Will your website provide your sales team with leads, sell products online, advertise a product, provide help and assistance for customers or generate an income from advertising?

Knowing your website’s role in your business and in your marketing mix helps you determine how your websiten contributes to your bottom-line and how to improve its performance.

Write down a list of things you want your website to do and then prioritise the most important to the least important.

2. Know who your customers are. Who are your customers and why do they visit your website?

This may seem obvious but it is important that you “get in your customer’s head” and work out what is important to them.

Talk to your sales team and find out what the most common questions your customers ask. What drives them to visit your website, your office or shop, or call? Then write down the steps a customer takes when making a purchase decision: from the time they recognise a need for your product or service, to the time they consider making a purchase, finding a supplier (hopefully you) and using the product or service.

Understanding how a customer behaves when buying your product or service helps you design a website experience that makes customers want to buy from you.

3. Understand what your customers do on your site.

Use your web analytics reports to find out how customers interact with your website. How many visitors does your website get a month?

Which page within your website gets the highest ‘bounce rate’. The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who visit one page only. This is a good measure of which pages are turning your potential customers away.
How long do your visitors spend on your website? This is a good way of finding out how interested your visitors are in your website.

What countries do your visitors come from? If you only operate in Australia and you have a lot of traffic from the United States you should either expand your business or exclude these visitors from your reports.

How much traffic do you get from search engines? What are the keywords? Are there any surprises?

4. Get feedback from your customers. What do your customers really think?

Survey your customers and find out how useful your website is to them. Listen to their feedback and look for common issues and address them appropriately.

If you have a high bounce rate, survey the customers leaving your site and ask them why. If someone calls you from your website (using your dedicated website phone number), ask them what they liked and didn’t like about it.

5. Benchmark yourself against your competitors.

Know what your competitors are doing online. Every week, check the website of your top five competitors. What are they doing that could be taking business away from you. Use the strategies you like and learn from the ones you don’t like.

6. Have a place for everything and put everything in its place.

Does your homepage have everything on it? It shouldn't. Every page is equally important and should be treated as an opportunity to persuade your potential customers to submit a sales enquiry or order online. Your homepage should contain enough of the right information for potential customers to find what they are looking for or for you to show them what they need. When deciding on the layout of your web pages think about how you can engage with your potential customers.

7. Don't fall in love with cool design.

Sometimes it’s easy to fall in love with a really cool design feature. It could be YouTube videos, animated graphics and banners, a large font, a small font or a really nice drop shadow.

Some design features detract from your website’s purpose and turn visitors away. Learn what works and use them. This is the time to listen to a web marketing expert who understands what web design helps improve your site’s performance.

8. Get a geek who understands your customers and your business.

If you use a web developer, ensure they understand your business. If they dictate to you and ignore your marketing needs and the needs of your customers, get a new geek. Your web developer or designer works for you and your business. If your geek is also a web marketing expert with a track record to speak of, then count yourself lucky.

9. Speak your customers’ language.

Do your customers say they want “media reputation management services” or do they simply refer to it as “media relations” or just “PR”?

If it’s a shovel, call it a shovel. Don’t use fancy names customers don’t use or worse, have never heard.
Copy is important! Use short sentences, paragraphs and lists. Don’t give customers a headache by writing long blocks of text. Break it down. If the information is not important, remove it.

Writing on the web is different. Make sure you know how, or pay someone who knows how.

10. Test, test, test, test

Based on your website’s purpose and what you know about how customers behave on your site, come up with a theory that gets your website better results and change your site. Over a few days or weeks, measure whether it has made a difference.

Then write down the results and try something else.

To find out more on how to further improve your website performance contact the team at SMPC on 02 8005 0333.

6 Common Web Design Mistakes to Avoid

It’s all about you

Content should always be developed with customers in mind in a language they understand. It is easy to fall into the trap of writing content that is full of jargon, littered with corporate speak, or worse, it’s all about you and how good you are. Use of jargon, however, may be necessary with a technical audience or in certain specialist industries (e.g. science, engineering).

In general, content needs to be persuasive, credible and engaging. The best way to do this is to answer a simple question most customers quietly ask: “What’s in it for me?” Then write it as if you were explaining to a friend what you do. Abandon corporate speak and strip your message down to plain English – clear, intelligent with personality to boot.

It comes across as a once-off project

A website should be seen as a sales channel that needs proper management, constant maintenance and
vigilant monitoring, even if you don’t physically sell anything on your website. Research shows that people tend to look up a website before they pick up the phone or visit a store. Your web site therefore has the difficult job of convincing prospects or customers to shortlist you as they make an important purchase decision, even before you see or speak to them. So make sure it is always up-to-date, has a strong call-to-action and the contact details are easily accessible.

It gives people a headache

Maddening motion, long blocks of text, wrong colour scheme, inconsistent look and feel, poor navigation and slow downloads all contribute to poor website experience and should therefore be avoided. It is worth consulting with a web or graphic designer before you embark on a web design project.

It ignores search engines

At its very basic, search engines operate in a text-based world. When search engine “spiders” (these are
robots sent by search engines to your site) drop by to read the content of a website, they look at text. So, make sure your website has plenty of it. Headings, titles and body copy should contain keywords that are relevant and consistent with the overall website theme. More importantly, content should be unique - not borrowed or copied from other websites.

Be careful of the eye candy –images, movie clips, or Flash animations– so compelling to human eye. Wrongly
placed, these visuals can actually get in the way and “trap” spiders, obstructing them from doing their job of
indexing your site.

Your web address is hard to say, remember or spell

There is nothing worse than coming up with a web address nobody can spell. It is best to avoid words that
require consultation with a dictionary. If you have a generic name, try to avoid double vowels or consonants
(eg. homeentertainment or weddinggarden). Hyphenated names (eg. business-cards) can also be problematic
because people tend to forget the hyphen.

Abbreviations and acronyms (eg. jsdf.com for Jen Smith Discount Flowers) can also be tricky as it is harder to
remember letters than meaningful words.

However, if you must use a name that is potentially problematic, it is a good idea to register different variations including the most common typos and redirect traffic to your main website so you capture as much traffic as possible.

You pay someone $180 /hr to make small changes

It is no longer necessary to spend thousands of dollars a year on building a website, let alone maintaining one. If you are in the market for a redesign, opt for a website with a content management system. You’ll be able to easily update web content (product information, pricing, images, etc) at any time with a click of a button.

Whether you’re building your first website or upgrading your current website SMPC can take the hassle and
expense out of the whole process. We can design and build your professional website to focus on your brand and target your prospective customers. Talk to our creative team about our Do-it-yourself website packages (call 02 8005 0333).

When creating your email campaign and positioning the images (if you have any) or text, be sure to consider these factors.

Quick Tip – position your primary message whether it is an image or just text in a position which is likely to be viewed in the recipients email preview pane. Look to have a good ratio between white space and text as this will mean the customer is more likely to read it. The positioning of images alongside text will also break up the layout of the email and give the reader a snap shot of what they are about to read.

Remember an email campaign with the right amount of white space gives the reader the perception they can find what is relevant to them quickly.

2. Do not bore your customers with long paragraphs. Reduce their length to no longer than 2 or 3 short sentences.

You must remember when writing content for email marketing or the web in general, readers will most likely scan the content looking for keywords that interest them. To ensure your message gets through effectively you need to make your point as concise as possible.

Quick Tip – write the content for your email marketing campaign as you would normally do, then challenge yourself to remove as many words as you can in each sentence to help make your point more concise.

Remember the recipients of your email campaigns must be able to scan the message with ease.

3. Don’t expect recipients to read all of your campaigns on a regular basis if there is not something in it for them. Ensure the content of your email campaigns bring value to your customers.

The biggest challenge for email marketing campaigns isn’t getting recipients to read them. It’s getting them to read your emails regularly.

Quick Tip – provide recipients with value adds or incentives such as free tips relating to the use of your product or service. This should cost your business very little and be perceived by your customer as relevant and of value. By doing this you are slowly working towards keeping the customer interested enough to open and read your email campaigns on a regular basis.

Remember if the recipient of your email does not see your value-add as something truly of value to them they are unlikely to read one of your email campaigns again.

4. Sometimes generating a lead from an email campaign can be far more successful than going for the hard sell. So don’t expect to achieve a direct sale every time.

Depending on what it is you’re promoting in your email campaigns, the generation of a qualified lead - whether that’s a phone enquiry, a customer downloading free tips or filling out an expression of interest form - can provide very good results.

Quick Tip – instead of asking the customer reading your email campaign to purchase the product or service straight away, offer them a free trial or demonstration which will allow you to generate a qualified lead. These qualified leads can then be transferred to your sales staff to follow up.

Remember the success of your lead generation will depend heavily on you being able to portray value to the customer in what you are offering.

5. Don’t assume your email campaigns are working. Track and analyse everything religiously.

For you to have real success in your email marketing campaigns you must know what has worked and what hasn’t. The only way to do this is to use a bulk email marketing tool that provides a full statistical view. Analyse your opened, not opened, bounce and click through rates after each campaign.
Keep a record of these so you can understand how each campaign compares with the last.

Quick Tip – set yourself some bench marks you would like to achieve. As a guide depending on industry and product type an open rate above 20%, a bounce rate below 5% and a click through rate above 15% could be classified as good. Also use a dedicated phone number for your email campaigns such as a 1300 number which will allow you to report accurately on how many calls you have generated.

Remember a poor performing strategy within a campaign can only be classified as poor if you do it twice. Don’t make the same mistake twice.

6. Test and re-test email campaigns prior to sending. Always ensure you have viewed your email campaigns in different email clients (eg Hotmail, gmail, Outlook 03, Outlook 07) before sending them.

When using the templates of a bulk email marketing tool or html code provided by your developer, be aware that your email campaign can appear completely different in alternate email clients. An email campaign which you have created and views perfectly in Outlook 2003 can look completely horrible in Outlook 2007. This also applies for free email clients such as hotmail and gmail.

Quick Tip – use the free email accounts you set up for collecting subject line examples and send test emails of your campaigns to these accounts. As for Outlook 2003/2007 find someone you know who uses the software and send the campaigns to them. Once you are assured that the email views correctly in all relevant email clients, then you are ready to send with confidence.

Remember an email campaign that views badly in a customer’s inbox will reflect badly on your business.

7. Avoid untargeted email campaigns. Use information about your customers captured in your database to target the right message to the right customer.

The more relevant the message is within your email campaign to the customer reading it, the better your chances are of achieving campaign success. By analysing past campaigns you can gain knowledge about what certain customers are interested in.

Quick Tip – using a bulk email system will allow you to view exactly what links your customers have clicked on. Use this information to segment your customer database into what they are interested in.

Remember a targeted email campaign is far more likely to succeed when you know the recipient has already shown an interest in the message.

8. Do not spam your customers. Ensure you are not sending your email campaigns to the same customers too frequently.

Like most email users, receiving too many email marketing campaigns from the same sender within a short period of time can reduce the likelihood of the customer opening future emails. You will need to find a fine balance when planning the regularity of your campaigns in order to achieve the highest open rate and lowest unsubscribe rate.

Quick Tip – split your database into segments whether that be by product, industry, interests or location. These segmented databases will allow you to send multiple targeted email campaigns to different customers at the same time, ensuring you are not contacting the same customers too frequently. Keep a log of what campaigns you have sent to which databases and rotate your campaign sends week after week. This will not only reduce the chances of your customers getting sick of your email campaigns but it will also provide you with consistent marketing activity ensuring a steady flow of leads.

Remember email campaigns sent too frequently will just be deleted.

9. Don’t expect your database to grow miraculously by itself. Getting potential customers to opt-in and receive your email campaigns is a process you must continually work towards.

Enabling your business to grow its email database will provide you with a very cost effective and efficient way to communicate with your customers. This ability to communicate with your customers will assist you in building stronger relationships and positioning your business favourably in the minds of your customers.

Quick Tip – Gather additional email addresses from your customers through integrating your accounts/invoicing with email. Provide your customers with the option to receive their monthly invoice via email, in turn providing you with an up-to-date email address list which can be used for marketing purposes. When using this strategy be sure not to spam your customers with irrelevant marketing messages as this could affect your customers’ willingness to open their invoice emails.

Remember a growing database is a good sign of healthy marketing activity.

10. Do not use long subject lines in your email campaigns. Try to keep your subject line under 40 characters including spaces.

When deciding on a subject line, remember that this will be the first thing recipients of your email campaigns will see in their inbox. It will also give the recipient an expectation of what awaits them in the email campaign. A good subject line should be as short as possible and aim to spark the recipient’s interest to open the email.

Quick Tip – look at what other email marketers are doing. It may sound unusual but some of the best subject lines out there are created by spammers.
Create a free hotmail or gmail account and subscribe to everything, encouraging as much spam as you can. Look at the way their subject lines comprise of short sentences to encourage you to open the email.

Remember less is more when it comes to subject lines.

In short this is because the site is new, meaning there are few if any sites linking to yours with the result that Google has not yet been able to find your site.

Google finds sites through a process known as “crawling” the web which involves following hyper links from site to site.

Links from other websites to yours are called Inbound Links. The search engines treat links that you get from other sites as if those other sites were “voting” for you as an authoritative or recommended site. Inbound links are the single biggest factor in determining which sites are indexed by Google, as most pages are found when Google’s robots crawl the web, jumping from page to page via hyper links.

Apart from helping to ensure that the search engines find your site, inbound links can also help your site’s ranking. If the text used for an inbound link contains one of your key search terms ie the words or phrases people might use when searching for your information, then the more sites that “vote” for you, the more relevant the search engines consider your site to be on that topic.

Every time Google updates its database of webpages, the index invariably shifts: new sites are found, some sites are lost and a site’s ranking may change. Your rank naturally will be affected by changes in the ranking of other sites. No one at Google hand adjusts the results to boost the ranking of a site.

If you would like your site to return for particular keywords, then you must include these words on your web pages. The crawler analyses the content of web pages in Google’s index to determine the search queries for which they are most relevant. If your site clearly and accurately describes your topic and many other websites link to yours, it will probably return as a search result for your desired keywords.

If you feel that certain keywords are essential to your site’s success, you may want to consider Google Adwords – Google’s targeted keyword advertising program. Your site will then appear in the list of sponsors shown on the right hand side of the results pages. You should note that advertising with Google neither helps nor hurts your site’s ranking.

Find out more about Google Adwords.

A word of caution. There are a number of unscrupulous methods employed by some website designers to try gain unfair advantage in search engine rankings and these sites risk severe penalties and will in some cases be banned from search engines all together.

Find out more about search engine optimisation

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intro::

BrandREfresh News is an essential reference guide brought to you by the team at SMPC to building and developing a brand. It establishes a disciplined approach to create and implement an effective brand identity and to establish a common process and shared vocabulary for the entire branding team, and to support best practices including;

1. Perception::

Illuminates the difference between brand and brand identity, and what it takes to be the best. It's easy to bypass the fundamentals in the speed of a new project, and critical to establish a shared vocabulary for the entire branding team.

2. Process::

Presents a universal identity process that underlies all successful brand identity initiatives, regardless of the project's scope and nature. This section answers the questions. Why does it take so long - and addresses collaboration and decision making.

3. Practice::

Showcasing examples of the best practices. Local and global, public and private these highly successful projects, created by branding firms, design consultancles and in-house creative teams. Inspire and exemplify original, flexible, lasting solutions.

4. Identity::

Since the beginning of time, the need to communicate has emerged from a set of universal questions:

• Who am I?
• Who needs to know?
• Why do they need to know?
• How will they find out?
• How do I want them to respond?

Individuals, communities, and organizations express their individuality through their identity. On the continuum from the cave paintings at Lascaux to digital messages transmitted via satellite, humanity continues to create an infinite sensory palette of visual and verbal expression.

Humanity has always used symbols to express fierce individuality, pride, loyalty, and ownership. The power of symbols remains elusive and mysterious-a simple form can instantaneously trigger recall and arouse emotion, whether it is emblazoned on a flag, etched in stone, or on the screen of your cell phone. The velocity of life in the future will demand that brands leverage the power of symbols.

Competition for recognition is as ancient as the heraldic banners on a medieval battlefield. No longer limited by physical terrain, managing perception now extends to the airwaves, cyberspace, and beyond. As feudal domains became economic enterprises, what was once heraldry is now branding. The battle for physical territory has evolved into the competition for share of mind.

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We look forward to presenting our guide to building business and brands over the coming weeks and welcome your feedback

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