On the flip side of yesterday’s post, Why Understanding Your Customers is Vital to Your Social Media Strategy, social media can also be an extremely powerful tool for understanding your customers. Before the wide-spread use of social media, companies would have to spend thousands of dollars on having market research, surveys, studies, etc. done so they could understand what their customers wanted and were willing to pay for. This pretty much left any type of customer or market research in the hands of large companies who could afford to pay for the information. With social media you’re able to gather much of this information directly by finding, listening and asking your customers online.
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Dec
31
2010
Best of 2010 – My Favorite WordPress Plugins
2010 in Review! We’re posting the best articles from the year to help you get 2011 off to the right start! (original on wordpress plugins posted on August 19, 2010)
I’ve been using WordPress for several years now — I’m a big fan. It makes it really easy to run a blog (or website) and it keeps getting better. One of the advantages of WordPress is the ability to add your own plugins to improve the functionality of your site. Here are some of my favorite WordPress plugins… (for now).
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Sep
28
2010
Driving Sales Away with A Splash Page
While mostly a thing of the past, I still see companies who insist on having a splash page (a page, usually with a video or some sort of “welcome” message that visitors have to view before they get to your real site). To a business owner a splash page may seem like an opportunity to “sell” to your captured audience. But to many visitors it’s a reason to leave.. and fast.
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Aug
06
2010
A Company’s Website Design and its Ability to do Business
This is a guest post from James Mowery, a computer geek who writes about technology and related topics on his blog, led tv.
The design and overall layout of a company’s website is of utmost importance when it comes to attracting customers and encouraging them to use that company’s services. One of the very first things many people notice about a company’s website is the aesthetic appeal and whether or not it is pleasing to the eyes. The customer will note whether or not the website is easy to use, navigate, and search. If a company’s website is completely disorganized, has clashing colors, or content that is generally just out of place with other aspects of the website, the customer may be turned off from the company.
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Jun
09
2010
Want a Sale? Make the Next Step Obvious
You have traffic coming to your blog or website. You’re using social media to network and build relationships. A person comes to your landing page on your site, ready to purchase — credit card in hand — but there are too many choices. They’re not sure what to do next. So they give up and leave.
Think this isn’t happening to you? Take a look at your analytics and see how many people are getting to your landing page (they’re interested) and how many people are actually going through with the sale (sales or thank you page).
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Apr
09
2010
Are You Standing in the Way of Your Customers?
You’re in business to sell something. You have some sort of action you’d like customers to take while on your website. Are you making that action and how to take it clear? Or are you setting up roadblocks that make the process frustrating which leads to lost business?
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Mar
26
2010
Balancing Good Design with Needed Functionality
When designing a website or online service, companies often have a whole slew of great ideas for functionality. When is enough enough? Can a simple design suffice? How do you make choices about what features to incorporate?
Even the simplest of interfaces, Twitter, has begun to add more complexity with new retweet features, lists, trending topics, and more. Aesthetically, “good design” means design that is appealing to the eye, and is easily navigated visually. With this idea, it is important that complex interfaces are well designed so that the users who prefer simplicity do not feel overwhelmed. – Finding the Balance of Design and Functionality (ReadWriteStart)
Feb
24
2010
A Quick Way to Improve Your Website
Wondering what to do to improve your website? Well, there’s a quick way to get started! Ask your customers! They’re the ones trying to use your website and they probably have some ideas of what can be improved if you’d just ask. Better yet, see if you can watch one try to use your website. You may be surprised at what you find.
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Oct
08
2009
Why Don’t You Want Customers to Contact You?
Ever done a bunch of research, finally decided to get a product, gone to the website and found the only way to contact them is through a contact form? While eCommerce websites are usually pretty savvy about letting their customers contact them through multiple ways, normal businesses sometimes give off the “go away” vibe unintentionally.
Sep
29
2009
Assigning Value to Actions
Pageviews, visits, unique visitors, followers, etc. are all great ways to measure success online, but what about actions that don’t lead directly to a conversion or lead (but probably will down the line)? How do you measure actions that may lead to something important later, but there’s not a direct connection online? Assigning a value to those actions may help…
Digital Marketing & Strategy
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