Assume your customers are idiots

This headline may seem a bit harsh – but its not quite as harsh as it sounds. When I say assume your customers are idiots I mean in the same way as when you drive your car or bike then assume all other drivers are idiots – this way you will never be surprised when they try to pull out in front of you.

What I really mean is that assume that your website users are idiots. If you look at your website statistics you will probably be horrified at short a time  someone stays on your website home page before leaving to go somewhere else – perhaps a competitors.

This blog entry covers a few simple tips (common sense really) to make sure you give your website visitor every opportunity to turn from a potential customer into a paying one.

What do you want your visitor to do?

Set out an objective for your website visitor. Typically this could be:

• Pick up the phone and call you
• Fill out a form
• Send an email
• Buy a product
• Read a certain page or story

or a mixture of any of the above. So when you have decided what your objective for your website visitors is – then you assume that your website visitors are idiots.

Objective #1 – Pick up the phone and call you
So have a look at your website and see where your phone number is listed:

• Is it on the home page?
• Is it prominent?
• Is it on every page?
• Is it high up on the page -above the fold?

Basically if this is your #1 objective then make sure its near impossible to miss it. A lot of websites have the phone number hidden away on a contact us page and you are asking an awful lot of your users to start clicking away to find it.

Objective #2 – Fill out a form
So have a look at your website and see where the form is:

• Is it on the home page?
• Is it prominent?
• Is it on every page?
• Is it high up on the page -above the fold?

Perhaps you can see a pattern emerging – like I said earlier its common sense. Unless the form is pretty long then theres no reason it should be displayed on the bome page and perhaps you can work it into an ever present prominent feature. Also keep the fields in the form to a minimum – we are all strapped for time and don’t want to be presented with War and Peace.

Objective #3 – Send an email
I’m not going to start repeating myself and I’m sure you get the idea about where to place your email link – and yes make it a link. If you are worried about spam harvesting of your email address have a look at this link.

Objective #4 – Buy a product
Work out what your best selling, most popular or most profitable product is and make it prominent on the home page. If you owned a shop then you would probably have this in the shop window and not at the back of the store. Display enough information and an image prominently on the home page with a prominent buy button – you can always have a read more link if there is further information.

Objective #5 – Read a certain page or story
If your objective is to get the viewer to read a certain story or page on your website – perhaps its your latest product launch or review – then once again you need to make it prominent on the home page. Have an attention grabbing headline and teaser and click through to the page and once again have it prominent on the home page.

If you have other objectives then you can pretty much tailor the advice based on the information in this post to any objective.  Its common sense – make it prominent and make sure the viewer cannot miss it. Of course the key to a succesful website is good and consistent navigation and this goes hand in hand with  your users finding the correct information quickly and easily in the least number clicks possible.

You can always run a test

You can always do a simple test on your website. Ask someone who has never been to your website before to look for certain information – your objectives. Ask them to record how long it takes them to find it.

Stuart Brant runs a web design and internet marketing agency – futurefirst.co.uk. He also runs highly succesful Internet Marketing Training Courses in London .

Stuart Brant

www.futurefirst.co.uk

I once was lost, now I’m found on the web

I thought I’d share a good article I read recently on timesonline.

I once was lost, now I’m found on the web

If anyone is interested in learning about how to market their business using search engines, social media and other forms of internet marketing you can book for a free 1 day Internet Marketing Training Course

Enhanced listings in Google

At our last Internet Marketing Training Course one of the delegates asked as to why when they searched in Google on their company name that under the main listing it bought up various other links to internal sections.

Muraspec Google listing

They also queried as to why this only happened after some searches, that bought up their website in the results, and not others. Although at the time I was pretty sure as to why i thought I’d carry out a bit of research and post it here on our blog.

Why does it happen in some searches and not others?
Google will only return thes type of results when the search criteria is specific enough – in this case the company name. When the search criteria is this specific then Google realises that it can go a bit overboard and give a type of menu to internal pages to save the user some time. In this case the company’s name was unique so there is little doubt as to what they needed. If the user searches for what the company does it doesn’t bring up these results when the company name is listed.

Why does this not happen when I search on my company name – even though I’m top?
This gets back to one of the central points of our Internet Marketing courses – A well structured website. In this case Google obviously thinks it knows enough about the site to give this mini menu. From a quick scan of the site it seems that its showing the values that are either text links or Alt Tags from image buttons – so whatever you do make text links on your site and make sure you have Alt Tags on any image menus.

In conclusion
At the end of the day a website owner has to make it easy for search engines to go through its site and find information. Although you can’t force Google to provide a listing like this you have to give it what it wants – which is information:

• Provide a text based menu – either the main menu or perhaps a quicklinks footer menu
• Put Alt Tags on all images – especially navigation buttons

Another important note to remember – you can also give extra information on text links (within the code) using the Title tag.

Credit – some of the information included in this blog article was found at http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/092509-google-adds-links-to-web.html?hpg1=bn

Stuart Brant

Top 5 Business Blogging Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Todays post comes via Mashable, the authority on social media. Ive reproduced the post in its entiriety here to save you a click, but this is their original content and I would highly reccommend subscribing to their blog.

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Creating a blog for your small business isn’t easy; it requires hard work and the ability to think creatively about your work. But if you avoid the five big mistakes laid out in this post, your chances of building a successful business blog will be much better.

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Mistake #1: Treating Your Blog Like a Press Center

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The number one mistake that business bloggers make is to treat their blog as an extension of their current press center. Repeat after me: Your blog is not the place for press releases. Blogging is a conversation and it offers a way for your customers to connect with your business on a completely new level. Press releases, on the other hand, are the exact opposite. They’re impersonal, they’re self promotional, and most readers don’t trust them. If you use your blog to republish press releases your customers will have no reason to keep reading and they’ll also likely not trust your content.

How to Avoid: First, don’t ever put out a press release on your blog. You can use your blog to make product or other business announcements, but do so with original writing and in a more casual voice. Second, do use your blog to write about things other than your core business. Share your thoughts on your industry, share insights into the day-to-day work life and processes at your company, and provide tips and tricks you have learned during your time in business.

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Mistake #2: Not Blogging Regularly

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Think about the blogs you read on a regular basis — how many of them publish only sporadically? Most successful blogs put out new content at least a couple of times per week and try to stick to a regular schedule. Consistently putting out quality content will keep readers returning and over time it will help you build a community and turn your customers into fans.

How to Avoid: Blogging regularly isn’t easy, so to avoid burning out, brainstorm editorial ideas ahead of time. If you plan to put out new posts every Tuesday and Friday, for example, try not to start writing Tuesday’s post on Tuesday morning. Get other people at your company involved so that one person isn’t shouldering the entire blogging load, and even consider sourcing content from your customers. Remember that anything can provide fodder for a good blog post, so pay attention to the things you read or see on other blogs, newspapers, magazines, or television.

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Mistake #3: Not Enabling Conversation

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As I already said, blogging is a conversation, and not allowing it to occur on your blog is a mistake. It’s true that blog comments can open you up to criticism, but blogging is an unparalleled opportunity to connect with your customers. You’ll get a lot more out of blogging if you enable — and even encourage — your customers to respond to what you write.

How to Avoid: Obviously the first thing you need to do is enable commenting on your business blog. But beyond that, you need to remember that the conversation is two-way. Get in there and respond to the comments readers leave on your blog and you’ll be more likely to develop a community around your writing that can help turn your customers into fans who will evangelize your products and services and provide you with quality feedback. You should also participate in the conversation on other blogs in your industry by leaving comments on posts elsewhere around the blogosphere. That will help you to establish your “blogging brand” and bring new readers your way.

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Mistake #4: Making New Content Hard to Discover

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Your blog won’t be very helpful to readers if they aren’t able to easily find new content. You need to make your blog discoverable and you need to make sure that when you add new content, your regular readers will be able to find it.

How to Avoid: There are a few ways to make sure your blog content is more easily discovered.

- Make your blog easy to find by linking to it prominently from your company’s web site and including your blog’s URL in your email signature, on your business cards, and in sales and marketing collateral.

- Use a full RSS feed (because the goal with most business blogs should be to get read, not boost page views) and make it easy for your readers to find and subscribe to.

- Embrace social media technologies like Twitter and Facebook as a way to notify your fans and followers of new blog content, and make it easy for your readers to share content with each other through social media channels and via email.

- Optimize for search engines by putting relevant keywords in post titles and URL slugs and write about the things that your customers are most likely to be searching for — but avoid sounding artificial simply so you can stuff some more keywords into a post.

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Mistake #5: Expecting Too Much, Too Soon

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Blogging isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon. Your blog won’t be an overnight success, and for the first few months it might feel like you’re writing for no one. It can take time to build up your readership and have a regular community of people who participate on your blog. Don’t expect immediate returns from your blog and do expect to put in a lot of hard work.

How to Avoid: Set attainable goals and realize that you’re in it for the long haul. Don’t cancel your blogging efforts after three months — give it at least a year of regularly putting out quality, original content. And make sure that your blog is easy to find, and that your readers are able to easily comment and share posts with others.

What do you want your customers to do!

So, hopefully, you are getting traffic to your website – whether its through pay per click, natural searches, email marketing, social media or any other form of marketing, offline or online.

We come to this point at the end of our Internet Marketing Workshops and to be honest its not normally something our delegates even think about – but its crucial in turning website visitors into customers. So I thought I’d discuss a few things we try to get over to people attending our internet marketing courses. The question you need to ask is:

What do you want them to do?

When you go to IKEA on a Saturday afternoon you enter the store and then, whether you want to or not, you have to walk through virtually every section and past every product (2 floors worth in the Croydon store) before you enter the scrum of the checkout area and are able to leave the store. This is not by accident – IKEA have sat down and asked themselves – What do we want them to do? The answer is probably “We want them to see every product we sell so they buy more products”.

So as the owner of a website you need to ask the question “What do we want them to do”

If you have an e-commerce site then the answer would normally be:

• Buy a product

If you haven’t got an e-commerce site then the answer could be any of the following:

• Give us a call
• Send us an email
• Fill out an enquiry form
• Join a live chat
• Sign up to our newsletter

Of course some of you may have more specific answers and these may change depending on your business circumstances or may even be seasonal.

So you have identified what you want your website visitors to do – now how do you get them to do it.

Well the simple answer is use the landing page to lead them to it – depending on your on your objectives:

• Have a telephone number prominently displayed – so they can’t miss it – put this on every page
• Have your most profitable and popular products prominently displayed with a logical (least amount of steps as possible) path through to actually entering the credit card details
• Have a newsletter sign up form on every page
• Have prominent links through to a contact form (and please keep the questions to a minimum)
• Have email links prominently displayed

Its all pretty logical but by sticking to a this simple theory you will be able to convert browsers into customers – once you have got them there. Like IKEA won’t let you leave their store until you’ve seen every product – you should follow the same approach.

I will be expanding on this in forthcoming blog articles and also on ezine.com.

Forthcoming articles:

Assume your customers are idiots!
Mental Recoginition and SEO

Stuart Brant

http://www.futurefirst.co.uk

If you understand this you will understand SEO

When I was sitting in on one of our 1 day Internet Marketing Courses in London, UK last week there was a penny dropping moment mid way through the afternoon when one of the delegates said “when you think about it this is simple, its common sense”. At this point I was happy as I knew we had 12 satisfied customers who would leave the course knowing what Google was looking for on their websites.

The guy doing the training, John,  was talking about SEO and in particularly how Google decides which sites to rank for different keywords. In our training courses we take the view that:

If you give a man a fish he can eat for a day
If you teach a man to fish he can eat for a lifetime

If the delegates understand the principles then the rest will follow.

He had all the delegates completely hooked by talking about the 2 things that Google wanted to see:

Relevance and Authority

Although I own the training company this was the first time we had used this trainer and I was anxious to see his approach. The course is aimed at business owners and marketing managers and covers all forms of internet marketing from Social Media, PPC, SEO through to email marketing.

Although I knew the course content well, the way he delivered it had me completely rapt and it was such a great way of explaining it to an audience of relative newcomers to internet marketing that I thought I’d share it with you.

So what is the Relevance and Authority that Google desperately wants to see?

Well the relevance is the content and tags. How can Google possibly rank your web page high for a keyword phrase if you don’t mention it on the page? If the page titles, meta tags, heading and content contain the keyword the Google can’t fail to realise its relevance. So if you follow this rule then you can tick the box marked Relevance.

Where does the Authority come from?

The Authority is when other websites link to yours. Rather cleverly Google has realised that only time it can pick up from a website a vote in another websites favour is through a hyperlink. Surely if a website page links to another website page it’s a vote in the recipients favour. Google obviously thinks so and they try and concentrate on natural links rather than directories and paid links.

To paraphrase one of our delegates – This is simple, its common sense.

I know a lot of Internet Marketing experts will say – everyone knows that but trust me a lot of website owners don’t.

Future First Technologies offer Internet Marketing Training Courses, consultancy and fully managed marketing solutions.

Stuart Brant

Should you move your blog to Tumblr?

Tumblr the half micro-blogging, half bookmarking site looks set to rise from relative obscurity and along with Posterous and others become the blogging platform of choice for busy people.

Put simply, Tumblr is a cross-content sharing utility.
That’s not very simple, but nevermind.

You can post images, videos, quotes, text, links (pretty much all types of media) to a blog-style page with a range of delicious themes, but as per usual, there is a wealth of community functionality.

Its wonderful, it really is. With very little effort, you can create professional and engaging content stream.

Although, having sung the praises of this new platform, its not all that in terms of marketing;

1. Its primarily a website based on artistic values, and exhibiting original content. You probably don’t do this, or if you do, its only on a personal level.
2. Post Twitter, social media services are strongly anti-spam. What would be marketing elsewhere is classified as spam on many emerging web services.
3. The people who use tumblr are a small niche market of artistic but not necessarily professionally so individuals. They may not be very receptive.

But for some companies, this could work; video production companies, for example. But it is important to realise, when creating an online presence, that you should be thoughtful about the location of your content, and not simply distribute as far and wide as possible.

Joe New

Converting non-believers

Many people who dont believe in the power of new media for business simply dont get what it can do. Similar to the dot com boom, where companies knew that they needed a website but still weren’t sure what it was for, people arent harnessing the power of social media because they dont know what to do with it. People with smartphones will understand me here: piles of features, you know it can make your life better, but you arent inclined to do the digging in the menus to reap the benefits.

This diagram illustrates simply and easily how to use social media. Cant get better than that.

using social media in an organisation

Joe New

Videojug: Right, as ever

Have a look at this wonderful video by the brains at videojug. Despite the protagonist being a sock puppet, its actually a very useful collection of tips on how you can market yourself and not just your company in the online world.

Starting A Job Search: How To Use Social Media To Get A Job

Joe New

Top 5 facebook fan pages

Everyone knows that the best promotion of a product comes from recommendations by the end consumer, and a new age of global interconnectivity allows the recommendation and sharing of products to happen faster and more efficiently.

Well, tis old news for those who have already begun to harness the power of facebook. Courtesy of Mashable, here are the definitive top 5 best facebook advertising campaigns for consumer products. All hail.

1. Pringles
2. Coca-Cola
3. Starbucks
4. Adidas
5. Red Bull

These all have several main facts in common:

• Original content that cannot be found anywhere else – Coca-Cola’s archive pictures, for example
• Engagement with the user, with 2-way communication
• Competitions and user generated content

So now you know.

Joe New