Keystone Media has been quite successful in creating websites that consistently achieve first page search results. What’s our secret, you might be asking. Really, it’s no secret at all. It’s all in how a site is strategically planned and then implemented. There are no short cuts to developing a site that both achieves it’s objectives AND ranks well in search returns. Read our post for information about website strategic planning.
Here are 5 basic SEO tips:
- Know your keywords. You may hear a lot about keywords, but what are they really? These are the phrases that folks will type into the search engine to find services like yours. They may, or may not be, industry lingo. Your potential customer may not know the technical terms that, you as an insider, use when speaking about your products or services. To find out how the general public talks about your products/services, speak with them and ask them. Talk to your customer service reps or sales people. You’re sure to get some invaluable information this way.
- Use your keywords in your content. The search engines use their algorithms to determine sites that use these keywords. If you’re not using the word, you won’t get ranked. But it’s also important to know how to use the keywords in your site. This leads us to number 3.
- Use your keywords correctly in your code. Make sure that your most important keywords are in your title tags and your description. Google doesn’t use the keyword tag anymore, but Yahoo does. Make sure you use your heading tags, bold and bullets appropriately.
- Code your site using best practices and today’s web standards. There are lots of companies out there who make sites using templates and frameworks. Make sure that if your site is built with a template system, that the code behind it is valid code.
- Leverage your internal links. Try to use your keywords to link from one page to another. Instead of using (more) to link to more information, use (additional inkjet printers) as the link.
Annie is presenting her ‘Websites That Work‘ seminar at this year’s Ann Arbor / Ypsilanti Region Business 2 Business EXPO. The 3 pm presentation will be in the Morris Lawrence auditorium – bring your questions!
The EXPO is March 31, 2010 – all day long. Come on down and visit us at Booth #14.
Seminar Description:
Discover the Fundamentals of an Effective Website
Sure, you’ve got a website – but is it working for you? Is it doing what it should to help your business grow and prosper? Effective websites not only attract more traffic but they convert that traffic into leads and sales – and they measurably improve customer relations and retention.
This seminar is for business owners who want their websites to work for them and produce results. Whether you need to develop an entirely new site, want to stay abreast of current marketing trends, or just need to make a few minor improvements to your current site, this seminar imparts the principles and strategies you’ll need to know, and the tools and tactics you’ll need to use, including:
- Search engine optimization
- Converting visitors to customers
- Goal setting
- Developing your target market
- Keywords and phrases
- Blogging
As the owner of Keystone Media, Annie Wolock has 15 years experience in strategic planning for websites and online applications. She knows what it takes to create websites that improve online results and in her presentation she explains how to accomplish that goal. Annie invites you to bring your questions.
We all know that the costs of obtaining new customers can be high. While we want to continue the activities that land new and fresh business, let’s explore what we can do with our website to enhance customer retention.
The best place to start our exploration is with our current good customers. Let’s ask a couple of key questions.
- Which activities are our good customers participating in, on our site?
- What is the length of time between their purchases?
There is a definite need for good data to ensure that we are tracking our customer’s buying habits properly. If your site is an eCommerce site, see if your cart most likely has built in tracking or have a tracking module installed.
One thing that we know is, the best time to contact a customer to increase repeat buying behavior, is quickly after the sale. We also know that first-time customers that have issues and come to customer support for a resolution, can become repeat customers, IF their experience with customer service is good.
Online Activities for Increased Customer Retention
Special Promotions
Special promotions are great for engaged customers. For eCommerce sites it’s a good idea to regularly have email promotions for all customers. You can segment your promotions based on several factors such as demographics, how much time has passed since last purchase, quantity, value, etc.
For illustration purposes, let’s say good customers purchase every 3 weeks. If a new customer has not made a repeat purchase in 3 weeks time, we should have a automatic email, or newsletter template set up, with a special promotion, automatically triggered for this occasion. This is an example of using current customer data (behavior) to assist in achieving better retention rates with new customers.
Wish Lists
If your site is an eCommerce site, set up a members area that your good, repeat customers can sign up and create a wish list that they can send to their friends and family members. This also has the added benefit of having your customers advertise your site for you. This is a win-win.
Product Reviews
Reviews add a lot of value to your customers. It allows them to more fully understand the full capabilities of products, as well as the pros and cons of purchasing. Some companies think that reviews will get out of control and are fearful of someone posting a bad review. Bad reviews are part of the package of customer dialogues. Bad reviews will happen. It is equally important for you to address the situation. This is an excellent opportunity to explain your point of view, and correct the situation, in full view of all other customers. This will have the dual effect of showing all parties involved that your company takes care of their customers, as well letting them know that you are not suppressing reviews and only allowing ‘good’ reviews. This shows transparency and credibility. People will increasingly trust and respect your company, thereby increasing retention. It’s all good.
Blogs
Use your blogs to promote product promotions, conferences that your company will be attending, presentations you’re giving and any company PR. Encourage your customers to comment and offer feedback. Give them tips on how to use your company’s products or services. Offer industry news. All this offers your current customer reasons to come back. Remember (Valuable) ‘Content is King’.
Marketing is a conversation between us (the company) and the customers. This dialogue is highly valuable, but we really need to listen to our customers. Their feedback is invaluable. They will tell you by their actions on your site what they want and need. If you really listen, they will tell you exactly what you can do on your site to improve customer/client retention.
What are you doing on your site to help increase customer retention?
Since I started creating websites in 1995, my mantra has always been ‘create it for the user’. At the end of the year 2009, this user centric means of designing websites is the mark of a quality site. Knowing your users is the foundation of an effective, hard working 24/7 website. A website that your visitors will return to, as well as refer others, for valuable content. Once we truly know our customers, or potential customers, we can create a site that will engage them. This engagement is the necessary step before they take the leap and perform the objective we’ve set out (buy, call, sign up, etc).
For the last several years, I’ve found the best way to really nail down who customers are, and what they want, is to develop “personas”. They’re perfect tools for ensuring that features added to a website are useful ones. They’re great for establishing effective website copy. I’ve even used them to keep projects on track and in scope. My clients are always tossing great ideas into the hat and we are able to discern whether the scope creep is necessary by bringing in our personas.
Recently I’ve discovered the book, The User is Always Right, by Steve Mulder and Ziv Yaar. The book’s subtitle says it all – A Practical Guide to Creating and Using Personas for the Web. This book is definitely a great guide for really making the most of personas.It goes into depth about conducting qualitative and quantitative user research, as well as segmentation. It’s an interesting read for those of us that are out here creating websites. Check it out!
The week before last I was in Seattle presenting at the OD Network Conference 2009. Most of the folks at my presentation were well outside the field of online marketing and were there to learn what they can do, to market their own businesses. They seemed to be totally engaged in how they can increase their findability online. My presentation included:
- Persona development
- The importance of speaking from your customers point of view
- Goal setting
- A review of what makes an effective website
- Scannability
- SEO tactics
- Persuasive paths or calls to actions
- How to leverage LinkedIn
- Best practices for blogs
The one thing I really wanted to review, but time did not allow, was an understanding of the importance of your choice of technology matching your potential customers.
What does this mean?
To illustrate this, I’ll use an example. If you are an external consultant for Fortune 500 companies, the mix of technology used should match those known to be frequented by corporations. LinkedIn would be more appropriate than MySpace, as LinkedIn’s members include executives from all Fortune 500 companies. While the members of MySpace are mostly teens or those in the music industry.
This may seem obvious to some, but I think it’s a very important concept.
Let’s take a different example. Twitter is a very hot social platform right now. However, it may not make a lot of sense to spend marketing time and dollars on Twitter for some types of businesses. Some types of businesses could really leverage using Twitter. I think most retailers could gain visibility and customer goodwill investing their marketing dollars in Twitter. The point is, it’s important to take a critical looks at who your market is and match this with an appropriate social media.
Generating leads from web sites has become a critical component of marketing strategy. The goal is to maximize your ROI by increasing your conversion ratio of your click-through traffic to sales leads.
Here’s the Math
Let’s say you have a traffic rate of 1000 visitors and then 20 inquiries per day. This is a 2% conversion rate. Now let’s say you increase your traffic 10% to 1100 visitors, with your 2% conversion ratio, you’ll get 22 leads. Now let’s put some effort into increasing your conversion ratio just 1%. Just this small increase in conversion will generate a total of 30 leads for a difference of 8 leads per day. Increasing your conversion ratio is the most effective use of your time and budget.
One of the best ways to increase your leads is through effective use of ‘The Call to Action’. It’s important that once your visitors land on your site, they are guided to an action. This action could be ‘Call for More Info’ or Download This White Paper’, or some similar act. Whatever you choose for your ‘Call to Action’, it must be clear and persuasive. There are many other ways to increase the ROI of your website.
Local Orbit’s pilot launched this past week!
While every site teaches me new things, this site has been really fascinating to strategize, architect, design and build. The site came out really, really cool, but what I love most of all is it’s sheer potential for changing the way food distribution happens. And in turn, this can make a very real impact on local economies. We, as a society, need modern ways to keep our middle class viable. A healthy middle class makes for a healthy economy. The advent of the big box stores, industrialized agriculture and conglomerates has put a lot of wealth into a few hands. Our world is seeing the consequences of this. Local Orbit can be a part of the change that our world needs. Local Orbit is the online way we can support our local communities in a sustainable way. Local Orbit puts control back into the hands of people.
I invite you to check out localorb.it to find out more.
In order to list these traits within this short article, we will qualify it a bit. You see, a complete evaluation of an effective website should take into consideration search engine optimization techniques and metrics. For our purposes, I’ll stick with evaluating web sites from the visitor’s perspective, once they’ve landed at your site. I’ll leave SEO/SEM and metrics for another day. This list relays the traits of sites that will achieve objectives. The overall assumption is that you have determined your site’s objective.
- Download Time / Speed
If your site is slow to load, visitors will leave. It is a very simple fact that has not changed since the beginning of the ‘net. The typical culprit is imagery. Some designers and clients feel imagery is very important to their branding. You need to evaluate the quantity of images on your site and if you can accept the trade off of visitors leaving vs having them there surfing. While there can be many other causes for slow load times, you want to find what the cause is and speed up your site. If users are required to wait more than a few seconds, they will leave. - Scannability & Value
A visitor must have immediate understanding of what your site is about. In a glance can your visitors, potential customers, understand what value you are offering? This is seemingly obvious, but you would be surprised how many sites have home pages that lack a clear message relaying benefits to their customers. They speak of features, while customers want to hear WIIFM – What’s in it for Me! In addition, layout is important for quick viewing. Using bullet points and bold text, you allow visitors to quickly pick out important concepts.Scannability of key point is very important online. - Navigation
Can you get to and from sections and pages of the site easily? Is your navigation clear and consistent throughout the whole site? One very bothersome feature of poorly designed sites is when you get to a page and there is no navigation taking you back, or anywhere for that matter. In effect, you’ve come to a dead-end in the site. Sometimes there is the home button, but it really is an annoyance to have to go back to the home page to move ahead. In addition to this, is the navigation set up in a way that it is very clear to visitors where they are in your site? You can use a variety of techniques to ensure that they do not become “lost”. - Look/Design
Does the site reinforce branding? Does the site look like others? Or is the look unique? A quality design lends credibility to a site. A good solid site designed by professional web designers who know how to blend form and function will pay back multiple times. - Content
Content is King as the old saying goes. Recently I redesigned a site for a new client. One of the first things I do when evaluating a site is look at the stats. In this case, while his 6 year old site was in desperate need of a redesign, he was getting pretty good traffic. But the stats showed they were landing on the site and not staying around. After reading the landing page, they left pretty quickly. The reason they found his site was the content, as the search engines picked it up. He is an expert in his field and he has good valid information. Visitors would quickly read his article and then leave, ignoring his services. Our job was to pull it all together and have the traffic convert to sales. The site just launched in the last month. Our hope is that with his excellent content and the new design that follows all best practices, he will see a good increase in sales. He’s already gotten some early positive feedback from visitors. - Credibility
Building in credibility is a key factor. The above 5 items down will certainly contribute to credibility. There are a few other items that will factor in. Having testimonials on your site is one good way to show that others have used your services or products and have been pleased. Others are making sure that there are no typos and your grammar is correct.
If you have anything to add to this list, please let me know. I’d be happy to hear from you.
Information architecture is the backbone of a website. It’s critical to the success of a site that information be organized so that users find it simple and intuitive to use. If the user cannot find the information, it doesn’t matter what your site has to offer. You could have the key information visitors are looking for, or the best products at the best price. None of this matters if they can’t find it. The importance of a site’s organization cannot be underestimated.
Thinking through how information is grouped will allow a site to develop in an intelligent fashion. Whether this is your first site or your 10th, it’s important to go back to the ‘drawing board’ with all your content and lay it out in outline formation. The basis of this outline will become your navigation. Users come back to sites in which they can easily navigate to find their information. It is important to the success of your site that the navigation reflects the information architecture.
Design follows function here and your design will be reflected by your navigation. A cool and hip, fun and funky, or a sophisticated corporate look will come, but your site’s design must be based on a smart and intuitive navigation.
In December the phone rang and my client called to ask if taking me to St Thomas might be a good thing for our web strategy / build project. She had an excess of frequent flyer miles and wanted to use them wisely. Being a Michagander, I said… yes. How could I turn this down?
Jumping ahead 6 weeks, here we are on our first full day. We spent 4 hours today working on developing personas, as well as some linguistic analysis.
This is the 3rd or 4th site that I’ve been commissioned to build for her company. She is a great example of a wonderful client. What a creative use of her frequent flyer miles!
For me, the relationships I build with my clients are of the utmost importance. But the relationships go beyond that. How do I build them? I listen to them. I hear them. I respond to them. It’s vital that they can rely on me to provide them with the most current thinking on internet marketing strategies and tactics. They all know I am not a “yes person.” I challenge their ideas to ensure that we are going down the right path. And, it is a “we.” I’m in it too. If they don’t succeed, then I can’t. While they are the client, I am the expert in online exerience. That is what they are paying for.
My clients become my friends, and sometimes, my friends become my clients.
