Web Design: Is Your Website a Friend or Foe of First Time Visitors?

Acquiring first time visitors to your website is one of the riskiest endevours in Internet Marketing.  

• Where should they come from?
• How much are they going to cost?
• Can we convert them to buyers or leads?
• Will they ever come back?

In my experience, businesses are very familiar with these concerns.  And these concerns are legitimate.  But often the concern is misfocused.  Typically, businesses are concerned about the traffic itself.  The appropriate concern should be the website itself and the planning that went into how the website would convert visitors into buyers/leads.

If you want to learn more about addressing this for your website, then please join me on Bryan Eisenberg’s webinar on Thursday, October 30 2pm EST.  

Click here to go to the registration form for the webinar.

Internet Marketing: Search Marketing Grows in Face of Downturn

Much of the news around the economy has been grim lately – everyone can admit this.  Just click here for the gory details.

12-Month DJIA Slide

However, in the midst of all this turmoil one area is thriving – Search Engine Advertising. 

SearchIgnite reported that search marketing spending grew 27% in the 3rd quarter of 2008; up from the same period last year. 

Search Engine Marekting Growth

Can newspapers, Yellow Pages, TV, radio or print come close to making the same claim?  You probably know the answer to this since it is likely that you are currently considering trimming these budgets back yourself. 

So what do you do with this information?  Get prepared and properly balance your marketing budget. 

1. Make sure your website is operating as it needs to be.  How do you know?  Ask two questions: a) What is your website conversion rate? b) Could it be better? 
2. Examine if your competitors (national or local) are making investments in their Online Marketing.
3. Create an online marketing plan that outlines how to: a) reach potentional customers and clients; b) engage customers and clients about your value proposition for them; c) convert visitors into sales or leads; d) retain these relationships for future marketing efforts. 
4. Execute on the easiest battles to win in your online marketing plan - and yes, that may be implementing or improving your search engine marketing.

Web Design: Understand Hidden Costs of Redesign

We recently audited a company’s Google Adwords account.  The business goal of the website was standard lead generation. (Google Adwords is at its best for lead generation). 

As usual we were able to quickly find several critical improvement suggestions which would lower their average cost per lead.  But there was a greater find in their Google Analytics data.

The business had begun using Google Adwords when they still had their old website roughly seven months ago.  At this time, they were getting qualified leads for roughly $25 per lead, which is acceptable for their business.  Then, one month later they decided to absolutely redesign their website. 

In my opinion, their web site needed to be redesigned.  And I would estimate that the redesign work cost them about $7,500, but you never really know from just looking. 

On first glance, the new web design looked great. 

But there was one critical problem. 

The company’s average cost per lead more than doubled after the website was launched!  Unfortunately, the company decided that their Adwords campaign was ineffective and suspended it.  Now they aren’t getting leads at all! 

But the truth is that in the web design process no one ever truly considered or planned for business goals.  While the website does look better than the previous one, it’s usability is poor because it is difficult to even find where to submit your name and contact information.

So in total, not only did the company pay good money and time for the new website, they also paid for it every month because their average cost per lead doubled!   

How much is your website’s design costing you every month?

Web Design: How Important Is the Copy on Your Website?

I first saw this video on the blog of my friends at Future Now.

As I was first watching it, I imagined the beggar as typical online business.  He is set up and occasionally some revenue trickles in.

You can even imagine his business metrics (you have metrics for your online business too).  Possibly, 1 in 100 who passed dropped a coin in his can.  And for the sake of ease, let’s say those individual coins were dimes.  So for every 1,000 people who passed by the beggar made $1.00.  Ouch! 

So the new words on his sign made the entire difference!  He went from a conversion rate of 1% to 5% and it looks like he may have also increased his average donation as well.  For the sake of ease, we’ll say that patrons began donating two dimes.  Now for every 1,000 who passed by he made $10.00! 

A few simple words made the whole difference. 

How well is your website working for you?  Could an improvement in your copy start to make the difference?

Web Design: Don’t Pay for Web Design

Too often, web design and development teams, with little actual business experience, get caught up in making websites “look sharp”.  They feel like they need to do this to justify themselves. 

One of my favorite examples of this are Flash intros (more on this another time).  But the primary thing Flash intros do is help Flash developers drive nicer cars.  In fact, Flash intros can really hurt websites.

Business websites should serve concrete business goals – like profitability, perhaps?

Websites meet business goals through focusing on usability and conversion rates – not fancy design.

Web Design: Results from Shop.org Survey

Shop.org just recently released Part 2 of their State of Retailing Online report.  Don’t worry about searching for it, the price is obscene.  But some of the results are still interesting, at least that you can get out of the press release. 

Of the 150 online retailing respondents, here are some highlights:

• 88% are prioritizing improving product detail pages. 
• 76% are using A/B testing for offers and promotions.
• 91% are using emailing marketing
• 88% are using pay per click advertising
• 67% are using affiliate marketing
• 56% are using comparison shopping engines
• 51% are using search engine optimization

So what…?

As the online retailing world continues to mature I really believe the SMB market is getting left behind.  Not too long ago, the Internet was a place that SMB and niche retailers could move into and make a significant difference to their business.

But now, they have dragged their feet long enough to where they are falling further behind the trends. 

But if you are one of the few that still wants to make a difference to your business before it is too late, what should you do?

A) Probably redesign your website with someone who is concerned with meeting your business goals, not just designing another website

B) Develop a realistic plan for where the traffic is going to come from – search engines, affiliate marketing, email marketing, etc… BTW – I am stunned that only 51% of the surveyed retailers are using SEO.  There is still an opportunity there. 

C) Invest in a solid analytics program and analysts.  You can use Google Analytics as training wheels, but once you are ready you should swith to Omniture’s SiteCatalyst program (or one of it’s competitors like Coremetrics or Visual Sciences)

Web Design – New VKI Studios Website

I have a lot of respect for the guys at VKI Studios.  They have done an amazing amount of work of the last year and now they have rolled out the design of their new website. 

It really is an improvement from the last one and it is really a resource for everyone in the Internet Marketing field as well our potential clients.