In virtually all cases, the primary goals of your website should be to:

1. Establish your position as a trusted expert and resource.
   Unless you’ve made your brand by selling the lowest end junk that you can find, you need to prove your knowledge and expertise through your website. It doesn’t matter if you’re a plumber, an attorney, a charitable organization, or someone who sells car parts. No one will (should) buy from someone that they don’t trust.
2. Provide what your customers need to make an informed decision.
   If all your website says is how great and how trustworthy you are, then it’s all but useless. Your site needs to be about the customer, their needs and wants, and how your product or service helps to solve those for them. Information about how satisfied your customers are is great and very important, but it’s not a substitute for providing knowledge about your product or service.
3. Make it easy for customers to contact you or buy when they are ready.
   If your contact information is hard to find or non-existent, then you might as well not have a website. There are far too many alternatives just a Google search away for people to waste their time trying to get in touch with you. Make it very easy, but don’t shove it in their face. Phone number to the top right, Contact Us form and a well-formed Live Chat if desired.
4. Make it very easy for customers to continue doing business with you.
   You’ve proven the value of your product or service, you’ve gotten the order/e-mail/call and you have a new customer. Fantastic! Now what are you doing to keep them happy, keep them coming back and make it easy for them to continue doing business with you? Consider e-mail newsletters that talk about new benefits for your customers, new products or services, and include articles that would be valuable to them. If your e-mail blast just talks about your products and how great you are, don’t bother sending them out.

For help with your online marketing, website design or search engine and social media efforts, give us a call at 800.203.8139, or e-mail us.

We decided to take 3 minutes and have a bit of fun with them, to see just how far these ads will go.
Here’s what we found…

Again, these are all real results we just got through a few minutes of simple Google searches. Try it out for yourself and let us know what hilarious ads you uncover!

Thought 1: Wait until the site is 100% perfect.

The idea here is that visitors to your website should be “wowed” by your brand new website, and that everything needs to be perfect. This means only the best images, text and content, and is very subjective. This can also take months to achieve, while your old site lingers live to visitors.

Many people consider a site to be “static.” That is, it needs to be created and refined to perfection, then left alone for the world to enjoy. If this description fits, you are most likely under the Thought 1 category. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as perfect and this just doesn’t work well in today’s rapidly changing web environment. It is much better to get the site out in the open for visitors as soon as it has been error checked, thoroughly validated and is ready, even if that means going back to make a few content additions down the road.

An essentially completed new site is likely still much better than the site that it is replacing, and your customers will be just as wowed by the site at 90% as they will at 100%. As long as the design is in place, the site has been browser validated and error checked, and your most important content is on the new site, the last few changes are not generally noticeable to most visitors.

Thought 2: Launch when the site is a major improvement over the current, live site.

In this situation, the website may have a few image placeholders, or have a bit of content copied from the old site that you would like to replace as time allows. It’s 90% there, and is vastly superior to the existing website. Here’s why this is the best approach in virtually every situation.

• It takes time for Google to index your new site.
  You just spent the past several months creating a new, vastly superior website. But it will take Google several weeks or even months to fully re-index this new site. That means that the longer you wait, the longer it will take you to realize gains on all of your hard work. Conversely, if you launch your site when it is almost fully complete (and is a vast improvement over your current site), you can make changes to the content over the next several weeks, along side Google’s re-indexing efforts.
  Now, instead of having to wait a month or more for the site to be re-indexed after you consider it 100% ready, Google is already fast on the road to a full index.

• No matter how long you spend on the site, there will always be improvements to be made.
  “Perfect” on the web is just as elusive as it is in any other part of life, and striving for it prior to launch will only delay your site from going live.
  Continually strive for a better site, and do it when the site is live. Google will see that your site is being updated, and will appreciate that far more than just seeing a new site launch that then remains unchanged for a year.

• What are you LOSING by waiting?
  Your new site offers testimonials, social media and a slew of other features that your current site is lacking. What is the cost of bypassing those new features for the additional month or two it will take you to go the last 10%?
  The answer is significantly more than the negative feedback you will receive (you won’t receive any) for having one or two placeholder images on your site.

• Customers won’t be looking at the site the way you do.
  No one will visit your website looking for things to find fault with, except for you. Don’t add placeholder pages like “This page is coming soon!” or you will give visitors a reason to feel displeased with a new site. The reality is, if you don’t have a page quite ready and leave it off, almost no one will realize that it’s missing (as long as you don’t have it in your menu).
  Choose your 10-15 most important pages, and let the rest come as you are ready for them.

• The biggest reason: The Bottom Line.
  Be it through phone calls, e-mails, store visits or purchases, your new site should be helping to increase your bottom line. You spent good money to have a site that’s working hard for you, let it do so as soon as it’s ready.
  The longer it’s offline, the more potential business you are losing due to an outdated or unintuitive site.

I was driving down the road a few days ago, when I passed a sign that made me stop (not literally of course) and think. It read something like this:

“Our plumbers, 100% steroid free.”

What???? Why would anyone care that a plumber doesn’t use steroids? Does it affect job performance? How does this have any bearing on anything?

Then I realized, the ad was simply designed to catch my eye and to keep me thinking about it. Well, it succeeded at that, but it failed in it’s ultimate goal – as I spent so much time wondering how steroid use impacts plumbing that I have no idea which plumbing company was the advertiser.

I see similar ads all over the place. I see more and more radical headlines, company names and colors than ever before. Usually, the “attention getter” makes literally no sense whatsoever (like the plumbing ad), and is simply created in a desperate attempt to get noticed.

I say, take an extra hour of brainstorming to uncover what stands out and would interest people about your company, instead of just throwing out whatever you think will get people to look. I will notice something out of place on an ad (until it’s so common that it gets ignored too), but I won’t be impressed that a company spent it’s ad budget to tell me something nonsensical.

What if the plumbing company had instead said “Our plumbers wear belts,” accompanied by a picture of a plumber leaning over a sink and not flashing himself at the drivers passing by the sign?

Instead of a minute spent wondering why plumbers would use steroids in the first place, I’d spend 10 seconds smiling about the companies’ sense of humor. Their ability to poke fun at one of the biggest stereotypes in their industry (and consequently themselves) would go a lot further for me than some ill-planned ad simply designed to catch my attention.

And in the end, which is more effective? Is it the minute spent thinking not about your company, but an ad that doesn’t make sense? Or is it the 10 seconds spent reflecting on a humorous ad, one that gives the viewer a shot at also remembering the name of the company, instead of just the ad?

I want a company with a sense of humor, not one that deliberately makes no sense in an effort to get my attention.

Anyone else with me on this one? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts.

Why do so many companies steadfastly refuse to provide enough information on their web sites for customers to make an informed buying decision?

Over the years, we have heard dozens of companies respond with the same message. “We don’t want to provide them with enough information right off the bat, we want them to call us.” That technique may have worked back when there wasn’t a huge, multi-billion (trillion?) page entity called the internet, providing answers to literally anything you can think to ask. Now, it just turns potential customers into no-potential site visitors.

Unless you are the only company in the world that offers your particular product or service, all a potential customer has to do is move on to the next web site to find the answers they need. And when that happens, do you think that they will come back to the site that didn’t answer their questions? No, they will buy from the one who was straightforward with them.

I hate to sound harsh here, but the days of the tough sell are over. It’s so easy for a customer to buy from your competitor online, be they down the street or five states over, that it’s no longer acceptable to try to play games in the sales process. Being honest is not just a best-practice way to succeed, it’s the only way to succeed.

There are many examples of companies who ignore these words. You can find them all day long in review sites such as Kudzu.com. They are usually the ones with the 1 or 2 star reviews.

Thankfully, the remedy is fairly simple: Review your web site content, and remove all the tricks. Make it easy for a customer to reach you by phone and e-mail, but don’t make it the only way for them to find what they need. If there is a question that consistently comes up in customer interactions, add it to the site.

If you aren’t sure what needs to be added, consider putting a simple contact form on each page that allows customers to ask questions about a particular product or service directly, and then incorporate answers to their questions on your web site. Become a resource to your customers, or they will find another company that is.

Here’s a concrete example:
Take a look at the reviews under Reliable Heating and Air. As I write this, there are currently 42 reviews, and the company has an overall rating of five stars out of five. Believe me, they didn’t get that way by holding back information that would help their customers to make an informed buying decision. I know that first-hand, because when my air conditioner failed last summer, they talked me out of a more expensive system that I didn’t need.

Maintain your honesty, both online and off, and your reputation will carry you even if times get tough.

The people who come out of this recession, just like any other, stronger and better will be the ones who take this time to make their business better. In the web world, that means focusing on ensuring that your site’s content is readable, friendly and conveys the message you would like to get across. It means removing the pictures of the Christmas party from three years ago from the “Latest News” section on your site (how many people reading this hear me all too well on that one?), and it means updating your list of products and services to purge those that you no longer do, and to emphasize the ones that you have since added. If you don’t have a blog, now would be a great time to start one, but only if you are willing to dedicate yourself, and your company resources to at least one meaningful article per week. This doesn’t mean a blatant advertisement for how much better you are than the other guys down the street, it means actually writing something that people will enjoy reading, and that will provide them with solid benefit.

Do these things now, and you will reap the benefits down the road.

1. Keep your text READABLE.

It’s one thing to want to make sure that search engines know what you do, and to ensure that you appear highly in them for the keywords that are important to your company. It’s another thing altogether to make your site a collection of unreadable, poorly formatted keyword paragraphs. Many people don’t even realize the way their content comes across to site visitors, because they haven’t taken the time to read it themselves, or to solicit feedback from individuals who don’t know the company or the industry well already.

How to do it.

Ask friends and neighbors to read through your most important few pages or products, and to give you honest feedback. After reading each page, would they know more than they did when they started, or would they have a headache trying to make sense of what is written?

2. Keep your text FRIENDLY.

No one wants to be talked at, in person or on the internet. Does your text have a friendly demeanor, or is it boring? Does it inspire people to buy from you, call you, e-mail you, or does it inspire them to look to the next web site?

How to do it.

Don’t take yourself quite so seriously. Yes, you sell an important product or service, and yes, people need to know more about it. But friendly costs nothing, doesn’t hurt the quality of the message and makes people feel like they are doing business with a human, not a computer. Note that this doesn’t mean you should tell jokes about your products or showcase your items in a ridiculous way, it simply means adding a personal touch.

3. Keep your DESIGN friendly.

Is your web site solid black, or bright blue with yellow text? Is the text large enough, the menu noticeable and easy to navigate, and the color scheme one that makes people want to stay on the site? Do you have a bunch of meaningless flash animation, with dancing letters or loading screens?

How to do it.

Be very aware of how your site design is perceived by others. Does it make them feel happy or sad? Lethargic, annoyed, or intrigued? Try asking a select group of non-company related individuals to use five words to describe your site design, and see what comes up. Also remember that if you are selling products, white sells. There’s a reason Ebay, Amazon, Target and all of the other large, successful online retailers accent their web sites with white. It emphasizes the product rather than the web site, and it makes people want to buy. What colors are you using?

4. Keep your content FRESH.

Seeing a news headline that invites visitors to a conference in Cleveland scheduled for two years ago, or a Merry Christmas message in the middle of April is a dead giveaway that you don’t pay attention to your web site. What does that mean to the visitor? It means that you may not be paying attention to keeping your product cutting edge, either. People want to know they are getting a new product with solid innovation behind it. If your site shows signs that it’s old and outdated, people could easily assume your product is as well.

How to do it.

If your site allows it, put “end dates” on your time sensitive articles. Our customers use SE’s built in date function to allow articles to disappear before they get too old, so there’s never a concern about having a conference invitation that has long expired, or reference to a holiday that has long-since passed. If your site can’t do this, then keep a note on your calendar to remove these old items the day they become dated. Another note, if you don’t have a lot of news, make sure your articles don’t mention the date. Nothing says “never updated” like an article with a post date of 2006.

5. Make it EASY to reach you.

It always amazes me when I see a web site with tons of great information, a clean design and… absolutely no way to contact the company.

How to do it.

This one’s easy. Place your phone number prominently in the top-right hand corner of your site header (studies have shown that this is the first-looked to location for contact information), and have some sort of simple and obvious link or button that directs people to your contact us page. Speaking of, you do have a “Contact Us” form, don’t you?

A simple, clear and concise contact us form is much easier on the visitor than a simple e-mail link. Instead of having to open their e-mail program (or give up if they are on a public computer without access to their account), the visitor simply needs to enter a little information and press send. Having a well-built contact form also prevents spammers from getting your e-mail address and using it to their advantage (aka sending you spam). Just remember, the more fields to fill out, the less chance someone will do them. If your contact us form has 20 fields to fill out, expect your e-mail box to be lonely.

Taking it further.

Did you like this article? Need some clarification, or want to know how these principles apply to your business and web site? Send us an e-mail and tell us what’s on your mind.

Consider this scenario. You have a plain, not much to look at web site, which you have optimized with keywords to the point that the text is not very readable, nor very useful. As a result of this effort, you are one spot ahead of your competition on Google. A potential customer finds your web site first (remember, you have tons of fluff keywords, but little meaningful content), reads a little, and then presses the back button on their browser.

They then visit your competition, whose web site is by no means great, but has readable content, a friendly undertone and is much easier on the eyes than your site. Given the choice between a web site that came up first (yours), but has poor content, or a site that was seen AFTER yours (your competition), which has better content and looks a little nicer, which do you think customers will choose?

The answer may seem obvious, but let’s explore exactly why this is happening.

• First, people visit your web site. They see a poor quality, hard to decipher site and it sets the benchmark for their expectations.
• Next, they find your competition’s web site, which as we’ve already established is better than yours. Given their original benchmark (your web site), the competition’s web site will appear to be much better, even artificially so, based on that pre-existing benchmark.

Now let’s reverse this train of thought. A potential customer finds your web site, which let’s now say is pretty darn good. They browse around for a while, and bookmark it. For the sake of thoroughness, they peruse the other sites that come up near you on their search engine of choice. Instead of having a poor web site as a benchmark, they have your high quality one. It won’t take them long to stop searching elsewhere, and to settle on your company as the clear choice for their business.

In fact, as long as your content is decent, this same principle will work FOR you, rather than against you. Customers will browse other web sites, and find yours much better by comparison.

So the question is, does your web site help sell you, or are you paying to help sell your competition? Before you answer, have you ever actually stopped to see what people outside of your company, outside of your friends and family think of your companies’ web site? Have you compared your site to your competition, to see how you match up? If the answer to either one of these is no, then it’s time to get a second opinion.

Taking it further.

Did you like this article? Stand by, our newest article entitled “How to ensure that your web site sells you, and not your competition” is coming soon!

Want to learn more, or to see first hand how your site measures up? We have lots more advice that can ensure you are selling your company, and not the competition. Send us an e-mail and let us help you stay on track.

1. To host video testimonials.

Video testimonials are a great way to get your product message across, and adding videos to YouTube is so easy that almost anyone can do it. Nearly any initial video format works (as does virtually any standard digital video camera), meaning that whether you design and edit your video clips on a Mac or a PC, they can be uploaded to YouTube and look great. Which brings us to our next point.

2. As a bandwidth-saver.

Instead of creating 10+mb video files that are hosted on your web site, Integration of YouTube videos within your site means that customers get to see more from your company, without increasing your hosting budget. Not only that, but you’ll even bring in the occasional YouTube browser who finds your video and visits your web site as a result. Learn about the SE Video Module.

3. As part of a viral campaign.

Some of the funnier/more relevant videos on YouTube easily surpass the 2 million view mark. Now, don’t expect that putting some kittens in a basket with your company logo will do the trick, but a well thought out viral campaign could provide you with an otherwise untouched marketbase for your products. A successful viral campaign will take off fast, which can again make the external hosting offered by YouTube an important feature.

4. To showcase your products.

Many companies have already started using YouTube for their business. If you are a reseller, there’s a good chance that at least a handful of the companies whose products you sell have videos on YouTube. Help your web site stand out from the pack by integrating these right into your product pages.

5. To show off your work.

Even if you don’t have access to any pre-made YouTube videos for your business (or if you don’t sell ready-made products), you can still show off your work with a video of your own. Say, for example that your company creates custom interiors for high end homes. Rather than simply showing a handful of pictures on the site, you can augment that picture gallery by creating a three minute walkthrough video that shows the detail work that has gone into your project.

6. To build and involve your customer base.

What better way is there to sell your services than by letting a customer tell his story? Now, I know that this sounds a lot like #1 above, but it is distinctly different. Traditionally, a testimonial is structured in some way, and typically does not actually involve the use of the product or service being discussed. If, on the other hand your company were to offer a contest that included a prize (or simply notoriety on your web site) for video of customers in action using your product, the resulting videos could send a powerful message to your site visitors. Think about which you would prefer, visiting a web site that showed a static product image (let’s say a kayak), with product information and specifications, or that same site with multiple videos of customers in action, riding the rapids on your product in Colorado?

7. Two words: Video tutorials.

It can be tough visualizing how to build, install or repair some products based solely on a product manual, but often these challenges can be avoided with a simple video clip. Especially if your product is unique, a YouTube video could be an essential asset in reducing customer technical support calls and returns. These video links can even be e-mailed to customers directly, simplifying the process of replying to repetitive technical support issues.

Taking it further.

Did you like this article? Stand by, our newest YouTube article entitled “Advertising: How utilizing video testimonials can bring in more business” is coming soon!

First, let’s cover what Google Analytics is.

Google Analytics is a website statistics program, created by Google that allows you to track (with roughly a one day delay) customer visits to your web site. Specifically, the system keeps track of what keywords visitors use to find your web site in search engines, as well as what sites they used to find you (say you have an account with Atlanta local directory Kudzu.com, Google analytics would track who found your web site by clicking on your web address from the Kudzu.com web site). In addition (and one of our favorite mini-features), the dashboard features a small pie graph including the percentage of traffic that was direct (from typing your link directly in a web browser) from search engines and from referring web sites. If you are looking to expand your presence on search engines, this pie graph is an effective way to see how your search engine presence is growing.

Okay, so how does Google Analytics help me and my business?

The analytics system is great for discovering what your customers are typing into Google to find you, and what web sites are most valuable to you from an advertising perspective. Say you have two different web sites that you are paying to advertise your company. The first costs $200 a month, and the second just $10. If you see in Google analytics that the site you are paying $10 a month for in advertising is bringing you more traffic than the $200/month site, it may be a red flag for you to re-evaluate where your advertising dollars are best spent. The keyword aspect of Google is maybe the most important, as it can give you insight into how your visitors think and how they are finding your web site in search engines. It is often difficult for a company to think like a customer who may not have a lot of experience in the product you are selling, and these keywords will help you to refine and expand your web site text. Getting the most out of Google Analytics can be hard work and will take some hours of frustration to fully get the hang of, but over time that hard work will pay off with more web site traffic and more business.

Customer locations, targeting zones and tracking advertising campaigns.

A neat feature of Google Analytics is the ability to visually represent where your customers are visiting your web site from. For instance, if you are a national (or international) company that sells products online, you can track what states or countries are bringing in the most business, and adjust your advertising budgets accordingly. This works just as well for local businesses, too. The map system can track all the way to the city level in any given state, meaning that an automotive repair shop in Marietta, Georgia could track how many visitors come to the web site from Kennesaw or Acworth.

Discovering popular products or services.

Tracking is a great way to discover trends in the marketplace you may not otherwise have captured. Say, for instance you have a web site that utilizes our SE Content Management System, and you have a section that features your custom projects. With analytics installed, you can see that one of your custom projects may be bringing in three times more traffic than your other project pages, and bringing you twice the customer e-mails. By knowing this, you can expand this project to include more information and pictures, thereby increasing the amount and quality of information your potential customer receives when visiting your web site, as well as the chance that you will get an e-mail or phone call from this potential customer. Conversely, if you see a section of your site that receives little or no attention from site visitors, it may be a sign that you should dedicate your efforts elsewhere.

Tracking Adwords or other advertising efforts.

Google Analytics has built in integration between adwords, meaning that as customers come in, you’ll know how and where they found you through the Adwords system. In addition, utilizing the Goal Conversions section you can track how many customers who enter the site by various means end up e-mailing you, what page they e-mailed from (if you have a contact form on multiple pages), how long they browsed your web site before e-mailing you, and much more.

Taking it further.

Did you like this article? Stand by, our newest Analytics article entitled “An expanded look: Setting up Goal Conversions with Google Analytics” is coming soon!