Website Promotion, Conversion Rate Optimization, and Internet Sales Advice

Site Review: Get Quick Feedback On Your Website with UserTesting.com

2009-08-29T20:22:00.000-07:00

UserTesting.com video for Ayos Website Design

Summary: Watching users stumble through your website is an uncomfortable but eye opening experience. UserTesting.com is an excellent tool for getting real live testers to use your website and give you feedback. Depending on how usable your site is, you'll find yourself cheering or cringing with every mouse click.

I just tried UserTesting.com this past week, and I was eager to share my positive experience with my readers. I highly recommend you try UserTesting.com. But, to understand why I feel this tool can benefit you, please read the below article.

Your Website Its Own Worst Enemy?

Pause, and try to answer this question before you read on: Has your website placed stumbling blocks in front of customers?

Imagine this example. Richard is looking to buy health supplements from someonlinedrugstore.com. He is ready to buy, but the checkout process requires he create a user account first. Frustrated, Richard leaves the website without purchasing the product.

It is all too easy to design a website that shoots itself in the foot repeatedly. How can you know if your website is chasing away customers?

You have to get feedback from real users. Usability tests on your website are the most reliable means of finding stumbling blocks that keep you from getting sales.

Real Users Give You a Fresh Perspective

Don't make the mistake of thinking you can find the stumbling blocks yourself! Your and your employee's minds have spent hundreds, maybe even thousands of hours staring at your website. Your brain has gotten used to your website. A fresh perspective, from real users, not your employees, is the only way to get reliable feedback.

But how can you quickly round up some testers without spending a lot of your precious money and time?

UserTesting.Com Provides Rapid Usability Tests At A Price I Like

As of this writing, UserTesting.com offers usability tests for your website at $29 per user. Each test consists of a 15 minute video, with audio, in which the tester tries to accomplish a set of tasks defined by you. The whole process generally takes MUCH less than 24 hours.

Here is the process in a nutshell:

Sign up for User Testing
Choose Demographics of Your Target Audience
Select the Number of Testers You Want (1 tester - 20 testers)
Pay for the Test
Users Record Video of their Screen and Voice as They Use Your Website
You Get an Email Whenever a Tester Finishes
You Watch the Video and Listen to the Testers Thoughts About Your Website
The Tester Also Gives You a Written Summary You Can Read

Is UserTesting.com a Quality Service?

In my experience and opinion, Yes. To verify, I tested UserTesting.com on my website. I was very pleased with the quality of the feedback I received. You can watch the video at the top of this article.

At first I was concerned that the testers would be of low quality. However, that was not a problem. My tester was very articulate, computer savvy, and knew how to evaluate a consulting firm's website. Also, you can pick the demographics of the testers you want to test your website.

Notice these quotes from other website owners and operators about UserTesting.com.

"Generally, my expectations of the service were blown away, and I would definitely use it again." (Smarticle.com, 2009)

"It was no wonder Amazon.com has selected them as a finalist in the Startup Competition. Based on the results I was able to pick up on about five usability flaws in our site." (Serena Safe Mode, 2009)

Did It Take A Long Time to Get Test Results?

No. For my test, the results were rapid. It took less than 24 hours for me to get my review.

The site owner at Serena Safe Mode had a similar experience, saying, "I submitted the request at 9:44am and the test was completed at 10:20am and that was with a 15 [minute] review of my site." (Serena Safe Mode, 2009)

UserTesting.com Yields Actionable Results

I wanted to see if I would actually be able to take some sort of action after watching the 15 minute video of a user testing my website. Surprisingly, in the 15 minute test of my website I found 11 insights that I have already started taking action on.

Notice, some quotes from others who have used UserTesting.com.

"'After just a few tests we were able to identify some key problems with our interface.' - Justin.tv" (UserTesting.com, 2009)

"Based on the results I was able to pick up on about five usability flaws in our site." (Serena Safe Mode, 2009)

How Many Testers Should You Request from UserTesting.com?

I had only one tester test my website. You'll generally want to request more than one tester. Jakob Nielsen, an expert on usability testing, had the following to say on this matter: "To identify a [website] design's most important usability problems, testing 5 users is typically enough." (UseIt.com, 2003).

Here is a good article that explains why only 5 testers are needed for a good usability test.

Sample Video from a Real UserTesting.Com Test

I am going to gather more videos, but for now here is the video for Serena Safe Mode.

Conclusion

I highly recommend you give UserTesting.com a try. I plan to use it many more times for my website and I firmly believe that you will profit from using it on your website.

If you read to the end, you also get this special treat. The first 20 readers to use this link, will receive their first test for only $19 instead of the usual $29.

Happy testing!

Common Questions: Can Websites See Who Visits Them?

2009-07-15T13:08:00.000-07:00

Yes. Clicktale.com provides a service that allows you to watch users as they navigate your website. With Clicktale you can record website visitors and watch these videos to improve your website's usability and to discover areas of potential frustration.

Clicktale provides mouse tracking and excellent visitor analytics that enable you to monitor the visitor's entire clickstream from start to finish.

The below video explains Clicktale in more detail.

With Clicktale, in only minutes you'll be able to start recording visitor interaction on your website and watching videos.

Please contact me if you have questions about how to use Clicktale for your website, or if you're curious about other solutions that will help you to see your website visitors as they visit your site.

How Does Google AdWords Work? Ad Position

2009-05-06T11:31:00.000-07:00

Summary: Google has published an excellent video explaining how Google AdWords works and gives insight on how ad position is determined. I recommend that any website owner watch this video to understand how he can advertise his website effectively using Google AdWords.

Google Ads are ranked by a metric Google calls Quality Score and the amount advertisers are offering to pay per click. Though many advertisers try to improve the position of their ad by offering to pay more money, improving your ad's Quality Score is often a better approach. Why? Better quality ads generate more business and save money.

Optimizing for Google's Quality Score can help you, because the way Google calculates ad quality is generally in the end-user's (e.g. your customer's) best interest. Better quality ads are probably going to be clicked more often, result in better qualified leads, and thus are more likely to lead to a purchase.

Again, I highly recommend you watch the entire video!

Related Articles:

Get Elastic. 2009. "PPC Myth Week Pt 2: Bid Higher to Appear Higher"
The Click Equations Blog. 2009. "The Preface: Quality Score in High Resolution"

Promotions:

Building link popularity is not an easy task especially for those who don't know much about search engine optimization.
MatrixMT has services to help you.

Gradually Make Your Website a Store of Treasures

2009-01-29T17:36:00.000-08:00

Slowly building his variety of wares and freely sharing knowledge made his shop a well-trafficked destination. Can you apply the same to your website? (Photo by KrisHaamer)

Summary: It is not rare for a new website to get off to a very slow start. However, rather than becoming discouraged, you should focus on increasing the quantity, variety, and value of the content (e.g. articles, videos, diagrams) and items for sale on your website. By focusing on helping people and through patient endurance you will eventually notice an uptick in your visitors and sales. The fictional story of Bartolo, an Italian fisherman, illustrates how a website can suddenly go from being perceived as having little value to being seen as an essential online destination.

Bartolo and His Ever Expanding Variety of Wares

Bartolo was an old man with an untiring zeal for helping others. As is the case with most zealous men, he was not one to give in to the geriatric lifestyle of his peers. His energy far exceeded his years, and his eyes maintained a brightness like the sparkle of white wine on a sunny summer day. Though well into his eighties, he still found plenty of adventurous projects to busy his day. And Bartolo still had one more endeavor he wanted to embark on.

For Bartolo’s whole life he had been a fisherman. His mind had become a treasure trove of knowledge regarding the most arcane aspects of his trade’s tools and vernacular. So now, several years after he had hung up his nets to dry for the last time, Bartolo decided to help his fellow fisherman by opening a fisherman’s shop on the rugged coast of Manarola a small village on the Italian Riveria.

Bartolo started small, with only a few of the oddest tools that a fisherman will find he needs in that one rare situation that is encountered perhaps twice in a lifetime; and because of his shop's specialty nature, Bartolo received nary a visitor. Occasionally the stray fisherman would stroll into his shop looking for advice on his trade, but purchases were few.

The small fishing village of Manarola where Bartolo started his shop. (Photo by ezioman)

It is worth noting that Bartolo was highly respected by other fisherman for his knowledge, but the oddity and narrow selection of tools available at his shop puzzled them, and his shop’s emptiness left him the butt of some ridicule. But Bartolo did not let this deter him. In his head he envisioned a day when his shop’s selection would grow to provide such a variety of useful items that no fisherman would find his shop unneeded.

So Bartolo steadily added to his shop's selection. Each week he increased the variety of tools and items available. As the number of items slowly began to multiply, a change of perception occurred. Suddenly local fishermen were interested in more than merely Bartolo’s advice. With amazement, each fisherman began to realize that Bartolo’s shop offered a tool for every strange event and odd happening that he might encounter out at sea.

Thus, Bartolo’s shop became known as a must visit destination for local fisherman to brush up on the knowledge of their trade and also find the odd tools that could be found no place else, or at least no other place brought together in such useful profusion the wide variety of odds and ends that a fisherman could need.

So Bartolo’s patient endurance was ultimately rewarded. By continuously searching for more odds and ends to add to the store of treasures available at his little fishing shop, and by freely sharing knowledge with his fellow fisherman, Bartolo was able to grow a thriving store that became an essential destination for the fishermen of Manarola.

Conclusion: Constantly Expand Your Website

Here is the key point from the above story. If you, like Bartolo, focus on steadily expanding the information and products your website offers, you will find that eventually more and more individuals will see the value of your website and over time it will become a well-trafficked destination.

Repeat Site Visits - A Critical Goal for a Successful Website

2009-01-12T18:50:00.000-08:00

Why is increasing the number of times a visitor visits your website a critical goal for a successful website?

Summary: What data should I track for my website to see if I’m doing well? What indicators most greatly affect the success of my website? How should I interpret my analytics to understand why I’m not getting sales? This article will discuss these questions.

Repeat visits to your website by your customers are the most important factor to increasing your conversion rate. To illustrate let's examine a user shopping for a digital camera.

"Jim sits in front of his computer looking to buy a high-end digital camera. He’s been shopping off-and-on for the past three months. His Google searches led him to ZTechCameras.com, a company he had never heard of and wasn’t sure if he could trust. However, after dozens of visits to ZTechCameras and other camera sites, he has come to trust ZTechCameras’ rich depth of accurate advice and is convinced they will provide him with more knowledgeable service for his new camera. Thus, he decides to shun better known competitors and makes his purchase."

Did you see the point? Jim had never heard of ZTechCameras.com and thus initially he did not trust them. However, as the website established a track record of reliability by knowledgeably answering his questions over multiple visits, he came to trust the company enough to make his purchase with them. The same lesson applies to any website selling products or services.

But knowing that repeat visits are important is not enough! How can you design a website that will get visitors to return repeatedly? How can you track if your website is doing well and your efforts to get visitors to return are bearing fruit?

Getting Visitors to Return

The #1 way to get visitors to return is to regularly update your website. Is there any website you regularly read up on? Why do you regularly visit? Isn’t it because every time you visit there is something new to see? If you doubt anything has changed on a website since the last time you visited, do you have any strong urge to visit it?

Like a newspaper, your website will be read if it has lots of fresh information. (Photo by KellyB, flickr.com.)

Likewise, with your website you need to constantly keep it changing. The more frequently you add information to your website, the more frequently your visitors will return. For example, most people check the news every day. Why? Because every day there is fresh news. If you update your website daily, your visitors will return every few days. If you update your website weekly, your visitors will return every few weeks.

The #2 way to get visitors to return is to keep them interested. True, visitors will return to your website regularly if you update your website regularly, but the updates also need to be interesting. For example, simply changing the color of your website every day is probably not going to spark a lot of interest. However, publishing an informative article daily or sharing industry news as-it-happens will generate interest that motivates visitors to return to your website.

Setting Goals & Measuring Your Results

How can you determine if your efforts are bearing fruit? There are three numbers that you must track to determine if your website is successfully engaging visitors and getting them to return. The three numbers are: Visitor Loyalty, Depth of visit, and Bounce rate.

Visitor Loyalty

This is a measure of the number of visits a specific user made to your website over a period of time. Usually this data is aggregated into a distribution that you can then view in a chart. Below is an example.

Do you see how most visitors are visiting only once? Have you checked this chart for your website?

A greater visitor loyalty means that your customers are constantly visiting your website. The more times your customer visits your website, the more comfortable he is becoming with your company. The odds increase over time that eventually he will purchase a good or service from you.

In our ideal world, most of your visitors would visit your website many times per month.

To increase visitor loyalty update your website frequently and make sure that your updates are interesting to your audience.

Depth of Visit

This is a measure of how many pages, on average, a visitor to your website viewed before leaving. Below is an example of what this report looks like.

Do you notice that most visitors view only one page and then leave? What does the chart for your website look like?

A greater average depth of visit means visitors are very engaged by your website. If you have a poor depth of visit distribution, it means visitors are quickly losing interest and leaving your website.

In an ideal world, most of your visitors would view a lot of pages while on your website.

To increase depth of visit you need to have plenty of quality information on you website. However, you also need a good information architecture.

Bounce Rate

This is a measure of what percentage of visitors leave your website after viewing only one page. If you have a high bounce rate, it means most visitors are leaving without giving your website more than a quick glance. A good bounce rate is below 50%. Anything above 50% deserves your attention.

To decrease your bounce rate, make sure your homepage and landing pages* are informative, attractive, and well-linked to other parts of your website. (Read more about effective landing pages.)

Cultivating Repeat Visits, the Best Goal for a Successful Website

If you want to increase your website’s sales there is practically no goal you can set that is more important than increasing the number of repeat visits you get from individual customers. The more times a customer visits your website the greater his trust in your company will grow; as the customer’s trust for your company grows, he becomes more likely to purchase a good or service.

So immediately start looking for ways to get your customers to visit your website more often by regularly updating the information on your website and making sure the information you share is interesting to your audience! By doing this you will have a more successful website that generates more sales.

* A landing page is any page a visitor might see first when they visit your website. This includes pages found through a search engine.

How to Keep Visitors from Leaving Your Site

2009-01-08T20:19:00.000-08:00

What compels a person to enter a store? How can you apply the answer to your website? (Image by JimmyHarris)

Summary: How is your homepage like the window of the store in the picture above? 60-80% of visitors will leave from your homepage without ever "entering" your website. Why? Nicholas Grant, discusses the answer and solution below.

Lots of people put stuff on a website just to fill space. If you are one of those people, you could very well be chasing away customers.

A homepage is like a storefront. When you walk into a store or market, or any place of business, what is the first thing you check out when you arrive? “The sales”, you might say. That’s true in a way, but why did you even walk into the store? What you’re really checking out is the atmosphere. If a place doesn’t appeal, you won’t even walk in the door.

Is your website like that store that no one wants to enter? If you feel the answer may be “Yes”, that’s okay because we’re about to fix this problem.

Your Audience is Deciding Whether to "Enter"

Whether your audience is kids, teens, adults or everybody you have to appeal to their viewpoint. For instance, if you are trying to appeal to teens, you must think like a teen. You can’t be putting articles about life insurance coverage on a teen website. After all, what teen is really concerned about that! Or, let’s say that your audience is kids. Would it really make sense to put an article about Job applications on a site that is for kids 5-11? If your homepage doesn't connect with your audience, like window shoppers, they will quickly move on to the next "storefront."

Mentioning your audience's problems is a sure way to get their attention. They'll see that you get their viewpoint.

This brings us back to the atmosphere. Like that storefront, if the atmosphere is not appropriate and appealing, no one will "enter" deeper into your website. So, on your website, be sure to make prominent mention of your audience's problems and avoid irrelevant content.

Record Visitors as They Use Your Website

2008-12-31T14:43:00.000-08:00

Record mouse clicks, scrollbar movements, and keyboard presses and playback videos of visitors using your website.

Summary: Recording website visitors opens up a powerful new aspect of website analytics. The ability to watch real user sessions on your website. Imagine the powerful insights you can gather as you watch real user behavior instead of sifting through metrics, numbers, and spreadsheets!

Would you like to be able to look over the shoulder of all your website visitors so that you can understand what they're doing on your website? Amazingly, now you can. Clicktale, an Israeli startup, provides a free tool that allows you to record every scrollbar movement, every mouse click, and every keyboard press on all of your web pages and play them back as a video. What is more, the tool takes only minutes to install and is free!

Don't believe me? Watch the below video:

Still not sure why you need Clicktale? Think about the following.

On average how far are users willing to scroll down your web page before they go to the next page or leave?

Without Clicktale you probably can't answer the above question. With Clicktale you can see exactly how far down your page the user scrolled before he left or went to the next page.

Now, imagine that your "Buy now" button is halfway down your web page. With Clicktale you can see if a user saw your "Buy now" button before he left your web page.

I've been gathering insights like this for months since I started using Clicktale.

So your next step should definitely be to give Clicktale a try. Go to Clicktale.com and signup. They'll walk you through a simple set of steps to insert a little Javascript tag at the beginning and end of your website.

I guarantee you; you will gain at least one invaluable insight about your website from using Clicktale.

* Only your website's session gets recorded. You can not see anything else on the visitor's screen. Thus, besides interactions recorded on your website, the visitor's privacy is maintained.

Readers Ask: How Do I Advertise My Website?

2008-12-10T22:13:00.000-08:00

The above image maps the various advertising methods by effectiveness and importance. Larger means the method is more effective and a higher priority.

Summary: Here are 7 ideas that will show you how to advertise your website to get more traffic. Implement each of these ideas and closely track which advertising idea gets you the most traffic.

Self-author a press release and submit it to PRWeb or a similar service (http://www.prweb.com).
Use Google's free AddUrl tool to submit your website to Google (http://www.google.com/addurl/).
Submit a sitemap to Google using their free Webmaster Tools (http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/).
Start a company blog. Over time, blog articles attract site visitors and increase your Google exposure.
Advertise with Google adwords (http://adwords.google.com). You only get charged when someone clicks your advertisement and you get to set your price limit.
Create a contest. Offer a prize on your website to attract visitors.
Advertise on related websites. Make a list of keywords related to your website. Do a Google search for those keywords. Contact the top 30 sites for each search and offer to advertise on their website.

If you need help with any of these steps, please contact me and ask for help.

Related Articles:

DoshDosh.com. 2008. "How to Advertise Your Website or Business: 8 Paid Advertising Models"
MarketingProfs.com. 2006. "How to Advertise My Website Effectively"

Kampyle - An Astounding Website Feedback Tool!

2008-10-30T10:44:00.000-07:00

Improve your conversion rate by using this excellent, free website feedback tool from Kampyle.

Summary: I just found an incredibly powerful, yet simple to use, tool that I absolutely must share with my readers! If you aren't already doing surveys, you should be using this tool too! It's free. It has plenty of survey and analytical power. It took me only 20 minutes to configure and install on my website. The user experience is elegant. And the tool's feedback has helped companies greatly improve their conversion rates.

If you look at the bottom right corner of my website, you'll see an orange diagonal strip saying "Give Feedback." This little strip is what has me so excited!

The orange strip is a free survey tool delivered by a company called Kampyle. The tool automatically prompts x% of site visitors, the percentage is defined by you, to ask them if they'd like to take a survey. A visitor can also opt to take the survey themselves by clicking on the strip.

Kampyle's feedback tool took me only 5 minutes to install and another 15 minutes to configure. So in 20 minutes my site has been setup with a free, professional looking survey!

Conducting a regular survey on your website is incredibly important if you want to improve your website's ability to increase traffic, increase sales, and improve your customer experience.

Would you like to regularly hear your site's visitors tell you what they think of your website?

Is it valuable to you to hear feedback and ideas for improvement from your visitors?

If the answer to either of the previous questions is yes, then I suggest you register on Kampyle now, and immediately put their free survey tool on your website. It should only take you 20 minutes!

Additional Reading

Conversion-Rate-Experts.com. October, 2008. "14 free tools that reveal why people abandon your website."

Grade Your Website - Find Areas for Improvement

2008-10-21T13:21:00.000-07:00

Grade your website by using WebsiteGrader.com, a tool built by HubSpot.

Summary: WebsiteGrader.com creates a report for you showing where your website is doing well and where it can improve further. There is virtually no wait. The tool generated my site's report in under 1 minute.

I recently found a tool from HubSpot called Website Grader. The tool does not require a download. You just enter your website domain and instantly receive a report grading your website on a number of different factors. The whole process takes about 1 minute.

"Websitegrader.com from HubSpot might make you humble, but it will also make you a lot smarter about how you present yourself on the web." - Newt Barrett, Content Marketing Today

I've run the tool on a number of different websites, including my own, and the reports that come back are definitely helpful. If you're looking for a quick and cost effective way to discover what improvements you need to make to your website to increase search engine rankings and your online exposure, this tool is a good place to start.

Announcing PRWeb Webinar: Use PR to Grow Your Business - Increase Website Traffic

2008-10-21T11:42:00.000-07:00

To learn how to use press releases successfully, I recommend you read the press release case studies on PRWeb's website.

Summary: PRWeb is hosting a free webinar teaching you how to use Online PR to grow your business. You can find out more and register by clicking here. The name of the Webinar is Small Business Marketing: Use PR to Grow Your Business.

PRWeb is one of the world's leading Press Release organizations. They serve press releases for Fortune 500 corporations as well as small companies. If you are trying to find additional methods you can use to increase site traffic, increase website awareness, grow web exposure, or grow sales their upcoming webinar, Small Business Marketing: Use PR to Grow Your Business, will be beneficial to you.

I have used Press Releases successfully in the past to grow traffic and grow website awareness.

PRWeb has a case study that discusses a real world example of using press releases to move up Google rankings. It is worth the time to read this case study to understand how a press release can greatly help your search rankings.

The webinar starts October 22nd. I hope you enjoy it!

How To: Estimate Your Internet Conversion Rate

2008-10-20T20:21:00.000-07:00

Computing your conversion rate is easy as long as you know how to measure each conversion with your web analytics.

Summary: This article teaches you how to compute your conversion rate. Calculating your website's conversion rate is a first step to accomplishing your online objectives. Typically, retail websites exclusively consider a purchase to be a conversion. However, what you consider a conversion may differ, depending on your goals.

The Equation

The above equation is simple. The trick is identifying what your desired actions are and knowing when to measure that the goal has been met.

What is a Conversion?

Now for some nomenclature. A visitor is considered converted whenever he takes a desired action on your website. Google calls desired actions your website's goals.

The following are examples of goals:

User registers for your newsletter.

Customer buys a book from your website.

Reader emails your article to a friend.

Tracking your Conversions

How do you know that one of the above goals has been hit? Google's approach is to track when a user views one of your confirmation pages after a desired action is completed.

For example, if a visitor has registered for your online newsletter, you might have a Thank you page that thanks the user for registering. Google would suggest you then measure your goal as being successfully reached whenever a visitor sees your Thank you page.

Similarly, if a user is buying a product from your website, you would measure success, not when the user adds an item to his shopping cart, but when you display the purchase receipt to the customer.

Read more about Google Goal Conversion and how to set it up for your website.

Putting It All Together

So in the above examples, the number of times visitors view your Thank you page or the number of times visitors hit your purchase receipt page would make up the top part of the conversion equation (e.g. the number of visitors who take a desired action).

The bottom part of the conversion equation is simply the total number of unique visitors to your website.

Do you have any follow-up questions about how to calculate your website's conversion rate?

Related Articles

Vertster.com. 2008. "How to Calculate your Conversion Rate."
Clickz.com. July 25, 2005."Calculate Your Conversion Rates."

Increased Traffic - Preceded by Compelling Content

2008-07-31T17:32:00.000-07:00

A screenshot from MicrolabGallery.com, a website I designed for MicrolabNW, a company in Redmond, WA.

Summary: A great selection of pictures helped my client go from zero visitors a day at site launch to a peak of 700 visitors per day in a five month time-span. Compelling content can generate word-of-mouth that blows away any traffic you can generate from solely using paid advertising or search engine optimization.

A Customer's Traffic Skyrockets

A recent customer of mine approached me with thousands of photos of particles under his microscope that he wanted to share. Impressed by his photos, I helped him to re-design and launch a website to share these photos with visitors. The website launched in March of this year with zero daily visitors. By this July, five months later, his new website is getting up to 700 hundred visitors per day! Why? Because visitors love his photos so much that they take the initiative to spread the word!

What is the lesson for me and you? Compelling content can generate a tsunami of traffic!

What Makes Content (e.g. photos, video, or articles) Compelling?

Here are four factors to keep in mind:

Use humor whenever it is natural and appropriate. Boring is bad.
Tell stories. Stories are illustrative and memorable.
Convey ideas with simple, clear logic and with appropriate enthusiasm.
When possible vary your use of media formats (e.g. use videos, photos, audio, etc.)

What Should You Do Now?

Compelling content is a powerful tool to generate word-of-mouth and thus increased traffic. Can you think of any other cost effective alternative that can reliably increase traffic as quickly? Finding a better alternative is difficult. Therefore, if you have photos, videos, or articles that are exciting to view or read, then by all means share them on your website. If you don't have interesting articles, or photos, or videos then start thinking about how you can create them.

It is okay if you create compelling content gradually. It took my customer years to build his archive of nearly two thousand photos. But by all means start now! Otherwise, you will wait that much longer to see your traffic increase.

To Increase Sales, Don’t Be Yet Another Site with a List of Products!

2008-06-27T01:34:00.000-07:00

Customers are overwhelmed with product selection on the internet. Your website can't be just another list of products. [Click Here to See a Larger Image]

Summary: Is your website just another of thousands of websites selling the same products? If so, instead of getting sales, you may just see yourself adding to the noise and confusion on the internet.

Yet Another Site with a List of Products

A golfer wants to buy a new set of Nike golf clubs, the ones Tiger Woods uses. He does a search on Google for ‘tiger wood’s golf clubs’. How many results do you think he’d find? No doubt he would find hundreds, if not thousands. Likely, the golfer can buy the clubs from Nike directly, from a website specializing in golf clubs, from eBay, from a sporting goods website, from Craigslist, and the list continues... Do you see the problem? Virtually any product you can think of is being sold by hundreds if not thousands of websites! Therefore, for you to get a sale, you must do more than offer just another product. You have to provide explanations and information that dispels confusion and helps the customer organize his product search.

Address Fears that Prevent a Purchase

To convince a customer to purchase you must address three customer fears that prevent him from making a decision. Customers fear…

Buying the wrong product (See #4 in this list).
Buying the right product at too high a price.
Being stuck with a disappointing product.

The last two are simple to address. Offer a good price and offer a good return policy. Most companies already do these two things well and I’m sure you are as well. But what can be done about the first fear?

Help the Customer Choose the Right Product

The other day I needed to buy paper for a direct mail campaign. I knew I wanted paper that would make a good impression but at a reasonable price. Unfortunately, I’m not a direct mail expert, nor am I a paper expert; so I was not sure which classification of paper would satisfy my goals. All of the paper and direct mail websites I visited gave me prices for different technical classifications of paper, but none explained, in layman terms, how the paper feels to the touch or how it might perform when used for direct mail. The options were overwhelming. Frustrated with all of these websites, I finally had to seek help from an expert at a local paper shop. A kind saleswoman pointed me to products that her direct mail clients use and explained how each paper is perceived psychologically by the recipient. Satisfied with her answers, I bought all of my paper from this paper shop.

What is the point of this story? I was not able to make my decision online because no website gave me the information I needed to help me choose the right product. Thus, every single one of those websites lost my business.

Are you losing business because you don’t help the customer choose the right product? On the internet, when the customer is faced with a bewildering variety of options, and he can’t sort out which product is right for him, he simply won’t buy any of them.

Don’t Just Explain Why to Buy a Product, also Explain Why Not To

To choose between options the customer needs to know why to buy a product and why not to buy a product. For instance, a car website may say, ‘buy a truck if you need to haul large loads, but don’t buy a truck if you need high fuel efficiency.’ This helps a customer narrow down his options depending on what is more important, fuel efficiency or payload hauling.

Drug companies have been doing this for years. Have you noticed how many drugs have one version that is ‘fast-acting’ and another version that is ‘long-lasting’? This increases sales by forcing the customer to choose one desired effect over the other, depending on how he feels.

Conclusion: Help Customers Select the Right Product

Your website is not the only source for any product on the internet. Therefore, to get the sale you have to do a better job of explaining your products than your competitor does. If a customer is confused, he would rather not buy any product, than take the risk of buying the wrong product. Thus, to generate sales, you need to do an excellent job of helping the customer buy the right product by offering informative product descriptions and information to help him decide between similar products.

Related Articles

Dmiracle.com. 2008. "Are Your Customers Sick & Tired of Choice?"

To Increase Website Traffic and Sales, Answer Customer Questions

2008-06-19T13:14:00.000-07:00

Frustration and a loss of sales results when your website does not answer questions.

Summary: Do you hate a pushy salesman that doesn't listen to your questions? Like a pushy salesman, your website will lose sales if it is so intent on selling to the customer that it fails to answer ALL the questions the customer wants answered before he will buy your product or service (See web marketing mistake #10).

The Internet Is a Tool to Answer Questions

Why do you use the internet? Isn’t it to get information? You’re not alone. 74% of men and women research online before buying any product or service (BigResearch, 2007). What are these 3 out of 4 men and women researching? Of course they are looking for answers to a wide variety of questions. So then, you do well to ask yourself, ‘Is my website answering all of my customer’s questions?’ If not, you may be losing 3 out of 4 potential clients.

Don’t Just Answer the Obvious Questions

Of course the #1 question most customers have is price. However, don’t stop at answering this question alone or you will still lose a good chunk of those 3 out 4 online researchers. Let me illustrate.

A certain man is interested in buying a set of golf clubs, and he finds a set he likes online. He likes the price, but he isn’t sure the clubs match his height. He searches the website for the shaft length, but it is not listed. Uncertain that these clubs will match his height, he decides not to buy.

Do you see the point? The man was going to buy the clubs, but because one of his questions was not answered, he decided against it. On the internet, your customer can not physically see, touch, or feel your product; so questions regarding dimensions, look, feel, and texture must be answered online (See #3 and #4 high-profit website redesign priorities). The same applies to selling services. If questions are not answered the customer would rather not buy than run the risk of buying the wrong product (See #4 high-profit website redesign priorities).

Conclusion: Analyze Your Website to See if You Are Answering Customer Questions

So take a look at your products or services. Can you try to think of ALL the questions customers might want answers to before they purchase your product or service? Once you’ve done this, take a look at your website and see if you’re answering these questions. If not, make the necessary changes before you lose additional sales.

Additional Reading

CopyBlogger.com, 3 Questions Your Website Must Answer to Succeed
CopyBlogger.com, Don't List Fake Benefits, List Real Ones

References

BigResearch.com. 2005. "More Consumers Researching Online Before Buying in the Store"

Benchmark your Conversion Rate Using Fireclick.com's Industry Data

2008-06-12T21:31:00.000-07:00

Use Fireclick data to establish reasonable conversion rate goals for your website.

Summary: The Fireclick Index is a great resource for site conversion rate data. I was very happy to find it! Use it to benchmark your site's conversion rate.

In a previous post I discussed the importance of benchmarking your site's conversion rate against your industry's average. In the post I mentioned that finding good benchmark data is difficult. Today I stumbled upon Fireclick, a great website for industry average website conversion rate data.

I suggest you take some time to review Fireclick's data, because a good understanding of your competitive environment is necessary to set realistic goals for your website.

Examples of What Fireclick's Data Reveals

Fireclick reveals that the average website conversion rate is 2.2%. However, conversion rates vary greatly by industry.

For example, catalog companies have a site conversion rate of 6.8%. Which lends further evidence that direct mail can do a lot to improve your conversion rate. (Of course you must balance this against the added cost sending out direct mail.)

The worst industry, by conversion rate, is electronics with an average of 0.8%.

Conclusion: Benchmark Your Site Against this Data

So far, this is the best resource I have found for freely available, real-time, accurate conversion rate data. I hope you are able to use this to successfully benchmark your website!

Guest Interview: Use Links to Increase Your Search Engine Traffic

2008-06-12T06:00:00.000-07:00

Debra Mastaler and a great article from her blog "The Link Spiel".

Summary: Debra Mastaler helps companies increase their search engine traffic by showing them how to build their inbound links. She's so good at what she does that she's been referred to as the "Queen of Links". The name of her company is Alliance-Link. Today Debra was kind enough to answer a series of questions I sent to her in an email interview format. This interview will help you to understand how inbound links increase your search engine rank, and how to start building links for your website.

Ayo: Why is link building important?

Debra: Since all search engines use a form of link popularity in their ranking algorithms and links are traffic paths between web pages, having a number of quality links pointing to your site is important.

People click links to travel from one page and one website to the next so having links on websites frequented by your demographic makes a lot of sense. If you own condos in ski resort areas, it would make sense to have your link on sites that rent ski’s or snowmobiles. Likewise, it makes sense to have ski schools listed on yours. Placing your link on sites your visitors would find useful helps drive qualified traffic.

Search engines work on the same logic when they determine the relevance of a link and its anchor text for their algorithms. Links act as votes to a search engine, the more votes your site gets from quality, on topic web pages the more important the page becomes to a search engine. In order to rank well, build brand and drive qualified traffic you need a number of quality links pointing to your website.

Ayo: In summary, what are the key benefits of link building?

Debra: There are numerous benefits behind link building, you drive traffic, work to increase your influence with the search engines, build brand and increase your online exposure. Each plays an equal part in helping to market your business and increase you placement within the search engines.

Ayo: So, what you do as a link consultant?

Debra: I have three primary services I offer as a link building consultant, first, I develop online marketing campaigns designed to attract or pursue inbound links to a specific website. Second, I offer link building training to individuals and firms looking to learn how to secure inbound links and third, I offer long or short term consulting to business owners who want to keep a link builder on retainer for special projects or to train new employees.

Ayo: Are there some resources readers can use to start building links for their website?

Debra: There are many many places and resources, but here’s a handful to get your started:

Resource Name	Resource URL
Blogs	These blogs primarily discuss link building.
The Link Spiel	http://thelinkspiel.blogspot.com
SEO Book Link Building Training (Highly Recommended)	http://training.seobook.com/
Justilien Gaspard	http://www.justilien.com
Eric Ward	http://www.ericward.com/articles/
Jim Boykin	http://www.jimboykin.com
Wiep Knol	http://wiep.net/
Roger Montti	http://www.martinibuster.net/

Tools
Link Hounds	http://www.linkhounds.com

Articles
11 Experts On Link Development	http://www.sugarrae.com/11-experts-on-link-development-speak/
101 Link Building Tips	http://www.seobook.com/archives/001792.shtml
Link Building Articles	http://www.semmys.org/category/link-building/

Promotions:

There are many link building strategies to employ when promoting your websites.
Vertical Measures can help you develop a link building strategy.

When Fishing for Customers Use Educational Information as Your Lure

2008-06-07T14:25:00.000-07:00

Just like the fisherman, a successful website must have a lure to attract customers.

Summary: No fisherman lowers an empty hook into the water; if he does, the fish take no interest in the hook and he catches nothing. But the fisherman puts a lure on the line and it attracts fish to the hook. Likewise you, to attract customers to your website can’t rely on product pricing and offer alone. You must first attract customers to your website using unbiased, informative information as your lure.

The #1 Internet Shopping Activity is Research

74% of men and women research on the internet before buying a product or service (BIGResearch, 2007). By offering useful, un-biased information on your website, you can help these 3 out of 4 of men and women accomplish their objective using your website.

Think about what type of research your potential customers might be doing. Remember, customers are interested in more than just researching product prices. Some customers aren’t even sure what to buy. They need to know what to buy, before they can even start looking at prices. Can you help the customer decide what to buy? (See Item #4 in this list)

Educational Information is Your Lure

Consider this example. A certain tourist wants to buy a digital camera for his vacation. However, seeing so many options he is not sure what to buy. So he goes to Google and does a search for ‘good vacation cameras’. He finds a website that tells him which cameras are good for vacations because of a long battery life and support for different countries’ power outlets. Happy with their prices, he buys a camera from this website.

Do you see the point? The website that told the tourist which digital camera is better for a vacation lured the customer in, and then hooked him with a good price. All the camera websites that merely list their digital cameras, with no information about using these cameras on vacation, were not even considered. If you want to increase site traffic, you need to provide information, such as articles, to answer the variety of research questions they might have. (See #10 in this list)

Conclusion: Educational Information is Your Lure, Price and Offer is Your Hook

To attract customers provide educational information that goes beyond merely listing the products you sell. Unbiased, informative articles and advice will attract website traffic. However, to get the sale you must have a compelling price and offer. Having a great price and offer but no educational information is like having a hook with no lure. Having educational information without a great price and offer is like having a lure with no hook. To increase site traffic you must give the customer information beyond just a product list with prices.

References

BigResearch.com. 2005. "More Consumers Researching Online Before Buying in the Store"

Your Site's Bounce Rate, Why Important?

2008-05-03T17:31:00.000-07:00

Summary: Improving your site's conversion rate largely starts at lowering your bounce rate. Why? Because every customer that bounces from your website is a lost opportunity to explain your value proposition and give your sales pitch.

What should you do if you have a high bounce rate? Avinash Kaushik, of Google's Conversion University, provides a great video explaining why a successful website must have a low bounce rate. While you watch the video, try to pick out reasons a high bounce rate is so detrimental.

Avinash brings out that a bounce rate between 40 - 60% is considered good. You'll never get everyone to stay on your website; nevertheless, if your bounce rate is higher than 60% you should begin by asking, Is there a problem with your website or is there a problem with your traffic sources?

A high bounce rate can occur because your traffic sources are low quality. If so, try to look for better sources of traffic. For example, if you're spending money for highly bouncing traffic through banner ads or pay-per-click advertising, cut back on this spending. You might try marketing strategies such as article writing and direct-mail instead.

If the problem is your website, then you need to use an analytics package to look at your top landing pages and see if you can understand what the visitor is looking for by seeing how he got to that landing page. Did he arrive at the landing page through a Google search? If so, look at the keywords being used to hit that landing page and make sure the landing page addresses the needs of someone searching with those keywords. Is the visitor hitting your website from a business directory such as Yahoo.com? Make sure the landing page from that directory category gives the information the customer would expect or want.

Improving your bounce rate will take time and it may take many design iterations before you finally find a solution that gives you an acceptable bounce rate. However, improving your bounce rate is worth the effort. A high bounce rate is a sure fire way to low website sales. A low bounce rate drives greater sales and means your website is making a more favorable impression with visitors.

An Incorrect View of Your Site's Metrics Can Hide Areas Needing Improvement

2008-05-03T16:54:00.000-07:00

Summary: Site analytics averages are deceiving and hide areas needing improvement. Avinash Kaushik, an instructor at Google's Conversion University, helps explain why you need to look at more than averages when you examine your website's metrics. Hidden in your metrics could be successes and failures of your website that you've never noticed before. I thoroughly enjoyed this video. Hopefully you are using Google analytics, or another comparable analytics package, since analytics are required to reliably improve your website. Once you watch this video, take some time to look at your analytics with this fresh perspective. Then ask yourself, "How can I improve my website with what I've learned?"

How Can Freely Sharing Articles You Author Help You Build Business?

2008-04-24T09:26:00.000-07:00

Make friends with your customers, both potential and existing, by giving freely.

Summary: Customers ignore advertisements because advertisements saturate our lives and we've learned most of them can't be trusted. So how can you reach ad-weary customers? By freely educating them. If a customer can learn something valuable from you, they are more likely to respect you, trust you, remember you, and recommend you. This technique is often called "Content Marketing." To help you better understand what Content Marketing is and how it can help your company, I thought it would be helpful to share an excellent definition I found on Wikipedia today.

Which is a customer more likely to ignore, a helpful article or a traditional advertisement? Which is a customer more likely to show to colleagues, an educational video or a video advertisement?

Freely sharing helpful articles, videos, etc. to grow your business is an effective method called "Content Marketing." Below is a definition of Content Marketing from Wikipedia.org:

"Content marketing is an umbrella term encompassing all marketing formats that involve the creation or sharing of content for the purpose of engaging current and potential consumer bases. In contrast to traditional marketing methods that aim to increase sales or awareness through interruption techniques, content marketing subscribes to the notion that delivering high-quality, relevant and valuable information to prospects and customers drives profitable consumer action.

The idea of sharing content as a means of persuading decision-making has driven content marketers to make their once-proprietary informational assets available to selected audiences. Alternatively, many content marketers choose to create new information and share it via any and all media. Content marketing products frequently take the form of custom magazines, print or online newsletters, digital content, websites or microsites, white papers, webcasts/webinars, podcasts, video portals or series, in-person roadshows, roundtables, interactive online, email, events. The purpose of this information is not to spout the virtues of the marketer’s own products or services, but to inform target customers and prospects about key industry issues, sometimes involving the marketer’s products. The motivation behind content marketing is the belief that educating the customer results in the brand’s recognition as a thought leader and industry expert.

Marketers may use content marketing as a means of achieving a variety of business goals, such as thought leadership, lead generation, increasing direct sales, improving retention and more.

Content marketing is the underlying philosophy driving techniques such as custom media, custom publishing, database marketing, brand marketing, branded entertainment and branded content." (Wikipedia, 2008.)

Put simply, Content Marketing allows you to build a closer relationship with the customer than mere advertising can provide by freely giving him with educational articles, audio, video, that address his problems and also demonstrate your company's value and expertise.

So do not delay. Start sharing your expertise with your existing and potential customers by writing articles with solutions to their problems and placing them prominently on your website, sending them out in email, and using any other reasonable method. If you share your expertise freely, you will generate goodwill and will gain the potential customer's attention, respect, and business. However, if you do not share your expertise freely, customers will incorrectly assume that you don't share information because you don't have their interests in mind, or worse you don't have the expertise you claim to have. As a result, they will take their business to a more convincing competitor. So apply this saying to your expertise, "Practice giving and people will give to you."

References

Wikepedia. 2008. "Content marketing."

This definition of Content Marketing was shared under the terms of the Wikipedia Licensing agreement.

Promotions:

Link building helps online businesses secure top positions on search results pages.
Vertical Measures provides link building services.

What is Web Strategy and Why is it Important? 10 Questions to Help Explain

2008-04-19T12:18:00.000-07:00

Do you think of your customers as one big group or do you categorize them?

Summary: I have watched friends build a website to generate income with very little planning; they have an idea, and the next day they're building the website. But I've watched those same friends start a business and immediately start with a business plan before doing anything else. Why the difference? It seems that planning is an expected part of successful business strategy. Why isn't planning considered equally important for a website? In this article we'll discuss what web strategy is, questions that should be answered as part of a successful website strategy, and we'll talk about why such a strategy is important.

So what is web strategy?

I'll start with a rather pithy definition: Web strategy is about looking at and anticipating root causes of online success or failure and coming up with solutions to address those root causes instead of superficial solutions.

Perhaps that still doesn't make sense; let's try to explain it another way?

Put simply, web strategy is like a business plan, but it is the plan for your website. In it you outline a road map for your website. You outline obstacles and challenges you expect to face, your plan to overcome those obstacles, and goals that will determine whether you've been successful.

Do you really need a web strategy?

You may ask, 'Why is planning important?' An ancient proverb states, "The plans of the diligent one surely make for advantage, but everyone that is hasty surely heads for want." Good planning ultimately leads to business advantages. Similarly, good website planning ultimately leads to advantages for your website versus competing websites.

But what types of questions are answered as a part of a web strategy?

Let me provide some examples of web strategy questions and see if this helps you to understand what web strategy is about:

What are the categories of customers who use your website? Thinking of all your customers in one big group is an example of having no website strategy because customers are not all the same. For example, a website selling books might group their customers into categories like as in the chart at the top of this article.
Does your website address the needs of each category of customer in a satisfactory way? Many website owners think primarily about their own needs, for instance getting a sale, and thus the website reflects this. Just as we hate salesman that are only out for their commission people hate websites that only sell and otherwise aren't helpful at sincerely answering questions or concerns the potential buyer might have.
What are the top 10 questions customers ask when they reach your website? How do you answer each of those top 10 questions? Websites that fail to answer the most important customer questions won't get sales because it is guaranteed you have a competitor on the internet that does answer his questions. Since this is the case, why would he buy from your website?
On each page of your website, what is the desired action you want the user to take on that page? If you don't know this, how can you tell your customer what to do? If you can't tell your customer what to do, how will he know what to do next? If he doesn't know what to do next, he will just leave your website.
What is considered a successful visit on your website? What are you doing to ensure that each visit to your website is successful? Are you trying to get a phone call, a newsletter subscription, a purchase? The answer to this question should greatly affect your entire website's layout and design.
What is the average conversion rate for your industry and what is the target conversion rate for your website? If you don't know your industry conversion rate, then how can you set a target for your own conversion rate? You can't just pull these numbers out of the air. If this data is not available, you need some other logical way of determining a reasonable conversion rate.
Besides relying on search engines, directories, and advertising, what is your six month plan for increasing the number of visitors to your website? Millions of websites are competing to get on Google Search, Yahoo Directory, etc. If you do the same thing everyone else is doing, you're going to get the same results. The average website fails. So what will you do differently than those failing websites did?
What are the goals for your website in the next 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, and 1 year? Your goals should guide your activity every day. Without goals you are like a runner running without a destination. How will he know which direction to take his next step?
What lessons have you learned from your competitors in the last 6 months and how do you plan to apply those lessons in the next 6 months? Your competitors are trying thousands of different things to find success. The smart entrepreneur learns from his competitors. Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart and Sam's Club, started Sam's Club after he visited Sol Price's Price Club (now named Costco). He way always learning. You should be doing the same by using your competitor's websites regularly.
What reason does a visitor have to tell others about your website? The best marketing is word-of-mouth. Is there anything about your website that a customer would have reason to tell his friends and colleagues about? To get an honest answer, you may need to ask someone else for their opinion. This is probably the most important question you can ask.

I could continue to list questions, but hopefully you get the point. Web strategy is about formulating answers to questions like the above. To put it another way, a successful web strategy can be a formal document, just like a business plan, that outlines your plan for the growth and development of your website and sets clear goals that will allow you to determine whether you were successful or not.

Your Plan is Your Map

If you don't have a web strategy, then you're like a traveler on a road trip without a map and without a route. You might stumble upon your destination, but your journey is going to be long and difficult full of wrong turns and dead ends. However, by developing a web strategy you're going to be like the traveler that has both a map, and a well planned route. You will reach your destination, and you will reach it quickly and you will enjoy the scenery along the way.

Is your website competitive? Let's Ask Google’s New Benchmarking Tool

2008-04-09T22:06:00.000-07:00

A screenshot from Google's new Benchmarking service.

Summary: Google has launched a new benchmarking service to enable business owners and executives to compare their website's statistics against the industry average. This tool can help you to gain insight into how your website stacks up against your competitor. This is necessary if you are going to increase your site's conversion rate, yield maximal benefits from website promotion, or increase site traffic. In this article we will discuss the tool in more detail and analyze why it is so valuable.

Have you ever been sitting, looking at your website statistics, trying your best to analyze the data, but just feeling like you have no idea whether your site’s statistics are good or bad? You keep wondering, ‘how do I stack up against my competition?’ Unfortunately, you can’t just call your competitors every week and ask to swap data. But without knowing how your competitors are doing, you feel like your site’s numbers give you little real insight as to how your company is performing.

Fortunately, Google has helped to lift the fog. Google Analytics has released a new benchmarking tool to enable companies to easily compare their website’s statistics against industry averages. Amazingly, this free service can help you see if your website is doing well versus websites in your industry, doing poorly, or just performing at an average level. Google’s Analytics Benchmarking tool can give you insights into your own success and failure and those of your competitors.

But what is benchmarking and why do business owners and executives need a benchmarking tool to maintain a successful website? It is beneficial to examine the answer to this question.

You may know your website’s statistics (e.g. number of visitors, pageviews, etc.), but is that enough to know whether or not your website is performing well? No. Your website’s level of success, whether good or bad, can only be determined by comparing your site against competitors. This process is called benchmarking. Let me illustrate why benchmarking is necessary with an example.

In college, students are graded on a curve. Students who are far above average receive the A grade; students that are below average receive the C, D, or F; average gets you a B. It is impossible to determine your grade from your exam score without also knowing the average.

For example, while in college, I once scored 45 out of 100 on a final exam. When I saw my score I was in shock. I was almost certain I had failed. But did I fail the test? No. In fact, I aced it. It turned out the average on the test was a 25 so my 45 was an A+. Only by knowing the average could I accurately judge my success on that test.

Measuring website performance is the same. If 10% of visitors to your website end up purchasing, is that good or bad? It depends. If your competitors are getting 30% of visitors to buy, then you should be asking, ‘what am I doing wrong?’ If this were college, you’d be receiving the F. However, if your competitors are only getting 2% of visitors to buy versus your 10%, then your company is performing at an excellent level! You deserve the A+! Again, site statistics must be benchmarked against your competitors to accurately judge your success. On their own, statistics provide limited insight.

So undoubtedly you see the importance of benchmarking your website’s performance against the industry average. Google’s new Analytics Benchmarking service is an excellent tool that now makes benchmarking easier than ever. I urge you to strongly consider the use of this tool, or any similar benchmarking tool you are aware of. As a result of benchmarking your website, you will know with confidence whether your website is great, without need of improvement, or uncompetitive with urgent need of an upgrade.

Notes

To use the Google Analytics Benchmarking service, your website must be using Google analytics.
Google Analytics is a free service.
You can sign up for Google Analytics at: http://www.google.com/analytics/indexu.html

Guest Article: How can Patience Provide Rewarding Sales Growth?

2008-04-03T12:31:00.000-07:00

What lessons can we learn from the success of LightningLabels.com?

Summary: Over a 2 year period, Peter Renton's blog has helped him grow his website, lightninglabels.com, from zero visitors to 22,000 visitors per month (Compete.com, 2008). This is impressive for a business with such a small niche. Today, Peter is going to discuss the rewards of patience as you build your website and how he benefited from writing a business blog. Recently, Peter estimated that his blog drives at least $2,000 per month of additional business to his website. I hope you enjoy this article.

I believe every business should have a blog, but to launch a successful blog you need to be patient and committed. You simply cannot judge the success of your blog for at least 12 months, so you need to continually update your blog even when few people are reading it. Unless you are very lucky or famous, building blog traffic is a slow and gradual process.

A blog can do a number of things for a business. First and foremost, it should provide a more personal face for your company. The blog author or authors should be visible and be allowed to write in a personal, conversational tone. A blog is not about telling the world how great you are; you should leave that to your main site. Instead, you should use your blog to educate and inform, and possibly entertain if it is appropriate.

When you start writing your blog you should do a handful of posts and then announce to the world that you have a blog. You can do online press releases, contact industry publications, email your customer list and get the word out any way you can. This should provide an initial bump in traffic for you which will hopefully result in a number of regular readers.

Our company blog is now two years old, and is the oldest blog in our industry. For many months, though, I would write blog posts and look at the traffic and be disappointed. Here is the breakdown of approximate number of daily visitors and how it has grown:

Month	Daily Visitors
3rd	25
6th	31
9th	45
12th	65
18th	114
24th	147

The numbers above are for unique visitors viewing pages on the blog web site, but with any blog you can subscribe to the content without visiting the site by using an RSS reader. Our growth in the number of subscribers has followed a similar curve to that of daily visitors, and today we have about the same number of subscribers, around 140.

These are not huge numbers but for a vertical market such as digital label printing you can’t expect to have thousands of readers. One important feature that every business blog should have is a prominent link back to the company’s main web site. We get more visitors to our main site from our blog than any other source other than the search engines. People find our blog go to our web site and become customers. I estimate that we get around four new customers a month resulting in around $2,000 in sales directly from the blog.

So how do you grow the number of visitors to your blog? Here are a number of ways we have done it:

1. Search engines – every new post is indexed by the search engines within a day or two and after two years we have over 170 posts and more than 50,000 words written about our industry. All these words are indexed and able to be searched with more words being added with every post.

2. Promoting the blog – we promote the blog at every opportunity. We provide a link to the blog in our customer emails, press releases, articles, even in my email signature.

3. Commenting on other blogs – I subscribe to dozens of blogs and I regularly make comments on these blogs. These comments usually provide a link back to our company blog. One word of warning: be careful to make the comment meaningful otherwise it will be deleted as spam.

4. Blogrolls – Develop a relationship with other bloggers and you can get your blog placed on what is called a blogroll. This is a list of blogs (with links) that a blogger publishes on their blog.

5. Your main web site – a link to your blog should be prominently featured on your main company web site.

We get many people who visit our own main site, then go and check out our blog and place an order. We have no way of measuring the actual impact that our blog has on these people but I know the blog helps create the impression that we are an industry leader. Our blog is also mentioned in trade publications now and has resulted in speaking and writing engagements for me that increases our exposure in our industry. But this all took time and perseverance.

Peter Renton is the founder of Lightning Labels, Inc., the leaders in digital label printing and custom labels. He writes regularly about the label printing industry on his company blog at http://blog.lightninglabels.com.

References

Compete.com. 2008. "Snapshot of LightningLabels.com"

Discouraged? A Successful Website Requires Realistic Goals

2008-03-31T19:33:00.000-07:00

What are the repercussions of having unrealistic business goals?

Summary: In this article we will discuss how to establish realistic goals for a website and why we do so. Realistic goals are important for a website owner if he is going to have success. Realistic goals accomplish two objectives. First, realistic goals lead to constant, measurable progress. Second, realistic goals provide motivation when achieved. Whereas, unrealistic goals can lead to wasted effort and discouragement.

What is wrong with having unrealistic goals for your website? Unrealistic goals can lead to discouragement. Discouragement can lead to a loss of joy and, worse, giving up altogether.

Sometimes in our efforts to reach out for as much as possible for our business, we reach out for so much that we overstretch ourselves.

Therefore, to keep your joy, and to continue to grow your company, you should always set goals that force you to stretch but that also allow you to see steady progress.

What makes a goal realistic? And how can your goals help your company make steady, measurable progress?

Here are some guidelines:

Realistic goals should be in-line with what companies in your industry have been able to accomplish historically.
Your goals should allow time for your efforts to bear fruit.
Realistic goals should reflect deep planning and not shallow thinking.

Let's briefly expand on each of these three points.

Realistic goals should be in-line with what companies in your industry have been able to accomplish historically.

If your goals fail to take into account industry averages they are more than likely going to be missed.

For example, if the average conversion rate in your industry is 5% and your website's current conversion rate is 6%, would a goal of having a 25% conversion rate be reasonable?

Google Analytics has a new benchmarking tool that helps companies to benchmark their websites against industry averages. Consider investing in tools like this or manually gathering data published about your industry. Then, armed with industry knowledge, set realistic goals.

Your goals should allow time for your efforts to bear fruit.

The farmer can not plant his seed Monday night and expect to reap Tuesday morning. Similarly, reaping the results of your effort to increase traffic, revenues, or profit requires time. Often noticeable improvement requires consistent effort for years not months.

Don't try to fool yourself into thinking that you're going to increase your monthly revenues an order of magnitude through a brief three month burst of activity. Though some websites manage to buck the trend, on average websites seem to take 2-3 years of consistent effort to gain traction. To read a real life example, click here.

How long are you currently planning on waiting for your efforts to yield significant results?

Realistic goals should reflect deep planning and not shallow thinking.

Many website owners obsess over only two numbers, traffic and revenues. This obsession is shallow because it fails to look at the root sources of traffic and revenue.

There are myriads of factors that go into a successful website (e.g. quality product selection, good site design, educational content, quality customer service, well written product descriptions, etcetera). Don't just set traffic and revenue goals as a knee jerk reaction. Try setting goals for improving very specific parts of your website.

For example, a study by Jakob Nielsen on website usability found that users are 22% more satisfied when website content is written in a concise, objective and scannable manner (Nielsen, 1997). Can you set a goal to re-write all of the text on your website to make it more objective (e.g. remove any biased or overly optimistic statements)?

One of Jack Welch's most famous actions when he became CEO of GE was to get GE out of any business where they weren't #1 or #2 (Wikipedia, 2008). This allowed GE to focus its energy on its strengths. Can you do something similar with your website? For example, can you set a goal of trimming back your product selection to only products with margins at or above your industry's average?

Paying attention to the three points discussed in this article as you set goals for your website will help you to set realistic goals that continuously move your website forward. By setting realistic goals you will avoid discouragement. More importantly, your steady, measurable progress will serve as personal motivation to continue working on building a successful business online.

References:

Nielsen, Jakob. 1997. "How to Write for the Web"
Wikipedia. 2008. "Jack Welch"