Registering

If your cart currently requires a registration for customers to buy, then consider ditching it. Few industries will need to retain this information, and customers are often not willing to sign up to yet another site. If your product is not one that is often bought, then passwords will be lost, and you will possibly lose business to a site that doesn’t require registration. If you are using the sign in process to record the sales info for the customer as well as for your marketing data, consider implementing an express or guest checkout for those that want to skip it. Better yet, use Facebook Connect, it gives you more information about the customer than a static form, and the customer won’t have to remember yet another password.

Long Tedious Forms

Your form should ask for the bare minimum. Turning your shopping cart form into a mini (or not so mini) survey or questionnaire will definitely kill the sale; even having to scroll down to read the rest of the form can be irritating. Edit your form with a vengeance, and leave the market research for another time.

Errors and Validation

Many forms and shopping carts have fields which are required to move on to the next step, or to complete the purchase. This is necessary for things like getting the correct billing information and shipping address. One common practice is to put an asterisk next to each field required, but many times, these are tiny and can go unnoticed the first time around. Make the required sections obvious, and also if the customer hasn’t filled out the form correctly, don’t wipe the form clean so that they have to start all over again.

A best practice is to use a validation code so that the form doesn’t get spammed. These can vary from the simple (for example asking a question such as ‘What is 2 + 4?’) to the obscenely difficult to read phrases where the writing is curved or scrambled in a way that even human eyes can’t detect it. Use something simple like reCaptcha.

Upselling

Amazon does this in an almost non intrusive way, by listing “things people also bought when buying this item”. Don’t be tempted to add in pop up suggestions, asking people to pay for memberships or sending them to a page with other items they might like. At the checkout process, your sale is almost won; don’t turn them off by trying to force another item into the trolley, this works with candy at the supermarket, but rarely online.

The moral of this story, is to keep it simple – you’ve lured your customers in with online marketing, excellent content and a product that solves their problem; don’t make the decision hard for them once they are there. A good shopping experience should be an easy one, and a bad shopping cart or form can sour the sale as surely as a surly cashier or sales assistant can.

How do your customers make the decision to buy from your or trust your advice? It would seem straightforward that the best would rank number one or two for the search terms that people enter, but does that logic hold once they visit your site? There are a few on page factors that might be SEO compliant, however may scare off potential customers.

Web design.

If your current design is years old, hastily put together and has an unprofessional logo or font, then compared to a more modern up-to-date site, the customer may decide that the modern looking one is more suitable for their needs. This is a psychographic based decision and may have no bearing on the quality of your goods and services, but is based on opinion and personality.

Don’t rush to change your website without doing a little customer and market research – some customers will be the opposite, instead trusting a site that looks a little more battle scarred. Think about what type of customer you are targeting and then do your research and plans accordingly.

No social sharing.

If you site contains informative content that is changed or added to regularly, then it makes sense to allow others to share it easily. This doesn’t mean you have to look after 10 different social platforms; just by adding a share button from Facebook or Google + to your pages, people are able to share it on their own social network page – thus showing their appreciation for the content. A ticker of how many ‘likes’ and +1’s will show your customers that this info or page was helpful to others, and put your name in front of their friends. If you have a commenting feature that is not utilised, consider disabling it as zero comments will act the same way as an empty restaurant, people will move on without giving it a chance.

Nowadays, word of mouth has spread to the internet, and with a plethora of social networks to use, it’s important not to over do it – stick to social networks that your customers would use.

Bad content.

Make sure that your content is easy to read. This may be a no brainer, but bad grammar and copy will cause some to consider whether your business is qualified to assist them! These days, bad spelling and grammar are everywhere, spell checkers have made people lazy about learning, so make sure you double check and even consult a copywriter for advice.

Having the same content across multiple pages is not only confusing for SEO purposes, but will make your website look hasty and disorganised. Your SEO company should be able to point you in the right direction with your menu system, simplicity is the key to useability. If you aren’t running a blog or any other type of regular content changes, then it can be a good idea to add recent reviews or industry news, so that your customers have an indication that your site is indeed, up to date.

Most modern internet users will search using dozens of keywords before awarding that all special click-through to a site. Once you have earned that position and gained that click, the process of converting a searcher into a customer has only just begun. Make sure your site is ready to receive guests and that the information and products you are offering are easy to search, read and purchase. And importantly, don’t forget to have clear contact details so that they know where to find you.

I’ve been promised a page 1 ranking.

Some SEO companies will guarantee you a first page, or even a number one ranking in Google. This is not a promise that anyone can keep, as no SEO company has an ‘in’ with Google. The seemingly good results that they provide may be the wrong keywords for your business. There is no point ranking number one for the key phrase “best blue jeans in Perth” if no one is searching for it, or more importantly, if you sell shoes, for example. On the surface some of them might seem appropriate, but some SEO companies will trade on the fact that you will not know what your customers are searching for in any volume, this is where strategic keyword research has it’s place.

What if I do the research myself?

You may have done your own research, but without being well versed in identifying the best keywords that your customers will search for, you could be wasting your time. It’s a very common and mistaken belief amongst business owners that since they know their business or industry best, that they also know their customers best. Business website owners are guilty of looking at their website through the eyes of someone who knows the industry inside out, but this is a very narrow way of doing research. Your customers aren’t likely to know as much as you do, and therefore will have a very different set of keywords that they will associate with your business.

A professional keyword researcher will have many tools in their repertoire that aren’t readily available to people looking for a one off researching project. By using these keyword research tools, they can learn how many users are searching for a certain term by day and month, locally and worldwide – and maybe most importantly, how the search term converts for a business in your industry. It can also alert them to words and synonyms relevant to your business that you may not have been aware of.

Monitor and Maintain.

Once the list of keywords has been compiled, they can then take the next step and implement these keywords and optimise your site. While you may not rank highly for these keywords immediately, the important thing is that they have been carefully selected for search volume and key relevance to your industry. With regular monitoring with a web stats tool such as Google Analytics, your SEO provider can determine whether these keywords are driving sales ready customers to your site, and if they are converting into sales or enquires.

To help you carry out some market research on your own here are a few useful tips on how to get started. These are all free tools and techniques so if you are looking to save money they are a great place to begin.

• Keyword Research – Use a keyword research tool and see how effective your competitor’s keywords are. Think strategically here too. Look at the keywords used by your competitor and see how they rank for them. They may not be targeting the same keywords as you, but this will give you an insight to what they feel is important to their business. You never know, they may not be using SEO effectively and this gives you an opportunity to outrank them for the keywords they deem important.
• Get Social - Social networking is a fantastic place to keep an eye on your competition. Check out their campaigns, read customer posts on their wall, see their latest links. If you do not have your business on these networking sites then ask your SEO provider if it is something that could be of benefit. Social networking can be a fantastic way for business to keep in touch with customers when used in the right way.

Free Tools from Google

• Google Trends – If you are looking to create new content then use something like Google Trends.  See what is hot in search and create content geared towards these search terms if it is appropriate to your industry.  Check to see the content on your competitor’s page to see if they are staying one step ahead using trending search.
• Google Insights for Search- This is a free tool where you can carry out keyword research and be given options on which terms are being used most frequently all over the world.  Google Insights search tool is great if you are looking to target a certain country or area as the results can be broken down showing you what is working best all over the world.
• Google Alerts – Create a search that you wish to monitor and Google will send you the results you request directly to your email.  If you want to know what your competitors are up to as soon as possible just create an alert and you will be among the first to know.

Use Your Findings to Your Advantage

By being aware of what your competitors are doing using these market research tools you can adjust your own marketing efforts accordingly.  Market research can be done for you by experts but it never hurts to learn these free tools for yourself. Learn who your competitors are and start your own market research and see how you compare.  You could learn some great tips and gain insights into where they are going wrong.  Learn from the mistakes of others to help improve your own business.

Actually having a website.

Research done earlier this year by MYOB’s Business Monitor showed that two thirds of Australian small businesses do not even have a website. (1source: http://www.dynamicbusiness.com.au/news/two-in-three-australian-small-businesses-no-website-1722011.html) This is a staggering figure when you think about the surge in internet ready mobile devices, and that many people do their purchasing research online, either before they walk into a store, or with a view to completing the transaction online.

While it is strongly recommended that you have a website for your small business, many people simply do not know where to start, or think they don’t have the time or money. If you reflect on the fact that $12 billion was spent online last year1, you may want to reconsider. There are many cheap and effective ways to get online – there are free blogging tools and cheap hosting packages with drag and drop website building features. One new promotion that started this year is the MYOB and Google joint venture “Getting Aussie Business Online” which gives your business a free website, free hosting and free domain registration for 2 years.

What’s the catch?

There practically isn’t one, but if you must know – the websites, while customisable, all follow a standard template, however all block titles, images and colours are editable.

See some example websites here: http://www.gettingbusinessonline.com.au/gallery. The websites design is mindful of SEO requirements and even comes with a Google Adwords credit to use on new accounts. Keep in mind, that as with any website, you won’t automatically rank for any of your keywords and traditional SEO techniques and marketing will still apply.

This is a great starting point for those small businesses or sole traders who need an online presence to compete, but can’t afford the initial outlay. After the one year period has passed, the website costs $5 per month to keep live, and your domain registration will cost you $30 per year after the first two years. All you need is an ABN and phone number to start, and no credit card details are needed at all. If you are looking at branding and making an impression with your online customers, perhaps asking a professional’s advice would benefit you, as while this promotion is fantastic for someone just starting out, if you are looking to agressively market online, it can pay to spend that little bit more to make a great impression.

Once you are up and online, you can then think about other ways of marketing your business, as you will have just opened up to a whole new set of customers.

Compiling customer profiles

This will not only help you understand your existing customers, but will help you get to know new ones and spot potential customers early in the buying cycle.

Start by assuming that your competition has already started this process. If this is true, it should scare you to know that they know your potential customer’s names, professions, birthdates, and where they live, and what they might like to buy in the future.

You may have had a similar idea to compile this information before, through email lists or whatever – but the easiest, safest and most reliable way to get this information is to simply ask your current customers for it. There are a few ways you can do this, relatively unobtrusively:

1. Surveys – not too long mind you, you don’t want them to abandon it and go elsewhere.

2. Customer cards that they can fill out on/after their first visit/purchase, either in store or online.

3. Competition entries.

Why send a mass email to everyone when you can just send them to the group that will most likely buy the product that you are offering or to those who have shown interest in your product?

Segmenting your customer lists

This is a simple way of building a customer profile. There are 4 main criteria you might apply; however this is by no means an extensive list:

1. Geographical – Where do your customers live? Do you typically get locals, or are you a brand leader that people will cover larger distances to see you? Is your product or service location dependant?

4. Psychology – Where in the buying cycle are they? Do they have a sense of brand loyalty? What kind of lifestyle do they lead, how do they see your advertising? (e.g. On television, print, email, internet)

Once you have this information, it can be tricky to use it effectively. You may need a good customer relationship management system (CRM) in place to make sense of it all. This can either be an elaborate piece of software, or as simple as a well organised MS Access file, depending on your unique needs. Whatever you choose, it can make your communication with your customers and prospects more efficient, regular and better informed.

The uses for customer information are only as limited as your budget or imagination – from an online perspective, think email campaigns and better targeted paid search for special offers. Offline, it can be used from something as simple as conversational topics (asking your customer when they are likely to buy or need your service again), or for direct marketing such as print advertising or direct mail.

You might not have considered this concept or you might have always wanted to know what to do about this. Either way, there certainly is a way to take back the marketing advantage so as to:

1. Benefit more from the advertising that your competitors are doing, providing you free leads, or

2. Minimize the spill over of your marketing to the competition and stop giving away your customers for free to the competition.

Whenever your competition is doing advertising, it increases the chances that customers will shop around and look for alternative quotes before making their purchase decision. This is where you need to identify where your customers are looking and be at the right place at the right time.

We already know that the majority of searches for information are conducted online and that over 85% of the population in Australia uses Google to find the product or service that they looking for.

This is something you need to consider especially if you’re relying on your customer to recall information about your company or product during their search for information, which is the second step in the buying cycle after need recognition.

Case Study

In the fictional case of the business ‘Golf Clubs Galore’, we’ll demonstrate how other businesses could benefit from their recent marketing campaign.

Scenario: The local business, Golf Clubs Galore has just launched their radio advertisement campaign to sell Golf Clubs sets with a free golf bag as part of a Christmas special. They didn’t realise however that customers wouldn’t be able to recall the website address or business name. Instead, potential customers started googling ‘golf clubs’ and ‘golf club set’s finding a whole list of Adwords advertisers, Google Places listings of Golf Club shops and other organic listings except an entry for Golf Clubs Galore.

In our example, Golf Clubs Galore didn’t consider an integrated marketing communication strategy which involves aligning other important marketing channels to sustain their campaign. For example, with a single Adwords campaign run for the period of the radio advertisements emphasizing the free golf bag, they would have been able to capture a significantly larger portion of their audience than relying on people recalling a phone-number or their URL. How many of us, go back home or into the office and successfully remember all the details of the ad we just saw or heard? Try it next time you hear an ad on the radio.

Some steps that you can take to improve communicating your marketing message:

• Identify and assess potential communication channels
• Evaluate your competitors in the market including their use of advertising mediums
• Ensure your campaign message is aligned across the different mediums

If you need help with the assessment of your communication strategy and some advice whether other online marketing channels would be beneficial for your campaign, please don’t hesitate to ask one of our staff at White Chalk Road.

Tweet
]]> http://www.whitechalkroad.com.au/website_marketing/are-you-giving-away-your-customers-for-free/feed 0 http://www.whitechalkroad.com.au/website_marketing/tackle-negative-online-press-with-reverse-seo http://www.whitechalkroad.com.au/website_marketing/tackle-negative-online-press-with-reverse-seo#comments Mon, 18 Oct 2010 07:39:54 +0000 wcrctr http://www.whitechalkroad.com.au/?p=1085 Reverse SEO may be an important component of your online reputation management (ORM) program. It may well be the quickest, most effective solution for dealing with bad press that has surfaced on the search engines about you or your company. By pushing negative listings from the front page of Google, Yahoo, and Bing, reverse SEO will largely, although not completely, shield you from the damaging commentary of others. This approach can be supplemented by paid search ads that lead to positive conversations about the topic in question.

Negative publicity online has become one of the most frustrating recent challenges for companies. It is typically anonymous, whereby names are often unattached to forum threads, blog posts, articles and even entire websites. Therefore, it is difficult to track and address the source of the complaint. Moreover, the growing popularity of social networking platforms has made it easier than ever for people with a mild grievance to give weight to their complaint, opinion or grudge. If you or your company have been the target of bad press online, it may be time to launch a reverse SEO campaign.

In this article, we will clarify how negative publicity gains traction within the search engines, and how an SEO specialist can provide a working blueprint for executing a reverse SEO campaign and limit the damage.


How negative publicity gains traction within the search engines

Google, Yahoo, and Bing rank pages based on a large number of criteria. If a website and its individual pages satisfy the most important of those criteria, those pages will rank well. Just remember that the popularity of the page, in terms of number of visits, is not directly a major criterion that gets a high rank. Age of domain and number of back links will often be the major factors together with relevance to the search term, although high rankings and visits may create even more back links and perpetuate the process.

Often, bad press that targets companies is placed on websites that meet these key ranking factors in the search engines. Fresh content containing negative publicity on these well established sites can climb into the top positions and gain exposure. When people search for you or your company brand, they’ll see the bad press in the search result pages. That damages your hard won reputation.

Reverse search engine optimisation is an ORM strategy that pushes negative publicity further down the search positions only by promoting other, more balanced content higher than it. By moving the bad press off the first page of listings, reverse SEO limits its exposure and stifles its impact.

Ingredients For An Effective Reverse SEO Campaign

Like search engine marketing, reverse SEO uses a methodical, multi-pronged approach to protect your online reputation. The first step is to identify the sites and pages that contain negative publicity about your company and that are ranking for important keywords. Those keywords might include your name, that of your company, or key employees.

The second step of reverse SEO is to analyse those sites and pages for their respective ranking authority. That will help you determine the effort and tools you’ll need to use in order to move them from the first page of listings within Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Obviously, a negative PR blitz that is spreading across social networking sites is more difficult to overcome than a single blog post that is on a relatively new or poorly linked domain.

The third step is to gather the necessary tools and execute the reverse SEO campaign. Such tools might include optimised press releases, sites and blogs that can come under your influence, social media profiles and branded twitter tweets. Reverse SEO may also include heavy content syndication to build high-quality links. A search engine marketing specialist will have these tools at their disposal.

Protect Your Online Reputation with Reverse SEO

Reverse SEO should play an important role in your online reputation management program. It is far too easy for uninformed prospects/customers, resentful past employees, lazy journalists, and malicious competitors to tarnish your good name. Launch your reverse SEO campaign now – before the damage begins to gain momentum in the search engines. In a year’s time, you’ll be glad you decided to dominate the conversation on page one of Google et al.

Tweet
]]> http://www.whitechalkroad.com.au/website_marketing/tackle-negative-online-press-with-reverse-seo/feed 0 http://www.whitechalkroad.com.au/website_marketing/how-to-detect-poor-seo-consultants-or-companies http://www.whitechalkroad.com.au/website_marketing/how-to-detect-poor-seo-consultants-or-companies#comments Wed, 07 Jul 2010 01:34:10 +0000 Charles Ryder http://www.whitechalkroad.com.au/?p=909 Anyone who’s anyone in the SEO biz will remember about half a year back when Derek Powazek went on a wild-eyed, mouth-foaming diatribe against SEO.  ”SEO is not a legitimate form of marketing…SEO is poisoning the web…you’re sacrificing your brand integrity in a Faustian bargain for an increase in traffic that won’t last the month.”

The irony is that this particular blog post was an inspired tactical SEO maneuver and an outrageously obvious piece of link bait.  (And yes, that was correct usage of the word “irony”.)  A storm of responses arose from the indignant and very legitimate SEOs of the likes of Danny Sullivan and Peter da Vanzo, all righteously blasting Powazek and defending what SEOs do and why they do it.  In a very clear and concise manner, I might add, which completely ripped Powazek’s blog post to shreds.  Go team SEO!

Putting Powazek’s pseudo-intellectualism aside, however, the man does make an excellent point.  There are many “SEOs” out there who are…how shall I put this…complete and utter crap.  And spew complete and utter crap in the form of a marketing pitch so that you will buy into their ability to make your site perform and pay off for all of the time and money that you have invested in it.  And of course, them.

On the flip side there are some excellent and very earnest SEOs out there who do their job and do it well.  Who really know their stuff, and who get excited when your site performs because it reflects well on them and their abilities.  The question is, how do you as an uninformed potential consumer tell the difference?

• Transparency
  • Real SEOs aren’t interested in smoke and mirrors.  Fact: you’re paying them for their expertise.  If you could do it, you would.  Anyone CAN learn SEO – the reason that you’re paying someone to do SEO for you is because you’re not interested or because it’s not worth your time.  So a real SEO will have no problem being quite clear about exactly what he or she is doing, and answering all of your questions patiently.  Scammers and spammers, however, will try to dodge questions and use oblique and evasive terminology that will confuse you enough to think that they know what they’re talking about.
• Promises
  • Rule numero uno of SEO: Never.  Promise.  Anything.  Ever.  SEO is evolutionary to the extreme – Google needs to constantly and consistently update its algorithm to keep ahead of spammers so that they are serving relevant and useful results to users.  Therefore, SEO methodologies likewise need to constantly and consistently shift in order to keep up with the Googles.  Which means that a website ranking because it utilizes a specific factor may drop in rankings tomorrow because the importance of that factor has been drastically reduced. Anyone claiming that they can guarantee a number one space for your site for competitive keywords is flat out lying.  An SEO who can provide long-term results will use language such as “should” and “attempt”.  It sounds counter-intuitive to hire someone who is specifically NOT guaranteeing results, but in this particular instance it’s the best way to go.
• References/portfolio
  • This may seem like business 101, but I’m saying it anyway.  To be fair, many times an SEO will need to sign an NDA with his or her clients. That’s fine.  If such is the case, he or she should be able to provide two to three professional references in lieu of a portfolio.

Of course, my ultimate fail-safe recommendation to not get scammed by SEO scammers is to just learn a bit about the industry yourself.  I would recommend Google Webmaster Central and Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide.  Barring that, use the above-mentioned tips, and be skeptical. And never, ever be afraid to ask questions.

Tweet
]]> http://www.whitechalkroad.com.au/website_marketing/how-to-detect-poor-seo-consultants-or-companies/feed 0