Category Archives: Website Design
Improve your website using science!
Dave here from Redcow.
It’s March already – how is your year shaping up? Is it starting to look
like “same old, same old?”
When I started off in 2012, I was determined to better the business model,
build on my knowledge, share some learning experiences and gain more sales!
As an owner of a company I don’t like the feeling of standing still. I
always want and need to feel that I am moving forward and growing
customers.
The feeling that I have when the sales and business is coming through the
door makes it all worth while. Along the way we also get to build up some
amazing relationships with clients and see the impact that comes from
helping them grow their business.
Last month I sent you an article all about trying to think outside the
square in regards to generating more conversions from your website. In fact,
my focus was on trying new things and how making changes can turn your
business upside down in regards to more leads!
The biggest lesson for me was that doing something that may be considered
radical, led to a client’s website generating 300% more leads…and that
to this very day is still an unreal outcome. So where does that leave ” best
practices”? It leaves best pracitices to those that are unwilling to test
their market place, those who don’t want more and more sales, those who want
to be the same as everyone else – which means you may never get the most out
of your website. If you think about where we have come from in regards to
advertising …from Yellow pages, shared hosting, dedicated websites, best
practice landing pages to now, landing page testing I feel we have only just
touched on the fringes of where websites and business growth can be.
This month I want to look into ways you can improve your website by
watching how visitors use your website. Watching, you say? Yes, watching!
We use software that allows us to track every activity a visitor makes on
your website. Armed with information you can see:
* Where visitors are clicking, and not clicking, on your website
* Where confusion is happening on your pages
* What friction points stop people from making contact with you
* The amount of reading people do on each page
* Where visitors are bouncing back and forth within your site
With this type of information you can study and look at ways to improve
your website by analysing and improving sticking points, catching errors and
fixing places on your site that are causing people to stop and not engage
with you.
The trick to making the most of this software is within the analysis area.
This is where having a team of analysts who study websites for improvement
purposes for a living can take your website to new levels
of satisfaction not only for the end user but also for your business sales.
Yes, once you have this information on hand you are then able to correct and
fix areas on your site that may be stopping people for making contact with
you, making a sale with you, or just engaging with your site at any level.
If you have a site now and feel that you should be getting more leads or
sales from it, maybe, just maybe there are issues with it that are stopping
the number of people coming through the site to talk with you.
This month, with my focus on watching traffic, the Redcow team are offering
a March Special Deal that allows you and your site to improve its ability
to sell. Our March deal includes a dedicated resource to watch your website
for an entire month, after the month is up my team will then analyse and
provide a report that will help your website convert more visitors into
buyers of your products and services.
We are offering this amazing service just to you because you are on my mailing list.
This one time deal will expire at the end of this month so be quick, act now! Normally $1000, yours for only $749*!
This is what you will receive with our March deal:
1. A consultation with me to discuss your website
2. Your website will be analysed for for 30 days
3. You will then be provided with a comprehensive report detailing the
areas of where your website is failing to help visitors turn into
customers
4. Along with this report will will recieve another consultation with me to
dicuss the findings and any opportunties for improvement
That’s it for me…
Have fun and don’t ever stop wanting to improve your website!
Cheers,
Dave.
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
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
What does Redcow Marketing do for businesses?
It’s interesting to chat to a customer about what we do and why we are different to others out there in the market place.
Some people see us as SEO masters, or pay per click managers, while others think we are website designers. What is our point of difference and what makes us so much different from the others in the market is this critical point…”the end result”
This is what I mean…I try to explain it by starting off talking about what we aren’t, we aren’t just a search engine optimisation company, we are not a pay per click marketing company, we aren’t a web design team..what we are and what we do is utilise these things just mentioned but again…that’s not us either!
We are business analysts for your online business. We design strategies to help businesses grow online – full stop. How we go about doing this depends largely on where the client is in terms of its current website presence. Some clients might have a website already and want to grow, while others have no website and want to discover more customers. So back to how and what we do….
I see ourselves as marketers who are able to improve or build new business for people by designing web based models in business.
Our major offering is in the key skills of improvement. We, in a “nutshell”, design marketing programs around improvement. We design tests and conduct studies online that help us improve our clients online businesses (much like a business analyst does for any business of substance) – we in a sense become the marketing team/business analyst team that companies don’t have for their websites and let alone can generally afford. What we offer our customers is a full marketing team at a fraction of a cost that they would have to fork out if they wanted a team to grow their business.
Let me walk you through a campaign we did for a client just recently, maybe this will explain more about we do…The client wanted more sales from its current visitors.
- The client had a nice website already but was not happy with the level of bookings it generated
- We started this program but designed a strategy to help the client discover how to make its website more effective
- Unlike others who might do an improvement review on a website based on just “best practices”, we start off by finding out exactly what past clients thought of their website as well as discovering what new visitors thought of their online website model
- We then went about discovering how people surfed their online pages, where people clicked, how far people scrolled on pages, what keywords brought them to site pages, we recorded people using the website and also conducted a number of user case studies to help us discover weaknesses within their websites.
- After three months of testing and discovering we were able to increase the sites performance (in regards to sales generated) by an amazing 100%
So there you go, that’s just one way we help clients grow….
So, is it clear now what we offer? Maybe a little clearer??
“We help clients grow their business by designing strategies to suit their end goals”
Can this be packaged and sold in the 1000′s, I’m not so sure… but we are giving it go!
For our clients the ultimate growth can only happen once we understand the NEEDS and because each client is unique each marketing strategy therefore must be as well!
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
How do I start marketing my business?
I often hear from clients who want a price or a quote for a pay per click campaign (Google Adwords)…they have read somewhere that if they advertise in Google they will generate more sales from their website!
Hi Dave they say… “I want to start advertising in search engines so that we can make more money using pay per click. How much do you charge for this? ”
While the simple answer to this is to give them a rough price and hope you are the lowest in the quote contest, our approach is to gain a meeting with the person interested in the quote so that we can discuss with them their goals, products and services in more detail.
What I discovered many years ago is that per per click alone will not make you rich, the only way to make it successful online is to combine a number of activities together to help you gain as many sales and customers via your web marketing. No, this isn’t a magic formula, its more about designing a strategy around making the goals for the client happen!
While it is true that you may increase your sales from some of the additional advertising you do online, the bottleneck for 90% of our clients is making that website sell for them. If your website doesn’t sell well then you are wasting your time and money.
It puzzles me that people still do not understand that the most important element of the marketing is on their website! PPC and new visitors will only take you so far… in regards to making and generating more business and sales. If your web site is converting only 1% of all visitors no matter how many come looking you will still only covert that same percentage. The objective is to help you design a website that increases this most important element – your “website”. Improving your website alone, can really increase your sales and return on investment sometimes (if you have enough traffic already) without any need for huge spends in PPC traffic.
Eh…but how do I improve my website…? What analytical data do I track, how can I track what people are doing on my website, where can I get visitors from, how can I track my online videos, how can I get my website found on search engines, where are visitors viewing, what are they typing in to find my site, and what they are thinking while they are surfing around my site…What do I have on the home site that is stopping clients from contacting me? How do I know if it is working well for people at all? All of this tracking, reviewing and analysis is what all marketing companies should offer, but little if any (apart from us) do this.
Here is my top 4 suggestions to help your business grow online!
- Use a marketing company to help you improve your website.
- Use a marketing company to help you analyse your web traffic.
- Use a marketing company to create a search engine optimisation strategy for you.
- Use a marketing company to create a pay per click strategy for you.
Don’t get lost in the crowd – grow your business with expertise behind you
Tell next time…
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
Usability & search drive 70% more revenue to hotel
How Redcow Marketing helped Museum Hotel improve their conversion rate by 100% and achieve a 70% increase in online sales.
The Museum Hotel’s Challenges:
The owner of Wellington NZ’s Museum Hotel – Chris Parkin – wanted…
- More bookings through his hotel’s website, more brand awareness, and more sales.
- To increase his website’s presence and make the most of its visitors.
- To reduce the fees he pays to third party travel sites for bookings, and to encourage guests to book from his website, instead.
Dave suggested they…
- Make better use of the hotel’s booking engine.
- Address usability and testing page enhancements to improve sales.
- Add sales elements on the website to improve the sales funnel, and add new content to the homepage and other vital areas that would enhance engagement.
- Work directly with the hotel’s booking engine provider to improve features.
- Work directly with the reservation staff and manager of the hotel to increase bookings.
- Address the site’s SEO content.
- Redesign the online advertising pay-per-click campaign.
First, they accessed the website’s analytical data to determine how much traffic was coming to the site, what levels of contact were made, what and how many bookings were generated, where people went when they visited, how long they were there, and where they left. All of this information helped to paint a picture of the site’s performance.
Dave reviewed the site for usability issues, friction, and confusion points, then looked for gaps in the website where they could enhance value, and studied the site’s flow of information.
Their major challenge was to make the website more interactive and focused – to get people moving into the booking engine as quickly as possible from the website itself; once there, the likelihood that a booking would be made was very high.
Dave proposed a new layout for the home page, then tried and tested different versions to find which one most effectively raised guests’ engagement levels with the site and booking engine.
The next step was to address the pages that were visited the most – providing feedback to the hotel on what those pages were lacking. They also added new tracking systems to monitor visitors and conversions levels, allowing them to track which parts of the pages people were more interested in, what keyword phrases were bringing in sales and customers, and other valuable information.
Finally, they added clearer navigation to aid the user experience, including new contact forms, maps and directions.
They rolled out these changes over the course of a few months, analyzing and tweaking along the way to enhance the overall package.
Results:
In 2009 their revenue increased by 56% from 2008
In 2010 their revenue increased by 11% from 2009
This is a massive revenue increase of 73% over two years
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
Improve Your Website And Sell More
Did you know that you can increase your website’s ability to sell significantly by looking at implementing small changes to pages within it.
See how we helped Museum Hotel increase their bookings 20% month on month and improve their level of conversions by 100% on their website by improving the functionality, usability and engagement levels. We tell you how in our PDF attached.
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
Website content for your homepage
Three things to look at on your home page.
When you review your website consider this… Most people will for the most part, have never seen or know anything about your business. In fact, for the majority of websites most visitors will probably find them by chance in Google, Yahoo, MSN or by a some other form of marketing of their business.
Ok, so when someone arrives at your site what will they see? Look at your own site for about 30 seconds and answer these questions from the visitor’s perspective.
- Where am I?
- What can I do here?
- Why should I act?
While these all seem really simple questions chances are your website and many other small to medium business sites do a poor job at providing the answers to visitors.
One of the favourites you see on websites is the ‘Welcome To…’. Let’s think about this for a second, you have only a matter of seconds to grab a visitors attention before they leave your site and look elsewhere, so instead of ‘Welcome To Jim’s Shop’ why not consider telling people very clearly where they are, what they can do here and why they should act now.
Let’s consider this, pretend you own a mechanic shop in Waikanae, here is what I would have on my home page…
‘Mechanic Shop in the Waikanae‘ as the main headline on your home page. Followed by a statement such as, ‘where you can have your car, truck and van serviced by our specialised and certified auto mechanics‘. And then something like, ‘Not only do we offer free pickup and delivery of your vehicle, once serviced we offer top quality support and 24 hr assistance just in case you car breaks down in the local area when you become a customer of ours!‘
This not only defines what you do, which tells the visitor ‘where they are’, then moves on and explains ‘what you have to offer’, (specialised and certified mechanics) and then provides them with a solid reason of ‘why they should utilise your services’ (by offering pick up and delivery).
It provides the reader with motivation, clarity of your offer and incentive to take action with you, all of which all help you generate sales from your website.
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
More website sales tips
Credibility
Credibility is key so make sure you site conveys messages of confidence; ensure that you have testimonials from customers on your site so that you can give the people visiting your website confidence in your company’s ability to perform to their expectations.
If you don’t have any testimonials, please don’t make them up! That would be just kidding yourself and lying to your customers. Go ahead and ask your current customers for testimonials, if your products and services are really that great, your customers will be more than happy to send you some nice testimonials.
One approach I have used in the past is to send my customers an email asking them for a testimonial and giving them some lead questions like: how did you find our service? would you recommend our services to others? what benefits have you gained so far from working with us? how long have you used us? etc.
These lead questions make the testimonial easier for the customer to just fill in the gaps and send it back to you.
Everyone is busy out there, working harder than ever before in business so making this as painless as possible will give you the biggest chance of getting a response.
Once you have this information, assemble the testimonials into categories if relevant and then place them on your website. Get them on the home page so that new visitors see this information straight away!
The perfect testimonials have photos of the customer, the customer’s website if relevant, as well as a contact number. If you do place this information about the customer on your website, please ensure you seek their permission first.
What’s in it for me?
When a visitor first arrives at your website they are looking for indicators that you have what they are looking for. To ensure they can see these indicators it is really important that you make it very clear what you are selling or offering.
A lot of websites have “Welcome to” and while this is very polite, it does nothing to ensure that the client sees what you have to offer instantly. What I recommend website owners to do is to remove the “Welcome to” and replace that with a main heading.
Say for example you are offering “Walking Tours in Auckland” I would advise my customer to ensure that was the main heading and it was clear and visible to all that entered your site.
At the end of the day you have to “Scratch the itch” of visitors that come to your site, by having your main offering in big bold headings it ensures they see “What’s in it for them” straight off the bat.
Your photo is worth having a look at
Having your photo on the website works well to really personalise the website experience. It helps reinforce to visitors that there is a real person behind this website and it also indicates that you are happy to stand behind your offerings.
I also believe it helps the sale process because at the end of the day people buy from other people, not from websites!
If you can bring your photo and personal approach into the site it will bring in more sales.
People like to see who they are buying the product from.
Your location does matter
Make sure people know where you are located, if you are selling products and services, people want to know that you do actually exist, you are contactable by phone, email or even by fax. At the end of the day, people want to be able to see that you are a real company with a real person behind it. These factors go a long way to reassuring visitors your products and services are in fact real!
Bring people to your site but only when it’s ready to sell for you.
You should be marketing your website to customers as much as possible. Get in touch with a marketing company that knows how to market your brand and site effectively.
Look for a creative marketing company (like us!) that will help you not just in your marketing of your site in Google but can also help you with your website.
There are many ways to market your site but Google AdWords in my opinion is the best method to instantly have customers banging at your door; but as I said above, make sure your website is ready and armed with tools to aid your sales numbers.
There is little point in having a marketing plan with Google AdWords if your website has major selling flaws. Get your marketing company to guide you through making your website sell more. If you have a marketing company now and they don’t offer you assistance with this, then go out and find a new one!
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
Hotel website best practices
Good ideas for creating a pleasant website experience for your customers.
As time goes on and people get accustomed to interaction through social networking sites our expectations of what websites should offer visitors are changing. I like to think of this as a free spirited approach to offering information about your hotel and its unique offerings.
When I design a website I start off by thinking about what my main objectives are and focus on accomplishing these. For some hotels, there are multiple objectives but try to narrow them down to a select few. Keep your objective at the forefront of your mind when you design or modify your home page.
Here is an approach that I like to use – list your objectives, your primary ones down to your secondary goals. For example, your primary goal could be to generate more bookings. A secondary could be to get more people signed up to special offers, or your Facebook account or just to your newsletter. Whatever they are list them on a piece of paper, and then print out your home page and circle what objectives you have met. Do the comparison and then have a shot at placing a new image on a piece of paper of what should be on your home page.
Some owners treat their home page as a sales tool, while others look to get people moving along through the journey to making a online booking. Think of ways to engage them, think about your objectives again and look to position your unique sales proposition and then make sure you have these on your home page. Make visiting your hotel a unique and easy experience from the very beginning (ie from your website).
The newest trends are videos or seamless photos of your hotel to create a virtual tour. This creates an interaction with customers as they can look through your entire hotel without needing to be there in person. Whatever you do, think about the visitors experience and make sure you attempt to connect and engage with them!
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
Five website tips for car rental companies
Follow these five guidelines for increasing your leads.
The car rental business is a very competitive space. In order to attract and obtain more customers I recommend a number of items for you to consider if you want to generate more sales and leads.
Make sure your homepage is not cluttered. Think about your main objectives (which are to gain leads and sales from visitors) and ensure your booking form or search form is located on your home page so that visitors can start on that journey of finding a rental vehicle.
Make sure your contact number is placed on your home page and even consider having your entire location on this page so that people can see exactly the location of your business… this can be helpful if your rental business includes truck hire, or is not dependent on places like the airport for your main revenue stream.
To add credibility include some testimonials on this page from people in the past that are your fans!
Look to add a real support option (a live person) into your website in the form of live chat function. Research has shown a connection to the business from within your website will increase its sales by up to 30%.
Make sure you make the most of the social networking opportunities that exist today. Place a connection to your Facebook and Twitter accounts directly from your home page.
For more tips and advice on ways you can generate more business from your website, join my newsletter or give me a call so that we can start working on your site together to generate more sales.
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
Hotel target marketing
How hotels can target the perfect client.
One way to attract more clients and increase sales opportunities is to target visitors with specific needs. For example if you offer conferences, meeting rooms, wedding packages, and/or gift vouchers think about designing some pages that are solely focused on detailing these features and benefits.
Consider designing brand new sites that focus on a particular offering and then look to target a segment of visitors that meet a criteria. Here are a couple of ways to broaden your appeal to a particular market:
- Create landing pages geared around one single product. Keep it simple, clear and make it easy for people to take action by contacting you for further information or for a booking.
- Create a page on your site that talks about nothing else but your offers. Provide some evidence of your brand, reputation, experiences and knowledge to add credibility.
Using a single product landing page can do your brand and sales a wealth of good. If these landing pages are designed to their fullest potential you can really boost up your rankings in all search engines as well.
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
Clarity on your webpage
Clear Design
It might sound like a no-brainer, but having a clearly designed and set out website will do wonders for your business!
Don’t be scared of white space. As in the print industry, having white space on a page adds clarity. If your website has links, ads, boxes of quotes all crowded up in the same space and visitors find it confusing to navigate, oftentimes they will exit out of your site, never to come back. Less is more when it comes to webpage design.
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
Does your website make it easy for people to contact you?
A golden rule for your website.
There is nothing more annoying on a website than having to search it to find the contact details.
The Number One Rule is this: Have your contact details clearly presented at the top of each page.
It’s so important to make it as easy as possible for visitors and potential customers to contact you.
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
Personalising your website
Adding photos is a great way to personalise your website.
Giving your website a ‘face’ is a great way to connect with potential customers or clients. Having a photo of yourself and your team adds credibility by helping visitors to see that when they contact you they will be dealing with a real person.
When customers see that you are willing to put your face out there and your credibility on the line, they are more likely to trust you and your product.
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
The importance of credibility
Attaining testimonials
Good testimonials can make or break a deal. If a visitor to your site is interested in your product, chances are that before purchasing that person will read the testimonials page to see what others say. The more positive testimonials you have on your website the better.
Testimonials from others create a lot of creditability and offer your site more value than just bleating on about how great you are.
It’s not only important for visitors to your website, but also for your own information. Testimonials can show you both how you can improve your business and what you are already doing right.
After a customer has purchased from you, follow up with them and ask for their honest feedback. See if they are happy to put it in writing to go on your website, and watch your credibility grow. Easy as 123!
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
The importance of good copywriting
Good copywriting is essential to increasing the conversion rate on your website.
The text on your website should be appealing and relevant to the visitor, and at the same time include as many key words and keyword phrases as possible to help the search engines find your site.
It doesn’t have to be difficult to achieve. Remember though that you don’t have to start writing the information on your existing website from scratch! Tweak and reword your existing text to include phrases and words that you think people will be searching for to find your site.
One tip I have used in the past is to gather all the phrases you would like to be found for in Google and then do the same exercise for what your product or service offers. Once you have the two lists, combine them both to create a powerful, compelling story for your website.
Have fun!
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
Are you failing to start a conversation?
Are you starting a conversation?
Did you know that people come to your website because they have a problem, or a need or want to narrow down a solution? Make sure you guide them towards your value statement, engage them where you can, take their hand and help them solve their problem…. Seek to remove any frictional points that stop visitors from making contact with you. Meet, connect and direct the visitors where at all possible…
You only get one chance with visitors so think about your home page….is it engaging or just overwhelming?
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
Home page mistakes
Some tips to help you avoid pitfalls on your home page
- Don’t try to achieve too many objectives on your home page
- Make sure you start up a conversation with the visitor
- Don’t depend so much on multimedia to convey your message to the visitor
- Don’t turn that home page into a landing page. Your home page after all is there as a doorway into your house – use it to welcome people in and then tell them where they can find items within your home. The intent of the home page… is to get through to your other pages and not necessarily to sell them right there right now
- Don’t assume that best practices will work for your website. Look to test versions to see which home page brings in more value. If your website has enough traffic look to using the tools available to track where people are clicking and then determine what other items either might be of use or can be removed from the page.
- Last but not least… keep testing!
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
