Category Archives: Website Architecture
How do you get more sales from your website?
Yeah a pretty good question, one we hear from most of our clients that come to us for help.
More and more these days, people are taking notice of what their websites are doing (or not doing) for them, 90% of business owners now see that and want their websites to generate sales for them. Where it began…?
Many sites are designed by creative teams of people whose job, as they saw it was to build websites that looked pretty, acted in some order fashion and/or mimicked client brochures. And to some degree, for the most part, followed a traditional look and feel that others had on their websites. Ok, so where to from here.
Well just lately, well in fact for the past five or so years, people have been looking at ways that they can have some business generated from their website – and this is where the whole design first and sell later comes into the forefront.
As I mentioned above, people went to website designers, the designer come up with a beautiful website which promised so much, but in reality has delivered nothing or very little in the way of business sales.
Lets review a typical website – lovely home page with pretty colours, a big “Welcome to” on the centre of the page, followed by content and links to other areas of their website…traditionally, there is an about us, what we do, our location, contact us, our services, our products…blah blah.. – sounds like a winning combination right…well…not really…lets consider a few things here…what do I want from my website, what is it that I want to achieve, and why have I gone out and spent hard earned money on my website? Do I just want a brochure but in electronic format….hmm maybe not…OK..stay with me, here I am getting to the meat and drink of what I trying to tell you…
What if I was to tell you this… if your best sales rep went to a meeting and all they talked about was what was inside your company brochure do you think that this sales rep would be successful..? – People that come to visit your website are effectively people that you are selling to…OK..we are getting closer..
Here is a typical point of difference with websites that sell and convert visitors into contacts and possible sales.
- They focus on telling people where they are
- They tell the user what they can achieve by visitors
- And they then give the visitor reasons to act
- They provide users with a clear channel of where things are located and how to access them
- They focus the content on “what’s in it for them”
- They display their USP, their “unique sales proposition” in the eye-line
- The are often a mirror image of their greatest sales reps
If we compare this list with the one from the brochure…where does your website fit?
Here are some statistics from our website tests..
- Business owners that have many websites doing specific jobs sell more
- Business owners that follow a sales process on their website sell more
- Business owners that have a 1 page website generate more sales than ones with 1 large website
- Sites that focus on lead generation verses lovely brochure sites win more sales
- Sites that are geared around helping others fix problems sell more online
Over the past decade, I have built my very own list of different types of website models (around 10 or so). Where most people go wrong is that they mix and match these different models which causes confusion, and with confusion people don’t act.
Good luck
Till next time, Dave.
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
Why branding isn’t important any more
Is branding your name as important as it once was?
I say no… why? Because you can now use the Internet in some creative ways to generate sales and customers for your business.
Here’s a concept that you may have seen on the telly in marketing documents and maybe even on the radio.
Companies are now branding what they offer, what they do etc., with easy to remember domain names that are catchy and informative to the end user. The National Bank now advertises mortgage services using this methodology as do many other major brands, the brand is important it is not used in the marketing of these services.
So what are the pro’s and con’s.
Pro’s
- Easy to remember domain name, for example www.GetYourMortgage.co.nz is easier to remember and therefore it’s easier for the client to get the information they are after without having to go through the National Bank’s normal home page.
- The content is rich with information about how to get your mortgage. While the brand is tied in with the product offering it is more the fact that that site is all about mortgages that makes it a far more informative site for the end user.
- The content and the keywords in the domain name also helps the site be found in all major search engines as the words in the domain and used in the site help to determine the overall positioning within their rankings.
- It enables smaller businesses to gain a larger market share as they are able to complete against the traditional marketing media that the the major brands depend on.
- This allows smaller operators to compete for business in creative ways to create new sales and customers.
Con’s
- Another site for the bank to administrate and manage moving forward.
- The brand may be lost in the marketing mix to some that depend on that to secure business, so in this form of marketing it is important to ensure the brand is included where possible within the site.
So to summarise, while the brand is important, what the Internet allows you to do is to stand out and be counted by offering unique tailor made service- and product-focused driven websites.
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
Use Google Optimiser to get more sales and customers
Knowing how to use Google Optimiser will guide you to more sales and customers.
I was looking into my Google stats for a client’s website last week and discovered a huge spike in people leaving their website on the products and services page. After further review I discovered that my client had decided to completely revamp their product and service content based on what others were telling them should be on that page. While making changes to your website can help you gain more sales it can also make you lose sales too.
With Google Optimiser you can set up various versions of a web page to see what impact a change has on the performance of your website. It’s a powerful free product that can allow you to test every tweak to your website to ensure you don’t get in the way of sales!
When using Google Optimiser consider these points:
- Don’t make any changes to your website content until you have tested one version over the next (old content versus new content).
- Look at split testing the changes to see what impact this has on your customers and sales generated before making the changed content the final version to go live with.
- Make sure you only make changes after you have reviewed your analytical data. Make changes based on what it is telling you works best.
- Don’t let bullies or the ones with the largest voice in your company make all the decisions on website content without first of all advising the reasons why.
Use Optimiser to help you refine and improve your sales and leads. Your business will grow from doing so!
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
More hotel bookings
Why not live chat?
Did you know that if you include a instant chat or a connection to a real people on your website that your levels of sales may increase by up to 30%.
The research has been done and hotels are now starting to embrace the need to connect with customers while they are surfing online.
With social networking on the increase people are becoming more interested in interacting with the hotelier before making that final decision to spend their hard earned money. People have questions and it can be the difference between making a sale or not.
If I was a hotelier I would take a reservation staff member and connect them to a ‘live person’ function on the website just to test the waters… hey, what’s the worst that can happen? At least you will know if this works for you or not. My tool of choice would be Boldchat or Live Person.
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
Writing content for search engine optimisation
Here are some tips for SEO content.
When it comes to writing for search engine optimisation for websites, what helps me is that I always think about what people might type in Google and other search engines before I start forming structured content on the site. I often look up what people have typed in using the tools available in Google and I also look at websites that are currently in place for search phrases and review the content on their pages.
Once I decide the phrases that I want to be found for, I mix those words with the content supplied by my copywriters or given to me by the customer who owns the site. Here are a few other tips:
- Try using bold content to emphasis the search phrases
- Use italics to emphasise words or phrases
- Add blocks of content with links to other pages within your site to create some links for search engine to follow.
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
Websites that sell more
Get more sales from your website
We have built many websites for our customers that sell like crazy. The difference from a traditional website is an interesting subject to write about. I wont go into the complete list of dos and don’ts in regards to increasing your saleability using websites but I thought I would share a few bits and bobs:
- Don’t use “Welcome To” as the main headline on your home page. Your main headline should be all about what’s in it for the customer
- Discuss the features and the benefits of using your products or services
- Guide the user to take action, how to go from visitor to customer
- Don’t try to sell more than one product from it
- Remove all navigation
- Keep the site to a maximum of three pages in total.
For a complete guide on how I can help you sell more from your website please contact me. Until next time…
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
