Improving Products

Once you’ve found your customers and potential customers online, you can listen to what they’re saying about your products and your competitors products. You can listen to what they complain about what they’d like to have, where their pain points are, and what their needs are so you can design and create products to meet their needs. The better match there is between your product and your customer’s needs, the more successful they’re likely to be.

Improving Marketing

Customers are pretty good about tuning out advertisements, but they are more likely to take action on marketing and advertising that talks specifically to them about a need or problem they have. Social media allows you to understand the needs of your customers so your marketing can specifically speak to those needs and how your product solves them. Social media also allows you to more narrowly target and engage with people who are more likely to be interested in your product to begin with.

Improving Content

When people are first starting the purchasing process, they often are looking for information. Social media can help you understand what information people are looking for so that you can provide it when they’re ready to receive it. Social media also allows you to provide information before the sale to establish your reputation as an expert. By listening to the questions people have, you’ll be better able to create content that meets the needs of your audience.

Improving Sales

Sales are more effective when the process is about the customer and their needs. With the research you’ve done on social media, you can not only understand the needs of your customers as a group, but often the needs of specific customers. That way, when you go into a sales call, you are armed with information specific to their needs and will be more likely to give them the information they want to hear.

Improving Customer Service

Customers will have problems or questions after the sale. Many times it’s easier or faster to turn to your own social network than to ask the company. People are asking questions and talking about problems all the time on social media — possibly about your own products or those of your competitors. By being engaged on social media, you can help solve those problems and answer those questions so that your customers have a better overall experience. Then they’ll be more likely to purchase from you again and recommend you to their network.

How do you use social media to understand your customers?

(image by Lali Masriera)

Disqus Comment System

Disqus replaces the WordPress comment system with it’s own, which allows readers to see their comments across all the sites that use Disqus, and it has good spam collection.

FD Feedburner Plugin

FD Feedburner is a WordPress plugin which redirects all the blog’s feeds to Feedburner to utilize Feedburner’s stats and additional feed functionality.

Google XML Sitemaps

Google XML Sitemaps generates a XML site map to help search engines properly index your site.

Lijit Search

Lijit Search lets readers search the content on your site — can also support ads for your site (search and content-related).

LinkWithin

LinkWithin WordPress plugin displays other recommended stories on each article to help increase the amount of time people spend on your site.

PostRank

PostRank provides some social network tracking as well as top posts.  I use it to track the PostRank of each post which is also a metric used by the AdAge 150.

Scribe

Scribe is a paid WordPress plugin (affiliate link) which quickly and easily provides recommendations to increase the search engine optimization for each post.  Requires a theme which supports it (I use the Thesis paid theme — affiliate link).

ShareThis

ShareThis provides links so your readers can share your content on various social networks.  Lets you control which social networks show up (and what order).  Provides stats for how many times that button is used.

TweetMeme Retweet

TweetMeme Retweet adds a button for each post so your readers can tweet a link to the article.  Counts the number of times the article has been tweeted (doesn’t always catch alternative ways to tweet the article).

Wibiya Toolbar

Wibiya Toolbar adds a bar at the bottom of your site which has links for sharing your content on social media, as well as a message (among other features).

WordPress Database Backup

WordPress Database Backup automates the backing up your blog’s database — can have it email a compressed copy or save to your server or computer.  Your theme along with your database are the key parts of your blog.  Having a backup of your database means you can recreate your blog if you have to.

WP Greet Box

WP Greet Box customize a message to your blog visitors depending on where they came from.  For example, ask visitors from Digg to Digg your post.

WP Minify

WP Minify WordPress plugin helps your blog run faster by combining and compressing javascript and CSS files to improve page load time.  I’ve seen a huge improvement since using this plugin.

WP Super Cache

WP Super Cache adds caching to your blog (which you can control) to make the pages load faster.  Site speed is now a consideration for Google’s PageRank.

What are your favorite WordPress plugins?

(photo by Sarah Worsham)

The Wrong Message

Your website visitor came to your site for some reason… to read your blog, to find your phone number, to find out where you’re located. A splash page puts a barrier in front of where they’re trying to go.  You’re telling your visitor that your message is more important than they came.

Confusing

Depending on the design of the splash page, and whether it has a way to skip it or redirects automatically, many visitors may be confused.  They expected to see your home page and instead found a page that isn’t what they were looking for.

Bad for SEO

Many search engines have a difficult time getting past splash pages, depending on how they’re coded and designed. If search engines only see your splash page (which often doesn’t have any “readable” content), you’re missing out on opportunities to reach potential customers through search.

An Edge for Competitors

Most of us have competitors that potential customers can go to instead.  Using a splash page may give them a reason to visit a competitor’s website instead (where they can more easily find the information they’re looking for).  Why give them that opportunity?

Results Speak

Removing splash pages from client sites has undeniably increased traffic and engagement. Clients score better on search engine rankings and have improved conversations and response from their customers and potential customers. While there are ways to do this with a splash page in place, why put a barrier on in front of your customers?

A Good Use?

I have seen splash pages used well, but these tend to be very well designed and coded, and only show up for new visitors.  The pages also are really another home page, giving visitors a quick overview of the site and some suggestions as to the most likely destination they’re looking for.

Site overlays (which essentially are splash pages) have been effective for short promotions or when asking people to fill out a survey.  But they’re most useful when they’re not always there and when they have a very specific call to action (hopefully with a benefit to the visitor).  Site overlays also tend to work better and be better received by visitors.

What do you think?

(photo by nathalielaure)

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.

Professional Design

A company’s website that is professionally designed will entice the most customers. An ideal web design would have a smooth and professional interface composed of a color scheme that does not clash. A model web design would also consist of organized content on every page detailing exactly the message that the company wishes to convey without any extra wordage or unnecessary content.

Preparing a self designed website

A web design represents details about your business and contributes to its development. A good web design enhances the growth of your business; a bad one can even become a reason for its ruin. One can add a professional factor by taking guidance from following points:

Using templates

Use of template always aids the website design by guiding in its composition. These templates are available from many website hosts. Whether your business is small or big, these templates offer different options such as color schemes, patterns, experimentation with various color combos etc. Using these templates can even enable you to design your web page on your own with little help.

Getting help from tutorial sites

There are various tutorial websites providing knowledge about how to design on your own website. They also can help with how to put in content to the templates.

Help from a professional

Even with the help from templates and tutorial sites, nothing compares to a site designed by a professional. Hiring a professional designer will take your website design to the next level, especially if you want something completely custom.

(photo by Armando Maynez)

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).

Now, there may be other things people don’t like — maybe the offer wasn’t clear or the price is too high — but oftentimes they just don’t know what to do next.

It happens time and time again.  Often when I look at the usability on a client’s website, especially the sales funnel, and I start mapping out the pages involved, I get this horrible mishmash network of links going every where.  There’s no clear path to a sale.

Take a look at your landing page.  Do you have a clear call to action — a clear next step? Is it above the fold (top part of the page)? If your copy continues down the page, do you have your call to action repeated every so often?

Make it as easy as possible for people to understand what the next step is when they want to purchase from you.  Getting people to your landing page is half the battle.  Don’t stop there! Increase your sales by helping people buy from you.

Copyblogger has a great list of tutorials on landing pages.

(image by House of Sims on Flickr)

Now take Sphinn – an Internet Marketing news and discussion site.  They also rely on content submissions, but their process is 230923 times harder (maybe I’m exaggerating a bit – It’s only 23239.3 times harder).  For both sites you have to have an account to submit (which makes sense), but Sphinn requires you to also pass a captcha test every time.  Then you’re taken to the page where you can change the title, pick a category and add a description.  Oh.  And it’s all really slow.  Sphinn is smart enough to make the voting (or sphinning) process fairly easy, but getting content into the system is a complete pain.

Obviously Sphinn is probably concerned with spam.  But I’m sure StumbleUpon is too – they’ve just taken the process behind the scenes so they’re not erecting roadblocks for their users. The same could be said for any business website.  What’s your call to action?  What do you want people to do on your site?  Are you making it as easy as possible for them to do that?

Thoughts?

(photo by Old Sarge)

Technorati tags: usability, customer service, design, marketing, brand, business

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)

I believe good design is not separated from good functionality.  In order for a website to be well designed it needs to incorporate the functionality that is needed in a way that makes it easy to use and understand.  There are plenty of pretty websites which I would not classify as “good designs” because they do not make it easy for website visitors to use the site – or even worse, they miss some features that are required in order for the visitor to do what they want.

Good design is important because visitors have so many choices of websites they can use and visit online.  If your site is not both visually appealing and easy to use, people are just going to go elsewhere.  And good design does not mean cluttering your site with links and ads – white space does count too as it allows the eye to visually take in everything your site has to offer.

What do you think good design means?

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Technorati tags: design, usability, business, navigation

In order to get the best response, this needs to be in a very personal one-to-one way.  Don’t send out a mass email and expect any answers. Send a few a personal email or reach out on Twitter or Facebook to get some feedback. Ask people who often retweet you or interact with you on Twitter or Facebook.  Find out what they’d like to know and what ideas they have for how you can improve your services.  If you’re having trouble getting responses, try offering something in return (a discount, a freebie, etc.).

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Technorati tags: customer service, usability, customer experience, business, marketing strategy, marketing

You’re afraid of spam email or solicitor phone calls, so you don’t put either your email or your phone number on your website, just a contact form.  While this probably does cut down on spam, how many potential customers are you turning away as well?  Is it worth it to turn away even one potential customer?

Most email programs are pretty good at filtering out spam.  And while you should answer the phone as much as possible, voicemail also does a pretty good job (most people are understanding on that front).  But, if someone can’t use either method and has to fill out a contact form (most of which tend to ask for a bunch of unrelated information), there’s a possibility that they won’t bother.

Contact forms do their have their place and use.  Sometimes you have a specific type of contact (for media or advertising or whatever) that you do need additional information for.  Or you’re using a contact form on a landing page for your marketing or advertising.  There are many good uses for contact forms, but they should never be the only way someone can get ahold of you.  Even in the cases mentioned here, there still should be a way to contact you directly.

How do your customers contact you?

(photo by ellievanhoutte @ Flickr CC)

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Technorati tags: customer service, brand, customer experience, business, marketing strategy, marketing

A website visitor may play around with your ‘build a car’ feature but not do anything else online.  Are visitors who ‘build a car’ online more or less likely to eventually buy a car from you?  How many people that do buy a car from you use the ‘build a car’ feature on your website?  Obviously there’s an offline component that needs to be tied to the online action.  The only way to really know how the online action ties to the offline action is to do a little market research.  This could be as simple as asking your customers or a more in-depth market survey.  Once you know how the ‘build a car’ function on the website is tied to actually buying a car, you can assign it a value.

Sometimes both the actions are online, but may not be directly connected.  For example, a website visitor clicks on your clearance ad in an email, but doesn’t purchase anything that day.  So what’s the percentage of people that click on the clearance ad vs. the number that buy?  This conversion is a bit easier to calculate, but it still may make sense to assign a value to clicking the clearance ad.

Why assign a value to a particular action?  Because it can help you understand how certain online actions influence the sales funnel.  More importantly, it can help you figure out how to organize your site, what actions should be emphasized, and what actions should have marketing or advertising campaigns.

Do you assign value to actions online?  How do you figure out what’s important on your website?

(photo by kennymatic @ FlickrCC)

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Technorati tags: analytics, statistics, marketing, strategy, business

Discussions about navigation on a website usually revolve around where to put them and what items should be in them.  But without navigation on a website, there is no website, just the one page where a visitor entered your site.

Two Ways to Navigate

There are really only two ways to navigate a website: search and menus.  People will usually try one or the other, but they may also try one and then the other.  Usually people are either a searcher or a browser.  Either way, both search and a menu system should be easy to find and easy to understand.

Easy to Use

Whatever navigation people use, it needs to be extremely easy to use.  The less interaction (pull downs, drop downs, extra buttons), the better.  Searches should be clearly marked as Search.  People expect the button to be on the right side and to say something like “Go” or “Search”.  It’s better if you do the hard work of figuring out what they want (instead of having a drop down with different types of searches).  It’s often obvious what they want by what they type into the search field.  For example, “248-555-5555″ is clearly a phone number. Menus should be either on the top or sides (multiple places can be ok).  Whatever you choose, be consistent throughout the site and use titles that are clear and easy to read.

Find it Fast

You have about 5-10 seconds to engage a visitor and let them know that you have what they’re looking for.  If they don’t find it on the page where they entered your site, they may look around for a search or menu to see if they can find it somewhere else on your site.  If they can’t find your search or menu or some other type of navigation, they’re quickly going to leave.

Proper Use of Technology

Be wary of using technologies (such as Flash) that make pretty navigation or menus (animation, for example).  If someone doesn’t have access to that particular technology, they don’t have access to your site (and many search engines won’t access it either).  Even if some technology has widespread use, make sure you have backup methods of allowing people to access your site. And just because you think having pretty menus is nice, doesn’t mean that everyone who comes to your site likes them (animations can get very annoying after several pages).

No Navigation = No Website

Without a way to navigate throughout your site, people are stuck where ever they landed and they’re not likely to stay there for long.  Navigation gives visitors (and search engines) access to the rest of your site, making it easier for them to stay longer (and for you to get your point/sale across).

Thoughts?

(photo by psd @ Flickr CC)

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Technorati tags: design, usability, business, navigation

When none of the links look promising and they can’t find the information on the page they’re on, many visitors will automatically turn to search.  If you don’t have one, they’re likely just to leave.  Search is an important function on any website and on the Internet in general.  Many people think of the Internet as their search engine of choice and will type in full domain names, ex. www.sazbean.com, into the search engine instead of into the browser.  There are some people who only use search on websites instead of browsing at all.

Without search on a website, you’re missing an opportunity to give a visitor the information they’re looking for before they leave to find it elsewhere.  Many blog platforms and content management systems (CMS) will have a search functionality built-in that you can install on your site.  Google offers SiteSearch which lets you put their search box on any website and have the results only return pages from that site.

Can Your Visitors Search For What They’re Looking For?

(photo by (le)doo.(jachere triennale.soon) @ Flickr CC)

Technorati tags: design, content, usability, search, business, strategy

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Business cards are still pretty important for face-to-face networking.  People are usually horrible about remembering names or company names and a small paper card lets them connect the conversation they had with the person they spoke to. (And gives them a point of contact if they want to continue the conversation).

Business websites are your online business card, yet so many businesses neglect to have the same important information in a quick & easy to understand as a paper business card provides. Most business websites are just a boring brochure of some marketing-blabber about what the company does  (that usually isn’t clear to anyone other than the author of the marketing-blabber), but don’t provide any real information to the visitor.

The nice thing about a website, as opposed to a small business card, is that you have the opportunity to offer so much more information.  But this can also be a crunch – businesses get caught up in the technology and create flashy websites, but forget about the basics.  It’s ok to offer lots of information to visitors – matter of fact, it’s a great way to get people to come back to your website over and over, but remember to keep the basics in mind: contact information, benefits to the customer, what it is you do – all visible and understandable in 5-10 seconds.

Take a look at your website.  Can you get the same type of information that’s on your business card?  Does your business website offer valuable information to your customers?  Is what you do clear in terms of benefits and value to the customers?

Make your business website a valuable business tool.

Technorati tags: design, usability, content, marketing, strategy, business

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What do visitors see during those 5 seconds?  Try The 5 Second Glimpse Test:

1. Open your website in it’s own browser window, and then minimize it.
2. Ready?
3. Un-Minimize the window and start counting slowly to 5 (1 mississippi, 2 mississippi….)
4. Look at your website during those 5 seconds.
5. Re-minimize the browser window.
6. What did you see?

When I did The 5 Second Glimpse Test for this site, this is what I saw:

First my logo on the upper right… Then the flower below and to the left. Next the title of the top post.  Then the site title and tagline in the upper left.  Lastly, the little icons in the right column…. then it was time to close the window.

The great thing is you can use this test on others to see what they see in the 5 seconds.  Just explain that you’re going to give them 5 seconds to look at your homepage and you want to know what they see during that time.  It’ll give you pretty good insight into what people see when they first come to your site – and whether it’s what you want them to see.

Since you only have 5-10 seconds to catch someone’s attention, it’s important that you get the right message to them during that time.

What did you see during your 5 Second Glimpse Test?

Technorati tags: design, usability, marketing, strategy, business

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A good tagline should:

• Be clear & informative
• Be short & concise (six to eight words)
• Differentiate your business
• Offer at least one clear benefit
• Be personable and catchy (hopefully a bit clever)
• Be unique
• Stand on its own

This may seem like a lot of weight on just a short phrase, but good taglines are invaluable for differentiating yourself and quickly describing what it is you do.  Once you have a good one you’ll be able to use it on all your marketing materials and advertising.  If you don’t know how well your tagline works, try showing someone (or telling) your tagline and see what it is they think you do.

How do you use your tagline?

(photo by Delphine – Very very busy :/ @ Flickr CC)

Technorati tags: tagline, design, marketing, uability, business

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Website usability is more important than ever with a large portion of business research conducted online.  With the rise in popularity of smartphones and other mobile devices, having good usability on multiple platforms will be extremely important.  The principles and examples used in Krug’s book will help any business understand the basics of getting their website into shape so that they can reach a much larger audience (and stop annoying their current customers).

Even web designers and usability “experts” will find something useful in Don’t Make Me Think (Amazon affiliate link), even if it’s just a great quote for a blog post on usability.  I found some good quotes that you may see in future posts, but I also found some great new ways to illustrate usability principles that will help get the why across to businesspeople (which can be difficult, as we all are aware).  Don’t Make Me Think (Amazon affiliate link) was a quick and enjoyable read, even for someone very familiar (and passionate about) with web usability.  I recommend giving it a read, no matter what your business role.

If you’ve read the book, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition (Amazon affiliate link)

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They’re cool

I hate using anything because it’s cool.  If you have a business reason for using something, that’s one thing, but using something because it’s cool, just isn’t.  Most things that are used for this reason are annoying and quickly become yesterday’s fad.  Besides, you’re running a business, not trying to join a high school clique.

They don’t work well

While this problem has improved, many sites still don’t implement drop down menus very well.  They’re hard to use and clicking on just the right link is very difficult.

They don’t show up on mobile devices

This has been improved as well.  But even if they do work on mobile devices, they’re even more difficult to use than when you have a mouse.

What about people without a mouse

There are people out there using computers without mice – text readers and other devices for people with disabilities, and other devices.  Some drop-down menus will have accessibility for people with keyboards or other devices, but often this is forgotten.

They’re a crutch

In order to properly (if there is such a thing) use drop down menus, information needs to be organized in a way that makes sense.  There needs to be some sort of hierarchy.  Most sites that use drop down menus don’t have a true information hierarchy, they just use cute titles that only make sense to the designer or marketing guy.  And there’s almost always a bunch of pages that don’t fit anywhere and are thrown under a Misc. heading – not very helpful.

It’s hard to find things

People are much faster at scanning a page than mousing over menu items to see what’s in them.  While your drop downs may seem like they’re saving time, they really are causing seconds of time for every use – that really adds up.

They’re annoying

I don’t know how many times I’ll go to a site with drop down menus and my mouse will happen to be over one of them.  All of a sudden a menu pops up when all I’m trying to do is read an article.  Now I have to take the time to move my mouse so I can do what I came to the site to do.  Or, I’ll be trying to navigate through a site but I can’t seem to get my mouse in the right place to keep the menu open long enough to click on the text – it can be pretty trying to click on a small word just to go to another page.

They’re a fad

For the most part, large sites have started to go away from drop-down menus (yay!).  They’ve found that people can scan through a long list of links much faster than they can hunt through different drop-down menus.  Having all the major links on a page means that it’ll be easier for people to find other reasons to stay on your site, instead of leaving or clicking off.

(photo by puroticorico)

Technorati tags: drop-down menu, usability, design, business, marketing strategy, marketing

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However, I want to insist that splash pages need to be used for one purpose – and one purpose only – collecting information from site visitors – getting them to sign up for your service, newsletter, whatever.  They should NOT be used for a pretty flash movie or some other annoyance that serves no real purpose other than to annoy everyone.  I don’t care if you spent a lot of money on that supposedly cool introduction.  If you’re not using it for a real purpose, don’t do it.  If you’re going to annoy your visitors, at least do it for an actual purpose – collecting information for a specific reason.

I also have to agree with Todd regarding the implementation of a splash page:

If you are going to deploy a splash page, please, please, please set it up so that a user only sees the page periodically. We usually set it up so that users who do not sign up see the page every two weeks or so. Also, make sure to set it up so that if users have already signed up for your email list they never see the splash page again. These steps will minimize the disruption to users who visit your site frequently.

(photo by sergio tudela)

Technorati tags: splash page, usability, design, business, marketing strategy, marketing

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For example, we try to cover social media, marketing, strategy and technology links through our Twitter feed.  Many of these tweets do not use any of those keywords, but they do cover that subject area.  If you were to just look at the words we tweet, you’d come up with a keyword cloud that looks similar to this:

From this keyword cloud, it looks like all our feed is about is thanking people, being happy and retweeting. Secondarily, about marketing, social media and the web.  While our tweets certainly to include those words, it’s not the entirety of what we’re about.  It doesn’t show context or association.

These types of keyword clouds also encourage people to game the system by always including certain words in their tweets and websites (what people often think of as keywords).  This makes conversations dull, repetitive and largely useless.  When you start writing and tweeting for search engines or computers, you’re missing the conversations you need to be having with customers and people.

(photo by kevindooley)

Technorati tags: content, business, usability, design

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1. Search in the upper right – Especially for large sites, make it as easy as possible for visitors to find what they’re looking for.
2. Consistent menus – generally on the left or top of the site. Visitors should be able to navigate wherever they want and get a feel for the site structure.
3. Include a home link – Visitors may want to get back to the homepage easily.
4. Contact page – with a business phone, address and email.  It increases your reputation and makes it easy for potential customers to get in contact with you.
5. Sized to fit – Fit into the minimum standards screen resolution of 1028×768 without scrolling horizontally.
6. Easy to read – Use text colors with good contrast, size and easy to read fonts.
7. One layout – If your site has a consistent layout throughout, it will make it easier for visitors to navigate and find information.
8. Pleasing to the eye – Color scheme is important to your professional image and makes it easier to visitors to understand what you do, as well as navigate your site.
9. Use white space – Don’t bunch things up.  People need white space in order to scan and read your site.
10. Speak normally – Overly technical text or too much hype makes reading difficult.
11. Use bullet points and lists – when feasible to make it easy for visitors to scan your content.
12. Move forward to the right – Submit, next, go, etc. buttons should always be on the right, cancel buttons on the left.
13. Use Flash, rich media, video, audio, etc. sparingly – If you have a video page, great, but your whole site shouldn’t be in rich media or people without the plugins, on mobile devices, or using text browsers will not be able to see your content.  Audio, Video, Flash and rich media should preferrably not play without the visitor clicking a button.
14. Restrain movement – Animation, flashing and movement make it difficult for people to read and scan your website.  Use for relevant informational purposes, not just as a gimmick or ad.
15. Limit advertising – We all understand that advertising has a place and a purpose.  If you choose to include advertising, keep it relevant, limit it to specific spots on your site, limit then number of ads and mark them clearly as advertising.
16. Include a Sitemap – Sometimes it’s just easier to see a list of all the pages on a website.  This helps search engines find all your content as well.

Do you have other tips to increase usability?  We’d love to hear them in the comments…

(photo by SantaRosa OLD SKOOL @ Flickr CC)

Technorati tags: customer experience, customer-centric, experience centric, business, usability, design

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