Is Your Host Weather Proof? Than Neither Is Your Business

"What do you mean tech support is at a basketball game?

Anybody with a credit card can buy hosting services at wholesale and resell them at retail. heck, all you need is a server and router in the bedroom closet and your a web host. But, if you go with one of these low-ball, rickity services to save a few bucks each month, you may end up losing your business.

Could be a flood. A Lightening storm, hurricaine or it could be your host jst unplugged the server and walked away with your website and your database. When you get a 404 error message logging on to your own web site, you got a fistful of problems.

Weather shouldn’t be one of them. You want a bunker mentality, back-up generators and off-site back-up for you $9.95 shared hosting account. That’s why it’s worth asking a few questions before you sign that 24-month contract with “Skippy’s Web Hosting, Skippy speaking.”

Quality web hosts deliver more than their clients expect. More in the way of services, client care, education, performance and security. If these business don’t deliver higher levels of customer care, they aren’t going to remain in business when stacked up against competitor hosting companies.

Now, one of the biggest concerns site owners have is security. Most of those commercial site owners have invaluable data that simply can’t be compromised. So, good web server providers use hardwired firewalls and multiple layers of server side security. All well and good. All to be expected from a good web hosting company in a highly competitive vertical market.

What a lot of consumers don’t consider is the safety of the physical plant – the place where their servers sit. The servers could be in India or Indiana. Many of these web hosts buy disk space in bulk and resell at retail. They don’t even know where the servers are!

So, since this is your business, it just makes sense to ask a few questions about how safe your server is. If the operation is run out of a yurt and one of those infamous dessert dust storms blows through, it could take weeks for the technician (they only have one) to get the grit out of the gear.

So what’s the weather like where your server resides?

Rainy Days
Rain isn’t a problem most of the time, unless it comes down in buckets for a week. Then, you run the risk of flooding and a wet server is a dead server. Oh, and by the way, there goes your business.

However, what if the servers are elevated? What if they’re up on racks? Even if Noah’s Ark plows through the front door your server is high and dry. Not all web hosts think about the worst case scenario. Your’s should. It may not have flooded for 100 years where your server sits connecting you to the W3. But it only takes one torrential downpour to create a catastrophe. It’s nice to know your host is prepared for the next deluge.

Howling Winds
When the winds come racing “down the plains,” you know it. You feel it. And lately, it seems we’ve been feeling it more – seeing more tornadoes and other high winds. Global warming? El Niño? Who knows, but winters seem colder, blizzards more common and power outages routine. In some cases, power outages that take weeks to repair.

A good web host has its own back-up generators to handle these disasters. Remember, when you’re off-line so’s your business. You want to stay on line, even if the power is out in your server’s home city – wherever in the world that may be.

Quality hosts have built systems that automatically trip the in-house generators so there’s barely a blip on the visitors’ monitors. Your site stays on line even if the web hosting company is the only lit building in the whole city.

Off Site Backup
You don’t see this with most web hosts. Off site backup.

Most reputable hosts provide backup protection in case a server goes ka-blooey (a technical term). Unfortunately, these hosts’ backup to servers in the same office, server room or bedroom closet (Yep, some web hosts resell disk space and run a couple of servers out of the spare room.) Anybody see the flaw in this logic?

If a web hosting company gets flattened by a tornado (knock wood), the building may be leveled and servers may be six miles away, carried by tornadic winds of 180 miles per hour.

But you know what? If your web host cares about maintaining your business, your site is safe, even from a tornado that takes direct aim at server rack 12A. In this case, run, duck and cover. All clients’ sites, databases, everything – should be backed up off site. Way off site.

So, whether we’re talking rain, sleet, snow, raging winds, torrential downpours, tornadoes, earthquakes or being struck by an asteroid, it’s the web host’s job to keep your site online.

And it’s a job any web host should take seriously so you don’t have to worry. When talking to reps of hosting companies, ask about protection from natural and unnatural disasters. It’s your job to ask the right questions.

It’s the web host’s job to provide the right level of protection against any potential disaster.

Need help finding the right web host for your new on-line venture? Go to webwordslinger.com and get in touch. Let’s get you started on the right foot. Webwordslinger: On-Line Marketing.

Customer Relationship Software (CRM): Who, What, Where and When?

Each Client Or Customer Is Unique

As a webmaster, you know what’s involved in designing, constructing and administrating an online business – everything from paying the bills to syndicating content, a well-run e-biz is a multi-faceted operation. And you run the show.

However, if you try this, then re-do that, test such-and such and hire people who don’t “get it,” your online business won’t be the dream come true you’ve been planning. The key is to integrate all of your business activities into a single strategy called CRM – customer relationship management. CRM is at the heart of any growing business. The principles are simple, you don’t need an MBA and it doesn’t cost a lot of money (much of CRM doesn’t cost any money).

CRM is an important consideration for corporations, NFPs, NGOs and public sites, all of which seek to implement the basics to manage relationships with customers, clients and stakeholders (upper management, shareholders, etc.).

It’s all about the acquisition and analysis of customer data, vendor information and the in-house procedures you design to connect satisfied customer to eager vendor. Think of your website as the intermediary between buyer and seller – your customers and your wholesalers.

What Purpose Does CRM Serve?
Customer relationship management weaves together a variety of business functions to deliver the best product and retain the customer or client. Client retention is the ultimate purpose of CRM but, in the process of developing a CRM strategy, you’ll be required to consider all facets of your business including: professional development (for you and any staff you have, paid or otherwise), customer service (this specifically includes training customer service representatives, if you outsource this task), sales, marketing and promotion and, finally, compensation – who gets what.

If you’re the only participant, this won’t be a difficult decision to make. Any compensation comes back to you as either salary or operating capital to expand the business further.

The Building Blocks of a Solid CRM Strategy
In addition to your learning curve (assuming you’re a sole proprietor), which takes time and costs money in lowered productivity, you’ll need several tools to develop a workable and effective CRM strategy.

Your Database
Your business database contains all customer/client information along with inventory data, shipping dates and other order processing and marketing data. It is the focus of any CRM. In fact, without this information, there is no CRM.

This means, when designing your first website, you install a reliable, simple, automated database (MySQL, for example) to track all business activities. These activities fall into four distinct categories: (1) analytical CRM, (2) operational CRM, (3) interactive CRM (interactive with site visitors) and finally, (4) integrated client support and customer service throughout the business itself.

Analytical CRM
To undertake these CRM-based activities you’ll need some tools and some time. Analytic CRM requires software that can deliver useable stats. If the software delivers reams of indecipherable numbers, the data won’t be as useful to other members of the business team. The CFO may understand what that 250-page financial report shows, but the CEO may not.

Employ analytical software that delivers data in graphic formats – heat maps, pie charts and other visual representations. This equips your whole team (even if you’re the only player) to understand, assimilate and use site metrics with greater effectiveness.

Operational CRM
Where’s what?

The daily administration of your site is greatly simplified through the use of CRM tracking software. Using this software, you’re able to automate many routine functions such as auto-responder emails when orders are placed and news updates sent during an email blast to those customers and opt-ins stored in your database.

However, operational CRM also enables you to make the best use of the data you maintain in the system. If the bank account number of a key vendor in Korea is written on the back of a scrap of paper, you’ll spend more time looking for that information than if you were able to bring up all of that vendor’s information on a single screen via the CRM software loaded on your work station.

Tracking data – sales data, order data, site metrics, order status and other critical information – becomes much simpler when (1) it’s easily accessible in one place and (2) you’re able to automate routine functions, giving you more time to focus on more “human-oriented” tasks like developing your next marketing campaign.

Interactive CRM
A relatively new digital phenomenon but one web users have quickly adopted and now expect from sites selling goods or services.

Interactive CRM enables the visitor to customize a product search using a site search feature that delivers the desired content whether the visitor enters a product name, brand or even part number. Fast. The visitor is in and out – and hopefully you’ve made a sale and a new customer.

Forms are another use of CRM interactivity. More and more sites collect data on their visitors who don’t seem to mind providing it, especially if they’re tempted with a free eBook download.

This information provides opt-ins (pure gold) and marketing data to better define your demographic and its needs. And again, the automation of the data acquisition and generation of the download key code integrates operational and interactive CRM, creating a business synergy.

Interactive CRM also delivers the ability to the client to ask a question via email. The “Contact Us” page of a site is where you’ll usually find this feature. It’s another channel to keep your clientele happy and to collect opt-in email addresses for future messages and updates.

Integrated CRM
CRM should be the focus of all your site design, marketing, ordering and management of customer objections. Instead of dealing with sales as a separate aspect of your operation, it’s built into the master plan employing operational, interactive and analytic CRM data drawn from an up-to-date data base.

When a CRM program is designed, it should look like a flow chart with automated decision points, QC statements, data collation and other business activities functioning as a unified whole. This is the ultimate goal of developing your site’s plan for customer relationship management.

In a cosmically competitive marketplace like the web, every advantage you gain over a competitor makes your business stronger. If you can deliver an order a day faster than the competition, you win. The relationship with those happy buyers is strong and they will be back to buy again.

Using CRM software to chart the course your online business may take a day or two to figure out, if marketing and customer care aren’t a part of your professional background. But that learning curve will pay off many times over by providing data that drives solutions to online retail problems.

Looking for synergies between marketing and order taking? Trying to figure out your percentage of repeat buyers over the past 12 months? Trying to resolve a customer complaint? You want (no you need) CRM tools just to keep up.

Need some helpt tracking your clients? Drop me aline or give me a call. I’ll show you how to treat a customer right. Webwordslinger.

CSS: Keep Your Content and Design Distinct

Simplfy Site Changes With CSS

Web sites are constructed using a simple computer code called HTML which stands for hyper-text mark-up language. HTML forms the backbone of the world wide web, providing the underlying infrastructure of the millions of web sites that occupy the digital landscape. HTML is simple to learn and implement, which is one reason it’s the W3 standard. However, HTML has a couple of significant drawbacks.

First, it’s cumbersome. It requires a great deal of hand coding which is very expensive compared to automated coding.

Second, HTML lacks flexibility. Elements of design, images, charts and other common web site features have to be positioned using HTML code – on every page, even if the layout stays the same.

Finally, HTML isn’t very efficient. So, if you have a site on which content changes often, as in the “sale of the day,” you or some HTML coder has to go into the HTML code to make those changes in content every day.

To address these and other HTML limitations, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) were devised to supplement the still-standard HTML code.

CSS is intended to increase flexibility of design, make sites more user-friendly by making them much faster and customizable and, finally, CSS eliminates repetitive and pricey hand-coding, making it much less expensive to get a professional-looking site up and running. Okay, not anybody can do it, but if you have some facility with site design and construction you can employ CSS to simplify the structure of the site.

Content and Design
Every page of a web site is comprised of two elements: content and design. Content is usually presented as text but content also includes pictures and other images that are a part of “telling your story.”

The other aspect of any web page is design – how the content is actually laid out on any given page. Design includes such basics as where to position product text near a product picture (under, over, to the side, surrounding) to the motif selected for everything from background color to buttons to navigation bar.

If you think of these as two distinct elements of a web page you’ll more clearly understand the value of CSS. Using CSS, design elements are kept in a separate file, apart from content. The benefits are immediate and significant.

Design It Once
Using stand-alone HTML requires that every page be constructed (coded) with both content and elements of design being hand placed by the code writer. No problem if your site is a few pages, but what if you’ve got hundreds or thousands of pages. Having to hand code each one of those pages would be costly in the extreme because it would take so long.

Using CSS, the designer codes all design elements one time. This is the background color, these are the colors of this header, this is the size of this button – all elements of design are placed in a single, CSS file.

Then, the coder can simply reference that CSS file to apply that design to whatever pages use it. Think of Amazon.com’s product pages – all basically the same layout. The content changes, of course, but the product pix are always in the same position, product description, reviews, etc. are always in the same place. Prior to the development of CSS, each of those pages required some hand coding in addition to a lot of cutting and pasting from blocks of HTML code.

Today, a designer can make any number of CSS and reference each site page to the appropriate style sheet. Design it once, then change the content as needed.

The Many, Mighty Benefits of CSS

First, let’s start with search engines. Spiders crawl pages of repetitious HTML code. It takes longer to spider a site and it’s more difficult for the spider to identify new content. With CSS, content and design are separate. So, a spider crawls the CSS file once then focuses on the site’s real purpose – the text that delivers the site’s message.

This elevates content to a new level since spiders are always looking for fresh content in assessing a site’s quality. Text is given more weight when design is relegated to a CSS file.

Second, download time is reduced anywhere from 20% to 80%. Why? Because instead of having to download dozens of pages of HTML design code, you now download a single CSS file with all design elements in one place. The text may be the same but downloads are much, much shorter, providing visitors with a better on-site experience.

CSS are more friendly to a variety of media – everything from cell phones and Blackberries to screen readers for the visually impaired who no longer have to sit through written descriptions of page graphics via an HTML tag.

CSS enables the visitor to design the site to his or her needs and/or preferences. Don’t like that type font? Click here for any easier one to read. In other words, by accessing different CSS, visitors can create screen settings that they like or need due to vision problems or just personal preferences.

Next, CSS cuts down on the costs of site design. Using CSS, programmers design it once and apply where desired. And remember, the designer can create as many CSS as required so there are no design limitations. In the same vein, updating a site is much less costly – very important to sites that sell a lot of different products with constantly changing inventory.

Finally, a site owner can easily create printer-friendly versions of all pages by creating a text only CSS. Very useful in sites that provide a great deal of hard content or print out invoices.

What Should I Do?
If you haven’t started the design of your site, go with CSS programming all the way. There are lots of on-line tutorials and many web hosts provide CSS software for easy style sheet creation.

If your site is already up and running, consider taking the time and/or incurring the expense of converting to CSS. Any one of the benefits listed above should be enough to motivate you but if not, how’s this: your competitors have already converted to CSS or soon will be. You’ll be the last black & white TV on the cyber block.

Faster downloads, user-customized pages, lower design and maintenance costs, easier reading by spiders, much less hand coding and flashier, more professional-looking sites. Those are the benefits of using cascading style sheets.

So, what are you waiting for? Go CSS and make your site more attractive, more visitor-friendly and much, much cooler much, much faster.

Need some help pumping up your site’s performance? Yeah, it’s a headache. Give me a call. I’m the cure. Webwordslinger.

Google Checkout: Is It Worth It?

 

Accept Credit Cards With Google Checkout - Easy!

Google Checkout is a checkout processing service that not only handles basic order processing chores, it also delivers some marketing benefits that no other checkout package can.

 

What’s Google Checkout and why should I care?

You should care because processing orders takes a big chomp out of your bottom line and anything you can do to cut those costs is a good step to take.

First, the Checkout module “bolts” right on to your existing website and fully integrates with CMS and other content and data management programs you have in place. Second, it provides customers with the very convenient “One-Click Checkout” – buyers enter shipping and credit card information once and buying is just a single click away. This generates more sales and repeat traffic simply because it’s so easy.

Finally, Google Checkout automates payment processing by providing numerous credit card options (the more payment gateways, the more sales). It processes orders interfacing seamlessly with your inventory management software and, finally, the best part – the software automatically drops payments into the company bank account. Automatic. Easy. Very cool.

The Google Cache? Really?

Look, Google has an excellent reputation among consumers of search engine services. It is, after all, the largest SE and, it appears to be taking over the world. So, if you can associate your site with Google, a bit of that gleam is reflected your way.

This is especially true if you use sponsored Google Adwords – those sponsored links that appear on every Google SERP and ubiquitously on web pages everywhere. If you use Adwords for marketing, you can display the Google Checkout badge, a little green shopping cart, on all Adwords you place. It’s a nice touch and a convenience that buyers will come to recognize in the months ahead.

Improve You Conversion Rate

Google’s Checkout is designed for online purchases, simplifying the process at every stage. So, you won’t lose as many buyers at the checkout trying to figure what to do next. Google’s Checkout GUI is simple, uncluttered and reassuring, enhancing the trust factor.
Free Adwords?

Not quite, but close. For every $1 you spend on Google’s Adwords program – an effective program, BTW – you receive $10 of processed sales for free. So, spend $100 a month on Adwords, building your business, and you’ll be able to process $1000 in sales for exactly $0.

If you exceed your Adword rebate, or you opt not to use Adwords, the processing costs are still reasonable at 2% plus $0.20 per transaction. Not bad.

Fraud Protection

And plenty of it. The system takes a proactive approach to fraud, filtering out bogus transactions before you’re burned. Google even offers a limited Payment Guarantee if you ever get a chargeback on a legit purchase.

Options and More Options

You can get started with Google Checkout in three ways. There’s easiest, easier and “I’d better call in someone who knows what they’re doing.” Let’s examine each.

Buy Now Buttons

This is the easiest way to hook up your site to Google Checkout. You simply paste snippets of Google-generated HTML code into your site’s HTML browser. That’s it. You’re hooked up and when customers click on that ‘Buy Now’ button, they’re directed through the checkout like any well-respected customer.

E-commerce Partners

Still pretty easy. All site owners have to do is enter their Merchant ID number and Merchant Key on the E-commerce Partners’ web page. This more fully integrates your existing order processing system with the new checkout.

Google Checkout API

If you aren’t sure how all the various pieces of your web site are interconnected, don’t try to install this option without a little help from your site designer or the neighbor’s kid who’s a whiz-bang at this stuff.

There are two levels of integration and, if it isn’t done properly, you may be processing orders by way of Greenland.

Easy As Pie

The hook-up you employ will depend on the extent of your product line and the need to integrate sales data with inventory, drop shipping and other order fulfillment matters. If you do you own shipping, go with option 1 or 2.

Regardless of which level of Google Checkout you select for your site, it’s all automated to keep things simple. You select the bank account where you want deposits made. You verify your account (takes a couple of days) but after that, money is deposited electronically. Nothing could be easier

Want to learn more? Want to see which hook-up is best for you? That’s easy, too. Just follow the link. You’ll be able to register and get started in just a few minutes. So, if you haven’t selected a checkout mod (there are several), or your planning to ramp up your Adwords spending, check out Google’s Checkout for benefits that no other check-out package can deliver.

The Case for Outsourcing

Outsourcing is a four-letter word in the current U.S. business climate. Jobs being exported to distant and not-so-distant countries, depriving American workers jobs on assembly lines and in office cubicles answering customer care telephone calls.

 

ARE YOUR KIDDING ME? OUTSOURCE IT!

The fact is that many outsources are U.S.-based. I am. I live in Connecticut. But people and businesses call me every day looking to outsource everything from content development (copywriting) to business development consultation. Over the years, as I’ve learned more I’ve been able to expand my service offerings – a sure-fire way to stay ahead of the bill collector, especially in slow times in an inert business climate.

 

But business marches on. And outsourcing is a great tool for business owners large and small. And, you can outsource anything. ANYTHING!

Why increase your staff?
If you run a small, boutique ad agency catering to local merchants and associations, why hire a copywriter when you can outsource the work? When you outsource to a quality provider you only pay for work delivered.

An employee actually costs a business owner 20% over and above that employee’s salary, so an editor earning $50 a year actually costs the company $60K with health benefits, sick days, vacations, maternity leave and other employee bennies.

Outsources pay their own insurance and when they take vacations it’s on their time, not yours. Bottom line: you only pay for performance – by the page or by the word or a fixed price for the entire project.

That’s another benefit, often overlooked by buyers of outsourced services. You can set a fixed price for a project. Keep it fair to maintain the provider’s attention but, by establishing a fixed price, you know to the penny just how much something is going to cost, whether it’s web site text or bookkeeping services.

From a pure productivity POV, outsources deliver greater value than staff employees.

No long-term commitment
Another plus. Once the job is finished, your relationship with the service provider is over unless you want to keep it going. It’s your call.

If you hire someone and they don’t work out, you’re stuck. Hire an outsource you don’t like and just move on to the next one until you find the provider who delivers the highest level of quality at the lowest price.

You can negotiate
You can with an outsource. Many will take a lower fee for regular work. It’s a good gig because the provider doesn’t have to beat the bushes for the next assignment so the trade-off between regular work and per hour rate evens out.

Can’t do that with an employee.

Create a virtual office.
There are big companies that employ virtual offices. Workers log in from home, see their assignments, notes from supervisors, reports to be read – everything they’d find in their in-boxes at work.

This software equips you to oversee all employee or outsourced activity in real time. This saves a ton of money on office space, furniture, equipment and donuts in the morning. It’s just like having an office but your outsources telecommute.

And you can track all business activity from an administrator’s console, making it easy to see pinch points and other problems before they become serious problems.

You get real world experience
Outsource workers have a long list of referrals and recommendations from happy clients. That may not be the case of the interviewee who has three recommendations from her communications professors. You want hard-nosed, no-nonsense recommendations from people just like you. A good outsource collects these referrals as a business building tool.

So you know what you’re getting.

You don’t need no “stinkin’” office. You don’t need a staff of 10. All you need is a well-fed Rolodex and a central clearing house – a virtual office – to keep projects moving forward.

So, whether it’s order fulfillment, marketing, accounting or even legal services, you can find highly-qualified men and women on sites like Elance, odesk and rentacoder.

Don’t hire and add 20% to your company’s operating expenses. Outsource in the U.S. and get more value for your shrinking dollar. And though it may sound harsh, if the company is going under for the third time, consider cutting costs by cutting full and part-time staff and outsourcing your bookkeeping and contract negotiations instead of paying for time spent chatting around the water cooler.

I’m an outsource and I’m proud of it.

Turning Metrics Into On-Line Sales Momentum

Does Your Sales Chart Look Like This?

When you build a website, the next step is to market that site and to do that, you need numbers – hard data that shows what’s working and what isn’t.

There are plenty of metrics software packs that provide piles of hard data – but what do all of those numbers mean in terms of site performance? If your pay-per-click rate is $1.86, is that good or bad and how do you know?

What’s the significance of the most common metrics and how can you better use these facts and figures to sell your site?

Metrics in General
First, a quick tour of what site metrics are in general and an explanation of why these numbers can do more harm than good.

First, site metrics tell you what has already happened – how many visitors you site saw yesterday, how many click-throughs you got last week, how long visitors stayed on site and other “yesterday’s news.” Keep this in mind when employing these numbers. On the world wide web your site may appear on page one of Google’s SERPs on Tuesday and page 23 on Thursday even though you didn’t change a thing on the site! Now you have to figure out why and fix the problem fast.

Second, site metrics are raw data, raw data that can be interpreted in any number of ways. In fact, interpretation is one of the biggest mis-uses of site metrics. Example: You conduct an A/B test using two AdWords. One pulls significantly more than the other. So you assume that the more productive blue block of text (60 characters total including the site URL) is the better choice.

That’s an assumption that may well be your undoing. There are any number of reasons one PPC ad pulls more than another including add placement on relevant site pages, cost per click (based on keywords), presentation parameters you set (I only want this AdWords to appear in Canada.) and so on. So, warning sign on the road ahead: remember that metrics are wide open to interpretation and your interpretation of this data could be 180 degrees off.

But, you can learn what metrics are commonly used and why. Take a look.

1. PPC – Simple. Pay per click. You only pay when someone clicks on your PPC ad. The more clicks, the more it costs you whether the visitor makes a purchase or not.

A good number of click-throughs is an excellent indicator that you’ve written a good PPC ad and that it’s being placed on good SERPs (based on your bid for laser keywords). PPC can also be compared to other raw data like CPM (see below) and conversion rate – the number of visitors who actually buy something or perform some other action like make a donation or opt-in for a monthly newsletter.

2. CPM – Stands for cost-per-thousand (M) of impressions. An impression is just that. The ad appeared on a web page or SERP but no action was taken on the part of the visitor. The PPC ad, potentially, was seen (made an impression) but you have no way of determining that from raw data alone.

So what good is CPM data? It provides a ratio of the number of impressions compared to the actual number of click throughs that were generated by the viewed ad. The more click-throughs per impressions the better. If only one visitor is clicking through even though 5,238 impressions were made overnight, you have a pretty sad click-through rate – an indication that the text of your PPC might not be pulling as much as you’d like.

3. Reach is a broad term the describes how well your marketing plan is working overall. If you’re getting lots of click-throughs and lots of sales from people all over the world (assuming that was your plan) your PPCs have a wide reach. Conversely, if you’re getting tons of impressions but no one is clicking, check and re-check your PPCs for the problem. It could be something as simple as a spelling error or something as complicated as the keyword headers you’ve selected.

4. Frequency is an indicator of how often visitors return to your site, and this depends on site stickiness. Is there a reason to return? The daily horoscope, the site blog or forum, the sale of the hour? All of these create site stickiness, important because the more times a visitor stops by your site, the more likely s/he is going to make a purchase, sign up for your newsletter or perform some other action you’d like to see.

5. Click depth is often used to determine a site’s bounce rate. A bounce is a visitor who lands on your site (homepage or interior page) and immediately bounces to another site. Click depth indicates (1) how deep the visitor went into your site and (2) did those interior pages lead to a sale, opt-in or some other desired action?

If you find that your click depth numbers are low, it indicates that visitors aren’t sticking around long enough to perform an action, like make a purchase. And this is where many new site owners start leaping to conclusions – the wrong conclusions: we chose the wrong domain name, the color scheme isn’t right, the typeface is all wrong and so on.

Click depth tells you whether your site is keeping the attention of the visitor. It doesn’t tell you why that interest is maintained. However, if click depth is low on your site, the bounce rate is high and that’s going to require some tweaking.

6. Calls-to action is a good metric to measure the quality of your site text from granite-solid hard sell to the soft sell required of certain products or services. (When was the last time you saw a funeral home announcing its ANNUAL FEBRUARY CASKET CLEARANCE SALE.)

The measurement of calls-to-action indicate the number of times visitors add something to their shopping carts, whether product, service, newsletter opt-in or some other desired action like a request for a price quote. It may not be a sale but it is a contact and an email opt-in that you can back sell, so it’s a good metric to track.

7. $$$ per transaction indicates how much each paying customer spent on your site. Absolutely critical information when placed in the proper context. If you’re selling party favors online and your dollars per transaction are running $20 a piece, that’s pretty good for party hats and birthday napkins.

On the other hand, if you’re selling high-end wrist watches with a couple of cheapies thrown in to expand buyer appeal, and your dollars per transaction are still $20, umm, you might want to consider dropping the cheap watches – unless your margins are really sweet and you pick up another 5% on shipping and handling.

Again, dollars per transaction, all by itself, is a useless number. Placed in some larger context, it becomes a useful (and reliable) metric.

8. Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) is the actual dollar amount spent to generate a sale and, to develop a true CPA, you must calculate the costs of building your site plus the cost of the PPC, or other sponsored advert. Plus monthly hosting costs.

CPA does NOT include the cost of goods (which are fixed by your wholesaler), postage or your time to process and ship the order – even though your time does have a dollar value, it shouldn’t be figured into your monthly CPA figures.

9. Site referrals is a great way to measure the usefulness of your site. This form of viral marketing is 100% word of mouth. BTW, if your site doesn’t have a “Refer a Friend” feature, you’re missing out on a great opportunity.

10. Net is the amount your web site generated after all expenses have been paid except for your time which, as the site owner, isn’t necessarily calculated as part of the site’s net profit. Net profit is, in fact, your salary if you want to take it. Or, you can reinvest that net into more advertising outlets like hosted content, links buying and other traction-building promotional efforts.

Just a couple of reminders:

Metrics tell you what has happened, not what will happen if you do such and such.

Metrics are raw data open to interpretation. A professional SEO may view metrics data positively while the next SEO predicts doom and gloom for your site.

Metrics analysis almost always requires making assumptions. This raw data are open to interpretation and many times these interpretations are dead wrong.

Use analytical software that converts this raw data into visual representations such as heat maps (the red blotch shows where people clicked; blue blotches are invisible to visitors). These analysis software packs make interpreting data easier, thus making the data more valuable.

Finally, establish a baseline for all your metrics – CPA, PPC, depth and so on. You’ll use these baselines as measuring sticks as you tweak the look of your site and your marketing efforts.

The E-conomics of E-Marketing

I apologize for this rather long-winded look at marketing econonmies on the web, but the simple fact is web ad revenues are projected to increase 15%. Follow the ad revenues.

So, if you’ve been relying on the local newspaper, direct mail, auto-responders or some other marginally effective marketing as a solo, keep reading.

Time to go digital, amigos.

Advertising – Changing Course

First, share prices of advertising and marketing companies are at annual lows on the day of this writing. Investors aren’t ignorant of what’s taking place. The traditional marketing outlets…well, they’re on their way out.

Newspaper revenues have been heading south for years and magazine advertising, predicted to grow at 4.1% in ’07 according to ZenithOptimedia will actually come in at 2.5% to 3.3%. “Shrinkage,” as George Costanza would say.

Part of the reason for this has been mass advertising’s slow response to web-based advertising. Consider this: thanks to the remote, I don’t have to sit through annoying commercials. I have become adept at getting back to the show I’m watching with just seconds to spare. But I’m not watching commercials, that’s for certain.

And though I get a couple of newspapers a day, I scan the news (which is already old thanks to digital technology), glance at the sports page during baseball season and see what Mike Doonesbury is up to.

Then, I spend eight hours a day (sometimes more) online, conducting research for articles like this one. Right now, on screen I’ve got an ad for Forbes magazine and Adify, purveyor of ads for vertical market segments, i.e. niche markets. Here’s what Adify offers versus the local newspaper:

• Achieve greater reach and impact with unique targeting

• Choose from quality networks created and managed by leading brands and experts

• View and control exactly who (within and across networks) runs your ads

• Run IAB Standard rich media, video, display or text ads

• Target any ad format across quality branded and niche sites

This ad placement service is the direction we’re all headed – finding ways to get our company’s message in front of more eyeballs. You already see it on TV with product placements in TV shows and the “Lo-Jack Caught Stealing” replay during the sixth inning. Advertisers know we surf or skip the commercials when we TiVO so instead of shredding out the commercials, they’re interwoven into the content itself.

In fact, you can’t watch a sporting event without being bombarded by product placements and ads. All the players on certain college teams wear a certain brand of shoe. Why? Because all the players love the shoe? Of course not, the manufacturer pays big money to display their logo on athletes’ footwear.

The Death Throes of Ink
My local newspaper has been sold three times in the past 12 months. It’s a hot potato – it doesn’t have any other print competition and they still can’t turn a profit.

Search engine localization (local search) is changing the entire dynamic of advertising. Instead of spending money on a one-time insert that may or may not pay for itself, car dealers, appliance stores and even the big boxes are hopping on the web bad wagon. These big retailers know which way the wind blows. They also know why people are turning to the web rather than the local paper.

More features. Greater convenience. You can log on and conduct a search for a car in a specific price range, specific make and model – even location – and in seconds have full-color pictures of your options that day. Print advertisers aren’t going to deliver that kind of response. In most places, Saturday is car day in the papers. The last section or two are dedicated to all the different cars on sale at local dealerships. You may have noticed this because a lot of car shopping takes place on Saturday.

But the car dealers who depend solely on this arcane form of advertising are going to be blown out of the water by specialized search engines that equip the user to find the best deal to a completely-customized auto within a 35 mile radius.

Print can’t compete on that level. It lacks the ability to interact with the user in a fully dynamic way.

The Future and Your Place In It
You’re looking at it. You’re reading it.

The Director of Forecasting at ad giant Universal McCann, Bob Coen, downgraded his forecasts for ’07 from 4.5% ad revenue spending growth to 3.1%. However, Coen believes that ’08 will see a 5% growth in total ad revenues, with less and less of those revenues going to traditional promotional outlets like local cable, newspapers and regional magazines – older forms of accessing potential buyers.

The money is being spent on web advertising and you can take advantage of it as both a seller of goods and owner of a web site. Either way, you can generate more revenue than through traditional media.

Want to watch a music video on AOL? OK, “but first a 15-second message from our sponsor.” The sponsor, BTW is always targeting the young, tech-savvy user since gramps wouldn’t know a music video from another “danged” commercial.

Bank of America’s financial analysts lowered their stability rating of The New York Times from a neutral to a sell – definitely an indicator of how large, institutional investors are turning away from print and putting those ad dollars on your site – or on somebody’s site!

How to Sell Ad Space on Your Site?
The easiest way is to become an affiliate. You don’t exactly sell ad space but you collect a small piece of the sales transaction and maybe a flat fee for each successful click, for example. But you aren’t going to attract the deep pockets advertisers through an affiliate program. At least not efficiently and cost effectively. What are you going to do? Call the marketing director at Coke?

It’ll cost you to use online advertising placement services, put it may be worth it – especially as a means of generating some cash flow quickly.

There are plenty of online ad agencies that can help design a cogent marketing plan – one that places your ads in the right places on the right pages of the right sites as well as generates some cash by selling space on your site.

However, before you contact one of these digitally-based agencies, consider the following:

1. How much can I spend on marketing? If the number is small, or even less than zero, please refer to the posts on viral marketing because it’s going to take cash to see some company flash on high ranking websites.

2. The guy with the checkbook is always boss. If you’re placing ads, you can and should stay involved through the entire process working with your account executive. If a well-branded player wants to place a big banner on your home page, and the money is right for you, go for it. Give the boss what he, she or it wants.

3. Never sign a long term contract with an agency. Anybody can call themselves an online ad agency but if you aren’t seeing soaring results, you want to be able to bail ASAP and find a more productive agency.

4. Learn to listen. You may know everything there is to know about drill bits but give the ad pros a chance to soup up your bottom line. However, if you don’t start to see noticeable results in six months, move on to another agency.

Why Digital Advertising?
Digital is digital is digital.

Once a marketing piece has been created, it can be formatted quickly for use through a wide variety of media including digital computers, digital cell phones, PDAs (digital) and, of course, digital video (DV), including digital HDTV.

So, for deep pockets advertisers – the IBMs of advertising – this enables the marketing department to create content once, format it six ways from Sunday and blitz the entire media spectrum using the same content.

You want to be a part of this marketing tsunami heading your way? So, okay, maybe become an affiliate – just to try it. If it works, great. Good for you.

But, also, consider selling ad space and buying ad space on relevant sites. Use one of the hundreds of online ad agencies that are all reading from the same book. Then, monitor results.

You don’t want excuses. You want results. That’s the only way to measure the success of your agency’s marketing plan.

If you’re paying an agency and NOT seeing spectacular improvement in sales, your cost of acquisition (CPA) is soaring, your inventory is piling up in the garage and your online advertising account executive is mysteriously away from her desk whenever you call.

Ad placement should create synergies between your site and the host site or, if your’s is the host site, it should generate lots of sales for the advertiser and some dependable cash flow for you – especially during the first few months of operation when outgo far exceeds income. Placing an ad on your site for Ford or Toshiba will, indeed, generate ad revenues and the higher your PR the more $$$ you’ll earn.

Or, if you’re the advertiser (the one paying for the advertising), at least in theory, you’ll see more click-throughs, site traffic and revenues. Advertiser or host site – either way, there’s money to be made online so stop the presses and join the millions of commercial site owners who have recognized that print is NOT growing, but digital is.

Which side do you want to be on?

 

 

Sorry for the long-winded post. Peace, Out!

Managing Customer Objections

 

Keepin' The Customer Satisfied: Success At Work

If you’ve built a career in sales you know all about customer objections. Objections are the reasons prospective customers give for NOT buying a product or service. It’s too expensive. It’s too complicated. I don’t really need it. These are common customer objections whether we’re talking about buying a new car or whatever it is you sell on your web site.

 

 Even if you sell the best products or provide A-1 services, and even if you have the lowest prices on the entire web, you’ll encounter objections. Problem is, you won’t encounter them face to face in the world of e-commerce, which means you won’t have the opportunity to address objections face to face. Therefore, controlling objections must take place in the content of your website.

Additionally, in the real world, managing objections is reactive. The customer objects. The salesperson reacts with a counter to the objection. In the impersonal marketplace of the W3, managing customer objections must be proactive. Assume you will encounter objections and address them before the visitor clicks off to another site.

What Objections Will You Get?

Depending on what you’re selling, objections will differ. For example, most customers won’t be concerned with a long-term warranty on a $15 calculator. If it dies, buy a new one. On the other hand, if you’re selling $2,000 laptops, your customers are going to be looking at your warranties, guaranties, return policies – anything and everything that protects them from being ripped off.

And as a good citizen of the web community, you should have no problem posting warranties and return policies where they can be easily found and easily read! (Wouldn’t you like to get your hands on the guy who invented fine print?)

So what objections are you likely to encounter?

It costs too much money.

I saw it for a lower price.

I don’t have the money right now.

My old one is good enough.

It looks confusing.

I don’t understand how it works.

I don’t understand the guaranty.

I don’t (really) need it.

My (insert relation’s name here) would kill me.

Maybe another time.

There are plenty more. I’ve already got one; I want something with more features or fewer features (usually not the same consumer, btw); I don’t like the color, shape, size, design, feng shui or some other aspect of the product. The list is as varied as the customers who visit your web site.

And you better know what objections visitors will raise and proactively address them in your site’s content.

How To Address A Customer Objection?

Once you’ve determined which objections you’ll most likely encounter from site visitors you develop a strategy to address the objection before it even becomes an objection.

 Example #1: It’s too complicated.

 Okay, take a look at this 3-minute Flash demo that’ll show you how to assemble the (whatever it is you sell). You’re not addressing the objection with a long body of text explaining how to assemble your gizmo. You’re providing a clip that actually shows each step of assembly with text burns identifying key steps and just where Tab A is.

 Example #2: It’s too expensive.

How will the product improve productivity or quality of life? Let’s say you’re selling hot tubs. You point out the benefits to the consumer. Forget product features. The “too-expensive” buyer must see personal benefit(s) in order for you to manage the objection.

 “You come home from a stressful day, hop into the heated, soothing water, turn on the relaxing massage jets and feel the cares of the day melt away.” The buyer who believes “it’s” too expensive doesn’t care about the 15hp motor, the 18 water jets and the automated chlor-tab release. S/he needs to see personal benefit. Once that’s established, move on to features in you sales copy.

 Example #3: I saw it for less at www.thecheapestsiteintheworld.com.

If you can’t beat the competition on price – and many times you won’t be able to compete with big box store prices – time to highlight the quality of your service, your easy return policy and the fact that there’s no re-stocking fee. (Wouldn’t you like to get your hands on the guy who invented the restocking fee?)

 Some sites offer a “Beat any legitimate price” guarantee. You can, too. Even if your price is a bit higher, most visitors won’t take the time to find the lowest of the low and if they do, you’ve lost a few bucks but have a happy customer – one who’ll be back to buy the accessories.

 Example #4: I don’t want to buy a (fill in the blank) on the web.

Would you buy a $4,000 diamond engagement ring online? From a site you never heard of? Not many people would. Too many risks. For all the buyer knows, you’re selling “diamacroids” as real diamonds. And if you’re half way around the world, the buyer has no recourse.

 Establish trust be establishing verifiable credentials. Member of the online BBB, certified by the Diamond Sellers Association of the World, graduate of the School of Gemology, 140 years in business, etc. You’d buy a diamond online from Tiffany’s because the trust factor is built in. Not so for www.billscutratediamondbazaar.com – no matter how low Bill’s prices.

 You get the idea. To successfully convert a visitor into a buyer requires that all objections be addressed in site content using a variety of media to get the job done. A Flash demo,  an audio clip and picture of you, a picture of your factory, a virtual 360° tour, a step-by-step, idiot-proof assembly guide, 24-hour tech support – whatever works best to counter the objection.

 All kinds of people will stop by your web site and each will come with his or her own expectations and objections. Meet those expectations and counter those objections right from the start. It’ll do wonders for your conversion ratio.

 It’ll also keep your repeat buyer list growing. Why? No objections.