10 Biggest Mistakes in Web Marketing and Sales

10 Biggest Mistakes in Web Marketing and Sales presented by Gregory Cox , www.leyline.net , 805.258.3112 10 Biggest Mistakes in Web Marketing & Saleswww.leyline.net page Page 1 of 26 INDEX 1: Does your website have text? page: .............................................................................................................. 3 ............................................................................ 5 ........................................................................................... 7 .................................................11 2: Does your website have enough pages? 3: Does your website have link popularity? 4: Does your website use keywords and metatags effectively? 5: Does your website have helpful content? 6: Is your website using coding no-nos? 7: Can you navigate your website effortlessly? ........................................................................................14 ......................................................................................16 ............................................................................18 .............................21 8: Do you distinguish yourself & your product/service? Are you compelling? 9: Is your website „sticky‟ (viral marketing)? 10: Are you monitoring your website success? ........................................................................................24 ....................................................................................26 LEGEND: Browsers refer to a person online visiting your website. A search engine is a website that helps people find information online (like Google, MSN Search, Yahoo!, AOL Search, Excite, AltaVista, etc.) A robot or spider is a program sent by a search engine to “spider” your site; it maps all the pages on your website. A keyword or keyphrase is usually two or three words that define your product or service; surf travel, small shovel, pink umbrella, santa barbara real estate. Note that they fall into an adjective-noun pattern. A URL is short for “Universal Resource Locator” and is basically an address to a web page (http://www.domain.com/page.html) - Web Marketing principle - Web Sales principle - Web Design principle 10 Biggest Mistakes in Web Marketing & Saleswww.leyline.net page Page 2 of 26 1: Does your website have text? WHY IT’S IMPORTANT Search engines such as Google, MSN, Yahoo, Excite, and AltaVista send little programs called robots out to your website to review and „spider‟ your website. These robots crawl through your website (hence the term „spider‟) page by page, taking note of all the text that you use. Although many really wonderful sites are built with complex, rich imagery and Flash technology, images do almost nothing for the promotion of that website. To understand this better, you have to understand how search engines rank websites. Images are not text. Flash sites are not text. Text is text. Though a particular image might look like text, it‟s not text to the robots. Figure 1: Is the image below ‘text’ to search engine robots? Nope! WHAT IT COSTS YOU Therefore, if you use images but no text in your websites, there is literally no way for robots (and therefore search engines) to spider and rank your website. There is simply no criterion, no „Google Food,‟ for search engines to use to describe to potential browsers (people using search engines) what you offer. Are we saying to not use any images? No! Images are an integral part of your website. We are saying that you have to include good quality text in order to be ranked in search engines. No text, no Google Food! No Google Food, no rankings, no rankings, NO TRAFFIC. HOW TO TELL There is a simple test you can use to find out if your site has text on it. Go to any page in your website, and „Select All‟ under the Edit Menu. Then Copy the text by selecting Copy under the Edit Menu. Then go to a text program (like Notepad, or Microsoft Word) and Paste the copied text. That is what the robots see! Very different from what your website looks like normally, isn‟t it? 10 Biggest Mistakes in Web Marketing & Saleswww.leyline.net page Page 3 of 26 Figure 2: ‘Select All’ on any page to find 'Google Food'! Robots sometimes pick up image „alt tags‟ for text, but predominantly, they use text exclusively to make decisions on how to rank you. You should, for every page in your website, at least 250-450 words. HOW TO CHANGE IT If you have a website that has NO text (like a Macromedia Flash site) contact Leyline Web Promotion immediately at 805-258-3112 – we‟ll tell you your options. If you have a website with little or moderate text, it might just be a question of you (or your webmaster) adding more content to already existing pages. Take a critical look at your site. Do you describe your all your products and company adequately? How about an FAQ page of questions that you are frequently asked? Write reviews of products (or have customers write it for you), give away news and free information that is complimentary or encompassing your product or service field. Ask your customers what they would like to see on your website that you don‟t already have! There are dozens of ways to increase your written (text) content, and it‟s your responsibility to make sure that both browsers and search engines benefit from your text richness and detail. 10 Biggest Mistakes in Web Marketing & Saleswww.leyline.net page Page 4 of 26 2: Does your website have enough pages? WHY IT’S IMPORTANT What do you think has a better chance of ranking in a search engine? A 12-page basic website with standard content, or a whopping 78-page site with great content, with every question that a customer ever asked approached and answered, industry-related articles on products, and updated weekly news? Obviously the larger site has a better chance at promotion online. Why? Two reasons: 1. More pages usually means a better chance to focus the specificity of each page‟s content. In other words, it‟s easier to read. If you focus your messages into discrete pages, it‟s easier to navigate and digest information as a browser. It allows browsers to find the information that is relevant to them without having to read your entire website. Figure 3: Breaking one page into many. One page into 4! 2. More pages in a website allow you more chances and angles to promote various keywords. In other words, it‟s easier to promote. If you have more pages, each page can be promoted independently of one another, one keyword per page. Consider this: Let‟s say you take all the content from your website and put it on one page. Is this bad? After all, no content is lost; you have all the information on the first and only page of the site. Browsers can just scroll up and down and get all the information on that single page. Scrolling is fairly easy, and there would also be the additional benefit not needing to click on any hyperlinks to other pages to find the information you need. Although that seems fine theoretically, it doesn‟t quite make sense instinctively. We don‟t get newspapers as one 30 foot scroll on the front lawn. Newspapers are broken up into sections, and subsections. It is easier to read that way. Browsers can also select only certain pieces of information and ignore the rest and the indexing of a newspaper allows us to do that. Websites work the same 10 Biggest Mistakes in Web Marketing & Saleswww.leyline.net page Page 5 of 26 way, with pages holding specific content, with hyperlinks to that page clearly defined as to what will be found there. WHAT IT COSTS YOU Without ample pages, it will be more difficult for browsers to navigate and find information, and it will be difficult to promote to search engines. HOW TO TELL Every website has different requirements in terms of breaking up information into discrete, bite-size pieces. Generally, however, sites that have less than 20 pages are difficult to promote. They might work for the browser, but it rarely works for promotion purposes. You can tell by simply tallying all the pages in your website. Dynamic sites like e-commerce systems are hard to tally, but here is a shortcut: go to Google and do this search: “inurl:www.yourdomain.com” (without the quotes, and with your domain name.) That will find all the pages that Google has found within your site when „spidering‟ (mapping the site page by page.) The only caveat is that if you have a website younger than a year, Google might not have found the pages yet. But if you see more than 5 results, then you‟ll probably see all the pages. HOT TO CHANGE IT 1. Focus the specificity, expand the pages: A single page‟s content should have information about a single concept. It could be a single product, or an index page to various articles (with discrete pages for each article), or whatever. The point is to make sure that one page has information only about that particular concept, and nothing else. We‟re not talking about the left (and right) navigation bars, or the header, or the footer, just the content in the middle of the page. So the FIRST STEP is to „parse‟ your information into discrete, bite-sized units of information, thereby increasing the number of pages you have (see figure above.) The SECOND STEP is to expand the sections of your website that help your potential customers (and return customers) make educated decisions to buy something, or increase the pleasure of the online experience with you, or to get them to come back to the website. Look at your competitors. What are they doing? Do they have an „in the news...‟ section and you don‟t? Is that useful to your customers? Why? Expand into other sections only if it‟s helpful! 2. More chances and angles to promote various keywords: There is a byproduct of breaking large amounts of information into more specific pages and creating new sections of your website; that website is easier to promote, with more opportunities to promote. For instance, on the figure above, notice how there is italicized “keywords”? To the left, the single combined page would have to promote all 4 keywords, whereas each page after the transformation would only have to promote a single keyword each. To say it another way, the 4 pages on the right carry ¼ of the burden for promotion. 10 Biggest Mistakes in Web Marketing & Saleswww.leyline.net page Page 6 of 26 3: Does your website have link popularity? WHY IT’S IMPORTANT Link popularity is the number of websites that point to your website. Google and other search engines use these links as a general gauge of your website popularity, and how useful your website is to browsers. Why use this as a gauge? Because it‟s very hard to cheat! Building link popularity is a grueling process to artificially boost, but happens naturally very easily. Think about it; the longer your site is in existence, the more browsers will visit, and the greater the chance someone will reference (link to) your website. They may simply like the site and want to point others to it. They may find an article that you wrote on a particular product and want to reference the article. Voila! Link popularity goes up. This is a natural process, and doesn‟t need your input to allow it to happen. Of course, you can write great content that someone wants to reference in the first place! Figure 4: Link Popularity is important! Most webmasters or web promoters now realize how critical link popularity is, and have devised was to artificially boost it. Some work, and some don‟t. Some use very underhanded techniques such as „link farms‟, sites that are nothing more than links to other sites, vast directories of link after link. Other diabolical web gurus create dynamic content that automatically implements itself on dozens of similar websites (with minor variations within each) which have a vast network of cross-linking and popularity building tactics. Usually, the websites support one, highly popular website. Other webmasters simply buy their way into link popularity, sometimes spending thousands of dollars per year to get into directories that are non-specific (www.yahoo.com Business Directory) or 10 Biggest Mistakes in Web Marketing & Saleswww.leyline.net page Page 7 of 26 specific (www.ired.com for real estate agents) to that product or service. Although there is nothing wrong with artificially boosting link popularity this way, it can be very expensive. Still others try to get links by finding free product or service directories that will add you if you give a reciprocal link on your website. WHAT IT COSTS YOU If you have NO link popularity, chances are you will never be ranked in the top ten search results by search engines like Google. If you have some link popularity but your competitors have more, they will probably rank higher than you, all other things being equal (you have similar content, metatags are in place, etc.) If you have high link popularity, chances are your website has been in existence for more than a few years and you have been burning the midnight oil trying to increase it. No link popularity means poor rankings. You must have text content and link popularity to truly gain top ten rankings. HOW TO TELL There is a simple way to find out if your site has link popularity. Go to Google and type in link:www.yourwebsite.com (no spaces!) That will give you a list of sites that Google has found link to your website. It‟s also a great way to find out if any link popularity work you do is working. Also, this method can be used to see what the link popularity of your competitors are linked to. It can give you a gauge as to the link popularity number you are shooting for, and you can review who links to them. Perhaps they are using a great directory that you didn‟t even know about, and sign up for free! Another method is to download a free link popularity checker program called Link Popularity Check, which you can find here: www.checkyourlinkpopularity.com. That will show you your link popularity on multiple search engines, at the same time. We suggest only focusing on Google, as Google is the industry leader. HOT TO CHANGE IT You can take two routes, or a combination of the two. We suggest the combination of the two. One, you can pay to get into directories. Here is a list of paid directories that might suit you. Pricing can vary considerably: 1. www.Yahoo.com (darn important but expensive! $299/year.) 2. www.JoeAnt.com ($39.99 one time fee) 3. www.Skaffe.com 4. www.BlueFind.com 5. www.Zeal.com 6. www.GoGuides.org 7. www.Gimpsy.com 8. www.WowDirectory.com 9. www.SevenSeek.com 10. www.ThisIsOurYear.com 11. www.tygo.com Two, you can work hard to find sites that want your link. Google is getting better at recognizing artificial link structures, so follow these general guidelines: 1. Focus on creating a natural incoming link structure that builds steadily but gradually over time. 10 Biggest Mistakes in Web Marketing & Saleswww.leyline.net page Page 8 of 26 2. Focus on getting links from authoritative sites with high PageRank. If they also happen to be ontopic, then all the better. 3. It's ok to get links from less important sites but remember: the lower the PageRank of a referring page, the more you'll want it to match your topic. 4. Strive to get your inbound links placed on pages with few outbound links... the fewer the better. 5. See to it that the URL format of your referring links is consistently identical. 6. Get your keywords into the anchor text of your incoming links as much as possible. However, avoid identical incoming link anchor text. 7. When starting out, focus on the major directories as a source of important links then shift to the topic-specific directories to solidify the theme relevance of your site. 8. Work your trade directories, press releases, suppliers, customers, and testimonials as an outside the box approach to building a gradual, solid, lasting, and natural incoming link structure. Think creatively. 9. Don't waste a lot of time getting reciprocal links. Their value is diminishing in the current SE environment. We see a time coming when the value of reciprocal links between nonauthoritative sites will be discounted or entirely cancelled out. 10. Avoid reciprocal links with pages that are designed solely for exchanging links. 11. Avoid linking back to sites that are unlisted by Google or Yahoo. Seriously avoid linking to link farms, web rings or any site that exhibits behavior contrary to a search engine's recommended protocol. Avoid linking to controversial sites unless they perfectly match the topic of your page. 12. Always remember that profits are your goal. More links does not always add more customers. Avoid wasting energy on projects that may increase link counts but add little or nothing to gain customers that generate profits. 13. Avoid run-of-the-site links. These are links where every page of a site links to your homepage. When you have, say, 1000 incoming links all originating from subpages within the same site, it appears to Google that your link count is artificially inflated. 14. Make sure that some of your links are deep links; i.e., links to sub-pages within your site and other than your homepage. 15. See to it that your incoming links from off-site pages do not include the rel="nofollow" attribute within the source code of the link; nofollow renders the link useless to your ranking efforts because Google doesn't credit your page for having that incoming link. Referenced article: 12 Essential Strategies for Building & Structuring Inbound Links, MarketPosition December 2004, http://www.marketposition.com/blog/archives/2005/03/major_index_upd.html ALSO, consider using some other angles: 1. www.DMOZ.org – it‟s free, and it‟s content based. It‟s also human reviewed and highly respected. Leyline has seen rankings jump from obscurity to NUMBER ONE with this reference in place. 2. Search Google for your „your product directories‟. For instance if you sell aromatherapy, do a „aromatherapy directory‟ search and see if there are directories that will take your link for free or a small cost! 3. Ask friends that have sites to do link exchange with you! 4. Find sites that are geographically specific to you (such as your local Chamber of Commerce site. Do they allow links on their site to yours?) 5. Do a “link:www.competitor.com” search on Google to find out who your competitors are linked to. Then link up to those sites just like your competitors! What we just described above seems like a lot of work, and it is. But just remember, once it‟s in, it‟s not going to go away anytime soon. And your competitors are probably not doing this. 10 Biggest Mistakes in Web Marketing & Saleswww.leyline.net page Page 9 of 26 10 Biggest Mistakes in Web Marketing & Saleswww.leyline.net page Page 10 of 26 4: Does your website use keywords and metatags effectively? WHY IT’S IMPORTANT Go to Google and type in surf travel. Figure 5: Keywords reveal themselves as important What do you see? That‟s right! The keyword (or keyphrase) “surf travel” is highlighted (or bolded) in the search results. Must be important! Consider this: if your website does NOT have the keywords that your customer uses to find you, how can Google and other search engines possibly rank your site for that keyword? They can‟t! Where does the text above come from? What you are seeing in the figure above (the text that comprises the results) is „metatag‟ data. This metatag data is critical for a process called Search Engine Optimization. 10 Biggest Mistakes in Web Marketing & Saleswww.leyline.net page Page 11 of 26 Figure 6: Metatag data is what supplies the search results you see. Metatag data is found in the code of a webpage but is not seen when you go to the page. Basically, metatag data is used to define the page before getting to that page. It‟s a sales pitch! And without it, Google would have a very tough job displaying results and browsers would have an almost impossible time finding what they want. This is not to say Google uses exclusively metatag data to define and rank a page; there is also body text (see Biggest Mistake #1) and about 42 other factors. But metatags are key. Take a look at the code below. This is a code representation of second result (www.wavehunters.com) above. Can you find the metatag title and metatag description? Figure 7: HTML code of a webpage By the way, let‟s make sure you don‟t confuse the general term keywords or keyphrases with the meta name=”keywords” code. We use the term keyword to describe a word important in defining a 10 Biggest Mistakes in Web Marketing & Saleswww.leyline.net page Page 12 of 26 particular page. meta name=”keywords” is a line of code in an HTML page that was originally used to define that page to search engines (before Google was even on the scene.) It is not used anymore because it‟s easy to cheat with (and Google knows this.) You can basically ignore meta name=”keywords” code forevermore. So metatag title and metatag description and keywords in the body text are important in defining the nature of a particular page to the browser AND to the search engines. WHAT IT COSTS YOU If you don‟t have metatag titles, Google and other search engines are forced to make strange decisions about the nature of your webpage. Don‟t leave it to chance. Create an informative, accurate title that defines your page in 2-5 words. The same thing goes for metatag description; define the nature and the usefulness of a particular page in one, complete sentence. And be compelling! Sell the product or service! It‟s the first point of contact for your future customers with your website, and you want to make a good impression. HOW TO TELL Again, use the trick “inurl:www.yourdomain.com” and scan the results. If all your pages say the same thing or give nonsensical information, you are not doing your all in promoting your website and web pages accurately. Also, check them for how compelling they are. Do they „pull at you‟ and make you want to click there? Do this the test above, and read the title and description in one pass. Then click on the hyperlink and see if the page lives up to its description. If it doesn‟t, rewrite the page or metatags. HOT TO CHANGE IT Metatags: Changing metatag data can only be done if you have HTML coding experience. If you built your own website, this should be easy for you. If you hired a web designer to build your website for you, then call them and discuss it. If you have an e-commerce system and don‟t know where to begin, call Leyline and we‟ll help you. Keywords: Keywords can be used in both the metatags area (in both title and description metatags) and in the body text of the page. Body text is the text that is visible when visiting a page. Again, you will have to know how to manipulate HTML pages to change things. Don‟t go overboard and start „keyword stuffing‟ as web promoters call it. That can get your website docked in rankings, even removed by Google and other search engines. Use a judicial amount of keywords (perhaps 2-4 times per page) and let your conscience be your guide. Call us if you want us to double check your changes before they go live! 10 Biggest Mistakes in Web Marketing & Saleswww.leyline.net page Page 13 of 26 5: Does your website have helpful content? WHY IT’S IMPORTANT What is the philosophy of the web? It sounds like a strange question, but the web emerged for very basic reasons: it‟s a way that people can connect with other people for the sharing of information. The more helpful a website is, the more that website will be visited (and revisited) by browsers AND ranked by search engines. Search engine rankings: Think about it: Google, although automated in terms of spidering your website and ranking web pages, is trying to recreate a browsers experience at that website. Google is trying to find helpful content and put it into the hands of Google searchers. That‟s why it‟s used, because it‟s helpful to browsers. This is not a 100% accurate system, but it‟s pretty darn close. And Google is only going to get better at giving browsers what they want. Therefore, even if „helpful content‟ might not directly translate into Google rankings, it‟s a great internal guide to develop your website. It makes you think in ways that will ultimately benefit you in rankings. The more you think along the lines of Google‟s goals, the better off you are. 1 Help your customers: even if helpful content might not get you actual visitor traffic, the ones that do get to your website are going to be much more happy, return more often, and buy more things, and tell other people. That‟s what it‟s all about, right? Why would anyone go to a site that‟s not helpful? If you educate your customers, your customers will buy! WHAT IT COSTS YOU If you don‟t have a site that is helpful, people will not be able to make critical decisions on why to buy your product or service, or why to buy from you. You have to make buying from you easy! HOW TO TELL You can also look at your competitors and compare your site to theirs. Do they have a more „content rich‟ website? Does it allow their customers to make better decisions on what to buy? If they do, it‟s time to develop more content! HOT TO CHANGE IT Ask your customers: “Is our site useful to you? What else could include on our website that would benefit you?” Unfortunately, those that never bought from you are the ones that you really want to ask. But every once in a while one of your customers will give you a gem of an idea and it will spawn great customer service through helpful content. Consider how useful your site is from the perspective of the customer/client. Are you:    Educating your customers on which product is right for them? Completely defining your products and services? Explaining the manufacturing process of the product and its quality? Admittedly, this is more of a philosophical angle, and I have no direct evidence for it helping. I do know that the more my customers think along the lines of serving their customers with helpful content, the more money they make. 1 10 Biggest Mistakes in Web Marketing & Saleswww.leyline.net page Page 14 of 26  Comparing your product in simple graphs and charts with competitors and where you beat them out on price, quality, selection?  Including any articles reviewing your products?  including any articles that are peripheral to your products (if you sold garden tools you could provide an article on recycling or sustainable agriculture or mulching)  Including any helpful, downloadable instructions on the use of your products?  Including client/customer testimonials?  Getting personal with bios, pictures and roles of everyone in your company?  Telling your browsers how you are different and better and your competitors? Review your competitors: what are they doing that you are not doing? Why? Could you develop content of your own that will help customers make good buying decisions? 10 Biggest Mistakes in Web Marketing & Saleswww.leyline.net page Page 15 of 26 6: Is your website using coding no-nos? WHY IT’S IMPORTANT Websites can be built in many ways. You can use standard HTML (.html or .htm) rules, programming languages (.asp, .php, .cfm) or entirely different technologies (.swf or „Flash technology.) As a result, there are no “perfect” standards for displaying web content, because web browsers (like Internet Explorer and Mozilla FireFox programs) can read them all. However, that is not the case with search engine robots. The ability to automatically spider a website can be blocked by bad web design. Search engine robots are less forgiving than web browsers. Figure 8: You can't tell by looking at a page that anything is wrong... yet it still has 47 errors! Because search engine robots automatically spider sites (starting usually at the index, or first, page) there must be a continuous link (through hyperlinks) throughout the entire site, starting with the index page. And, when a page is analyzed by a robot, the robot better like what it sees in the code, or the robot won‟t rank the page very well. Things that block page spidering:  Invalid HTML code 10 Biggest Mistakes in Web Marketing & Saleswww.leyline.net page Page 16 of 26      The page is an „orphan‟ on your site with no hyperlink to it from another page. Non-standard hyperlinks using Java or Flash may not be followed Non-standard hyperlinks using dynamic websites like e-commerce systems Bad robots.txt file (contact us for more information!) Page in question is too deep to find; if page is more than 3-4 clicks from your home page, it might never be spidered (Solution: this problem is easily solved by creating a search engine spider map for your site (also called a „site map.‟)  Bad Meta Index Tag - or or all halt indexing by search engines  Bad HTTP Redirect (poorly coded 301 redirects) Things that cause low page rankings:     Invalid HTML code (Solution: find a code validator, see below) Excessive use of very small text Excessive use of metatag keywords that are not in body text (meta name=”keywords” in code) Code clutter by .css (Cascading Style Sheets) or .js (JavaScript) – including rules into every page instead of referencing code in a single file (a .css or .js file) WHAT IT COSTS YOU If your code is invalid, spidering your website can be hindered, even outright blocked from search engine inclusion by their design alone. If your site is not spidered, it cannot be ranked! HOW TO TELL Step one is to validate your web pages. True, most WYSIWYG editors (FrontPage and Dreamweaver) have code validation built in, but these are much better validators... http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/ http://validator.w3.org/ You‟re probably going to see a lot of errors. Don‟t worry, many of the errors are the same error in different places, and once you get a hang of what you (or your web designer) are doing wrong, then you can easily correct those problems site wide in big, broad strokes. Step two is to use a spidering tool to spider your website and see if all your pages can be found. I use many types, but this one is free and pretty complete: http://www.lithopssoft.com/hlv/index.html. Of course, the proof is in the pudding; if you can find all your pages on Google by search with inurl:www.yourdomain.com, then you know spidering is not a problem. HOT TO CHANGE IT Validation: Changing code in web pages requires experience. If you don‟t personally use programs Microsoft FrontPage or Macromedia Dreamweaver, then chances are you did not design your website yourself. Contact us for help, or make your web designer aware of what you learned here! If you are an experienced web designer, then you probably don‟t need any help in changing things around. So good luck to you! Spidering: You can create a site map (with a link from the home page to it) that has a list of text hyperlinks to all the pages in the website. 10 Biggest Mistakes in Web Marketing & Saleswww.leyline.net page Page 17 of 26 7: Can you navigate your website effortlessly? WHY IT’S IMPORTANT Have you ever been to a website that is difficult to navigate? You find yourself saying, “Whoa, I didn‟t expect that” or “I didn‟t even know that was a button!” or “god, where do I go now? I‟m confused.” These are all navigation problems. Simply put, if you don‟t create good navigation on a website, then no one will find what they are looking for, or be so frustrated they leave your site. How people process information is pretty much the same. Give them too much information and they shut down. Website navigation should follow some simple rules WHAT IT COSTS YOU Poor navigation leads to browser frustration and low sales. HOW TO TELL Do usability testing. Put 5 intelligent people down in front of a computer and have them browse their website. Make sure that they are not familiar with your website before testing. Then start asking them questions on how to find certain information. You might be surprised that your website is not as intuitive as you thought it was! Consider these rules when testing    Find people that are intelligent and familiar with the web, but not familiar with your website. Make sure you test only one person at a time. Make sure that testers talk out loud when browsing, having them describe why they are going to this page or that page  Create a series of questions to ask them:  “Find these products: product 1, product 2”etc.  “Where is our phone number? Our address?”  “How do you contact us?”  “Why would you buy from us instead of XYZ Company?” You may quickly discover that everyone is making the same mistakes. HOT TO CHANGE IT Almost everything has standards; newspapers, books, all media. Including websites. Layout is critical for success when designing a website. For instance, where are navigation bars usually placed upon a website? That‟s right, on the left hand site. How about the name of the company, or what you call the home page? What about the color of the hyperlink, and the color of the „visited‟ hyperlink? Aren‟t hyperlinks usually underlined? If you have an e-commerce site, where should the shopping cart button go? We‟re not trying to tell you that you can‟t design an unconventional and exotic website, only that if you do, you want to establish standards that are easy to learn upon entering that site. Don‟t change the location of the navigation bar from page to page. Distinguish the color of the hyperlink from the regular text so that it pops out. Simple things, but so frequently overlooked that we had to mention it here. If you build a website that no one can navigate easily, no one will navigate it! 10 Biggest Mistakes in Web Marketing & Saleswww.leyline.net page Page 18 of 26 Websites work like newspapers more than anything else. Sure, websites can be a work of art but not at the expense of its primary goal, to allow navigation to the desired information. Use these handy rules to make sure that navigation is easy:  Navigation bar should never change location. It should be on every page, and every link on the home page navigation bar should exist on all other pages.  Hyperlinks on navigation bar do not disappear on certain pages  Hyperlinks should be easily distinguishable from other text by color. No text that is not a hyperlink should look like a hyperlink. Never underline anything except hyperlinks.  Hyperlinks should be simple but descriptive.  There should be a „home page‟ button on every page, including the home page, in the same place every time in the top left corner. And call the button „HOME‟ – this is no place to get fancy.  Business name, phone #, address, and email should be on every page, visible when printed.  „Contact Us‟ page with a repeat of all company information above  Rule of 7: Make sure that information in your website is evenly distributed and digestible. When there are more than 7 choices for any decision, people tend to get confused (see figure on next page)  For over 40 products on a website, make sure you have a very usable Search Button.  Make buttons look like buttons (look at the book cover below around the „think‟ word)  Review www.amazon.com and www.yahoo.com website for very complex site structure. They really do it right.  If it requires more than 3-4 pages to get to a particular page, make sure you include breadcrumbs so people don‟t lose their way!  http://www.webdesignpractices.com/ - review this site extensively for great additional information There is a wonderful book called Don't Make Me Think : A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug. If you think your design is lacking flow, this is the book to get! 10 Biggest Mistakes in Web Marketing & Saleswww.leyline.net page Page 19 of 26 Figure 9: Even distribution of pages starting at home (index) page. 10 Biggest Mistakes in Web Marketing & Saleswww.leyline.net page Page 20 of 26 8: Do you distinguish yourself & your product/service? Are you compelling? WHY IT’S IMPORTANT There are two types of websites that exist; websites that state information and websites that state information and compel. Your website is a chance to build a case for the purchase of your product or service. All products and services differ in small, critical ways, but if you don‟t make your customers aware of this, they cannot make educated decisions. What makes your product or service different? How can you inform your customers of this? These are the basic questions to ask when designing compelling copy. WHAT IT COSTS YOU If there is no reason to buy from you instead of your competitor, you‟re losing sales. Your website is a chance to convince the customer that your product or service is better than your competitors. STATE IT LOUD. HOW TO TELL Back to usability testing: ask 5 people, “Why would you buy our product or service over these other competing websites?” Then show both your website and competitors websites. If they fumble around your website and have to think about it too much, you‟re not clearly stating your message. Browsers should be able to instantly know why you are the best choice. HOT TO CHANGE IT 1. State it loud: State as loudly and simply as you can (without getting flowery, cute, and annoying) why someone should buy from you instead of your competitor. You could do this a number of ways...    Create a “why buy from us instead of our competitors?” page How about a “product comparison” page between you and your customers? Put a button or hyperlink to these pages on EVERY page of your website. 10 Biggest Mistakes in Web Marketing & Saleswww.leyline.net page Page 21 of 26 Figure 10: Comparison Charts are a great way to compel AND distinguish your product! 2. Be compelling: Compel your customer with benefits, not features of your product/service. #2 Pencil Features Six inches long Clay/Graphite composition Pre-fired graphite Core-locked Hexagonal shape Bright yellow paint Both paints are non toxic #2 Pencil Benefits Lasts an average of 5 months Lead won‟t break, even under high pressure Produces dark, legible line Lead won‟t break inside of pencil Won‟t roll off desk; easy to hold Easy to see / find Can chew without danger of poisoning 3. Remove risk: Look at this equation: VALUE / (COST + RISK) = PURCHASE  Some people just don‟t want to buy something because they don‟t want to take a chance on the product not working out. So remove the risk! Create an iron-clad 100% money-back guarantee allowing people to return the product for a full refund, with no questions asked. “A 100% money-back guarantee that you will consider our product beneficial. That's how much we want you to try our product!”   Offer a free „sample pack‟ to customers not ready to purchase the whole shebang. Remind customers that they can call you for additional information. In the customer‟s mind, talking to a live person removes risk. Don‟t rely upon email. Email is great for some things, but talking to a live person is faster and more satisfying. Plus, you have the opportunity to sell them even more when you start to understand their needs (up selling.) 4. Offer something for FREE: Don‟t give away your product, but offer incentive! Free shipping, free gift, free consultation, and free evaluation all work well for a reason. People like getting gifts. If 10 Biggest Mistakes in Web Marketing & Saleswww.leyline.net page Page 22 of 26 you don‟t want to offer free shipping because it‟s too expensive, then offer free shipping for purchases over $100. Remember, whatever is free must be a highly-perceived value. Remember, your first order of business is to create satisfied, loyal customers, not to make money (that‟s your second order of business.) 10 Biggest Mistakes in Web Marketing & Saleswww.leyline.net page Page 23 of 26 9: Is your website ‘sticky’ (viral marketing)? WHY IT’S IMPORTANT Viral marketing sounds bad, but it‟s one of the most important concepts in web marketing. Viral marketing, simply put, describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for growth in message‟s exposure and influence. Leyline further associates this term with the frequency of the return customer. Viral marketing makes websites „sticky‟ because it encourages browsers to keep coming back to a website. The more a customer (or potential customer) comes back to a website, the greater the chance they will buy from that website and tell others that the website exists. Figure 11: Viral marketing in action. Here is a simple example. One of our clients is www.unionhotelvictmansion.com. They are a quirky bed and breakfast up in central California. They have been very successful with viral marketing. Once a month, they send out a newsletter that people have signed up for sometime in the past. This is an automatic process, so it costs our customer no time. The newsletter lets people know what fun events are taking place, room specials, etc. One day we noticed that a travel agent signed up for the newsletter. Why would a travel agent sign up? Because they were looking for content to pass along to others, in this case, to their clients. The end result was a 34.4 x increase in money. That one travel agent alone represented $12,000/year in gross profit. Figure 12: Viral marketing leads to money! Travel agent is yellow, vacationer is blue. 10 Biggest Mistakes in Web Marketing & Saleswww.leyline.net page Page 24 of 26 So what did we do? We turned around and started calling all the travel agents in Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Luis Obispo, and Ventura to get them to sign up for our newsletter. Pretty powerful! Although we make nothing from the travel agent (and usually offer considerable discount to the travel agent) it still makes us 34.4 x the amount of money with almost no additional time expended in marketing. WHAT IT COSTS YOU Without viral marketing, you are not tapping into your big sales. Word of mouth leads to sales, and viral marketing is THE word of mouth machine. HOW TO TELL If you are not offering incentive to drive return traffic on your website, then you are not taking advantage of viral marketing. Ask yourself, how do I get customers to return to my site, and how do I get them to tell others that I exist? HOT TO CHANGE IT Here are some ideas on how to engage viral marketing on your website.  Newsletter offering specials, coupons, upcoming events about your industry, articles on your product, helpful tips, anecdotes, funny stuff, anything that is helpful to your customers. Browsers sign up for useful information, not sales pitches.  „Tell a friend‟ button. See www.unionhotelvictmansion.com (at the bottom) for an example.  Put a coupon inside any package that you send customers. Ask them to use it or give it to a friend!  Create a „forum‟ on your site and build an online community. Here‟s a great forum program: http://www.phpbb.com/ Building word of mouth is tough, but once it is in place, watch your sales and browser traffic skyrocket! 10 Biggest Mistakes in Web Marketing & Saleswww.leyline.net page Page 25 of 26 10: Are you monitoring your website success? WHY IT’S IMPORTANT Whether you are a product or service-based business, locally owned and operated or a huge ecommerce behemoth selling internationally, monitoring success is critical in making important decisions about your future success. If know for sure what has worked in the past, you have a better idea of what you are going to do in the future. Most website owners that we meet have no idea how to track their success (or failure.) Monitoring your website takes two forms: 1. What are your rankings? Where are you located on Google, MSN Search, AOL Search, Yahoo!, etc? If you type in a keyword, where are you ranked? First page? Second page? Here is an example report on rankings... http://www.leyline.net/promotion/unionhotelvictmansion_com/menu.htm Note how you can review by search engine, keyword, and page. The idea is to track your rankings so you know where you‟re going. You can do this by hand, but if you call us (805.258.3112) we‟ll tell you what program we use! 2. What are your stats? How many people come to your website per month, per week, per day? How are they finding you? Through search engines, or another site? You can‟t monitor your success unless you know this! When a browser comes to your website, your server (where you are hosting your website) tracks their browsing in a log file. That log file can be accessed through a statistics program. Chances are that your web host has a statistics program in place already and you are unaware of it. Call us: we‟ll help you find your statistics program and interpret your results for you. WHAT IT COSTS YOU You can‟t gain direction for the future unless you know what your past is! Monitoring your website success is critical in gaining perspective. HOW TO TELL Rankings: Just go to a search engine, type in how the name of your product, and see if you come up. Or, you could use a program that automatically tracks your rankings for you. Call us at 805.258.3112 and we‟ll tell you what we use! Statistics: you have to find your statistics package (given to you by your web host) and browse it. HOT TO CHANGE IT Changing the way you monitor your website‟s success might require you to buy a ranking program or pay an additional fee to your web host for visitor statistics. Call us if you have questions on what you need. 10 Biggest Mistakes in Web Marketing & Saleswww.leyline.net page Page 26 of 26