How web designers often feel

We really do love our clients… but some can test our patience just a little. Someone just sent me this video which basically sums up the experiences I have with a some clients.

If you’re in the web industry, or any kind of creative industry, you’ll identify with this video.

And if you are a client working with a professional designer, please take note

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.”

‘Winning Websites for Small Businesses’ - a new handbook for New Zealand businesses

I have just finished writing a brand-new handbook for New Zealand businesses, called “Winning Websites for Small Businesses”.

I don’t believe there’s any other publication in New Zealand quite like this handbook because it’s aimed specifically at the unique needs of the New Zealand marketplace.

If you have a website for your business and it’s not getting you the amount of visitors, leads, or sales that you wish it was - this handbook has been written for you!

I’ve basically tried to summarise everything I know about website design and selling on the Internet, in a user-friendly way that is easy for the ordinary business person to understand.

This handbook is not about website design in the ordinary sense. It is about how to build a website that SELLS - and there’s a big difference

If you are keen to find out more about this handbook (and if you’re a New Zealand business that has a website, then you should be) then go to www.winningwebsites.co.nz.

Free website assessment - special offer during May 2009

During May, I am offering a FREE website assessment to anyone who has a website but it’s not bring in the amount of leads or sales you were hoping for.

I will look at your website and give you a brief report about how I think it could be improved. I’ll be looking particularly at factors such as the headline on the site, the sales copy, the offer you are making to your prospective customers … dthe overall “selling power” of the site.

I’ll also look at some basic search engine optimisation factors, such the title tag and other meta tags, and the use of keywords throughout your site. If you have a website and it’s not working as well as you hoped to bring in new business, this is an opportunity for you to get your site assessed, at no cost.

This offer lasts until May 31. If you want to take advantage of it, click here to get a free website assessment.

New direct sales website for UK client, shows the awesome power of the Internet

I’ve just launched a new website for a client in the UK and early results look very encouraging.

The company is selling a range of services to help people who are in debt. This is (unfortunately) a growth industry at the moment in the UK and most of the developed world. So there is a strong demand for such debt consultancy services.

The client is driving traffic to the site using Google Adwords. The aim of the site is ultimately to get people to fill in the enquiry form either on the home page or a more detailed assessment form on an inside page. The site takes a direct selling approach, which is proven to work best on the Internet for this type of person-to-person selling.

I’m delighted with the early response to this site, and so is my client. It’s bringing in a good number of leads for him, and that means he will quickly make back the money he paid for the site (probably within a few days) and then he’ll be in profit.

Already, the same client has asked me to build him two more sites, taking a similar direct selling approach in slightly different but related markets. The power of direct sales websites is enormous, when they’re designed and written correctly.

This client is a smart businessman in his own right and I’m looking forward to helping to build his business (and my own in the process) over the coming months.
(The site is www.debt-trust.co.uk)

Meanwhile, I’ve recently launched another site for a UK client, in a very different market. He is a chartered surveyor in Cambridge, looking to grow his business by marketing online. So far, the results of this site are also very encouraging.

A website like this will work enormously to boost this company’s credibility and is sure to bring in a lot of new business. The site is sharp and modern looking, and is clearly written. (It’s www.alstonsurveyors.co.uk)

It’s very satisfying to work with clients like these two, who truly appreciate the power of the Internet to grow their respective businesses. There must be thousands of other businesses out there who could see the same kind of results, with a properly designed and written website. 

Most small businesses haven’t really grasped how powerful the Internet is as a form of marketing. They are still focusing on the Yellow Pages, the local newspaper and maybe getting bigger and brighter signs etc. The Internet really is an untapped goldmine for local businesses! I’ll write more on this in my next post.

P.S. If you’re interested in organic food, or organics in general, you will be interested in visiting this new website we have built for the NZ Organic Expo and Green Living Show, to be held in Auckland in April 2011.

It’s still two years away but this going to be a big show and we’re starting publicity early. So visit the Organic Expo site and have a look.