1. There is no phone number to contact anyone if there are problems with shipping or with simple satisfaction.
2. There may not be proper guarantees in place in case things go bad.
3. The entire site is all about the product and not enough about the company Or even worse, little about the product and nothing about the company!

The contents found on your page, for the purpose of this article, is often what makes the difference between a high bounce rate and a low one.  Navigation and usability are also very important, but for the present argument, let’s just take a look at your messages.

Simple Things Your Web Site Should Have

The first thing you want to make sure is that there is contact-ability on every page. Have a nice big phone number prominent in the same place on every page.  Preferably somewhere in the header, in most cases, people will automatically look at the top right corner.

If the visitor prints a page and then leaves the website, they still have a way to contact the company in case they can’t navigate back to the site for any reason. If they can’t see a phone number, you won’t get a call. Period.

In many cases, phone call leads from a site visit have more quality because the visitor is more serious. It is their attempt to establish some kind of relationship with a person as opposed to filling out a form.

Add Contact Forms On Every Page

Small contact forms have their place as well, so you want to make sure that these are provided as well. 

Sometimes the visitor doesn’t want to speak to anyone, but still wants information. If they are in a hurry or if the context is not right to provide more in-depth information, then a mini contact form is more appropriate. Having one on every page is a good way to capture just enough data for a contact, even if you only get their email.

Strong Content Breeds Credibility

I went to a shiatsu massage website (ok don’t ask!) that provided very detailed background on the company’s history, their vision and family lineage that went back 10 generations. In short, it bled credibility. If I want a massage, who will I go to? Someone who just got in the business or someone who has done it forever?

The idea is to provide transparency. If you are hiding something, you won’t build trust and you won’t get sales.  Be as open as possible. Spill your guts about who you are, what you are about, and what advantage the visitor has in doing business with you.

One of my favourite sites for providing information about who the company is and what they stand for is www.walmart.com. Yes, Walmart. Irregardless of what you may or may not think of them, their website speaks volumes about integrity and speaks to a culture and a mindset.  Their text is in small snippets.  It is also direct and to the point.

If you build your site with the messages with this transparency mindset, you will be in a much better position to develop a good long-term relationship with your visitor. Give value, educate and be transparent.

Here Are Some Content Basics For Every Website

1. The ‘About Us’ Page - Have information about the team, bio’s with pictures, company history, the company’s Vision, the mission, etc.
2. The ‘How We Are Different’ page - Why should someone do business with you instead of someone else?
3. Testimonials - Provide testimonials of satisfied customers including the ability to contact those individuals. Give Case Studes. One of the best testimonial tools is the video testimonial. Good ones are hard to get, but if timed properly, you can capture someone’s rave review that are worth their weight in gold. The more credible the source, the more powerful the testimonial.
4. Mention charitable associations and do charitable marketing.
5. Contact Us page – How contact-able are you? Do you provide dedicated phone support beyond a 9 to 5? Even if you can only do 9 to 5 support, that’s better than nothing. In the cold internet world, where the big companies aren’t calling you back, there is a lot of value to a simple phone call.  When it comes to following up, at the very least, call them back within 24 hours.

I always say that if you have a Ritz-Carlton attitude with a FedEx sense of expediency, you will go a long way in delivering results to people who are looking to you to be that “go to” person or company.

The contents of your website speaks volumes about who you are and the thought you have put into your online persona.  If you are serious about the image your company gives the public, your website is the gateway for people around the world to see who you are.  Make sure the picture you paint of your company online is thought provoking as it speaks volumes to your audience.
 

I met a woman (I will call her Edna) a while back at a networking event. From all appearances she seemed very professional and since the reputation of the company she worked for was stellar, she earned my attention for several minutes during our interaction. 

This is my first lesson that in making sure your online reputation matches your appearance!

She worked fulltime at a brokerage house in downtown Toronto and did financial planning on the side.

When I inquired about her services, she sent me to her website to get more details. When I went to the site she lost all credibility with me. Her site was designed by her 16 year old son and looked totally unprofessional.

When I asked her who designed her website, she said her son did because she was not a “technical” person. She left her marketing and user experience up to someone not qualified and it was reflective of the way she saw the “internet”.

Think of your website as a reflection of your company.  Remember back in the day when people posted Yellow Page ads?  Well people now go to your website instead!  Since you are in control of the design of your site, it is also you that determines what your visitors will see.

You are being researched all the time by people deciding whether to be your customer, your business partner, your boss, your boyfriend/girlfriend, etc. As I mentioned in a previous post, there is no such thing as six degrees of separation on the internet. There can be just one degree – as in one click. 

If You Conduct Yourself Poorly, Expect Search Engines To Display Results Outlining This

After typing in Edna’s name I then began looking at other listings and it seems that she has some people that have written some things online that have hurt her reputation.  I was once again very surprised!  Remember that the world wide web is a big place.  If you tick someone off, eventually you can expect someone to write about it.  It will not take long for the search engines to find this type of content.

Us Internet Marketing people deal with reputation management all the time.  Client’s call us telling us they need help with some bad remarks that have been made.

So remember this moving forward.  Your website represents who your company is.  Make sure you treat people well or you just might get to read about your experience along with everyone else one day online!   Edna knows all about this!

Being what I describe as in the “I want it now” mindset, the vast majority of people don’t want to or can’t wait to get home or back to the office in order to access things like email, browse internet or download music.

What is vast becoming the cell phone of choice is the "smart phone". Some examples of Smart Phones include BlackBerry, the iPhones, Treo and a host of other phones laced with 3G functionality and super fast browsing.  These phones are usually bigger in size, and give more functional choices like typing in Word documents, calendars, to-do’s, etc.  They are designed to allow better media access like internet and email. A major tie-in is that they are associated with data packages.

Data packages represent an amount of download and/or browse-ability measured in megabytes or percentages of megabytes. Kb size becomes very important to measure because the cost per download becomes relevant to the type of download you are doing. Anyone working with larger file sizes would be better served to download from their computer because of the potential cost factor.

Back in 2006, when buying a data package along with wireless service cost an outrageous $25 per half megabyte, I couldn’t believe that people were willing to pay it…but they did, and continue to do today.

Some SMART PHONE numbers to digest

Keep in mind that these would be 2006-2007 figures.

I was signing monthly packages for data to the tune of 5-7/week. If my weekly sales totaled between 15 to 25, then potentially 30% of my customers were buying data along with their cell phone plans.

The $25 package was purchased about half the time with the $40 plan about 25%, $60 plan at 20% and the $100 plan about 5% of the time. Our customer base tended to do business at our downtown location in the biggest city in Canada and largest region including Toronto.

I’m not sure what the numbers would be in smaller cities, but the big city mindset (as convenient as things tend to be for Torontonians) told me that people here wanted even more. With the cheaper plans that are available now, the demand has increased to the point where many more people want it who really don’t need it. It is kind of an ‘ipod’ mentality. It is meant to be easy to use and be right at your fingertips.

What environment does this mindset create?

It allows the user to feel entitled to get information immediately anytime at their fingertips. If they don’t get what they want within seconds of punching keys, they somehow feel letdown by either the service or the websites that they are accessing.

When people know they’ve got a text message, they take a quick peek and then deal with it either by answering back or filing it in their memory. Knowing that this is how people function with their cell phones, this will go across platforms to how they expect to be treated and to find other information.

There are two ways to look at the information provided by a website on a smart phone and/or a regular cell phone:

1. Because of the size of the screen and limited way in which the user can push buttons, the less searching a user has to do, the better. Even some of the largest screens are still limited on visual access to information. Apple’s solution on their iPhone is to allow finger scrolling while other phones still have to do button scrolling.

2. No matter what cell phone you use, you cannot inundate the user with content or a story. There is no time. Because people live in sound bites, they have no patience to sift through content click after click or scroll after scroll. They are hoping to find certain trigger words that speak to their unspoken question or query when they access a website.

3. Very clear Calls to Action, the shorter the better. Trigger words from key words they are hoping to find created to answer their search and supporting links are the best ways to get Smart Phone users to go deeper into your sales funnel that you have created specifically for visitor conversion.

If you can picture yourself trying to search a website from your BlackBerry, you will get an understanding that the less cumbersome it is for them to go from point A to point B, you will develop ways to get to the point and answer their questions quicker or at least lead them to find the answer for themselves quicker.

4. This means larger type that is easier to see and stand out with. No script fonts or fonts that are difficult to read. A headline in Red will stand out the best and copy that is no more that 10 to 40 words per paragraph will complete quick thought patterns and themed links that will keep the user engaged and digest the information they can handle both visually and mentally.

What does this mean to the internet marketing industry?

We have a whole new market to consider when developing a site!

• Text needs to become more point form based
• Navigation needs to be perfectly laid out
• Each page should have direction to the end goal

I have no doubt in my mind that Smart Phones are going to redefine how we use the internet.  Coming very soon will be the fact that people access the internet more on phones then they do on computers.  In short, computers are now in peoples pockets.  People can now seek out information on a whim.

Ever wonder how much more important internet marketing and your business can be?

It’s funny how peoples’ sense of powerlessness tend to directly relate to the seemingly endless power of big corporations. I know that many people were happy when Microsoft was taken to court by the US Government for what seemed to be unfair windows platform software monopolization. The same feelings tend to be vocalized about Google, now that it seems to own the search engine universe.

To not think that Pay Per Click works is burying your head in the sand and not realizing that Google must be doing something right if it is worth as much as it is. In speaking with would-be clients on a daily basis I am astonished by the regular belief that pay per click doesn’t work. 

If you are one of those people that think Pay Per Click services like Google Adwords do not work, I urge you to consider whether any of the below applies to you.  I say these points because I live them daily and can attribute negative experiences to any or all of the below:

• you likely have had a bad experience because you either ran the campaigns yourself or had a company that didn’t know how to do it for you.
• you probably didn’t install any conversion tracking or phone call tracking service to verify the exact return of your investment and what it brought you.
• you likely lacked the ability to analyze or view reports on the results
• you likely didn’t use basic Adwords features like, geographic targetting, ad scheduling, or daily spend limit.
• your campaigns built were broad instead of granular in the pages you were targetting traffic too.
• you didn’t have focussed landing pages built that were specific to the keywords typed in by your visitors.
• you did not have the knowledge to hook up Google Analytics to your site which helps validate and improve upon your PPC campaigns.
• you were sold PPC by a company professing to have a ‘special arrangement’ with Google whereby they get you unlimited clicks for one price.  An arrangement that does not exist with Google but is rather a sales technique whereby they take your money and do not report to you the monthly adspend.

Think about it – do you use the Yellow Pages anymore to find things?  If you do you are in the minority.  The new Yellow Pages is search engine marketing.  If you used to pay to have your ad listed in the Yellow Book then why wouldnt you pay for Pay Per Click management services?  It provides you way more detailed information than the Yellow Pages ever did or can today! 

What about the page you are sending traffic to?

Of course, having a website developed that persuades in the right manner and in the right sequence helps convert a lot more prospects then those that repel the visitor. Even before they get to the site… and if they do get past that annoying flash intro and do get to your home page, are repelled again by a site that looks like someone’s 14 year old nephew created it, complete with a neon green background and big flashing red header that screams “Go Away”!… I mean “Joe’s Cell Phone Accessories”.

Can you tell that I have some interesting experiences under my belt?  Not all internet marketing prospects I speak with are in quite this bad shape but you would be surprised how many are!

PPC is not a waste of time or effort. You just need to do your homework.  It helps if you call a reputable internet marketing company for tips, and those who have had success. They are as easy to find as looking at the top ranked advertisers on Google.

My final comment about PPC marketing.  Even if you are weary.  Try it.  Try it and believe in it for 3 months.  The results are instant.  They don’t lie.  And if you are one of the few that dont benefit from it then turn it off.  It isn’t a huge investment when compared to the opportunity you just presented your company.

Planning + Traffic Building + Measurement Tracking = a successfull internet marketing campaign.

And so ends Isaac, your Toronto based internet marketing consultants rant of the day.    Happy reading!

What I told him came as a surprise to him and is a prime reason why sometimes you should leave a job up to the professionals who do this every day.  As much as Google wants its customers to be better educated, it is not Google’s job to tell them everything they need to know to get the advantage over their competition.

Getting a high placement in the sponsored PPC listings is not a matter of paying the most for a given keyword. You get the highest rankings by having the highest quality score.

So how do you get a high quality score, or a better first question to ask is what drives the quality score? Quality score is effected by all of the following:

• top quality ad text that gets visitors clicking on the ads
• a homepage with content that is relevant to the keyword that was searched
• the amount you are willing to pay per click

What I believe is the most under rated element in an effective pay per click campaign is the ‘landing page.’

What is so special about a Landing Page? Consider the following items.

A Landing Page…

1. focuses on specific keywords which attracts the right market to you.

2. keeps away the wrong market (or non-conversion visitors).

3. allows you to reach deeper into your market.

4. allows your click through rate to go higher because of your keyword and landing page strategy which in turn allows you to bid less on the same keywords as your competitor.

5. gets you better placement in the sponsored rankings (i.e.: top shaded areas on the left and on the right – while competitors pay more and are beneath you).

6. gets your visitors to take specific actions designed around specific keywords that your home page cannot possibly do (no matter how good it is).

7. has ‘Calls to Action’ that are very specific because of the direct search query. The home page has more responsibility than just focusing on individual keywords.

8. that is focused on specific keywords in turn will bring your conversion up as well from more qualified visitors coming to your site, and to an investor, makes your numbers look better.

If these don’t hit it home for you, then I can’t say anything more.

The only question I have left for the clients I consult with is, how badly do you want that high quality score?

Huh, What is Website Measurement?

Not that most CEOs would admit or even know, but have you ever suspected that companies spend  thousands of dollars and man-hours on websites and then don’t bother to figure out a return on their investment?  How about not even having a system that shows if they are getting an ROI or not?

This is how countless companies have been managing their websites from day 1.  Most companies place little or no effort to even consider having a proper way to measure any success…or lack there of.  Think about it… If car manufacturers built vehicles without a dashboard, there wouldn’t be too many on the road.

What does a good measuring and tracking system do for you?

When properly handled by the right Analytics Professionals using the right tools, the difference between loss and nice profit can be as simple as one line of copy added or taken away on your page(s). The difference can be that simple. It is part art, part science, gut instinct, history and experience.

The science part is having all the data at your disposal that tells you what numbers mean what, and what changes need to be made based on those numbers.

Imagine that your website is solely responsible for your company’s success or failure.

You give 110% effort toward your website because failure is not an option. Remember; Investors don’t ignore a website just because the owner does. To the public they see a sloppy website as a company that is not on top of their own online persona. 

For most companies, the website is the biggest window visitors have to look inside and understand about the company. If a company fails at something as simple as an online persona (i.e: the website), what else in the company could one fail to give proper time and attention to?  

Like all other parts of the company, your website is an investment, and could be one of the most important investments you make. If your website shows a return on investment, it is an asset that on paper, especially with proof of ROI (via Analytics Reports) can raise the value of the company…or reduce the value of the company. The choice is always yours.

My Top 4 List of things you can start doing today to help measure your online website success:

1. Secure a strong Analytics package on your site to review stats!  Preferably an intuitive package that allows you to setup and measure goals, goal values etc.  Hint:  Ever heard of Urchin or Google Analytics?

2. Figure out what the purpose of the website is and push your visitors inside of a sales funnel so they achieve your end goal.

3. Employ a CRM tool to measure the leads / sales made both by email and by telephone.

4. Measure your leads!  How many leads did you get by email last month?  How many phone calls? 

Don’t know where to start?  Guess what – companies like ours specialize at putting you right on this road.   Give me a call and I will personally even talk to you about how to get your plan started!  We probably have an internet marketing package tailored to your needs already!