Website usability – 10 tips for getting it right

For a business, there isn’t anything more important than the website when it comes to online marketing. It’s the focal point of your business’ online presence and your success rides on its ability to deliver to visitors a great experience. Follow these 10 website usability tips to ensure that your business’ site is doing exactly that. 

1)     Make sure that visitors understand immediately what you do. Many companies make the mistake of assuming that their site visitors already know what they are offering. Not necessarily. Visitors need to be able to understand what your company does within seconds of landing on your site. Let them know they’ve come to the right place right off the bat.  

2)     Keep the distractions to a minimum. Think about your main calls to action and ensure that they are front and center.  Keep things focused on what you want your visitors to do. Don’t deter them with other, less important content.

3)     Make your content easy to digest. Large chunks of copy can be overwhelming. Use headings, bolding, bullet points etc… to break up the copy and help visitors easily identify important points and main ideas. Font size, spacing, colour and contrast are important too. Ensure that your information is presented in a way that is easy to scan and digest.

4)     Keep your forms as clean as possible. When creating your website forms, keep them as simple as you can. Remove any information that isn’t absolutely essential. Long, detailed forms can be a deterrent.

5)     Be quick. Websites with long load times quickly lose visitors. Ensure that your site is speedy, avoiding flash or cumbersome plugins.   You could check out services like www.yottaa.com

6)     Monitor your website visitors. Learn about what your visitors are doing on your site. Find out where they drop off, where they click and what catches their eye. Use this data to further improve your website.

7)     Don’t be afraid to test. A/B or multivariate tests are a great way to test different parts of your website – whether it’s copy, design, layout, images etc… You may think that you know exactly what your target market wants and prefers – but only by testing can you know for sure.

8)     Talk to your customers in their language. Convoluted copy that is full of jargon, is vague or comes across as too stuffy or professional does not make for a good experience. Your copy should have a conversational tone that is easy to digest and resonates with your target audience.

9)     Don’t hide content. Don’t force your site visitors to spend time hunting around your website to find what they need. Many of them simply won’t bother. Your top information should be accessible by just a click or two from anywhere in your site. Your navigation should be clear and consistent throughout. Navigation that disappears or changes on inside pages is confusing and frustrating.

10)  Have contact information front and center. Buried contact information sends the message that you don’t want to be contacted and forces the visitor to do extra legwork. Your contact details should be accessible from each and every page.

Internet marketing success depends on a great website. And a great website depends on its usability.

Google+ Business Pages – Implications for Search Marketing

The Internet marketing world has been all abuzz over Google the last few months. First with the launch of its latest foray into social media – Google Plus. And now, most recently, with the opening up of Google+ pages for business, the latest in Internet marketing solutions from the search giant.

It’s a well known fact that social media activity directly relates to search marketing. Search engines use social content, engagement and interaction in their quest to bring the most relevant search results to users.

So will Google+ pages have a similar effect on search rankings? Given Google’s position as the premier search engine on the Internet, and the fact that they favor their own sites – you can bet on it! In fact, the company officially announced that it will be giving greater authority to Plus pages in search results. You can already see Google Plus pages showing up on first page search results when you search for different brands and companies.

Google has even linked Plus pages to Google Webmaster Tools, so you can see the effect of your Google Plus page on your rankings.

To make the most of your Google Plus page, make sure that you take steps to create a page that is as search engine friendly as possible.

Your page has plenty of options for search engine optimization:

• Create a keyword rich tagline for your business
• Ensure that you are uploading images with optimized file names
• Create a fully optimized, keyword rich introduction to your business, including links out to relevant pages within your website. Don’t forget to use keyword rich anchor text for your links.
• Include a link out to your website, as well as to your other social media profiles and any other pages within your website that you want to call attention to.

And don’t forget to add the Google +1 button to your website, which now integrates with your business page.

When looking for online marketing solutions to meet your SEM goals, you should now add Google Plus to the list. But search engine marketing isn’t the only thing that Google Plus pages are good for. If creating valuable content is part of your business’s Internet marketing  and promotion plan, look out for an upcoming post, where we’ll discuss the Google+ implications for content marketing.

What the new version of Google Analytics brings to your business

The new version of Google Analytics has been available in beta for quite some time within existing accounts, accessed by clicking on “New version” in the top right hand corner of the webpage. They have recently announced that soon this new version will be activated in all accounts as the default interface. Google shares that the new version provides its users three significant improvements:

• A redesigned platform with major new functionality
• A streamlined interface that makes it easier to access information
• Improved, faster report performance

You already use Google Analytics to access crucial data and metrics about your internet advertising and marketing efforts. So what does this new version bring to your business? Some of the highlights of the new version of Analytics include:

Real-time reporting  You are now able to see stats on what is happening right now on your website. Reports are updated continuously, with stats reported seconds after pageviews occur. This is especially useful for monitoring campaigns that you have running, such as an online advertising campaign for example. Or maybe you want to see how your new blog post or article is doing. With the new real-time reporting, you can get feedback right away and make proactive adjustments more quickly. You can access real-time reporting from the “Home” tab.

Mobile reporting The number of visitors using mobile devices to access websites is fast increasingly. This new metric gives you insight into how these visitors are using and interacting with your site. You are also able to see which devices are most commonly used to visit your site, allowing your business to focus mobile optimization efforts on these devices. See these stats under the “Visitors” tab. If your business has a mobile version of your website, you are also able to create a separate profile for the mobile site, and get all the same information from Google Analytics that you do for your regular website.

Flow visualization This newly designed graphic tool shows you how your website visitors navigate through your site. Previously it was a little cumbersome to access this data, but the new design makes the data easier to visualize and understand. Visitor flow allows you to see your visitors’ journey by traffic source or by visitor demographic information, such as country. Access this data via the “Visitors” tab. Goal flow, based on goal steps that you define, lets you see a visitor’s journey through these steps. Access this data from the “Conversion” tab within the “Goals” section.   Both flows also give you insight as to where visitors have dropped off.  

The new version of Analytics promises to be faster, more intuitive and more insightful than ever before. Use it to further improve your business’ internet marketing strategy. For more detailed information about the new version of Google Analytics, visit the Analytics blog.

Why you should get on the blogging bandwagon

Blogs are popping up everywhere these days and it seems that almost everyone is blogging. If you haven’t started a blog yet for your business, and you’re wondering whether or not this is something you should take on, here are 3 main blogging benefits to consider.  

SEO  

If the cornerstone of your internet marketing strategy and your business success revolves around getting traffic from search engines, a blog is an absolute must. SEO plays an important role in boosting your search engine rankings and a blog is a great tool to support your optimization efforts.  

A blog is a gold mine of SEO possibilities. Here are just a few:

• Blog posts give you all kinds of content that can be keyword optimized.
• You can also use your posts to ramp up your internal linking.
• In addition to the post itself, blogs offer many additional areas that can be optimized, such as categories, tags and descriptions.
• Pumping up your blog posts with photos and videos gives you additional optimization opportunities.
• Search engines highly value refreshing content on websites. With regular blogging, you are getting just that.  

Exposure  

Blog posts don’t just sit on your blog for your website visitors to read. By using your social media channels to share your blog posts, you can drive additional traffic to your website. If appropriate, you can also invite guest bloggers to post on your blog, exposing your business to their online audiences.  

Building relationships  

Having a blog opens a new communications channel for your business. Your current and potential customers or your industry partners can post comments to share their feedback and ask questions. A blog is a potent way to foster connections, as well as get valuable insights.  

With the natural social sharing that goes on around blog posts, blogging can also help to increase interactions on your social media accounts. As your posts get shared on social media, a communications channel opens up and you have the opportunity to interact with individuals or organizations that you may not have come across otherwise. Relationship building becomes much easier with a blog as a conversation starter.  

When it comes down to it, any business can benefit from having a blog. If you currently don’t blog, it may be time to get on the bandwagon and include blogging in your internet marketing promotion and advertising plan.

How an out of date website can hurt your business

Refreshing or redesigning a website that is past its prime is an important way to ensure that your business meets its online marketing goals and takes advantage of the best internet marketing solutions currently at your disposal.   But many businesses will hold off on updating their websites. Whether it’s for budgetary reasons. Or a lack of manpower or resources to actually manage the project. Or the belief that there are more important things to concentrate on. The website can wait until we have x, y, z done.   Putting off a redesign for any reason can have some pretty serious consequences. Consider these negative repercussions of having an out of date website representing your business online.  

Credibility  

Like it or not, potential customers will make very quick decisions about whether or not they can trust a company based on what the website is like. If it’s clearly outdated, not maintained, not easy to use, visually unappealing – this is sending a message to your site visitors.   Some might see it as a sign that the company does not value their business enough to have a solid online foundation or enlist the help of an internet marketing agency. Others will see the website’s quality as a reflection of the quality of the product or service being offered. A poor website undermines your business’ credibility in the eyes of your customer.  

Lost sales  

Older, outdated websites lack what is currently accepted as basic standards in web user experience.   Whether it’s a lack of compelling content. Poor usability. Unappealing visuals and graphics. Difficult navigation. A lack of updating information.   If your visitors are frustrated or displeased by their experience on your site, they will leave without buying or converting.   If you miss the opportunity to engage your site visitors and entice them with your offering, you will lose out on sales.  

Perception in the marketplace  

If you find yourself in the lucky position of having no direct competitors and being the only company to offer what you do, a bad website might not be as damaging (although it certainly will still be a missed opportunity). However, if your competition is fierce, and you are fighting to capture your target market, your website can become a deciding factor.   If your competitors offer a more pleasant, engaging, easy website experience than your business does, a good number of your potential customers will decide that the competition is a better option. A poor website affects your perception in the marketplace and gives potential customers an easy reason for choosing to go with the “other guys”.   Your website is the foundation of all your sales and marketing efforts. It speaks volumes about your business and your product. Make sure it’s saying sending the right message.

What you should be tweeting

Many businesses are jumping on the Twitter bandwagon. They are excited by the prospect of this free marketing tool, and all the success stories they have seen in the media. They eagerly anticipate the traffic spikes and hoards of followers that will help them promote their businesses. But it doesn’t happen. The traffic doesn’t come. The visitors that do come don’t stay. The number of followers doesn’t budge.

One of the biggest mistakes that businesses make in the Twitter world can explain what is going on. Instead of engaging and interacting, businesses are strictly self-promoting. Only sharing their own news and information. Creating what is essentially an advertising stream on Twitter. And the majority of people on Twitter are not interested in that. That’s not what they are there for.

How to break out of this cycle of constant self-promotion? Here are some ideas for what you can tweet about to help boost engagement and visibility for your company on Twitter. 

- Share industry news that is not specifically about your company, but is related and would be of interest to your followers.

- Share tweets from others in your industry or from your partners. This helps to foster relevant relationships.

- Respond to @ mentions. Even a simple “thanks for the retweet” goes a long way.

Ask questions. You can gain some valuable insight and maybe get some conversations going.

- Reveal a more personal side to your business. Share information or comments that are in line with your values and mission. Give people a peek inside the day to day workings of your company.

- Participate in conversations. Create lists with your customers, partners, industry contacts etc… and then interact with them as appropriate. You’ll boost your visibility and help establish a stronger connection.

By keeping the above tips in mind when managing your Twitter account and avoiding only self-promotion, you’re sure to see more activity and interaction. When tweets come to your Twitter stream, they’ll see a company that is interested in engaging and building relationships. And that will make them that more likely to click that follow button. 

5 ideas for using video marketing in your business

The marketing world is all abuzz over video – and for good reason. Video marketing is a powerful tool. From supporting your SEM goals to getting visitors to click on that buy button, video can support a variety of business goals. Not convinced? Here are a few stats:

• Video will be 90% of all web traffic by 2013 (Cisco, 2010) There’s no doubt that video is a major marketing booster. So, how can you actually use video in your business? Here are 5 video ideas that can help support a variety of marketing and communications goals. 

• Ecommerce site visitors are 85% more likely to purchase if they’ve seen a video (Internet Retailer, April 2010)

• Google loves video – Properly optimized video increases the chance of a front page Google result by 53x (Forrester, January 2010)

There’s no doubt that video is a major marketing booster. So, how can you actually use video in your business? Here are 5 video ideas that can help support a variety of marketing and communications goals.

Showcasing your product

If you sell a tangible product, show it in a video. If yours is a digital product, why not give a tour of what your product is like from the inside? Photos are great, but actually seeing a product in action can help your customers feel a stronger sense of what your offering is like in the real world. The more information customers have about a product or service, the more likely they are to buy. 

Sharing a peek at your business in action

A behind the scenes look at your business operations helps your customers to feel a stronger sense of connection to your company. Customers also value transparency. By not being afraid to show what your business is like, you’re upping the trust factor.

Showcase your people

Customers are always interested in seeing the people behind a business. Whether   you get members of your customer service team to answer common questions, or take your about page to the next level by including videos of your staff rather than    just photos, video can help your people come to life. Similarly to showing the business in action, showing your people helps your customers feel a greater sense of personal connection to your business, which in turn encourages trust and loyalty.

For educational/training purposes

Showing how to use your product, and answering common questions via video makes it that much easier for your customers to use your offering successfully. Not only are you delivering a superior customer experience, but you will reduce the demand on your customer support team. 

Sales information

Do you have impressive stats? A great company story? Outstanding case studies? Selling features and benefits make for perfect video content. Think about the type of information that your sales team might use in a PowerPoint presentation. Then make it into a video. The sky really is the limit when it comes to video marketing. Get creative and have fun with the process. Your customers (and your bottom line) will thank you.

3 ways to grow your business – Part 3

In part 1, we looked at what most businesses tend to focus on – growing your customer base. In part 2, we discussed the potency of increasing the frequency of purchases.

In this last segment, we will look at how to get your current customers to buy more from you, also known in the marketing world as up-selling and possibly cross-selling.  

How this is different from increasing purchase frequency is the emphasis on getting your customers to buy more at the time of purchase or from a subsequent purchase.  To purchase more of your or even a partner’s service (cross sell) or a higher end solution (upsell-sell).  

Many of the considerations will be the same as increasing purchase frequency. You need to deliver both a top-notch product or service and offer an exceptional customer experience. The quality of the product or service should speak for itself. Customer experience involves every single customer touch point, from your shopping cart to your support team. To get your customers to buy more from you, they need to be loyal and trust you completely.  

Up selling is also a very cost-effective option. Keeping your current customer base is 5 – 10 times cheaper than trying to bring in new customers. And it’s easier to cross / upsell customers that are already loyal and happy with what you do than those that are learning about you for the first time.  

If you want to cross /up sell to your current customers, make sure that they know about all of your offerings. In all your communications, whether it be newsletters or social media or even your email signature, make sure that you are highlighting all of your different offerings. Awareness is a crucial aspect of cross / up selling.  

Whether you are selling to a new customer or an existing, a very effective cross / up-sell technique is to get them right at the point of purchase. Offline, we can see this at virtually any retail shop. There are additional products right at the till. This works online as well. During the checkout process, you can suggest or encourage additional purchases. The more targeted the extra offering, the better. Cross-selling related products or services is much more effective than a random suggestion.  

You can also encourage additional purchases by offering special discounts or deals that only apply for the purchase at hand. This can increase urgency and the likelihood that a customer will act.  

To get your customers to buy more from you, they have to be buying in the first place. You need to be upping that conversion rate and ensuring that your sales funnel is optimized and doing its job. Pair that with a strong cross / up-sell strategy and you’ll be seeing increased growth from a smaller number of customers.

A marketing lesson from the Go Daddy PR nightmare

Everyone’s talking about Go Daddy these days. And not in a good way. In case you missed it, Go Daddy CEO Bob Parsons not only shot and killed an elephant on a recent trip to Zimbabwe, but he posted the video of the kill online for the world to see. 

The controversial video, and Bob’s response, have been flooding the media. PETA has deemed Mr. Parsons the “scummiest CEO of the year.” He however defends his position, insisting that the kill helped protect the crops of nearby villagers.

There is no doubt that the Go Daddy public relations department has been working overtime to address the flood of outrage. This situation gives all of us a reminder of the importance of pr and reputation management.

There is another key marketing lesson to be learned here too – the importance of keeping tabs on your competitors.

You are no doubt already carefully monitoring your competitors in terms of their product offerings, their pricing, their distribution, their marketing campaigns. These are all an important part of the competitive landscape. But the Go Daddy fiasco highlights the importance of monitoring ALL competitor activity, and acting quickly to capitalize on any situation that can help boost your business.

Many web hosting companies acted right away in response to the incredible negative backlash. Host Papa is one example of a Go Daddy competitor that was on the ball. They quickly rolled out a program that gave a $5 donation to Save the Elephants for every Go Daddy customer that made the switch to their hosting services. They did an excellent job of not only responding to the situation, but taking the opportunity to emphasize their own environmental commitment and their pre-existing eco-initiatives.

The internet has made competitive monitoring easy – using Google Alerts, taking the time to monitor industry news, signing up for email updates from industry publications, using social media to keep an eye on what your competitors are doing. The information is there if you’re proactive about tracking it.

Simply having the monitoring in place is not enough, however. Your team has to be ready to act, and fast, when these types of opportunities arise. Consider your business’ internal workings. Firstly, do you have staff actively monitoring what’s going on? And secondly, have you empowered them to act quickly?

Encourage your staff to bring ideas to the table. And make sure that they have the power and the support that they need to make things happen fast. In situations such as these, dilly dallying, waiting for approval or stalling until someone has the time in their work schedule to execute won’t work. You’ll miss the boat. And your competition will be reaping the benefits.

3 ways to grow your business – Part 2

In part 1 of this series, we looked at the most common way that businesses tend to approach growth – by trying to get more customers.   Today, let’s take a look at the second way that companies can boost their business profits – increasing the frequency that current customers buy from you.   Contrary to the first way, which involves a huge investment of both time and money to reach these new potential customers, upping purchase frequency is much less involved.   Why? Well, your customers already…

• Know about your business – less education is needed, and for the most part your business should be top of mind when they think about your industry.
• Trust your business – you’ve already successfully met their needs or delivered a product, so they feel confident that you’ll do so again.
• Are part of your business – whether you have them on your email list, have connected with them through social media or simply have them logging in to their account, they are already in your communications loop. Reaching them is much, much easier.

  It costs anywhere from 5 – 10 times more money to attract a new customer than it does to keep an existing one.   So, how can you increase the frequency of transactions for your current customer base? In many businesses, it revolves around keeping your business top of mind and offering special incentives to buy. Groceries stores, for example, rely on this strategy. They send out weekly flyers and other communications of in-store specials, they offer points programs, they have special events in store etc… This is all to encourage their customers to come to them, and not the dozens of other competitors, when it’s time for that grocery shop.   It’s a little trickier in the web hosting industry. Customers generally don’t require your products or services all that frequently. They might have monthly recurring charges, which means they never need to go to your website.   Here are some tips for increasing purchase frequency:

• Promoting increased usage of your product/services. Again, a little trickier in the web hosting industry, but think about how some of your customers operate. Do they run hundreds of websites, for example, but don’t exclusively use your hosting services? Perhaps bundles, quantity discounts or free additional services would encourage them to host all their sites with you.
• Encourage customer loyalty. Make doing business with you so enjoyable that they wouldn’t even think to go elsewhere. Then, when their needs grow, they will look to your company.
• Keep in touch. By staying in contact with your customers, letting them know about special offers and valuable promotions, informing them about company developments etc… you are keeping your company top of mind.

  In part 3, we’ll look at a similar topic – how to get your customers to buy more from you.