INTERNETNEWZEALAND.COM » Conversion

Does Your Website Suck?

admin — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 10:25:34 +0000

Did you know that success online is a ‘holisitic’ thing?

It’s not about any one thing, like good search engine optimisation, online conversion or copywriting…it’s also about having a great website that works.

I’m not just talking about how ‘pretty’ the thing is. While aesthetics are really important, there are other factors that can make the difference between whether your website makes money for your business…or whether the only thing it’s good for is eating up hosting fees!

So what constitutes a website that ’sucks’? Depending on your type of business and the sites purpose, generally it means it’s ability to attract good numbers of traffic and visitors who then take a desired action…that leads initially or eventually to your buisness growing. And to achieve this ongoing.

If your website sucks, the good news is that you can create a successful website on purpose…And literally turn it into a sales machine over time.

The trick is knowing now to do it. If you contact us, I’ll show you.

Strategic Thinking

A few years back, websites were brochure sites. Nothing more than your business card online. But things have changed because of the way the ‘net (and especially search) is driving new consumer behaviours. Just think of how often you you use Google instead of Yellow Pages, Finda or Trade Me.

Internet users just like you and me, are more savvy, sophisticated, cynical…and fickle. It’s no longer a case of getting your nephew to bung up a website.

Today your website (or rather websites) must be about your business strategy. And the reality is that ’search ‘ ie Google, Bing & Yahoo is the single most important aspect of business strategy right now. Why? Because more and more, people are looking online for what you do, sell, offer or promote.

In fact, in the near future, I predict that your search strategy WILL BE your marketing strategy. In other words, when your potential customers (most of whom have never heard of your brand) look for what you sell using a search engine, where are you ranked?

Anyone Can Rank Highly (If You Know How)

Here’s the thing. Most businesses that appear near the top of their industry or niche keywords are not there by accident. They are the smart ones who have seen the emerging trends and have started to take action.

The days of being the biggest company offline meaning that you also lead the search engine rankings…are well over. Sorry.

Here’s an example (healthinsurancequote.org.nz). A small client of ours who is taking on the largest health insurance organisation in New Zealand – and winning. Being at #1 means visibility, and it means leads.

Rankings + Traffic x Conversion = Online Success

For a website to achieve high Rankings in search engines in your chosen category or niche must have the right architecture. It needs to be built in a certain way that sends a clear message to the web crawlers about exactly what your site is about. We call this concept ‘relevance’ and it’s one of the most important aspects of achieving good SEO rankings.

Sure, there are other important factors like backlinking and other off and on-page SEO factors, but we know now that relevance and what we call ‘theming’ are critical factors that are affected by how your site is built.

Traffic is simply the volume of visitors that come to your website over a peiod of time. Good SEO rankings affect traffic because there is a link between your top 10 ranking and the number of clicks to your site. But good SEO rankings are not the only way to increase traffic. There are other strategies like dealing with returning visitors, permission (email) marketing, microsites, integration of social networks (like twitter) and lots more.

The measurement of how many site visitors actually take some action that you desire is called Conversion. Success with conversion is dependent on many factors.

Some of the main ones include site aesthetics (how pretty the site is), the use of compelling words and copy, the proper placement of the site’s key features like calls-to-action, newsletter sign up, the inclusion of list-building tactics such as whitepapers or mini email courses, the placement of different elements and lots more.

How Do You Stack Up?

How well is your website performing right now? If you could double or triple the number of qualified enquiries you get over a month, and it continued without rest way into the future, would that be worth contacting us for a free strategy meeting to learn more?

If you’d like to get a written report outlining some genuinely practical ideas (assuming you have a site) that you can implement immediately, as well as some strategy and options for the future, please click on the button below.

We’ll send you a short questionairre to complete and within a day or two we’ll email our findings and suggestions – without any hard-sell or obligation.

I hope this information has been useful, and look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you for reading this.

Rhys Coffin
Director
Strategic SEO Specialist
Internet New Zealand Ltd

E: rhys@internetnewzealand.com

What is Online Conversion?

admin — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 05:17:30 +0000

If you’re a business owner or person responsible for increasing activity and turnover coming from your website, and you’re looking for some help from specialists who do this for clients every day, then please read on.

Why? because I’m writing this article with you in mind.

And no-one else.

From one business owner to another, I know you”re busy so thank you for reading this short article on online conversion.

But first. Did you know that success online is not just about search engine optimisation and getting lots of ‘eyeballs’ to visit your website.

Yes, our company does that too, but success is also about getting visitors to your site to do something that you want them to do.

That in a nutshell is what online conversion is; selling more to the people who get in front of you.

Online conversion therefore, is the relationship between site visitors and the numbers that take certain action.

Principles Don’t Change

If you were in business before the inter-web thingy took off, you’ll see that the same principles still apply. Back in the 80’s

I remember my old sales manager (his name was John Matthews) harping on about ’strike-rates ‘and ‘activity.’

He used to bang on about how the only way you can make more money in business was to:

Raise your prices
Increase the people you get in front of (activity and leads)
Improve the ratio of how many people you get in front of who actually buy something (strike-rate or conversion)
Improve the frequency of purchases that those customers make, so they buy more often.

This is simple and beautiful fact and it makes sense.

I am constantly amazed at how much so-called internet marketing experts manage to make this whole subject sound so complicated! You would have thought that they invented the idea of people giving money in exchange for services. Sheess.

BS Baffles Brains

So many internet marketers rabbit on about bounce rates, latent semantic indexing, theme relevancy and CMS open source websites that all they do is end up making themselves feel important. In the process they miss out on what really matters…

Helping their clients to make more money.

Online Conversion is a Simple Process

Now, don’t get excited. I don’t have a ‘Step-by-Step 568 Point Secret Action Report’ so you can ‘Get Laser-Hot Results and Explode Your Website Profits”.

No (sorry).

The point of this article is not to have you set off chasing butterflies by giving you ” 568 How-To-Tips” that will take you until 2013 to master. Instead, I’m going to outline the basic process that we apply to improving online conversion so that when you’ve read it, it makes sense to you. And, if that happens we might earn the right learn how we can help you.

I promise, that if you follow some of the guidelines below and decide to get help from us, then I guarantee that you’ll see jaw-dropping results in your chosen market or niche.

Hold on, let me qualify that…

The guarantee above assumes that you don’t sell anvils or ‘belly button lint removal services’, or similar. In other words, you need to sell or promote stuff that people actually want to buy. The reality is, it doesn’t matter if you’re at the top of Google with your anvil store, there needs to be demand for what you do.

It’s pretty simple. Unless people who visit your website actually take some action, there is little point in spending time and resources getting them to visit? Would you agree?

Online Conversion: Some Guidelines

Let’s assume that what you have to promote has value. Here are some guidelines that apply to online conversion:

Guideline #1:
To get visitors to take action, you first need to decide the action you want them to take. This is called the site objective, and there could be more than one. It just depends on the site. Is it an online shop? Is it a brochure site? Is it a lead-generation site? Is it an authority site? Are you selling information?

Once you decide what you want visitors to do (you may have more than one objective), you need to design your website with this objective in mind.

Here are the most common actions to consider:

Telephoning or TXTing you
Buying something online (either directly from your store or from an affiliate)
Requesting contact or more information from you (inquiries or leads)
Downloading some information such as a report or ‘whitepaper’
Joining your newsletter list or email database
Signing up to your information FEED or RSS

Plus others..

Guideline #2:
Structure your website using proven features that maximise the visits you get. This could include having your primary message in the line of site of the website, putting the right call-to-actions in the right places and more.

Guideline #3:
The right use of words is vital to improve online conversion. Your headline and message must align with your site objective. The site must be written using compelling language in the right tone that fits the mindset of your visitor.

Guideline #4:
You need to present real value before visitors will take action. So, what’s your ‘offer’? You’ll need a reason for people to buy or sign up, and that reasons needs to be articulated clearly using the right words and the right tone.

Guideline #5:
Set up a system that sends valueable insights or information to people and invite them to subscribe. There are many low-priced solutions that work that can turn returning visitors into paying customers.

Guideline #6:
If you can’t measure online conversion, you vcan’t improve it. So, make sure you get web analytics set up on your site to measure online conversion rates and other important metrics.

Online Conversion Help

We work with ambitious, entrepreneurial and growing companies to navigate through the mire of hype, myths and unscrupulous operators…And help them to dominate their industry or niche online. Really.

We combine SEO with online conversion to get results that last.

If you would like to find out more about how we can help you, (and to provide proof of how we’ve done it for others) please click the button below. We’ll provide a free online marketing and conversion review and provide insight and ideas irrespective of whether we end up working together.

Thank you for reading this.

Rhys Coffin
Online Conversion Specialist
Internet New Zealand Ltd

E: rhys@internetnewzealand.com

Online Conversion