1. Shock your first time customers by calling them within a day of their order. Ask them for feedback and thank them for their support.
2. Post online profiles of everyone at the company, but ditch the boring executive bios. Instead post profiles from the rank and file, the people who actually interact with your customers on a daily basis. The profiles will remind your customers they buy from people, not an “organization”
3. Take one day a month and answer the phones yourself. Tell customers who you are and get their feedback first hand. Customer’s love to opine when they know they’re talking to a decision maker. (I guarantee you will walk away with loads of new ideas from this tip).
4. Include a manager’s business card along with every order, along with a note asking for feedback.
5. You know those feedback boxes on your website? Don’t just read them, respond to every single customer who leaves a suggestion. They took the time to leave their 2-cents, don’t they deserve a response? (from my personal experience, customers are utterly shocked when you respond to suggestions. Kinda sad, isn’t it?)
6. Leave smiley face and “thank you” penciled on your customer’s receipt. Restaurant servers do it. It reminds them a real human touched their order.
7. Give to a worthy cause. Make sure you communicate specifically the people who benefit from your donations, so customers feel the connection.
8. Include a picture of each customer service representative in their email signatures. Every time they engage a customer via email, they’ll be reminded a real, caring human being is on the other end.
9. Actually listen and respond to your customers via Facebook and Twitter. It’s shocking how many large brands still just push out updates and never bother to respond to comments or tweets.
10. Start blogging. Scratch the corporate-speak, and find an authentic trust agent from within the company customers will relate to. Zappos is the master of creating a window into company culture with their frequent video blog updates.
11. Publicly recognize your top customers, product reviewers, etc. Link to their profiles on your site. Give them e-badges that signify their loyalty, such how long they’ve been supporting you, etc.
12. Actively call your long-time customers before they call you. Not to sell them something, but rather to get feedback on a recent purchase or service call.
13. Assign a personal customer service rep to each customer. When a customer orders, send them an email letting them know who their personal customer service rep is. Assign the same customer service rep to the same customer each time they order and, voila, you’ve created a relationship.

Have you ever been pleasantly shocked by a company “getting personal” with you? Share your experience below.

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The Website Redesign Cycle

1. Company creates website
2. Company grows tired of website, and realizes it doesn’t meet all of their needs
3. Company redesigns website, addresses some of the weaknesses, but damages features that worked perfectly, annoying customers accustomed to the old site
4. Repeat (endlessly)

Website Redesign = Admission of Failure

The sad fact is, when a complete website overhaul is necessary, someone has been asleep at the wheel. Someone hasn’t been extracting actionable information from analytics reports. Someone wasn’t testing pages, headers, and buttons. If someone was, small, gradual changes could have precluded a redesign in the first place.

Who Are You Redesigning For?

If you aren’t designing with your customers in mind, the project is bound to fail. You can’t design for your CEO, because he’s not using your website. But don’t customers get sick of the same website? Not really. Come to think of it, most people don’t like change at all. The truth is, your company cares more about the look of your site than your customer ever will. Customers don’t know that your site hasn’t been redesigned in a year, as long as they can complete their objective.

Evolve, Don’t Re-Invent

Drastic is dangerous. By evolving your site, little by little, based on true customer feedback and testing, you’ll slowly but surely build a truly remarkable website. No, it’s not as exciting as a redesign, but it works.

Need a fresh set of eyes on your website? Find out what 3 Things you can improve with a $99 website critique by Palmer Web Marketing.

On the contrary, I would argue we can learn much from the offline world. After all, with hundreds of years of experience, traditional retailers are in many ways much more polished than their online counterparts. Here’s 7 pointers we can take from the brick and mortar world.

1. Merchandising Matters: Countless hours of research have been performed on product merchandising. Grocery stores make a killing off selling prime locations on their shelves. I believe we are just starting to learn how to effectively merchandise online. How much thought have you given to how your products are ordered on your category pages? What about the way you order your categories in your nav? It kills me every time I see products or categories ordered alphabetically. Should accessories really be listed first if you’re known for your jeans? Probably not.
2. Packaging Matters: Few retailers consider packaging when selling products online. There’s a reason manufacturers spend millions on package design and testing, because it works. It’s a shame to not carry those elements online. Far from your typical product page, every product on the HoMedics website features a flash presentation, along with several tabs, one of which shows the product packaging. Too many product pages suffer from extreme boringness, offering a lifeless, overly-templated presentation of products. Showing packaging serves gift givers especially well, since they care about what the box looks like when the gift is opened.
3. Shopping is Social: Shopping mall empires are built upon the simple fact that shopping is a social activity. While our web is becoming increasingly social, online shopping seemingly lags behind. While services such as ShopTogether go so far as to allow customers to browse together, simpler website features such as “Get a Friend’s Opinion” email form can take small steps in that direction. I’m also a big fan of public wish lists, and allowing your customers to create and customize profiles on your site.
4. Social Proof: No one wants to be the first to try a product. When perusing the aisles of a store, its not hard to see what sells and what collects dust. You can also observe the shopping behaviors of other customers. Where do your online shoppers go to see what’s popular? Do you allow customers to sort by popularity or reviews on your category pages?
5. Product Bundling: Walk into any department store, and you’ll find products grouped together not only by category, but by common purpose. Some clothing stores have a shop by outfit feature, a perfect example of bundling. Product bundling not only serves to raise the average basket size, but it helps customers see practical  benefits from a group of products. After all, what’s more appealing, a t-shirt by itself, or a whole new look you can show off to friends on the weekend?
6. Location Matters: Setting up shop in a prime location makes all the difference. How does location translate in the online world? Domain names and search engine results. Are you on a busy street corner (Google results page 1) or a desolate backroad (Google results page 29). Is your virtual location (domain name) easily communicated, and credible sounding? Cheap-Laptop-Computers.com may help for SEO, but will it ever spread like wildfire via word to mouth?
7. Answers Matter: Have you ever made a serious in-store purchase without asking the store employee at least one question? Unknown millions have been lost in e-commerce due to unanswered questions due to inept product pages (And no, FAQ pages are not the solution) What about letting your customers answers questions for each other, like BackCountry’s Product Wall Q&A feature?. Customers are more than eager to help each other. The problem is most sites don’t let them.

Yes, we have a lot to learn from our traditional retail brethren. I’m excited to see how online retail transforms over the next few years. We’re still just a bunch of toddlers wobbling around in brave new world

Need a fresh set of eyes on your website? Find out what 3 Things you can improve with a $99 website critique by Palmer Web Marketing.

I’ve recently been reflecting on lessons I’ve learned through this exciting but tumultuous experience. What follows is a list of 6 lessons I’ve learned, often the hard way. I hope these lessons are helpful to your business as well.

Lesson #1: Serve your Customers Offensively

All businesses give lip service to good customer service, and yet few are known for the truly remarkable kind. I believe this is due to a defensive rather than an offensive approach to customer care. Too much emphasis is placed on serving customers who initiate contact with the company rather than the company initiating contact with them. Would you be considered a good friend if you never called? Probably not. Your customers aren’t impressed that you answer the phone with a friendly voice, that’s an expectation. Do the unexpected. Call or email them first. Actually listen and respond to all feedback. Publicity recognize them. You can’t win in sports if you’re always on the defense. Neither will you win the hearts of your customers if you never go on the offense.

Lesson #2: Don’t Listen to Your Best Customers

Hear me out on this one. Over the last few years, I’ve succumbed to complacency in areas of our business because I believed the feedback I was getting. We sent out surveys. We brought customers in-house for testing. Everybody loved the website. Customers gave nothing but praise. The problem was in who we were getting our feedback from. When you poll your customers for feedback, understand that your best customers will respond. These are the ones you need the feedback from the least. They already love you, and probably don’t want anything to change. And yet growth necessitates change. Seek out the kind of feedback that is painful, but necessary.

Lesson #3: Redesign for Customer Needs, not Internal Ones

One of the most dangerous temptations in web business is to constantly be redesigning a website. Rather than driven by customer needs, these incessant redesigns are usually motivated by the company getting tired of their existing design. Website overhauls that are driven by anything but customer needs are a colossal waste of time and money. Trust me, we’ve done extensive overhauls that took months, and yet customers barely noticed, and conversion didn’t change.

Lesson #4: Deploy when you’re 80% finished

I don’t believe in perfection, especially when it comes to web development. While you’re busy getting to perfect, your competitors are stealing market share. There is no such thing as a perfect launch, so the sooner you discover the problems the better. If you launch your website improvements and new features when they’re 80% ready, and you’ll instantly gain priceless feedback your development team would never have encountered in testing.

Lesson #5 Create a Flexible Development Culture

I’ve been blessed to work with a group of incredibly gifted developers and designers who can adapt to any situation and meet any deadline. A flexible developer will realize that meeting a deadline is more important than 100% fully complaint code. (I’ve actually not hired incredibly gifted designers because they told me they couldn’t put out a page that wasn’t 100% standards compliant.) A flexible attitude is key. When you run an idea by your development team, are they excited for the challenge or give you a million reasons why it can’t be done or it will take too long?

Lesson #6: Don’t sell the product

The sooner you realize it’s not the product you’re selling, the better. C28 doesn’t sell clothing, but rather a way for its customers to express deeply held faith beliefs through clothing. When you address the ultimate need, your customers will see you as more than a business, but part of their lives. Sell the experience. Sell the meaning. Just don’t sell the product, that’s what your competitors do.

What are your top lessons you’ve learned the hard way?

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Such is the problem for many online business’ when gazing into the vast array of tools available in internet marketing. As with any tool, the internet marketing tactics are best when used for their intended purpose. Despite what any consultant says, there is no one web marketing tactic that works for everyone, in all situations. Below is a guide to help you choose the proper tools for your unique marketing needs.

Search Engine Optimization

When to use it:

• When you have time, and can patiently wait for results
• When people are already searching for your product/service
• When you serve a local market (competition is much less)

When not to use it:

• When you need results fast
• When people don’t know they need your product (more often than not, extremely innovate products with little competition fair poorly with SEO, because no one is searching for them)

Pay Per Click

When to use it:

• When you need a quick burst in traffic
• When testing what keywords to do natural search engine optimization for
• In combination with search engine optimization (studies show both used together are synergistic)

When not to use it:

• In an extremely competitive market. Bid prices are high and click fraud is rampant
• When targeting customer early in the buying cycle. Search users are less likely to click on a paid ad when they are still just looking for information

Social Media Marketing

When to use it:

• When you are genuinely interested in contributing value to your customers, not just pushing out messages
• When customers are already talking about your product/service on social media
• When your product/service is truly buzzworthy (let’s face it, some products, while valuable, aren’t worth talking about)

When not to use it:

• When your products are, well…. boring. There’s nothing wrong with having a boring product, we all need them. We just rarely talk about them on Twitter and Facebook.
• If you’re a brand control freak. A certain openness is required for social media to work. If you can’t open up a discussion about your brand, SMM isn’t for you.

Email Marketing

When to use it:

• When customer retention is your goal. Email is permission marketing at its core, therefore its best used with a list of existing customers.
• As a lower cost substitute for direct mail. Most businesses find email marketing to provide much better ROI traditional mailings

When not to use it:

• When attempting to acquire new customers. Email is a terrible customer acquisition mechanism because you typically have to buy or rent a list of emails, which is bad news all around.

A/B Testing and Conversion Optimization

When to use it:

• When managers or designers disagree about which version of a page is best. A/b testing is the ultimate equalizer.
• When you have the resources: Creating multiple version of pages or emails can double a designers work load. Remember to count this cost as well.

When not to use it:

• If your site is barely getting any traffic. You’ll be spinning your wheels trying to a/b test a page that gets 5 visitors a month. Focus on getting critical mass first.
• When you’re focused on the small stuff. You may have heard stories of Amazon testing the colors of their buttons, but unless you have millions of visitors a day, don’t test the small stuff. There is much lower hanging fruit.

The tactics above are by no means exaustive, but are probably the most widely used (and abused) methods in internet marketing today.

What has been your experience? When have the tools above worked and not worked for you?

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Will it work? Yes. Will it work next month? Maybe. Will it still work after this tactic of desperation has been used for months? Absolutely not.

When the cost of an additional marketing endeavor is virtually nothing, the directive from management will always be the same. “Do it more!”

But more is a paradox. It works well in the short term, but fails miserably in the long run.

The alternative to more is better. Better requires thought, planning, and relevance. More simply requires more of the same. More is easier than better, so its often the weapon of choice.

Permission marketing is all about trust. Every time you send a campaign that is irrelevant, you lose a bit of trust. Every time you over mail your list, you lose trust. Slowly but surely, you’re crying wolf. And like the boy in the fable, one day you’ll really have something important to say, and no one will care to hear it.

Need a fresh set of eyes on your website? Find out what 3 Things you can improve with a $99 website critique by Palmer Web Marketing.

It starts with a clean, professional, easy to use website.

Then you launch a new product line, so you add a new button/ad/page, etc. Innocent enough right?

Next your company receives an award from an industry publication. Why not show it off on the homepage?

Then you read an article about a Google Adsense millionaire. Why not throw a few ads in, and pick up some extra revenue?

Then one customer complains that your Privacy Policy was too hard to find. So you put a huge red button in your header linking to it.

Before you’re aware, your website is unprioritized, cluttered mess… a frankensite.

Take a step back, and remind yourself the primary purpose of your website. Is it to solicit leads? For a customer to make a purchase? To educate customers about your brand?

Now take a critical look at every button, page, color, word, or ad on your site. Does it attract or detract from your primary purpose?

Need a fresh set of eyes on your website? Find out what 3 Things you can improve with a $99 website critique by Palmer Web Marketing.

Remedy #1 – Focus on the Few, Not the Many

“If I look at the mass I will never act. If I look at the one, I will.” — Mother Theresa

People know millions of children are starving in Africa, yet rarely act on this knowledge. But what if one of these children showed up on their doorstep? Who wouldn’t act to help this child? The emotional connection with a single child trumps the astonishing, but paralyzing knowledge that millions of children are starving.

Sometimes we’re so fixated on the mass of data before us we forget there are people behind the pageviews. Have you ever stood behind someone as they used your website? Don’t just watch how they interact with the site, watch their demeanor. Ask them how they felt about the experience. Clickpaths rarely tell the whole story. What happens between the clicks matters. How the customer feels about the experience matters even more. Try focusing on just a few experiences, whether by observing people directly, or using a visual analytics tool such as Clicktale.

Remedy #2 - Ditch the Averages

General averages are often used for high level KPI reports for management, and rightfully so. Your CEO doesn’t want to know the conversion rate of your blue widget page, he wants the big picture. However, focusing solely on averages without extracting specific segments often results in information you cannot act upon.

Consider the following metrics and their usefulness:

• Useless: Your website bounce rate is 25%
• Better: Your website bounce rate from first time visitors is 40%
• Actionable: Your blue widget landing page bounce rate for first time visitors is 70%

The problem with general averages (the first example above) is they hide specific problems (the last example). By making the data more granular, you discover that a specific landing page is problematic. You now have information you can act upon. By tackling problems on a granular level, you’ll slowly improve the more broad averages as well.

Remedy #3 - Let Business Needs Drive Strategy

A trap I often fall into is wasting hours scouring analytics reports for that one business-altering, earth shattering insight. Unfortunately, excessively mining analytics for insights is often a waste of time.

For instance, suppose your international conversation rate reports shows unusually low conversation rates from visitors in Mexico. While you may think you’ve found an action item (increase Mexico visitor conversion rate), this may not be inline with overall business objectives. Sometimes going after international business is very expensive (due to shipping, customs, and customer service costs). There are often unknown variables as well, such as a low credit card adoption rate in Mexico)

Here’s a different approach:

• Start with a known business problem or opportunity, and consult the analytics for the solution

Rather than:

• Consulting analytics reports find business problems and opportunities that don’t align with strategy
  

Contrast the prior example with this. Your company has made a strategic decision to sell more blue widgets because the margin is better than green widgets. Upon research, your analytics reports show that repeat visitors buy green widgets at twice the rate of blue ones. This discovery can now be made meaningful by optimizing clickpaths of return visitors towards a green widget purchase. Based on this knowledge, you begin marketing your green widgets to your sources of repeat traffic, such as visitors who come through email newsletters.

Conclusion

There’s other great ways of getting your analytics unstuck, but I hope the ideas above will help you make sense out of the madness that confronts you each day. How about you, what are your methods of dealing with an analytics overdose?

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Social media can no longer be ignored, even by traditional marketing agencies and old-school business. But before you make the plunge into this powerful, but often misunderstood marketing tactic, ask yourself these 7 important questions.

1. Can you have a conversation? I recently saw a wall comment posted to a major clothing retail chain’s Facebook page, questioning whether the company was going out of business. As of today, the comment still has not been responded to. Obviously, they are not interested in having a conversation, or managing their brand reputation for that matter. If you want to do social media, make sure you have the time to listen and respond, not just push out content.
2. Do you have the time? Managing a Twitter or Facebook account can easily suck hours of productivity from an aimless employee charged with the task of managing it. Are you willing to invest the necessary time, but able to limit fruitless, unproductive chatter? Are you able to commit to the long-haul? Social media is more of a commitment than a campaign, if you start, expect to finish and stick with it for the long run.
3. Are you saying anything worth listening to? If you’re thinking of using Facebook updates as another channel for press releases or pure advertising, think again. Your friends and followers will quickly see through this sham. The key is to strive for interactions. If your updates contain only push content (e.g. “Come buy our new widgets!”) your followers will quickly tire. Much can be accomplished by transforming push into pull content (e.g. “please comment with your opinion on our new widget!”)
4. Can you stomach the negative? A certain openness is required for social media marketing to work. If the thought of an irate customer posting a negative comment on your Facebook wall scares you to tears, SMM might not be for you. In my experience though, nearly every time I’ve witnessed negative comments on a company profile page, the true fans jump in and defend the organization, sometimes before even the company does.
5. What role will customer service play? Once customers know they can reach you through social media, you will undoubtedly need to get customer service involved. How will you handle the inevitable customer service issues that surface? In my experience, giving at least a few senior customer service representatives the ability to interact instills a sense of ownership, ensuring that customer service will view social media with the same importance as they view a phone call or email.
6. Are you joining the right conversations? You don’t have to be everywhere. Consider first polling your customers and finding out what social media sites they use. Only join those that have a critical mass, there’s no point in talking to no one.
7. Can you accept a fuzzy ROI? Social media ROI can’t and shouldn’t be tracked in the same way as other online marketing venues. Say goodbye to the CPMs and CPCs from typical online marketing channels. Tangible revenue can be tracked in some ways, but much like traditional offline advertising, you’ll never really see the full picture of brand awareness benefits. Make sure your company management sees some of the more subjective ROI indicators, such as positive comments and the extent of conversations.

Social media is surely worth the time and effort, as long as you understand the cost. SMM isn’t free, it takes a serious investment. Before you get into social media, make sure you truly get it.

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So now you’ve committed to testing your website. Where do you start? What do you test? While you’ll ultimately have to answer these questions for yourself, below are 7 Do’s and Don’ts to help guide a successful testing strategy.

1. Do Test Properly: So you tweaked your homepage and sales shot up 50% from the prior week. Success? Not really. There’s too many moving parts here to consider. Did you run a sale during the same period, or send an email? In order to determine whether a new version of a page outperforms an old one, you must run both pages at the same time under the same conditions, and split test them using software such as Google free website optimizer. Before you advance any further with your testing strategy, get acquainted with Google’s powerful testing tool.
2. Don’t Be Afraid to Fail: In testing & optimization, failure is success. Although you may be disappointed that the new landing page you created underperformed against the old one, had you not tested it, you would have caused unknown damage to your sales.
3. Do Be Patient: Let your test run until you have a statistically significant winner. It’s tempting to end a test early when your favored version is winning, but fight the urge. Once your test has started, set it and forget it.
4. Do Use Testing to Settle Disagreements: Testing is the ultimate equalizer of opinion’s, especially those of the HiPPO’s. Rather than argue endlessly with clients or managers about what route is best, offer an unbiased test of each option. I can’t overemphasize the value of this approach. Eventually, you will reprogram the thinking of your company from “let’s do it!” to “let’s test it!”
5. Do Prioritize What You Test: When determining what to test, prioritization is crucial. Focus on the highest traffic pages first, those which are higher up in the conversion funnel. Bryan Eisenberg of GrokDotCom suggests testing the following pages first:
   • Your Top 5 High Bounce Rate Pages
   • Your Top 5 High Exit Rate Pages
   • Your Top 5 Lowest Time Spent Pages
   • Your Top 5 key pages (i.e., checkout, cart, registration, top product)
6. Don’t Test Too Many Variations: While you can run a multi-variant test that allows you to test dozens of different versions of a page at once, such a test will require too much time to determine a statistically significant winner. Only test variations that you have reason to believe will impact the bottom line.
7. Do Project out Benefits: After you’ve found a clear winner in a test, estimate the value of that change over a future time period in order to justify testing to management. Like other marketing activities, you’ll need to prove the ROI of your testing activities. Suppose a change to your site navigation increase your conversion rate by 10%. Calculate what that means for your business over a period of a year, and communicate your success to stakeholders.

Optimization testing separates good websites from great websites. Following the tips above will help you attain your testing goals. Have your own testing advice? Leave a comment below.

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1. It’s biased: If you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail. In other words, the SEO consultant believes that natural search is the key to your growth, while the social media guru says Facebook is the goose that lays the golden eggs.
2. It’s unprioritized: It’s easy to be overwhelmed by a mega-list of recommendations. I’m a fan of top 10 (or top whatever) lists, but they do have a tendency to produce unprioritzed advice that can easily swamp the small business owner.

With plethora of marketing options (e.g. email, SEO, PPC, social media)  competing for your attention, how do you decide how to allocate resources? Here’s some guiding principles: (that are prioritized, of course)

1. Strategy before Tactics: You need to know where you’re going before you choose the vehicle to get there. Some marketing vehicles are better than others depending on what you’re doing, and who you’re trying to reach. If you’re shooting for a 55+ audience, twitter probably isn’t the best place to start. If a consultant says you should be doing such and such, first stop to consider whether their recommendations gel with your strategy.
2. Leverage what’s already working: Is 50% of your business coming from natural search? There’s a good chance there’s still some low-hanging fruit ripe for the picking. A 10% improvement on your top performing marketing tactic is more effective than a 50% improvement on your worst performing one. Study and live by the 80/20 rule.
3. Budget for the future: While the point above may imply only sticking with what’s safe, such would be a short-sighted plan. It’s easy to get too comfortable with what you already know, and ignore what’s up and coming. It’s the classic innovator’s dilemma: why seek something new and improved when what you already have is working fine? Because you never know how long it’s going to work. Plan for obsolescence.
4. Imitate the Innovators: If the competition is already engaging in a certain tactic, there’s a good chance you could be missing the boat. You don’t always have to be the first in order to be the best. Stay on top of what your competitors are doing.
5. Fail Quickly, Fail Inexpensively: There’s no harm in trying something new that doesn’t work, just cut your losses early. Don’t invest too heavily, despite what any of your peers say, until you see promising results.
6. Demand Tangible Results: While the benefit of every marketing activity is not as easily quantified, you should be seeing results in some way. Don’t accept “branding” as an excuse for poorly performing banner ads, or “higher link-popularity” for ineffective search engine optimization. Insist on bottom line results.

The good news for internet business owners is there’s 1,000 things they can be doing right now to improve their business, the bad news is that not all 1,000 are equally important. Choose wisely, because the order in which you execute is critical for success.

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Second 1 – Impressions: First impressions are forming. What loads first? Your header logo? Your navigation? Ads? As your page finishes loading, your visitor is already unconsciously judging your site based on the quality of your website design. Though average visitors know nothing about web design best practices, they are quite good at identifying poorly designed sites, and abandoning them for lack of trust. After all, if your site design sucks, what does that say about your products or services? The first impression is often the last.

Second 2 – Definition: Here comes the big question, “Who are you and what do you do?” At this point the visitor needs to know the purpose of your site and what sets you apart. Your landing page must communicate unique value, not just what you sell. Keep in mind visitors come in from all directions, so don’t ignore the backdoors such as product and category pages. Does your website header (viewable on all pages) have a unique value offering or only your homepage?

Second 3 – Relevance: Relevance is key at this at this moment. Can your visitor continue to follow the “scent” of what they were looking for after arriving on your page? However they got to your site, whether by Google or a link on another page, your visitor is learning whether or not you keep your promises. For example, if they arrived from a Google search for “gourmet coffee”, can they find a reference or picture that matches this phrase?

Second 4 – The Hook: They’re starting to get it. Now what’s the hook? Based on personality type, the hook is different for many. Some are looking for the deal. “Free shipping” or “10% today only” might resonate with this crowd. Others are hungry for an emotional connection. These folks vicariously envision themselves enjoying your product through your lifestyle and contextual images. And still others are looking for solutions, fast, easy, and painless. They need reassurance that you understand their needs.

Second 5 – Action: Your visitor is now asking “what do I do now?” You’ve kept their attention for this long (ok, only 4 seconds) but now you need to solicit action. Strong calls to action are critical in this moment. The MIA (most important action) needs to be painfully obvious. There should be no question what you want them to do.

The good news is they’ve made it this far, the bad news is everything repeats on the next page – relevance > hook > action.

Do you doubt that visitors make decisions this quickly? Try it for yourself using StumbleUpon (the equivalent of Channel surfing for the internet). You’ll be surprised to see how quickly you judge and abandon a website.

Will you only get 5 seconds from all your first time visitors? Of course not, each visitor is different, and this is only a speculative scenario. But all visitors have one thing in common: they have no desire to have their time wasted by unconvincing websites. They have better things to do.

Need a fresh set of eyes on your website? Find out what 3 Things you can improve with a $99 website critique by Palmer Web Marketing.

As much as customer service is all the rage, and heralded as the new marketing, it’s still viewed as a cost-center by most online businesses. This I believe, is entirely due to a defensive approach to customer care.

Defensive customer service can be defined as any type of reactive customer servicing such as answering calls, responding to email inquiries, or responding to live chat sessions.

Providing good defensive customer service will never result in a flood of new business for two reasons:

1. You will only have personal contact with a fraction of your total customers. (those who have questions, problems, etc.) Only this small segment will be impacted by your excellent service. Note the uniqueness of this situation, in a brick-and-mortar world, you do have personal contact with each and every customer.
2. Good service is an expectation. Yes, some companies like Zappos go above and beyond customer expectations with extraordinarily helpful service, including referring customers to competitors for products they don’t stock. But for the most part, good service is a requirement for doing business.

At it’s very best, good defensive customer service will only prevent you from losing what you already have. It will not, by itself, create hoards of new word of mouth business. Unless… you change the paradigm.

What if you were able to reduce needless, defensive interactions through high-cost touch points (phone, chat, email) and with the time saved, start a offensive customer care plan that will actually add value?

Consider these powerful, yet rarely used tactics:

• VIP Recognition: Do your top customers know that they’re your top customers? They should. An outgoing phone call to a VIP customer is ten times as valuable as taking an incoming call. Come up with a system in which you regularly recognize these VIPs, and do something special for them.
• Customer Welcoming: Want to knock their socks off? Give brand new customers a call shortly after they place their order. Thank them for trusting your business and ask for feedback.
• Give them Feedback on their Feedback: It’s not uncommon for an online business to ask for customer feedback, but rarely do businesses respond to such suggestions. C28 makes it a habit to respond to every single customer suggestion left on their website. The response from customers is utter shock. “You actually read those suggestions?” most say.
• Customer Apology Program: Mistakes happen. Unfortunately, sincere apologies usually don’t. Learning the art of an effective apology will greatly exceed the expectations of your customers. Imagine getting a call from a manager, who apologizes for a lost shipment, and offers a discount on the order for the inconvenience. This is not expected. This adds value.

Sounds great, but how can you possibly have time to implement the ideas above? Here’s some ideas for reducing the load of defensive customer interactions.

1. Have a thorough FAQ / Knowledge Base: Every reasonable question should be answered in advance on your site. Ask your customer service team for help with this, they know what type of inquiries occur repetitively.
2. Answer questions contextually: FAQ pages are good, but few people have the patience to search through your site looking for an answer. By placing answers to common questions within the context of where the question is raised, you’ll prevent countless unnecessary calls and emails. For example, if customers are constantly asking when their shipment will arrive, include an estimated delivery date on the order confirmation page or shipping receipt.
3. Let customers help each other: Shoes.com brilliantly allows shoppers to ask questions about a specific product that can be answered by someone who owns that product. After all, who really knows a product more, someone who owns it or a customer service rep?

Start small. Over the next month, can you shift 5% of your customer service time from defensive to offensive tactics? 10% the next month, and so on? Give your customers the attention and care they deserve. I guarantee you’ll see a difference.

Need a fresh set of eyes on your website? Find out what 3 Things you can improve with a $99 website critique by Palmer Web Marketing.

We rarely think of it this way, but every button, every subject line, every headline on our website is a promise. Whether or not that promise is kept determines whether we win the trust of our visitors, or lose them for good.

To illustrate, let’s take a look at a fictional shopping scenario, not unlike an experience that happened to me recently.

1. Customer receives an email from electronics retailer with subject line “HDTV’s Starting at $700″
2. Customer opens email and finds a graphic showing only 1 TV and no details. BROKEN PROMISE: Subject line promised an HDTV for $700, but email contains no support for this theme
3. Customer clicks on Button that says “Shop HDTV’s”, and is taken to the website’s homepage, which differs completely in the look and feel of the email creative. BROKEN PROMISE: Button claimed to let visitors begin shopping the TV models, instead they’re left stranded on a seemingly unrelated page
4. Visitor reaches HDTV category page displaying dozens of HDTV models. The $700 model is the last item on page 5. BROKEN PROMISE: This retailer made it very difficult find the $700 TV model promised in the subject line
5. Once on product page, customer clicks “Add to Cart”
6. Customer lands on a page upselling the extended warranty. BROKEN PROMISE: Customer received no confirmation that item has been added to cart

Here’s some other common examples of broken promises:

• Homepage gets SEO’d for a specific product, and ranks. Yet when a Google searcher lands on this page, they must again navigate to a category page in order to find what they were searching for
• Shopping Cart total changes when shipping & tax charges are added late in the checkout process
• Item is shown to be out of stock after added to the shopping cart, yet product page did not indicate a stockout
• Customer opt-ins to email list, and doesn’t receive follow up for weeks

Keeping your promises requires staying consistent. So what elements must be kept consistent in order to ensure a smooth transition from page to page? Here’s 4 to keep in mind:

1. Consistent Design: Even the design of a web page makes a promise, that is, it implies a specific theme will be kept constant during the experience. Colors, graphics, fonts all need to stay constant in order to make the visitor feel safe and secure.
2. Consistent Voice: Your visitors will notice, maybe subconsciously, if the writing style changes from page to page, or step to step. Keep it consistent by having one writer do everything.
3. Consistent Messaging: Don’t call your promo a “48 Hour Closeout Sale” in your email and a “2 Day Clearance Event” on your landing page.
4. Create Logical Flow: Create a logical flow by setting expectations for the next page. One way to do this is ensuring that the call to action text on first page equals header on the subsequent page. For example, if the button on your email reads “Compare HDTV’s”, the header of the landing page should read the same. This ensures continuity, lessening the chance that a visitor will feel they landed on the wrong page.

There’s a fine line between making big promises and setting the bar too high. Take a fresh look at your site today through the eyes of a promise maker. Are you keeping them?

Need a fresh set of eyes on your website? Find out what 3 Things you can improve with a $99 website critique by Palmer Web Marketing.

In other words, the people most likely to give feedback are the people who spend the most money. So what’s the problem with this? Simply put, these are the people who’ll give you the least helpful advice. Let me explain…

Here’s the 2 types of people that volunteer feedback:

1. the first time customer, who is excited about your products/services
2. the long time customer, who has an ongoing relationship with your business

Here’s the problem: if we only receive feedback from the paying customers, what is everyone else thinking? After all, if your products suck, or your website is broken, people leave, they don’t hang around to give input.

Here’s 3 types of people you’ll never get feedback from:

1. The bouncers: These are the people who hit your site and leave immediately.
2. The lost and confused: These folks are interested, but they can’t figure out your site. Many people in this group adopt a “it’s probably my fault” mentality rather than blaming your website for being confusing. Because they blame themselves, they’ll never tell you when something is wrong.
3. The unmotivated: This group is somewhat interested, however they need extra motivation to act. Because they are only casual visitors, they probably won’t leave feedback.
   

The sad truth is that most businesses never truly get the right type of feedback. In other words, they hear only what they want to hear. That’s not to say that they never receive criticism through standard feedback channels, they just never really get a full picture of experiences with their brand.

Here’s the million dollar question: how can you get feedback from people who, well, don’t exactly want to give feedback? How can you possibly listen to those who aren’t talking? Here’s 4 ideas:

1. Watch your bounce rates: High bounce rates just might be the only feedback you’ll ever get. This is usually a sign of lack of continuity between your ads and landing pages. For example, your ad may over-promise or your landing page may not carry through the theme of your ad.
2. Preempt visitors with a survey: It can be annoying when you’re greeted with a survey the first time you visit a site, but at times its worth the risk to get priceless feedback. My survey tool of choice is 4Q by Avinash Kaushik and iPerceptions.
3. Email your inactive customers: You know those customers who haven’t bought from you in ages? Why not email them and ask why they stopped buying? With this group you have nothing to lose.
4. Putt a Feedback Button…everywhere: Don’t just bury your feedback button in the footer of your site, place it in every possible area of confusion. Ask for feedback everywhere, early, and often. For general website feedback, I like Kamplye.

Feedback is the grease that keeps your business moving. More importantly, feedback from the right people is the grease that keeps your business growing. Take some time today to ensure that you’re not just getting one-sided input from your customers.

Need a fresh set of eyes on your website? Find out what 3 Things you can improve with a $99 website critique by Palmer Web Marketing.

Below are 10 eCommerce startup mistakes I’ve encountered while working with online businesses. Specifically, many of these blunders are made by companies who are taking a traditional business online for the first time.

#1 – Blowing the budget on web development and neglecting marketing:

In the brick and mortar world, you get free traffic just by setting up shop on the street corner. The same does not apply for eCommerce. The “if you build it, they will come” mentality still exists in the minds of zealous, first time internet entrepreneurs. If you want a successful website, plan on spending as much on marketing and optimization in the first year as you pay for developing the site.

#2 – Getting Stuck in Endless Cycles of Design Revisions:

In traditional marketing or store operations, you have to get it right the first time, because it’s too expensive to redo your store signage a week after you open. However, the tools available to you online allow you to easily evolve and optimize your website overtime. As General George Patton once said, “A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.” The same applies to websites. Don’t expect a perfect website on day one. Rather than focusing on perfection, make a commitment to optimization after the website launches.

#3 – Forgetting people can’t touch your products:

This point may seem painfully obvious, but its often overlooked because companies know their products a little too well. It’s amazing how many eCommerce sites neglect appropriate zoom-in photos, contextual photos, and product descriptions. Take a look at the top performing websites in your niche, and pay close attention to how they describe and picture their products.

#4 – Not realizing website visitors aren’t as committed as store visitors

It’s easy for business owners to imagine a website visitor in the same way they perceive an in-store visitor. This is a serious mistake. While it’s not uncommon for retail stores to experience conversion rates of over 50% (half of the people who enter the store buy). a 3% conversion rate for website, would be considered acceptable. Why this disparity? It all comes down to commitment. The amount of commitment required to get in the car and drive yourself  to a retail store is much greater than the commitment from a casual surfer who clicks on your website from Google. In the physical world, your competitor is 10 minutes away. Online, they’re a few clicks away.

What does this mean? It means that any obstacle, large or small, that gets in the way of buying process will cause lost sales. It also means that you must add value to the customer experience, especially if you sell the same products as your competitors.

#5 – Using Print media for online media:

You know that killer flyer you made for your big sale event? Odds are it makes a terrible email blast. What about the retail catalog you invested so much on? It too, is likely very ineffective as an online version. Print and online media may be similar in some ways, but there are more differences than similarities. When choosing a designer for your website or online marketing projects, make sure they have significant experience with online creative, not just print media.

#6 – Ignoring Online Trust Issues:

In the face to face real world security, and privacy are rarely top concerns for customers. eCommerce, however, is inherently “taxed” with a low-trust environment, causing visitors to doubt the legitimacy of your site. You must go the extra mile to assuage these perfectly rational fears. This includes assuring customers of their information is secure, and that you value their privacy.

#7 – Having a “Home Page equals the Website” mentality:

In countless situations, I have seen companies place too much emphasis on the homepage, particularly the graphics, and woefully neglect other critical pages such as the product or category pages. A recent company I work with was surprised to learn that total pageviews of their homepage represented less than 4% of overall pageviews on their website. Yes, the homepage is important, but don’t go overboard and ignore other essentials.

#8 -Chasing After Every Internet Fad

Don’t go chasing after the latest and greatest internet marketing tactic or ecommerce feature. Yes, there are many exciting new tools and marketing tactics out there, but focus on the sure-fire methods first, such as search marketing, email marketing, and website usability. There’s much to be said about innovation and trying new things, but take every opportunity with a grain of salt, considering the opportunity cost.

#9 – Not Understanding or Caring about Web Analytics:

You can read a balance sheet, now make a commitment to understanding basic website analytics. In a physical store, the idea of analyzing customer activity is far fetched and impractical. For this reason, business owners often never realize the potential of not just monitoring but acting upon web analytics data. It’s vital that someone in the organization can understand and interpret web analytics.

#10 – Failing to Integrate your In-Store & Online Channels Early on:

Many large click-and-mortar retailers are still struggling to seamlessly integrate their in-store and online channels. Channel conflict, price discrepancies, and a siloing mentality are common, causing brand confusion for your customers. Many store managers believe promoting an eCommerce website will steal store sales. Make sure to educate your store staffers early on, highlighting the many synergies of online and in-store retailing.

I’ve listed 10 “don’t s”, now what about what you should do? If you had one tip to give an ecommerce startup business, what would it be?

About Justin Palmer

Justin Palmer is the owner of Palmer Web Marketing, a strategic web marketing consulting firm. Justin also runs MedSaverCard.com, a Medicine Discount Card offering up to 80% off prescriptions for drugs not covered by insurance.

Need a fresh set of eyes on your website? Find out what 3 Things you can improve with a $99 website critique by Palmer Web Marketing.

Too many websites have identity issues. That is, it’s too hard to figure out what the heck the site does, or what sets them apart from the crowd. Simply put, if prospects can’t understand what your business does within a few seconds of arriving on your page, you’ve lost them for good.

Identity issues are more problematic when visitors arrive through certain types of traffic than others. For example, a Google searcher who lands on Amazon.com after searching for “online bookstore” is much less likely to need assurance about what Amazon does. (even though the homepage does not explicitly say anything about selling books)

On the other hand, suppose a friend forwards a link to another friend with a vague message such as “check out this site, I think you’ll like it!.” Unless your site clearly identifies your purpose, you’ll never get the full effect of this word of mouth marketing.

So how can you easily explain your business and unique value to first time visitors? Here’s 7 easy ways:

• Use a 1 line identity slogan near your brand logo: Having a one sentence definition below or beside the brand logo in your site header is priceless. The Recylced Retriever sums up their purpose with the short statement “eco-friendliness for pet lovers.” Fugitive Toys declares themselves to be “an urban vinyl toy store.” It may be hard to sum up your business in a few words, but there is tremendous value in these succinct identity statements.
• Have an Easy to Scan About Us page: Visitors who are interested in digging deeper will likely seek out your about us page. Going into your company history on your about page is great, but make sure you succinctly define who you at the top of the page. Also, don’t get too creative with what you call your About page. If you don’t want to call it “about us”, stick with something like “Who We Are” or “What We Do”. Here’s some more tips for creating a powerful About us page.
• Explain How it Works: If your business model is particularly unique, a “How It Works” page may be necessarily. Here’s a great example from Fashion Hire, which lets customer rent, rather than buy, expensive designer handbags.
• Use a Short, Informational Video: A short (1 minute or less) video explaining your business and unique value proposition can engage customers who are otherwise too lazy to browse around your site to find information. Lulu, which offers on demand print content, clearly explains their business model with a short demonstration video.
• Show your stuff: If you sell a physical product, show contextual product photographs (products in use, rather than just on display) on your most frequently trafficked landing pages. Remember that customers are always entering your website through side and back doors via search engines, so make sure you optimize your top landing pages with first time visitors in mind.
• Create a Carefully Crafted Title tag: In addition to SEO value, your title tag is an effective way to communicate your purpose. Don’t waste this important page element by only filling it with only your brand name.
• Integrate identity into your brand: If you’re still brainstorming on what to call your business, consider integrating your purpose into your brand name. Knituition communicates their purpose (they sell knitted products) through their domain name.

It all comes down to not making the costly assumption that your website is as intuitive as you think it is. Always remember a good percentage of your visitors are there for the first time, so assume only one thing – they know absolutely nothing.

Once you’ve answered who you are, the next step is to communicate why you’re different. The world doesn’t need another widget shop, so explain why you build a better mousetrap.

Need a fresh set of eyes on your website? Find out what 3 Things you can improve with a $99 website critique by Palmer Web Marketing.

Offer Bounce Back Discounts: Your site will be flooded with traffic this holiday season. How can you harness that traffic to create year long business? Consider offering a good discount incentive for customers to come back and shop in January. You can automatically email them a coupon after each order, or send one along with the package. Don’t forget to email and remind customers to come back and use their discounts.

Loosen Up & Emphasize Your Return Policy: While a 30 day return policy is commonplace for the rest of the year, it may scare off early shoppers during the holidays. Make it clear to your visitors that you will accept returns and exchanges on all Christmas gift purchases. Be sure to let visitors know early and often about your policy, such as on product pages and the shopping cart.

Review Past Failures & Successes: Try this as you plan your busy holiday season. Take a look at you and your competitor’s website’s through the lens of the Wayback machine. What worked and didn’t work last year? What can you improve upon?

Communicate with Fulfillment & Customer Service: Don’t surprise your customer service and fulfillment staff with a unplanned for 24 hour blowout sale. (I’m talking from experience ). Taking 10,000 orders in a day is great, but if your warehouse can only ship 1,000, you’re in trouble. Work with your operations team in order to smooth out the volume spikes. One company I work for emails promotional offers to their customers by region, over a 2 week time period. This ensures that not everyone gets the offer at once, resulting in too many orders to fulfill in too short of time.

Use a Website Monitoring Service: Odds are, your website will go down at least once during the busy holiday season. If you’re not big enough to have a 24 hour IT department monitoring your server, signup for a website monitoring service such as Alertsite, who will email or text message you if your site goes down.

Put All New Web Development on Hold: December is not the time to be re-coding your shopping cart. Send your developer on a much needed vacation. Well, not really, but do put a temporary hiatus on all major web development projects. The 4th quarter is the time to optimize, not innovate.

Post Shipping Cut-off Dates Prominently: This is quite possibly the most important information to communicate to customers during the holidays. Check with your shipping carriers to determine what the cutoff days are for the various methods of shipping. As you get closer to Christmas, consider offering discounted priority shipping services to extend your selling period.

Do a Security Once-Over: Hackers don’t take time off for the holidays, in fact they probably work even harder. For this reason, have a professional audit your website for security flaws. Services like McAfee’s Scan Alert do a good job at detecting most eCommerce vulnerabilities.

Monitor those 404 and 500 Errors: Talk with your webmaster and ask him to setup a script that notifies him every time a 404 (page not found) or 500 (internal server error) occurs on your site. You might be surprised how often errors occur. When we set this up for one of my clients, they received over 1,000 errors in one day. These errors can be costly, especially at Christmas time.

Allow Gift Receipts: Gift givers hate revealing how much they spent on a gift. Make sure you allow customers to click a Gift receipt option that will hide the prices on the packing list from the recipient.

Allow Gift Messages: Let your customers add a personal message to their gift. For simplicity, you can have the message appear on the packing list which will already be included in the box.

Holiday Graphical Themes: Show some holiday spirit and redesign some of the artwork on your site with a holiday theme. Hopefully, this will get visitors in a buying mood.

Get Creative with your Creative: Every email blast you send doesn’t have to offer a discount or promotion. Consider sending out a gift guide or a Top 10 gift lists.

Promote your Wish List Feature: Start promoting your wish list feature, encouraging customers to share these wish list’s with family and friends.

Increase Server Capacity: Talk with your web host about how you can increase your server performance during the holiday rush. You don’t want to end up like Walmart or Amazon on  cyber Monday. Here’s a sad, but funny example of Macy’s servers getting overloaded.

Checkup on your Domain, Web hosting, SSL and Merchant Accounts: Letting your domain name expire mid-December will create a Christmas you’ll never forget. It’s not a bad idea to double check that your web hosting, SSL certificates, domains, and merchant account to ensure everything is all in order.

Audit Your Product Catalog: Have a detail oriented person visit each of your product pages to ensure accuracy. Check for typos, broken images, and bad hyperlinks. Small problems turn into big problems in the chaos of a busy Christmas season.

Seasonal SEO and PPC Landing Pages: Don’t forget to optimize your SEO and PPC campaigns for seasonal keywords. Visitors searching habits change around the holidays, so your marketing strategy should as well. Also, don’t fall into the trap of bidding wars, or allowing your ads to fall too low on the page.

Offer Online Gift Certificates: If your site doesn’t offer online gift certificates, and your visitors don’t find that perfect gift, they will just leave. Gift certificates make great last minute gifts. In addition, they’re a great way to drive sales at the beginning of next year.

Suggest Gifts by Person: Product category based navigation does little to help a frustrated gift giver find an idea for that hard to shop for person on their list. To help generate gift ideas, organize gifts intended for different people groups such as kids, teens, parents, grandparents, etc.

Suggest Gifts by Price: In addition, organize gifts for budget conscience customers by price range. For example, highlight gifts under $10, 25, 50, 100 or whatever price points are appropriate for your business. Be sure to highlight low cost products that would make good stocking stuffers. These can be a great way to increase your average order value.

Bundle Products: Gift selection is much easier when related items are grouped together in some sort of gift basket or bundle. You can add value to your customer’s experience by simplifying the gift buying process through product bundling.

Offer Gift Wrapping: Many don’t like the idea of sending gifts to friends or family wrapped in nothing but bubble wrap or Styrofoam popcorn. If you can, offer gift wrapping services to your online customers. Be sure to charge enough to cover the labor and material costs for this additional service.

Emphasize Urgency: Let your customers know it’s not safe to wait until the last minute. To prevent shipping issues or product stock outs, encourage your customers to shop early.

Mystery Shop your Site: Ask a friend to mystery shop your site or hire a professional service. Mystery shopping should include ordering, contacting customer service, and returning the product back to you. You might be surprised to learn about a few problems.

Need an outside perspective on how you can maximize your site’s holiday sales? Here’s one final self promotional tip Checkout Palmer Web Marketing’s 3 Things or MySitePlan website review services.

Need a fresh set of eyes on your website? Find out what 3 Things you can improve with a $99 website critique by Palmer Web Marketing.

You have plenty of other blog posts to read or emails in your inbox beckoning for your attention. Even if you commit to reading this you may be distracted by a ringing cellphone or a text message. Or maybe your brain will suddenly remember that proposal you had promised to send out 3 hours ago. Just as you may abandon this post, at this very moment, dozens of visitors may be leaving your website for similar reasons.

When optimizing our websites, we often focus (and rightly so) on elements such as web forms, buttons, product pages, shopping carts, etc. It’s easy to forget the countless external factors that affect the attention of our customers.

Preventing Controllable Distractions

Many distractions, such as calls from customers or bosses can’t be prevented, but some are within our control, such as:

• Ads on your website. If you’re currently using ads to supplement your income on a e-commerce site, seriously consider the professionalism and effectiveness of this tactic, as ads offer one more needless distraction.
• Cluttered checkout. This could include not removing navigation during the checkout process, or showing too many upsells/crossells too late in the checkout process.
• Make Your Site Design Good, but Not Too Good. Web design can be a double-edged sword. Professional, attractive, and usable design will put the focus where it belongs, on the products. On the other hand, overly animated or creative design can be a distraction, focusing too much attention on the website rather than what’s being sold.
• Too many fields, too little time. Do your web forms stay on a need to know basis, or are you quizzing your customers for information you’ll never use?
  

Are You Stressing Urgency?

Does your website give visitors any sense of urgency to complete a transaction? If you’re running a sale, do you clearly communicate the end date? If you’re offering merchandise at a permanent mark-down price, have you reminded customers this item will not be re-stocked? Customers assume there’s safety in later. It’s our job to refute that idea, and close the sale now.

Have a Killer UVP

If visitors feel your product is a commodity, you have already lost the battle for their attention. From the moment a prospect lands on your website, you must differentiate the heck out of their experience.  If your unique value proposition (e.g. free shipping on returns, 110% price guarantee, 10% of sales donated to charity, etc.) is not clearly communicated as early as possible, then customers are prone to choose another option, namely your competitor with a lower price. While you can never prevent interruptions, the best you can do is convince a customer that what they are currently doing (shopping on your site) is more important than that pressing distraction.

Does your Site Have An Express Lane?

Try this experiment: Time yourself on how quickly you can complete a transaction on your website. Better yet, ask someone unfamiliar with your site to place an order as fast as they can. If its not humanly possible to complete a transaction in a short period of time (say 3 minutes), then the odds of your visitors abandoning their effort due to distractions greatly increases.

Re-capturing Lost Opportunities

Of course there is no foolproof way to prevent external distractions, but there are some effective tactics for re-capturing lost prospects. One of my clients sends personalized emails to every customer who abandons their shopping cart, asking if there was a problem preventing them from completing their purchase. One of the more typical responses, not surprisingly, goes something like this, “There’s nothing wrong with your website, I just got distracted and didn’t finish my purchase.” In addition to sending cart reminders, make it a priority to capture email addresses. Personally, I will subscribe to a website that I find interesting at the moment, but I’m too busy to buy or dig deeper. Another tactic would be encouraging bookmarks, whether browser based or through a social bookmarking service such as Delicious.

Quite possibly, this very blog post is an interruption in your day, maybe distracting you from accomplishing something more important. But since I kept your attention this long, hopefully you’ll take away a practical tidbit from this article, or will leave a comment with your own input.

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With web forms playing such an important role in the completing goals, it goes without saying that we should optimize the heck out of them. Below are 25 tips for doing just that.

1. Ditch the Captchas: Captcha’s are great for blocking spam, but some evidence suggests they are just as good at blocking conversions. A little spam isn’t the end of the world, and definitely isn’t worth losing conversions over. If you must use a Captcha, make sure it’s easy to read.
2. Remove Unnecessary Fields: Do you really need to ask for your customers date of birth and gender? Even if your customers aren’t concerned about privacy issues, odds are they’re lazy and might just abandon your excessively inquisitive form. Here’s some great advice from Get Elastic on registration forms.
3. Keep It Simple: Just because we can use CSS to do all sorts of fancy things with text boxes, doesn’t mean we should. Keeping form fields simple will ensure that customers understand their purpose and won’t confuse them with design elements.
4. Clear the Clear Button: Having a clear button next to the submit button just makes it easier for customers to accidentally delete what they’ve entered. Skip this unnecessary feature.
5. Cancel the Cancel Button: In the case of long or multi-part form pages, such as checkouts, don’t give customers the option to cancel their decision. That’s equivalent to a commission driven salesperson asking, “Do you really want to buy this?”
6. Label Required Fields: People want to do as little as possible. For this reason, let your customers know what they are required to fill out with an asterisk or similar label.
7. Use Point of Action References: If customers are getting confused by the information you’re asking for in a particular field, include a small note with a popup link with more information. For example, one of the most common POA references is an explanation of the 3 digit CVV code found on the back of credit cards.
8. Show Formatting Examples: Some fields should have notes showing how to format them, depending on your database requirements. For example, you might want phone number formatted in a certain way, with or without parenthesis, dashes, etc. In general though, keep these formatting requirements to a minimum in order to keep it simple for customers.
9. Make it International Friendly: Forms requiring an address can be confusing if they’re built only with US residents in mind. Check out these detailed guidelines for building international friendly forms.
10. Allow Easy Forward and Backward Movement: Customers rarely maneuver through our website the way we intend them to. In order words, they hit the back button, the forward button, refresh, etc. Depending on how your forms pass data, this could cause error messages such as “this page has expired”. Make sure you test the forward and backward flow of any multiple page forms on your site.
11. Logical Tab Sequence: Don’t you hate it when you hit tab, and rather than going to the next field, the focus moves somewhere else on the page? This problem is likely due to the way the form is laid out with HTML tables. Make sure your forms tabs in a logical sequence to prevent customers from accidentally skipping fields.
12. Server Side Validation: There’s 2 ways to ensure that your visitors are entering correct data into fields. You can use client-side scripting (such as Javascript which is browser dependent) or server side error processing. In addition to server side validation being less reliant on the user’s browser settings, it’s also more secure.
13. Clear Error Messages: When displaying error messages when customers enter invalid data, make sure your messages are clear and well placed. This means saying “Please enter an email address” rather than something vague like “you must fill out all fields.” A best practice is taking them right back to the field with incorrect data, and displaying the error message next to it.
14. Show What’s Needed When Its Needed: It’s best to hide form fields until you know they are absolutely needed. For example, if you already know your user is from the US, you can dynamically hide the province field and show the state drop down box instead.
15. Logical List Order: When using drop down lists or radio button lists, make sure you order them in a logical way, listing items higher if they are selected more often. In other words, if 90% of your customers buy from the USA, don’t list Afghanistan as your first option, and United States at the very bottom.
16. AJAX Validation: Some sites have begun to validate form inputs as soon as the user tabs out of the field. This can be very effective, since it does not break the flow of the process. Its easier to correct an error immediately after entering it rather than after the whole form is completed.
17. Remember Me Feature: For login forms, allow customers to choose a “remember me” option, which uses a cookie to fill in login information the next time. Who wants to remember all those passwords anyway?
18. Set Focus: When a page loads containing a forms, sending the cursor to the first required field will prevent users from having to click into the field in order to start typing. This can be accomplished with a simple JavaScript function.
19. Avoid Obnoxious Password Requirements: Ever received this annoying error? “Your password must contain at least one letter, number, and be least X number of digits.” Requiring passwords to be formatted a certain way may help security, but it will likely discourage return visits since visitors must now remember an unfamiliar password.
20. Progress Indicators: For forms that span multiple pages, include a progress indicator letting people know where they are in the process. These are most commonly seen during checkout and would include steps such as “Shipping Info > Payment Info > Receipt Confirmation.”
21. Minimize Scrolling & Pages: A good case can be made to limit the number of pages in a a multi-part form in order to prevent customers from abandoning. However, an opposing case can also be made than ridiculously long, single pages forms that require scrolling can scare off customers. There’s no sure-fire rule here, its a perfect opportunity to perform your own a/b test.
22. Strong Call to Action Buttons: Sometimes “Submit” just doesn’t cut it. In other words, be specific and action oriented with your form buttons.
23. Use External Labels: Have you ever used a form that labeled the field with text that disappears when you click into it? This can be a great space saver, but extremely confusing if a customer forgets what the field is for since the label has disappeared. Here’s a great example of why external form labels are more effective.
24. Prioritize Size and Location of Multiple Button Forms: On a form with multiple action buttons, make sure you emphasize the most important button leading to the conversion. For example, if your final order confirmation screen has 2 buttons, “Finalize Order” and “Edit Order”, make sure the “Finalize Order” button is larger and more prominent.
25. Clear Confirmations: Have you ever filled out a long, tedious form, clicked submit, only to be returned to what seems like the same page with the form empty? You can do everything right with your form, but if you drop the ball on the confirmation, your customers will be helplessly confused. In addition to making a clear confirmation message, check out these other tips to prevent wasting your confirmation page.

So what are your thoughts? Have any other form optimization tips to add?

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About Justin Palmer

Justin Palmer is the founder of Palmer Web Marketing, an internet marketing and e-commerce consultancy. Justin also runs several other websites, including EnjoyinJava.com, which offers coffee coupons and reviews.

Need a fresh set of eyes on your website? Find out what 3 Things you can improve with a $99 website critique by Palmer Web Marketing.

E-commerce in particular lends itself to a low trust environment. After all, when you make a purchase online, you’re giving money to someone you can’t see, for a products that you can’t touch. Needless to say, trust is a crucial aspect of transacting business online.

Duct Tape Marketing recently interviewed Steven M.R. Covey on his book The Speed of Trust. Covey speaks of a “low-trust tax” which makes all business processes less efficient. Inspired by this concept, I came up with 10 ways to avoid paying a low-trust tax with your e-commerce site. If you have any ideas of how to inspire trust on your website, please leave a comment below.

1. Have a Real About Page: I’m not talking about a vague paragraph describing what you do. I’m referring to a personal, detailed explanation of who you are. Share your mission, your passion, and your vision with customers. This information becomes a powerful word of mouth tool when customers are telling friends and family about your products or services. Consider even showing pictures of yourself and your staff to add an extra personal touch.
2. Ability to Reach Management: Customers love to know that they can influence the management of a company. Providing an email address to reach a manager or even the owner shows you are committed to listening. But don’t stop there, why not publicly thank customers who have recommended new site features that you added. Even better than a company who listens is a company who responds to customer feedback.
3. Security Logos: Simple, yes, but having a few trusted logos from the BBB, McAfee, or your SSL provider inspire confidence for your customers. For first time visitors, these logos may be the only thing they recognize, and the trust they have with these brands spills over in favor of your company.
4. Professional Design: Even if customers don’t have any artistic inclinations, they intuitively know if your website design sucks. Your website doesn’t have to do a fancy song and dance, it just needs a professional, clean design that instills confidence in your brand.
5. Unfiltered Customer Reviews: This means allowing the bad reviews, not just the 5 stars ones. Negative product reviews serve to establish the credibility of your website. Sure, you might lose a sale on that product but you gain credibility when customers see your review system is unbiased.
6. Logical Navigation: If the information architecture of your site doesn’t make sense, customers will doubt your ability to serve them. In the same way that cleanliness and layout affects a brick and mortar experience, problems such as poor navigation, broken links and broken images erode customer confidence in your brand.
7. Tell them Who Else Buys: Social proof is a timeless persuasion tactics that just plain works. In addition to traditional testimonials, try using a real-time display of who’s ordering like Aweber’s “Who Just Ordered” feature.
8. Lenient Return Policy: Zappos has mastered the art of using the return policy as a marketing tool. Yes, its expensive to pay for 365 day return shipping on refunds & exchanges, but the confidence this liberal policy gives customers is priceless. Take it one step further by showing how few customers actually do return products using a tool such as Shoeline.com’s Return-O-Meter.
9. A Ubiquitous Privacy Policy: Having an effective privacy policy means not just burying the page in the footer of your website, but rather linking to it anytime you ask for personal information.
10. Check the Other 9: When was the last time you checked the other 9 Google search results below your website for your brand name? If there’s negative information, have you tried to resolve these complaints? If all else fails, try pushing the negative results to the second page with these 10 tips.

About Justin Palmer

Justin Palmer is the owner of Palmer Web Marketing, a strategic web marketing and e-commerce consultancy. Justin also runs MedSaverCard.com, a medication discount card program offering a discount on prescription drugs not covered by insurance.

Need a fresh set of eyes on your website? Find out what 3 Things you can improve with a $99 website critique by Palmer Web Marketing.

You.

As much as we want to believe website optimization is all about tactics and strategy, often the key to success lies in our own behavior. In order for optimization to occur, we first have to properly collect and interpret data about our websites. However, if the daily processes which we use to collect data are overly systematic and rigid, inevitably out of the box thinking will cease to exist.

Let face it, we all get into ruts by doing things in the same old way. So how can we change perspectives and see our website through a different lens? Here’s 12 ways to help you look at your website as if it were the first time.

1. Stand Behind Someone Browsing your Site: One of my favorite ways to inspire ideas is to hand my laptop over to my wife, and have her browse through a client’s website. As she does, I watch her browse the site and ask her questions. Because she interacts with the website as a much less experienced user, she often does things I wouldn’t expect.
2. Stand Beside Someone Browsing your Site: Want to perform a low budget eye tracking study? Perform a similar experiment like the one above, yet this time focus more on the person than the website. Stand beside a friend or family member as they maneuver through your site for the first time. Pay close attention to where their eyes go as they browse. Are their eyes attracted to the page elements you would expect? Interact with them and quiz them on their impression of the website.
3. Record Your Visitors: Screen recording allows you to see your website through the eyes of your visitors and offers an experience that traditional analytics software just can’t. The ability to see micro-actions, such as the cursor moving or visitors interacting with a form, is absolutely priceless, and something you will never glean from log files or Javascript based programs. ClickTale offers a free version of their screen recording analytics.
4. Change analytics programs: Using the same analytics tools over and over can get you into a repetitive rut. I’ve found that looking at the same data with a different analytics program can yield insightful results. Lately, I’ve been experimenting with Microsoft’s new Adcenter Analytics.
5. Try a slower internet connection: We forget how using a slower internet connection creates a shockingly different user experience. When page elements, such as images, embedded videos, or flash files hesitate to load, visitors may think your website is broken. For a disturbing reminder of a slow internet connection, check out this free application.
6. Get an Analytics Buddy: Give a trusted friend or colleague access to your analytics data for an hour or two, and offer to do the same for them. They’ll likely interpret the data a much different way than you, shedding light on previously unnoticed trends.
7. Use a Different Web Browser: As much as I love Firefox, I intentionally use other browsers on occasion. Sometimes even simple design modifications can cause rendering problems in less fortunate browsers such as such as Internet Explorer. Regularly viewing your website in multiple browsers will prevent simple rendering issues from going unnoticed for very long. Try BrowserShots for a quick screen shot of your website in all the popular browsers or give Google’s new Chrome browser a spin.
8. Change your Screen Resolution: Using your web analytics, take a look at the 5 most common screen resolutions of your site visitors. If possible, adjust your screen resolution to that size and take a spin through your website. You might be surprised that certain mission critical site features such as add to cart or checkout buttons are obscured or below the page fold. Webconfs.com offers a nice little tool to simulate different screen resolutions.
9. Adjust your Color Settings: Color settings on monitors vary greatly, frequently causing certain colors to have insufficient contrast with the background. Try adjusting the settings on your monitor, or using another monitor altogether.
10. Browse with Script Errors On: You know those ugly little JavaScript errors that popup now and then? Make sure your internet browser it set to display them so know when one of your pages is broken.
11. Use a Mobile Device: How usable is your website for a mobile user? Does it render properly? If not, try using a service such as Mofuse that can generate a functional mobile site based on an RSS feed.
12. Work at a Different time: Apparently, I’m not alone in discovering creativity late at night. Taking a hard look at your website or your analytics reports when you feel the most inspired can yield surprising results.

Think about how you would react if you were actually able to visit your website for the first time? What would you tell yourself? Hopefully the tips above will help you uncover previously unknown issues with your website and improve upon them.

Have you used any of the tactics above? What other methods can inspire out of the box thinking and creativity?

Need a fresh set of eyes on your website? Find out what 3 Things you can improve with a $99 website critique by Palmer Web Marketing.

Because we’re so focused on the primary conversion goal of our website, we often forget many of our visitors come to our website with a different agenda in mind. Although we’d prefer that 100% of our visitors make a purchase or generate a lead, its in our best interest to help visitors complete the task that’s most important to them at the time.

FACT: Your ability to convert visitors for secondary goals affects your ability to convert visitors for your primary goal.

For example, if a customer tried unsuccessfully to find a store location on your website, how likely are they to make an online purchase? Judgments are made quickly about your site, so if a simple task can’t be accomplished, some may assume your site is broken or poorly made.

What type of alternative goals are we talking about? Here’s a few that come to mind:

• Finding a store location
• Checking for new products
• Learning about the company / brand
• Researching in-store purchase
• Finding a job
• Tracking an order
• Contacting customer service
• Finding an answer in an online knowledge base
• Adding a product review

So how do you go about optimizing for alternative conversion goals? Here’s quick checklist:

1. First, identify all your alternative goals. To help with this, study your navigation paths from the top entry points on your site. You may also consider directly asking visitors their intent, using a survey tool such as Avinash Kaushik’s excellent 4Q tool.
2. Setup Google analytics goals or similar tracking through your analytics software, allowing you to see visitors as they funnel their way to the goal in mind
3. Looking through the lens of this goal, try to identify possible obstacles. For example, if you learn that 10% of your site visitors are looking for a store location, but your locations page is buried in the footer of your website, you’ve found a potential stumbling block.
4. Determine the goal completion page. In other words, after a visitor completes this goal, where do they end up?
5. After a visitor reaches the goal completion page, ask yourself “How can I steer this visitor towards the primary goal of the website?” For example, after a customers adds a favorable product review, you can suggest similar items to the one they just purchased.

Potentially, you could have hundreds of various alternative goals on your website. Start with optimizing the most common ones, and go from there. If you delight your visitors in these areas, you’ll undoubtedly build a bridge to future conversions.

Need a fresh set of eyes on your website? Find out what 3 Things you can improve with a $99 website critique by Palmer Web Marketing.

1. They convert better
2. They spend more
3. They’re more likely to tell others
4. They’re free (you already paid to acquire them)

Here’s 10 ideas for creating loyal visitors by creating a magnetic website:

1. Consistency: If customers know that content is updated at a certain time consistently, you’ll train them to return to the same place at the same time.
2. Get Email Opt-ins: An obvious point, but I can’t overemphasize its importance. Consider an email opt-in almost as important as a purchase. (or whatever your primary conversion goal is) Browse through your site with an eye for this secondary conversion action, asking yourself how you can better encourage email opt-ins. Can you offer an incentive such as a freebie or a contest? Maybe you just need to place your sign up form in more places?
3. Trigger Based Emails: Event triggered emails, in contrast with regularly scheduled marketing emails, are a great tactic for bringing in highly targeted traffic. Here’s a few trigger based email examples. You can email customers (who have opted in) notifications when:
   • A Certain product is re-stocked
   • Before a product sells out
   • Similar products are added
   • Someone abandons a shopping cart
   • Someone abandons a wish list
   • Order confirmations
   • Shipping confirmations
     
4. Daily Specials: Wouldn’t it be cool if part of your customers’ daily routine was checking your “daily deal” page every morning? By offering item of the day (or week) special, you’ll consistently attract curious deal shoppers.
5. Social Communities: Allowing your customers to interact with each other creates an automated mechanism for repeat traffic. By yourself, you probably can’t create enough content to keep visitors coming back daily, but a self-sufficient community can. Forums, mini-social networks, & online street teams are great ways to attract and keep a loyal following.
6. What’s New Section: Your loyal visitors don’t like digging to discover what’s changed since their last visit. Ensure that your homepage, category pages, and product pages all clearly label new items and allow visitors to sort or filter by newness. Having dedicated section highlighting new products or website features would be ideal.
7. Freebies: Free branded content such as wallpapers, screen savers, myspace layouts, and web banners provide sticky content and great viral branding tools. If content such as this doesn’t fit your brand, consider posting useful “how to” videos or articles.
8. Blogs: The benefits of blogging are numerous, even for eCommerce retailers. It’s sometimes hard for customers to see real people behind a website, but not so with a blog, which allows your personality to shine through. By allowing customers to comment on posts, you’ll create two way conversations that will keep them coming back.
9. RSS: RSS can be used not just for blog updates, but also to keep customers current with new products, company news, or sales. CompUSA lets customers subscribe to over 30 RSS categories, creating a truly personalized data feed from company to customer. Using RSS in combination with a Daily special (see #4 above) can be especially powerful.
10. Make Customers Part of R & D: We often think of customers as the last link in the chain of business processes. But why not make them apart of research and development as well, ensuring that your products are made by customers for customers? Threadless pioneered this approach with community based product development, allowing their community to submit and vote on t-shirt designs. C28 asks their street teamers to vote on new clothing designs and uses the feedback to modify designs and production quantities. Allowing customers to influence product development creates an incredibly interactive experience that customers won’t be able to get enough of.
11. Ask for a Bookmark: If all else fails, just flat out ask customers to bookmark your site. In addition to browser bookmarking, suggest other popular social bookmarking sites such as Delicious.

Before you make any changes, delve into your analytics to determine just how well you’re doing with attracting repeat visitors. Take a look at your ratio of new vs. returning visitors, and make this your benchmark to improve upon.

What other tactics can be used to attract repeat traffic? Leave a comment with some tips of your own.

Need a fresh set of eyes on your website? Find out what 3 Things you can improve with a $99 website critique by Palmer Web Marketing.

Assumption #1: People will know how to find your website

We often assume that people have memorized or bookmarked our web address. But what happens when people forget, or are using a different computer and don’t have access to bookmarks? In addition to ranking on Google for your brand/company name, do you rank for common misspellings and variations? One company I work with uses uses pay per click to bid on at least a dozen variations / typos of their brand name, which is often misunderstood when spoken. What about your domain name? Especially if your URL contains dashes (example-url.com) or a top level domain of anything besides “.com”, consider buying up every reasonable variation you can afford, and redirecting it to the correct address.

Assumption #2: People know what you sell

How many times have you landed on the homepage of a website, and were unable to understand the primary purpose, product, or service? We often neglect to succinctly inform our customers about our product or service, which leads to a prompt bounce from visitors.

Assumption #3 : Everything will go as planned

Here’s an experiment. Try going through your website conversion funnel (checkout process, contact us form, etc) and do everything wrong. For example, enter an invalid zip code, click on things that weren’t meant to be clicked on, click the back, forward, and refresh buttons on your browser excessively. You might be surprised what you see. How well does your site handle errors? When people stray off the beaten path, can they get back?

Assumption #4: People know where to click

Don’t assume that because you know where to click, everyone knows where to click. Creative can be beautiful and attention grabbing, yet completely worthless if people don’t know what to do next. The power of a strong call to action button on a landing page is priceless.

Assumption #5: People know how to get home

Yes, most people know that clicking the company logo will take them to the homepage, but not everyone. Recently, I performed a test on a website and found that 45% of visitors preferred clicking on a link that actually said “Home” instead of the company logo. Even worse is when interior pages offer no link at all back to the homepage.

Assumption #6: People know where they are

People don’t always start on your homepage, and navigate step by step to their destination. Maybe they landed on an interior page from a search engine, and they have no idea where to go next. Breadcrumb navigation helps orient visitors, and establishes a navigational hierarchy.

Assumption #7: People know how to buy

This one is quite common, unfortunately. Many eCommerce sites assume the visitor will be on the shopping cart page to checkout. However, my experience has found that customers will look for a “checkout” button from any page of a site whenever they are ready to complete a purchase. If it’s not painfully obvious where to go, you might just lose a sale.

Assumption #8: People will volunteer loads of personal information

It’s important to think like a customer when building registration forms or checkout pages. Is the information you’re asking for so important that you’re willing to lose a customer because of it? The truth is, you will lose a certain percentage of customers for every additional piece of unnecessary information you ask for.

Assumption #9: People will contact customer service if they have a question or problem

Actually no, they will probably just leave and never return. In my experience, one customer question or complaint usually represents at least 10 other unspoken ones of the same nature. It’s best not to count on customers to tell you about problems, but rather to discover them yourself.

Assumption #10: People will come back

Even if people love your site, don’t assume they’ll be back unless you give them a good reason. This is why it’s so crucial to capture an email address, since it provides a proactive follow up mechanism. Other tactics to help bring in repeat visitors include having an RSS feed, a section highlighting what’s new, and constantly updated, fresh content. I can’t tell you how many incredible sites I’ve visited and completely forgotten about. When a do remember them, I often can’t remember the url or brand name. (see assumption #1)

To follow my own advice, I’m not going to assume that you’ve already subscribed to the Palmer Web Marketing feed. If you haven’t, why not subscribe now?

Need a fresh set of eyes on your website? Find out what 3 Things you can improve with a $99 website critique by Palmer Web Marketing.