Outdated Website? Try these six starting points for website optimization
Maintaining an up to date website has become a necessary price for running a business
Remember Sam Goody? No, not the fourth grader who made funny sounds. I’m talking the former record retailer, aka Musicland in some parts of the United States. Music industry changes lead to the demise of Sam Goody – who would’ve thought that Apple and Amazon would become the largest music retailers?
A similar effect can happen to your website. Changes in industry preferences, customer tastes, and new advances in online media can affect how your site is discovered. Scripting language has lead to new ways that webpages can function and interact, which gets translated into new ways a visitor experiences a website. Moreover, online experiences are become more closely aligned with offline sales. According to Experian in the 2011 Digital Marketer benchmark study, 73% of surveyed digital users review prices online before making a purchase, while 69% research products. 17% search social networks sites for information before a purchase. So the importance of online vitality has become essential to sales and business growth.
Updates also yield a positive effect on search engines rank. Search engines like updated sites, with more placing emphasis on visitor actions. Google’s Panda introduction, for example, reportedly downplaying links since so many black-hat SEO activities occurred with buying useless links attempting to gain more website authority.
Yet many businesses treat their website as a static property, because website maintenance seems to take both time and patience if there is a coding problem. But a balance of evolutionary changes, and a monitoring schedule with a web analytics solution, can convey business vitality that can lead to sales. Here’s some starting points to consider and what can be done.
- Inspect site function Google has a HTML checker that gives feedback on which changes are needed – it is located in Webmaster Tools, so you would need a Google account and include your site. You can check how your website appears in a browser, the speed in which pages are loaded, and verify the function of an analytics code. To check the appearance of a website in a browser, Adobe has a site called BrowserLab as does Browsershots . For page speed, use Yottaa, a free MongoDB-based solution in which you upload your URL for a page load test. In addition, Google is introducing a page speed testing service to support its updated emphasis on page loading (see here). The service increase page speed performance for website. More specific to analytics, Sitescan, a test service developed by Epik, can verify if your Google Analytics code properly operates after being added to your site.
- Is the traffic navigating in the manner in which you planned? Examine the goal and funnel reports to determine where along the traffic is dropping out of your site. Consider a heatmap at the point of visitor drop-off, and also consider a A/B test. These tests can indicate if minor changes would be effective to increase conversions (The number of action intended on the goal page)
- Is the exit rate high on a page with a number of links to additional material – One way to minimize exits on a page with a number of outbpound links is to add a “_target=blank” to those links; The link will appear as <a href = “http://www.yoursite.com _target=blank”> in the HTML code. Doing so will permit the new page to open in a new tab (This works for laptop/desktop browsers, and will not work in a mobile site, however). If the exit continues to be high, consider revising the content – use an A/B test for comparison.
- Is the trend of returning visitors increasing? A new site may have a high number of new visits at the start, but returning visitors are key for long term success – Their presence shortens the number of times to complete a sale if they are researching your business. To further engage them, consider social media widgets that display your activity and where visitors can reach you regularly. Twitter and Facebook both offer free widgets which can be embedded into a website. There are plugins for blogs as well. Yoast offers a Slideshare plugin for WordPress.
- Can unique content be offered as mobile site? You may have mobile traffic according your analytics, but the data may also be self-referential — visitors may be coming to your site through a mobile device but low conversion can occur if the site is too difficult to navigate. Try creating a mobile css that arranges for one particular offering or transaction and a mobile link that automatically dials your business. Creating a mobile site may allow for better access for potential customers who have a cellphone but may not have, say, Javascript capability to view a standard website feature or a way to view a large amount of text.
- Can you participate on sharing sites that can refer traffic sources? Though still useful, gaining quality sites to link to yours can be a time consuming task. Finding communities to augment a linking strategy may provide a consistent source of traffic. BizSugar, Digg, StumbleUpon can be combined with Facebook and Twitter for sharing your generated content.
As your business grows and changes, your site should also grow and change as well, reflecting your new products, services, locations, testimonials, articles, listings and anything else you would like to share with your current and potential customers. When you do not create a regular plan for updating your website, you are giving the advantage to your competitors. Regardless if you created your site or paid for your website, you have wasted time and money if no reinvestment occurs. By keeping your site up to date, you have contributed to the vitality of your business.
If your starting to evaluate keywords, see this Zimana post to gain some ideas. If you are planning to incorporate video, try this post for starting ideas.
What Kick-Ass Teaches Small Businesses About Targeting the Right Market
A product can gain buzz, like the movie Kick Ass did initially... but is the buzz coming from the right audience?
USA Today posted an article on the movie box office. Not usual. In it, the article mentions the anticipation built for the movie Kick-Ass, even with comparison to another comic book turned movie 300. Not usual either. What was unusual was the relatively low box office. Yes there was online buzz. What’s not kicking ass here?
Well, buzz does help for exposure. But the movie had a risk — The main characters were kids, yet the movie had an R rating.
Takeaway for small businesses:
- Any ol’ buzz is not equivalent to sales — if the audience talking about the product the most can not use/see/purchase it, then the buzz is worthless. Which means….
- The target consumers really need to be the ones doing the buzzing to make an event/product launch a success. Otherwise…
- The benefit of what is being offered is not of value to the intended consumer. In this case, the tough sell was getting adults who could see an R-rated movie interested in seeing an action movie with children as main characters.
The last point is not a light subject in movie making. Even Star Wars creator George Lucas, who admits he likes the R2-D2 character the most, was concerned that the first Star Wars movie (Episode I: A New Hope) may not appeal to moviegoers because the earliest scenes – between the attack on Princess Leia’s ship and when audience first meet Luke Skywalker – contained no human faces onscreen for the audience to relate to.
In short terms, the benefit of a product may not be of value to a consumer. In the case of Kick-Ass, the buzz may have been a distortion to whether the movie was marketed to the right audience. But there is some financial hope for Lionsgate (see this article on the box office for Kick-Ass in the LA Times).
What do you think? Offer your thoughts…
Customer Service in the age of social media and analytics
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Ever fill your gas tank in New Jersey (ok, a bad question for a Garden State car owner)? As a native Hoosier, I for one get amazed every time I fill a tank passing through New Jersey on the way to New York. New Jersey, along with Oregon, does not permit self service at fuel stations. This throws off my typical routine at times, as I have fueled my car in many states of driving. Full service in general has declined in America, so the idea of letting someone pump my gas, but not wipe my windshield or offer anything else while I am sitting in my car is an enigma. This is “full service-ish” at best.
The variation of a shopper experience can lead to that same sort of “ish” I experience with Garden State fill ups. It can alter the expectation between a consumer and service provider to create the experience. What are my “duties” as a consumer? What responsibility does the business provide? With exposure to difference experiences, the answer each consumer and business owner comes to varies.
We are in a new age of consumer interaction, thanks to the growth of e-commerce and the increased capability of websites to deliver consumer information. A Technorati post by Doug Stephens talks about how the consumer’s need for low price eliminated customer service in many cases. He references a survey in which respondents scored 1000 businesses at 48 points out of 100, a low score. I also agree with the article’s claim that there is a trade off between price and customer service, as well as a low score brings opportunity to improve the customer service experience. From the blog post:
For most consumers it’s become a matter of making trades and concessions based on the type of product, the brand, or the store we choose to shop at. Just as we don’t expect the lowest price for a laptop at the Apple Store, we can’t in good conscience demand brilliant service at Sears, whose stores have become a virtual sea of sale banners. And if in fact we really can’t live with that trade-off, then I’m afraid we’ll need to rethink our definition of value as consumers and as a society.
However, getting consumers to agree to a collective consciousness of the consumer service trade offs is an endless pursuit. Moreover a quick glance of customer service questions in Linked In and other sites indicate the idea that in business it may be more profitable to eliminate annoying customers — what is the yardstick to measure an annoying customer vs. an need to improve service?
A potential idea is to get businesses to state what the buying experience will generally be like. Apple has done a great job of this, setting the expectation through consistent behavior of product introduction and trained store experts, and further monitoring its results to create an experience rewarded by enthusiastic, loyal customers (Monitoring results is where analytics can support a business, small or large). For another successful example, read about Zappos and its customer service experience, mentioned in this Zimanablog post.
How has customer service changed for you, as a consumer or business, in the age of e-commerce.
How segmentation could have saved the Orient Express (and maybe your business, if it’s off track)
A National Public Radio article broke a news story that ends a vacation dream for me and a lot of people. The famous and original Orient Express, operating since the 1830s, is ending operations. Traveler shift to modern speed trains and cheaper flights across Europe made this train an endangered species. You can read the NPR article on the Orient Express and learn more about the train’s storied history (The post does mention a second OE train service, but the original had the storied past).
Now, one business takeaway from the NPR posting is a shift of customer tastes on which the Orient Express, for one reason or another, was not able to capitalize. Many businesses face a market adjustment with two responses — either reinvigorate your customer base despite the inevitable decline in an overall market or shift to new sources of customer. Cadillac is a great example – years ago it tried to stir its customer base with updated vehicles that continued its past definition of luxury despite the fact that it was aging (As customers grow older, they simply have less years to buy a car). Eventually it used a new line, the CTS, as a focal point to attract younger buyers interested in more performance – oriented luxury vehicles like BMW. Cadillac was able to lower the median age of the average purchaser.
One lesson for businesses is to examine the segmented traffic data they receive and develop how to best serve the traffic that can be converted into real customers. Many small businesses are learning to add analytics tags to their websites, like Yahoo! Analytics and Google Analytics, but many are not taking any time to review the data in a deeper analysis. Avinash Kaushik, author of Web Analytics 2.0 and Web Analytics, An Hour A Day, stressed the important perspective that website visitors are not an aggregate, that they arrive to a site for different reasons. Smart business leaders learn to engage these customers via social media, surveys, and generally talking to customers. Small businesses like Zimana consult businesses on how to best segment the data and determine actionable insights. Segmenting can help identify the right visitors that lead to outcomes — sales, sign ups, downloads, etc. It can also direct offline business activity that may be required to support the desired outcomes. Dell’s success in generating revenue from Twitter with its refurbished computer sales is an example.
In this case, Orient Express would have needed to find ways to appeal to customers on the romance of train travel, such as unique personalized customer service and reinforcing links to its destinations. This would have resulted in a focus on a core travel crowd that, while small in size, could yield to additional and profitable opportunities. This is not a new concept — Coach focused on developing its brand of mid-level handbags on an ignored segment — mid-luxury between luxury handbags and knock-off version. (Another example comes from Lexus — check out the Zimana blog post on how it is marketing a new halo ultra-luxury sports car, the LF-A, to strengthen its global brand). Successful businesses often find new way to reinvigorate its customer base, and web analytics can provide a great insight if sales are conducted online.
Does your business try to segment its customers? if so, does the effort lead to great ways to stimulate customers (and sales)?