Should your business be advertising on Facebook?

More and more businesses are discovering pay-per-click advertising on Facebook is a cost-effective way to get traffic to their websites. Generally, Facebook advertising is less competitive (and cheaper) than Google Adwords.

In fact, one of the ‘gurus’ of Adwords advertising during the past 5 years, Perry Marshall, is now turning his attention to Facebook. Perry has launched a new website - ‘Is Facebook for Me? (www.isfacebookforme.com.) It includes a short quiz to ascertain whether Facebook advertising would benefit your business.

If you’ve ever wondered:
Q: “Is Facebook for Me?”

Take this short quiz to get instant feedback on whether Facebook could be a main traffic source for your business. Discover:

- Can I advertise on Facebook and make a profit?
- Will my products appeal to Facebook users?
- How much time should I devote to understanding how to advertise on Facebook?

I recommend you visit this site and take the simple test - www.isfacebookforme.com.

12 awesome resources for web designers

These valuable resources have been provided by Michel Fortin, one of the world’s top Internet marketing consultants.

If you are in the web business, or interested in it, you will find this list to be a goldmine.

So here are some of these articles…

1. 20 Best WordPress eCommerce Themes

If you ever wanted to setup an online store using WordPress, in a way that it doesn’t make your website look like a blog but like a full-fledged Internet retail store, this post provides some great examples. (Of these, eShop, by the way, is my favorite one.)

2. 13 Pure CSS Techniques for Creating JavaScript-like Interactions

This one is neat. Ever wanted to have javascript-like interactions on your website but without javascript? This article shares some of the best CSS-only ways to make your website dynamic and interactive, without any scripting.

3. 47 CSS Tips & Tricks To Take Your Site To The Next Level

CSS is a fantastic tool, not only for design but also to make your website appear the way you want it to, to make it cross-browser compatible, and more importantly, to make it convert like crazy. This article offers a ton of little tricks you can use.

4. 30 Fresh Icon Sets For Developers and Designers

Icons galore! If you need icons for your website, digital product, or software, this post offers a ton of them — most if not all of them are free to download and use.

5. 15 Uniform Payment Options Icon Sets for Ecommerce Design

Speaking of icons and online retail stores, this article provides a variety of payment option icons — from credit card logos to alternative payment methods.

6. 45 Fresh WordPress Tutorials, Techniques, and Hacks

As I’m sure you already know by now, my favorite CMS is WordPress. There’s so much you can do, and it isn’t just for blogging anymore. We’re using it with all our sites. Well, this article provides some fantastic WordPress tutorials and tricks.

7. 55+ Most Wanted WordPress Tips, Tricks, and Hacks

This is another WordPress tips and hacks post. However, it does offer quite a few different ones — some I really like and plan to use myself.

8. 40+ Effective Call-to-Action Buttons

Your call to action is one of the most important elements of your sales or marketing website. But designing an effective call-to-action button is just as important, especially if you test a lot and want to know which button creates the best conversion.

9. 35+ Essential Submit Button Enhancements

In addition to call-to-action buttons, the most prolific button online is without a doubt the submit button. Whether it’s for submitting content, making your site interactive, or getting a response, this article shares some neat submit button tips.

10. 50 jQuery Tools for Awesome Websites

Modern websites and particularly salesletters need to be interactive, dynamic, and personalized. Some scripts help you do exactly that. This one offers jQuery scripts you can add to any website for this purpose.

11. 30 Fresh AJAX Tutorials And Techniques

Same as the one above, but with AJAX. What I particularly liked about this article is that many of the AJAX tools it offers are helpful in commercial and sales situations.

12. 50 Fundamental jQuery Controls, Components and Plugins

Finally, this one offers a ton of jQuery plugins and tools that make a website more usable, friendly, and responsive. From sticky slideup footers — great for unobtrusive ads and opt-in forms at the bottom of the page — to collapsible panels and menus.

Michel Fortin is a direct response copywriter, author, speaker, and consultant. Visit his blog and signup free to get blog updates by email, along with response-boosting tips, tested conversion strategies, the latest news, free advice, additional resources, and a lot more!

Secrets of top converting e-commerce websites (interview with Bryan Eisenberg)

This video interview with one of America’s top website conversion experts, Bryan Eisenberg, first appeared on Web Marketing Today (www.webmarketingtoday.com).  In the interview with Dr Ralph Wilson, Bryan discusses three of the secrets behind top-converting e-commerce websites.

He looks at the some of the best-converting online stores, such as VitaCost, GoToMeeting, MailChimp, and L.L. Bean, as examples of how to set up an effective e-commerce site. He also stresses the importance of studying visitor statistics (through Google Analytics etc), and customer feedback.

Here are the 3 secrets, in summary:

1. Communicate your unique value or campaign proposition (sometimes called your USP). In the first few seconds you must communicate why a visitor should do business with you rather than your competitors. He cites several sites that do this well: VitaCost, GoToMeeting, MailChimp, and L.L. Bean. Since people can enter through your internal pages, your value proposition needs to be communicated on every page of your site — probably in the header — not just on your homepage. The value proposition differs from a tagline. A tagline is used to grab attention and for people to remember you by, while a value proposition contains a reason to buy.

2. Be data driven. Successful companies make decisions based on their site metrics. Don’t just glance at the reports, make a “to-do” list. List items you want to improve, what you want to experiment with, what’s working, and what’s not. Ask your IT or analytics person to suggest — with the monthly report — things we can improve this month, to do some analysis. Then sit with the team to go over recommendations and prioritize.

3. Leverage the voice of the customer in your business. Eisenberg gives examples of using the customer’s voice (often obtainable from social media, etc.) in product descriptions, category groupings, reviews and ratings, and letters of recommendation.

Is it becoming less critical for businesses to have websites?

I’d like to share this through-provoking article by Chris Crum, published originally on WebProNews.com

Can You Be Successful Without a Website?

I don’t think there’s any question that you need a web presence to survive in today’s business climate. But do you still need a traditional website, or has the web moved on in that regard?

First off, let me be perfectly clear in that I’m not advising anybody not to have a website. That said, there are a lot of ways to have a web presence without actually having a site, and let’s face it - maintaining a site (let alone a successful one) takes time, money, and resources.

According to data from Compete, Facebook has become a bigger traffic source than Google for some sites, and for many others, it is right up there with Google as a major traffic source. If it can drive the traffic, then that means the people are already at Facebook. You can be on Facebook without having your own website.

Businesses can build a Facebook Page, complete with analytics provided by Facebook itself, and they can spend time making that page a good one. Here are some tips on how to do that. Facebook pages are perfectly capable of being found in search engines. In fact, they are often right on the first results page.

You know what else is often right on the first page? A set of local search results from Google Maps, courtesy of Google’s Universal Search integration. Within those results (which are very often right at the top of the SERP) are links to individual businesses’ “Place Pages”. From here, users can find coupons, reviews, store hours, etc. There is a very good chance users will find this before they find your site anyway.

Google is actually going to great lengths to get people using these Place Pages. They are even sending out stickers with barcodes for stores to hang on their windows. When a user scans this barcode with their mobile phone, they will be taken to the business’ Place Page. Social media profiles can also appear on these pages (although so can website links of course).

I probably don’t have to tell you that the web is rapidly becoming more mobile. Smartphone usage and mobile broadband subscriptions continue to accelerate, and people are using a variety of devices, operating systems, browsers, and apps. Making sure you have a site that looks right across all of these is no easy task. This is not so much of a worry when it comes to Facebook pages, Google Place Pages, and other third-party entities.

In many cases, it seems that small business sites are becoming harder to find through organic search. If you look you can find them, but users want convenience, and they are probably not going to look too hard if they can find what they are looking for on the first search results page (or right within Facebook where they’re already spending their time).

Social profiles show in up in search, and often early. The very nature of social media is viral. If one Facebook user becomes a fan of your Facebook page, that user’s friends are going to see it. Then, maybe a couple of them also become fans. Then maybe a couple of their friends become fans, and that trend can continue on and on.

The more people who become fans, and the more exposure that page gets, the more chance that page has of acquiring links, which of course can lead to better search engine rankings, not to mention a larger presence on Facebook itself, where a large percentage of Internet users are already spending a great deal of their time. Your reputation and following within the social networks themselves may do your profile well in the eyes of Google too.

If you sell things online, there are obviously many different options out there without having to sell from your own site. In fact, even Facebook and e-commerce are on the road to becoming more and more closely attached. People can buy/sell physical goods through Facebook.

A great deal of focus has been placed on Facebook in this article for the simple fact that it is the world’s most popular social network. That could all change in time. But that doesn’t mean the points would not sill apply to other services. Google is going to be placing a lot of emphasis on Google Buzz this year, and it’s going to become integrated with more and more Google products.

Currently, Google profiles are kind of the central place for a Buzz presence. Users can include any links they wish right into that profile (Facebook page, Twitter account, blog, eBay/Amazon listings, etc.)There’s no telling how big Buzz can be, and there’s always the possibility that something else will come along and take the world by storm. And that is one of the reasons…

Why it Still Pays to Have a Site

Can you be successful without a site? I think so. However, having a site gives you a more stable foundation, and still creates more opportunities than if you didn’t have one. When you have a site, you have control. You don’t have to adhere to the policy guidelines of any third-party platform. If Facebook decides to shut its Pages down (as Yahoo did with GeoCities, for example), you still have your own site that they can’t touch. For that matter, having your own site certainly lends credibility to your brand.

Still, social networks continue to work on making data more freely able to flow among one another via a number of open standards like Activity Streams, AtomPub, OAuth, PubSubHubbub, Salmon and WebFinger. “The idea is that someday, any host on the web should be able to implement these open protocols and send messages back and forth in real time with users from any network, without any one company in the middle,” says Google software engineer DeWitt Clinton.

“The web contains the social graph, the protocols are standard web protocols, the messages can contain whatever crazy stuff people think to put in them. Google Buzz will be just another node (a very good node, I hope) among many peers. Users of any two systems should be able to send updates back and forth, federate comments, share photos, send @replies, etc., without needing Google in the middle and without using a Google-specific protocol or format.”

Google itself, even has its own site dedicated to making user data for its various products exportable. That’s just Google, but the web in general appears to be moving more in this direction.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have a site, or even that you don’t need one, but I think it’s an interesting discussion. For now, I’m going to say having your own site is still in your best interest, but has a more social Internet with more portable data made a standalone site less critical? Is having a website going to be less important in the future? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the subject.”

How to turn a business around in 10 minutes or less

If you’re struggling to make enough sales in your business, this video by Brett McFall will stimulate you to think in ways you probably never have before about what makes your business unique.

Hardly anybody in business puts any effort into thinking about their Unique Selling Proposition. Those who do, will walk all over the competition.

Most business websites are “me too” sites. Everyone copies everyone else. Occasionally, you get someone in a market sector with the courage to stand up and state what makes them different.

Watch this entertaining and challenging video (about 6 minutes long). It could help to revolutionise your business!

You can’t make pigs fly

Website owners often think they can boost their sales by hiring a search engine optimisation expert to get them more traffic.

While more traffic is always good, you need to bear in mind the advice of Bruce Clay, who is regarded as the world’s leading expert in search engine optimisation.

To quote Bruce: “It is not the job of search engine optimisation to make a pig fly. It is the job of the SEO to genetically re-engineer the website so that it becomes an eagle.”

In other words, it’s a waste of money sending more traffic to a website if the site doesn’t work effectively to convert those visitors into sales.

It’s far better to invest money first to transform your website into an eagle… so it really flies.

It’s much easier to double your business by doubling your conversion rate than by doubling your traffic

To quote another top marketer: “Trying to increase sales simply by driving more traffic to a website with a poor customer conversion rate is like trying to keep a leaky bucket full by adding more water instead of plugging the holes”

Most New Zealand websites are full of holes. The priority is to get these plugged (or in some cases it’s better to build a new bucket).

If you’re serious about selling online, you do need to work on search engine optimisation too. But that should come AFTER you’ve got your website converting at the best rate possible. And bear in mind, SEO (done correctly) is expensive. It’s easier and cheaper to double your conversion rate than to double your traffic.

12 questions any good web design company should ask before starting work on your website

If you’re a business owner with a website, here is a question…

How many new leads and/or sales has your website brought in during the past week, the past month, or the past year?

If your website is bringing in a significant amount of new business on an ongoing basis, you are in the minority. Most small business websites are almost worthless as a marketing tool because they’ve been built by designers or programmers who know very litle about marketing.

On this point, (and as a sidetrack before I get into the 12 questions mentioned in the heading) I was approached by a client this week who needs help to get his website ranking higher in Google. I had a look at the site and saw a massive problem. The site is built using a content management system, which doesn’t allow meta tags to be added to each page. This means the title of every page on the site is the company name… nothing else. This site contains a large number of products, each of which people could be searching for in Google. But they won’t find this website because of its non-existent meta tags.

Now, the programmer who built this website is obviously very talented as a programmer. He has custom-built a content management system. But while the site is technically brilliant, sadly, it’s almost worthless in terms of marketing the company’s business on the Internet. 

So, bearing this in mind, before I agree to build a website for a client, I need to be sure in my own mind that the site I build will actually be a valuable investment in terms of bringing in new business. Otherwise, what’s the point of building it?

Here are the 12 vital questions…

 The answers will help me to determine, first , whether the business actually needs a website (not every business does) second, what type of site they need, and thirdly, what sort of ongoing internet marketing strategy they need.

1. How do you acquire new customers or clients now?
2  What is your business plan? Specifically, what is your Mission Statement? What do you deliver to your clients/customers above and beyond “quality at a fair price”?
3. How do you keep in touch with your current customers?
4. What’s your most profitable product or service?
5. Do you have any underused capacity that you’d like to scale up?
6. What causes you the most aggravation or frustration in your business?
7. If you already have a website and/or email marketing strategy, how is it working?
8. Where do you want your business to be in 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, 5 years from now?
9. What is the “Lifetime value” of a new customer or client?
10. What is the profile of your “Ideal Customer”?
11. Do you have an advertising budget?
12. What is your current return on ad spend?

These are vital questions, which every business owner should know the answer to. It’s my job, if they hire me to help them market their business, to ask these questions and then offer the right solution, based on the answers.

New website for Christchurch company selling steel-frame kitset homes

I’ve just launched a new website for C-Style Homes, a Christchurch company that sells a great range of steel frame kitset homes at amazingly low prices.

This website project is the first of what will be many more as part of a new business relationship I’ve developed with MARKITABLE, a Wellington company.

The website is built with the Joomla open source content management system and has a contemporary look. It’s clean and simple in its design. And furthermore, it is already ranking on page 1 of Google for the keywords steel frame kitset homes due to some pre-launch work on my part ot help get it optimised in the search engines.

The long-term strategy will be to get this site at the top of Google for the term kitset homes, which is much more competitive. I achieved this a few years ago for another website selling kitset homes and I’m confident within a few months C-Style will also be near the top of Google, certainly on Page 1.

Search engine optimisation is very important for any business website, particularly in the current economy. It’s still relatively easy to get a good search engine ranking in the local market in New Zealand, because so few websites are optimised.

That will change, of course, as more busineses get web savvy. But for now, a few simple strategies such as the right meta tags, alt tags on images and developing some good incoming links, is enough to get most sites well ranked on Google in their local market.

How to Recession-Proof Your Business Using the Internet

I have just published a new report called
‘How to Recession-Proof Your Business Using the Internet’.

The report is too long to post here (about 9 pages). So I’m offering it to you as PDF to download. The report is free and you don’t even have to give me your email to get it

But if you find it helpful, I would like to ask that you will forward it on to someone else who might also benefit from it.

The Report covers:

• How People’s Behaviour Changes in a Recession and How to Profit from It [Page 2]
• What You Should NEVER Do in a Recession and What to Do Instead [Page 3]
• The 4 Reasons Why You Need to Market Your Business on the Internet [Page 4]
• The Top 3 Ways to Market Your Business on the Internet [Page 6]

To get the Report, Click Here.

Why aren’t more websites designed with ordinary people in mind?

If you’ve ever tried to buy something online and have been asked to set up an account first, before you can make the purchase, you will appreciate this article by Jared Spool of www.uie.com.

The $300 Million Button: How Changing a Button Increased a Site’s Annual Revenues by $300 Million

It’s hard to imagine a form that could be simpler: two fields, two buttons, and one link. Yet, it turns out this form was preventing customers from purchasing products from a major e-commerce site, to the tune of $300 million a year. What was even worse: the designers of the site had no clue there was even a problem.

The problem wasn’t as much about the form’s layout as it was where the form lived. Users would encounter it after they filled their shopping cart with products they wanted to purchase and pressed the Checkout button. It came before they could actually enter the information to pay for the product.

The team saw the form as enabling repeat customers to purchase faster. First-time purchasers wouldn’t mind the extra effort of registering because, after all, they will come back for more and they’ll appreciate the expediency in subsequent purchases. Everybody wins, right?

“I’m Not Here To Be In a Relationship”

We conducted usability tests with people who needed to buy products from the site. We asked them to bring their shopping lists and we gave them the money to make the purchases. All they needed to do was complete the purchase.

We were wrong about the first-time shoppers. They did mind registering. They resented having to register when they encountered the page. As one shopper told us, “I’m not here to enter into a relationship. I just want to buy something.”

Some first-time shoppers couldn’t remember if it was their first time, becoming frustrated as each common email and password combination failed. We were surprised how much they resisted registering.

Without even knowing what was involved in registration, all the users that clicked on the button did so with a sense of despair. Many vocalized how the retailer only wanted their information to pester them with marketing messages they didn’t want. Some imagined other nefarious purposes of the obvious attempt to invade privacy. (In reality, the site asked nothing during registration that it didn’t need to complete the purchase: name, shipping address, billing address, and payment information.)

Not So Good For Repeat Customers Either

Repeat customers weren’t any happier. Except for a very few who remembered their login information, most stumbled on the form. They couldn’t remember the email address or password they used. Remembering which email address they registered with was problematic - many had multiple email addresses or had changed them over the years.

When a shopper couldn’t remember the email address and password, they’d attempt at guessing what it could be multiple times. These guesses rarely succeeded. Some would eventually ask the site to send the password to their email address, which is a problem if you can’t remember which email address you initially registered with.

(Later, we did an analysis of the retailer’s database, only to discover 45% of all customers had multiple registrations in the system, some as many as 10. We also analyzed how many people requested passwords, to find out it reached about 160,000 per day. 75% of these people never tried to complete the purchase once requested.)

The form, intended to make shopping easier, turned out to only help a small percentage of the customers who encountered it. (Even many of those customers weren’t helped, since it took just as much effort to update any incorrect information, such as changed addresses or new credit cards.) Instead, the form just prevented sales - a lot of sales.

The $300,000,000 Fix

The designers fixed the problem simply. They took away the Register button. In its place, they put a Continue button with a simple message: “You do not need to create an account to make purchases on our site. Simply click Continue to proceed to checkout. To make your future purchases even faster, you can create an account during checkout.”

The results: The number of customers purchasing went up by 45%. The extra purchases resulted in an extra $15 million the first month. For the first year, the site saw an additional $300,000,000.

On my answering machine is the message I received from the CEO of the $25 billion retailer, the first week they saw the new sales numbers from the redesigned form. It’s a simple message: “Spool! You’re the man!” It didn’t need to be a complex message. All we did was change a button.”

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