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When profits aren't as high as anticipated, many e-businesses blame their products, their pricing point, or their competition. But actually, the problem might not be with your core business at all, but rather with your presentation – in other words, the usability of your website.
Here are five website pitfalls that catch many companies, causing them to drive customers away and lose business unnecessarily.
1. Poor Website Navigation
The best content in the world is absolutely irrelevant if users cannot find it. Furthermore, they won't take much time to discover whether the information they need is buried somewhere on the website. Use navigation that is familiar to your website visitors, strong hierarchal organization, and alternate ways of finding information such as a site map and a search tool.
2. Going Overboard with Flash
Yes, Flash does look pretty, but it does have drawbacks: it can annoy site visitors because of slow page downloading times; search engines can’t read it; and it doesn't work for people who don't have the latest Flash plug-ins installed. As you can see, Flash has some pretty serious disadvantages, but it can be a very useful technology for product demonstrations. The rule is, use it sparingly.
3. Making Contact Details Hard to Find
Some e-businesses try to promote online communication by actually making their contact information hard to find; they believe this will save them man hours and money. The truth is, people generally want to get to know companies before they do business with them. Hiding your contact information is like telling your site visitors you're untrustworthy.
4. Forcing Audio or Video on Your Visitors
Audio and video can be effective methods of communicating with your site visitors. Sometimes, nothing drives a point home better than being able to see it played out in front of you. In such cases, audio and video clips are a valuable part of your sales website.
However, these clips can also take up bandwidth and startle or annoy site visitors. If you're at work, you might not want to have your computer suddenly blaring out music or a video soundtrack; so, instead, make these clips optional. Instead of having them play automatically when someone visits your site, show them the benefits and invite them to click to learn more.
5. Pages that Take Too Long to Load
Your website visitors are busy people, and their time is valuable – or at least, that should be your assumption. Nothing frustrates web users more than having to wait, and wait, and wait for your pages to load. And although that waiting may mean just a few seconds per page, on the internet that’s a long time. Make sure your website loads as quickly as possible by optimising images, practising good coding techniques, and removing unnecessary bells and whistles.
By avoiding these five website usability pitfalls, you can dramatically improve the profitability of your e-business without changing your core services at all. Take a good look at your website and see if it possesses any of these traps for your site visitors. Your bottom line will benefit from it. F or a no-obligation consultation, call 01491 614121.
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The 2007 holiday season is fast approaching, and Santa isn't going to be the only one making lists of who's naughty and who's nice. With online shoppers getting more internet savvy, those websites whose shopping carts are clumsy and difficult to use are going to be left with nothing but a lump of coal, while easier, more user-friendly shopping sites will reap the rewards of the estimated £10 billion pounds that will be spent online this season.
Recognise and Avoid Common Online Shopping Mistakes
If you're not entirely sure where your website will fall on the naughty-to-nice scale, check out these common shopping cart mistakes, and fix them quick, before it's too late!
1. Customers Don't Know What They're Buying
Problem: How would you like to do your shopping in a dimly-lit building with shady salespeople holding up products for you to buy half a room away, with no way to get closer before you commit to a purchase. That scenario is unappealing enough to make it sound insane, yet that's exactly what many web shoppers experience.
Solution: Let web shoppers get up close and personal with high-quality images of your products. Include as many angles and colours as possible, as well as a way to enlarge the photos.
2. Customers Can't Get Help when They Need It
Problem: So you've been browsing through a website picking out gifts, and you're just about to press the purchase button when suddenly a question pops up. How long will the goods take to arrive? Will your loved ones be able to return the items if they don't fit? You don't know, and there's no easy way to find out. Annoyed, you give up, abandon the shopping cart and quickly switch to another site that will answer these questions.
Solution: Make it easy for customers to find quick answers to their questions without leaving the checkout process. Offer FAQs in pop-up windows, and have a toll-free customer service number displayed prominently.
3. Customers Left in the Dark about Shipping Costs
Problem: You're researching a particular gift you want to buy online, and you find a website that seems to offer that product for a good price. Problem is, there's no mention of shipping costs. If the company isn't open about their shipping costs, they must be trying to hide something, right?
Solution: Don't be coy about shipping costs and hide them at the end of the transaction. Online shoppers are used to factoring shipping into their purchasing decisions, and will feel uneasy if they are not given all the information they need.
4. Customers Can't Find the Shopping Cart
Problem: You've found a gift you want to buy, and you have your credit card out and are ready to buy. However, you can't figure out how you're supposed to proceed with the transaction. Frustrated, you give up.
Solution: Make the shopping cart symbol large and easy to see. Remember, not all your customers have sharp eyes to pick out small symbols. A text link to add items to the shopping cart will also help the visually impaired, who use text-to-speech translators to browse.
Just by following these tips you can make a huge difference to your business' profitability throughout the year, including the busy holiday season, which will ensure your online shopping process is nice, not naughty, to use. If you would like a no-obligation consultation to improve your e-commerce website, please call 01491 614121.
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Imagine for a moment you want to buy a certain kind of product – say a new pair of tennis shoes. Would you be more likely to buy a brand you see advertised on television or on the internet? Or would you rather buy a brand you hear about from a friend who's raving about how great his new shoes are, how much better he feels after exercising, and how much his game has improved? For most people, there's no contest – the third way of hearing about a product or brand is much more powerful, which is exactly why you want to put word-of-mouth advertising to work for your business.
Word-of-Mouth Recommendations Work Magic for Your Business
Why is Word-of-Mouth Advertising Important?
Shoppers, deluged by hundreds of different ads from dozens of media channels every day have become jaded about most forms of advertising. But recommendations that come from a trusted source, or even just another consumer, are treated with far more interest than regular ads. Why?
Consumers feel they can trust personal recommendations more than information from a company. After all, it's in a company's best interest to gloss over their products' weaknesses, whereas other consumers don't have a conflict of interest.
The Nielsen Online Global Consumer Study conducted in April 2007 shows that 78% of consumers say they trust personal recommendations, compared to only 56% who trust television ads and 26% who trust online banner ads.
Best of all, word-of-mouth advertising is free, or nearly so.
If a consumer doesn't trust your business, there is no way he or she will turn over their hard-earned money to you.
How Can You Encourage Personal Referrals for Your Business?
So, if word-of-mouth referrals are so valuable, how can your business encourage people to spread the word about your products and services?
1. Ask for Referrals
It may seem too simple to be true, but a very powerful way to encourage word-of-mouth referrals is simply to ask for them. Remind your customers to tell their friends about their experiences with your company, and actively solicit opinions to post on your website.
2. Make It Easy for Your Users
Most happy customers will be glad to spread the word if it doesn't cost them anything (including their valuable time). Make it as easy as possible to send referrals by offering links to online rating sites or feedback forms, creating pre-filled emails that site users can send to their friends, and by putting a forward link in a prominent position in your newsletters.
3. Reward Referrals
Offering an incentive is a great way to encourage customers to spread the word. Incentives can be anything from a free month of service, an e-book or white paper, to a cash reward for encouraging other members to sign up.
Word-of-mouth referrals have an extremely high return on investment. For little or no cost, you have a much better chance of converting strangers to paying customers. It's definitely worth the time to work on incorporating personal referrals into your company's website.If you would like a develop a referral campaign from your website, call 01491 614121 for a no-obligation consultation.
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More people are becoming aware of the threat of opening attachments in emails. While this is good, it is also forcing hackers to come up with tricks that are becoming increasingly devious and more insidious. Here are some of the latest online security threats, and how you can protect your company from them:
How to Protect Yourself from the Latest Online Security Threats
More Sophisticated Attacks
Online hackers are becoming more and more sophisticated in the methods they use to access and infiltrate computers everywhere. One example is a multistage attack that begins with a downloader program that can install more threatening software without any intervention from the user.
Solution: Always use a robust anti-virus program that updates regularly.
More Powerful Attacks
Recently, government, police, and banking computers in the eastern European nation of Estonia were brought down by a massive cyber attack. At the vanguard of this attack that infected thousands of computers owned by unsuspecting people and businesses was the Storm virus. Experts estimate that this network of compromised computers is so widespread that the criminals controlling them could compromise even the world's strongest supercomputers.
Solution: Scan your company's computers regularly for viruses. Make sure that your emails are scanned for viruses before opening them.
Web-Based Threats
Because people are exercising more caution when opening email attachments, hackers are turning to other ways to insert malicious software on your computers. One way of doing this is by inserting malicious code onto the websites you visit. When your computer opens what it thinks is an innocuous audio or video file, it could actually be installing a hacker code on your computer.
Solution: Use the settings on your browser to restrict the types of files your computer will open automatically. Refuse cookies from any site that is not trusted.
Spear Phishing Attacks
Phishing is an attempt to trick users into providing hackers with sensitive information like passwords and account numbers by fooling them into thinking they are on a safe site. For example, many scammers send out thousands of emails claiming to be from different banks; they tell people that if they don't click through to a site that looks like the bank's page, but which is actually controlled by the scammers, their accounts will be shut down. When such victims visit the scam site, the scammers log their personal information. Spear phishing is a targeted version of phishing, in which employees of a specific company or agency are targeted with legitimate-looking emails.
Solution: Educate your employees how to identify phishing attacks. Don't send out generic company emails, but always use the employees' names and other identifying information.
Leaving Wireless Networks Unsecured
A large number of businesses send sensitive information across wireless networks without paying enough attention to security. An unsecured wireless network can be easily accessed by anyone in the area who can read any data – including passwords, encryption codes, and financial information – transmitted across that network.
Solution: Use the highest available encryption methods to protect your company's wireless networks. Never use the default passwords that come with your wireless network, as these can be easily located online.
Taking steps to protect your company from online threats is as critical as locking up a store when it closes for the night. Internet security is continually changing, so it's important to keep up to date with the most recent threats to your business.
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What would you pay to increase the page views on your website, provide your site visitors with the information they need, improve sales and increase your visibility in the search engines, all at the same time? For most businesses, the answer would be "a lot!”
The good news is that you can accomplish all these goals simply and easily, and it won't cost you a penny. How? By creating a solid internal linking strategy.
Help Your Visitors Find Information – And Improve SEO
What is an Internal Linking Strategy?
The internet does not lend itself to long tracts of writing that cover every aspect of an issue. It's much better to write short pieces that cover one particular aspect of a topic, and then link to pages where readers can learn more.
Shorter, well-presented content will hold surfers’ attention better, help them find the information they need while skipping things they already know, and keep them moving through your website. Ultimately, if your website is well crafted, surfers are more likely to make a purchase, sign up to a newsletter or become registered members.
Even better, these targeted pieces of information are exactly what drive search engine rankings as well. If your information is laser focused on one subject, people looking for information on that subject will rate you highly and could refer you to others.
The key is a good linking strategy that helps people (and search engines) move from one piece of information to the next. You never want your site visitors to be left stranded without clear pointers on how to move on to the next step.
A good linking strategy includes:
Pages that are well linked, to and from other pieces of related content.
Those links use descriptive anchor text to help people (and spiders) determine what information they'll find at each link.
Links are prominently placed, easy to find, and easy to use.
Links lead visitors on a path that answers their questions and encourages them to take steps to fulfil your business goals.
How Your Internal Links Can Drive Sales
The more your site visitors interact with your web pages, the more invested they become in your business. By using your linking strategy to help bring your visitors closer to your pre-defined goals, you will provide value for them while making it easy for them to do what you need to be profitable.
How Your Linking Strategy Can Improve Search Engine Rankings
There are a few different ways a good system of links will help improve your search engine rankings, including:
Search engine spiders move from page to page, using links. A good linking system ensures that all your pages are found and added to the search engines by the spiders.
Search engines use the text in links to help determine what a page is all about. By using keyword-rich text in links, you can improve your chances of being recognized through your target keywords.
Paying attention to your internal linking structure really pays off for your website in terms of sales, search engine rankings and visitor satisfaction. Could your website use a link makeover? Take a look today and see if you are making maximum use of your internal links. Call 01491 614121 for a no-obligation consultation to review the effectiveness of your internal linking structure.
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