The Lost Knowledge Blog for Web Design

1 message per email

One thing I see time and time again and that is someone trying to squeeze far too much sales into an email newsletter or promotional email. Now there are the rare types of businesses that can get away with this (amazon, dabs etc…), but generally most businesses should focus on one key message or product/service. People have short attention spans these days.

This may mean that you send out your email to a smaller list of customers or prospects that would be interested in it or you could hope that if they aren’t they will pass it along to someone else who is. Regardless try to target niche markets in your industry you should find it increases response rates and hopefully conversions as a consequence.

Bonus tip: Keep your email short and put the real detail on a separate sales page on your website, that way you can hook them in with a snappy quick to read email with only the main benefits to get them interested. This detail will also be picked up by search engines so you should benefit from that as well.

What’s worked before

This is a simple little concept, look at other companies in your field that have been around for a while and are successful as they have spent lots of time testing the marketing for you. Now you won’t get all the juicy details, but you’ll have a great place to start from and save yourself some time and money.

One thing, make sure you don’t just outright copy them, put your own spin on things, also check that they haven’t trademarked or patented anything, you don’t want to get into a legal battle with a company that has a good and long standing reputation, you’ll only harm your own.

Bonus Tip: When you talk to people at networking events and they say oh I already have that, ask them where they got it and why they were happy to buy it from them. This should give you a great idea of what your customers expect to get from the product or service you offer as well.

Find your ideal customer

Look at all your current customers, are there any that you’ve thought ‘I wish all my customers were like them?’ If you do then write down all their traits that make them a good customer then simply look for other businesses that share those same traits. Change all your marketing material in line with this new target after you have confirmed first on a small scale that it works.

If you don’t have one then think of what the ideal customer would be then try to target them.

Bonus Tip: Work out all the things you did for that ideal customer just in case your approach was different from how you normally deal with customers, you never know you may inadvertently have made them into your ideal customer!! How good would that be, the ability to turn average customers into ideal ones, isn’t that worth a day or two of your time and effort to work out??

Alan Fair

Contact Multimedia

So there’s a new set of reports for Adwords called search funnels, aparently it will make you understand the true value of a keyword in your ads.

Below is a video that explains it quite well and if you want to read more head over to googles own blog to get the details http://analytics.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-in-adwords-search-funnels.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FtRaA+(Google+Analytics+Blog)&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher

New password-stealing virus targets Facebook

Hackers have flooded the Internet with virus-tainted spam that targets Facebook’s estimated 400 million users in an effort to steal banking passwords and gather other sensitive information.

for the rest of the article go here http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20100317/ttc-uk-facebook-virus-fe50bdd.html

Q. What factors do you need to consider to ensure that an e-commerce site is as successful as possible?

A. There are a number of areas that really help an e-commerce site.

The main one you should focus on is really concentrate on the shopping basket experience as this is where you can lose most of your customers. Don’t make it too complicated or have too many steps, make it simple and easy to create an account, so minimum information and let them fill out the rest later.

If you look at one of the most successful e-commerce sites (Amazon) they have got it down to a fine art. 1 click purchasing, people who bought this also bought these items, customer feedback with ratings.

Sometimes they could do with simplifying a page mainly because if you’re not used to the layout there is a lot that hits you all at once, but they make a lot of money as they have really perfected the art of reducing shopping cart abandonment.

Other 10 key areas are:

1. Really understand who your customers are and what details they want to see in the descriptions.
2. Have large and many images of items being sold, customers like to be able to see the detail of the thing they are buying. This helps convince them that the quality or value is as advertised
3. Have a most popular list of items you sell and do regular special offers to people who sign up to your newsletter.
4. Have an FAQ and update it as much as possible, if you get a complaint or a question put it up there, show your customers that you are trustworthy and fair to deal with.
5. Make sure that the site is secure with SSL (the little padlock you see on secure sites) and has logos or information easily accessible proving this.
6. Have a good support system to deal with customers quickly, this will help your reputation and make sure you have multiple ways for them to get in touch.
7. Do a lot of PR to help build the trust in your brand, why should people shop with you even if you are a little bit more expensive.
8. Run loyalty schemes for your top buyers to keep them not only coming back, but recommend you to others.
9. If you have the right products you can create an affiliate program so get others to do the selling and effectively pay them a percentage of sale.
10. Measure and test often, try different headlines, look at your stats, keep trying to make your site better and easier to use for your customers.

There are many more factors, too many to mention here, but the list above are some of the main ones to consider.

I hope you find it useful.

I’m finally getting back to an eBook I started writing last year titled “The Lost Knowledge – Things your web developer never told you”

What I hope to achieve is to highlight many things that may be within your actual power to improve on your website from Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) to improving the conversion rates of your website call to actions. Most of which can be done without any specialist coding knowledge or skills, just your time and effort.

I mean what is the point in having a Content Management System (CMS) to control your website, if you don’t have the knowledge to actually get the most out of it.

What I’m looking for is to talk to people who currently have a Content Management System, but feel they aren’t getting anywhere with their site, and if all you’ve been told this phrase “All you need to do is add new fresh content to your site regularly” then please get in touch there’s a lot more to it than that and it’s not difficult to do once you know how.

I will gladly throw in a couple of hours free consultation to anyone willing to talk openly about their issues, plus I’ll give you and your business a mention in the eBook, maybe even a free copy when it’s completed

Go to our main website contact page and fill out the form and mention that you can help out with our CMS Study & eBook.

Alan

Wired have done a really good round up of the last 10 years since the dotcom bust era. The article has lot’s of good information in it and lots of stats on before and after or horrible announcment mistakes from people believing they would rule the world.

Here’s the link to enjoy the full article http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/02/10yearsafter/all/1

Google have released public data to the world, it’s a marketers dream, but is also really handy for business users if you can spend the time sifting through the stats.

Here’s the link http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/statistics-for-changing-world-google.html and heres a video with a basic explanation.

Now there is more US data than UK data at the moment – this should get better over time, but if you do sell internationally (especially US) you will be able to look into for example specific growth areas of employment.

Granted some of the data will be a little out of date, but any marketer knows that it’s rare to get up to the month data like this (unless you spend a lot of money!). Most times it’s a best experience and knowledge estimate on trends using previous data to extrapolate how to exploit a particular area of a market.

This is why having someone who knows traditional marketing (generally referred to as offline marketing) as well as new marketing (generally referred to as online marketing) like we do is vital in being able to ensure there is a market place for a new website.

A slight side note and something that has been bugging me when I talk to new clients, every single one of them only want to pay for online makreting and they ignore the obvious offline marketing strategies. In today’s world too many people concentrate only on online marketing, what about the foot fall for retail, pubs, restaurants, events etc… you can’t possibly just do only online marketing, well not if you want to be successful, ok so mini edu-rant over.

Anyway this looks like it will become a great resource for the future and I look forward to keeping an eye on the updates Google make to the system.

Alan