Mobile Retail
Google’s Mobile Ads senior marketing Manager Johanna Werther provides stats to project 44% of total searches for last minute gifts and store locator terms will be from mobile devices this holiday season based on historical growth rates.

Better Consumers?
 Google research has revealed in the US customers check on average 10.7 sources when making a buying decision   - double the rate of 2010

Does that mean it s getting harder to sell online ?
Google are promoting this as  Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT)

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This article by Matt Paish goes on to say:  The popularity of smartphone shopping is changing retail horizons. New smartphone applications have been launched in Australia in the past month by major Australian food retailers. Multinational food giant Tesco has launched the world’s first ‘virtual shop’ in Korea during the same period.

Australian Food News reports have included new smartphone apps launched by Australia’s two largest supermarket chains, Coles and Woolworths, as well as a new smartphone app from Australia’s largest pizza chain Domino’s.

Should you be promoting your products/services to a mobile client base ?

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Make sure you don’t loose sales from these situations:

Personalised searches

In Dec 09 Google introduced personalised search which examines your search history and ‘adjusts’ your search results accordingly. Read more here: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/personalized-search-for-everyone.html

Are you really ranking that well ?

While the concept of personalised search sounds great, there are a couple of pitfalls you should be aware of.

To explain lets say you’ve been monitoring your website ranking by occasionally searching for it. Google’s personalised search will kick in and display your site  with a higher rank, but just for you. Meanwhile everyone else including your prospective clients will see (or may not see) the site in its real ranking position which may be way down the list and out of sight  :(

In your personalised search induced naivety you’ll believe your site is doing real well, but actually it might be doing really, really bad!

A suggested solution
If you do monitor your site’s ranking, (and I commend you for doing this!) then use your browsers ‘stealth mode’ to check rankings  and see what the rest of the internet sees.

Most browsers have a stealth mode but it can be a bit hard to find so here’s some clues:

• Internet Explorer 8 calls it ‘In private Filtering’ Ctrl Shift F
• FireFox calls it ‘Private Browsing’ Ctrl Shift P
• Chrome calls it ‘Incognito’ Ctrl Shift N
• Safari calls it ‘Private Browsing’

How much does Google know about you?
The other way that your search results might differ from what your clients see, is when you are signed into your Google ID.
Google may  skew results based on info stored  in your Google ID.

The solution here is to log out of your Google ID, or again use your browser’s stealth mode.

Invisible Flash

Apple iPhones and iPads are becoming increasingly popular internet devices. Sites I monitor have up to 6% of visitors arriving on their iPhones and I suspect iPad usage will explode soon to take this total number much higher.

Flash is used to provide visual interest in websites, and is important for emotional based sales i.e. selling products and services that make us feel good. Flash is also good at attracting attention.

As any iDevice devotee will tell you, iPhones & iPads don’t display Adobe Flash.

Any Flash in your website looks like a gapping black hole to these visitors. There’s no emotional sales value, it looks ugly; even defiled and predictably undermines your website’s ability to engage iDevice visitors .

Read what Apple has to say about Flash and why they are unlikely to ever support it.  http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

What does this mean for your business website?
David Radzikiewicz from A7 Designs suggests, split your web presence over two sites; your traditional site and then a mobile visitor site. Visitors are automatically sent to the best site for their internet device by coding in the site.

If your target market is likely to visit using an iDevice then take action soon.

Display Standards

The last and ongoing display anomaly relates to web design standards. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has a set of technical standards for websites to ensure they all display OK, but many  sites don’t comply.

Display compatibility is complex as your website must be displayed faithfully in the plethora of browsers each with multiple software versions. As context; in the last 30 days, 52 different browsers/browser versions visited just one clients’ site.

This is has been further exacerbated by browsers that didn’t comply with the W3C standards (Microsoft being one of the worst offenders), and as a result W3C has lost relevance for some frustrated Web Developers.

Who cares about standards, I just want sales!
Fortunately there are typically few display issues for non-compliant websites, but occasionally the outcomes can be catastrophic sales-wise:

• Menus don’t work properly, so the visitor can’t access product information or sales pages.
• Product information is displayed completely off the screen and unable to be read.
• Search engine spiders are unable to navigate the site, so products don’t feature in search results.
• Text and/or images are displayed over the top of other content making it impossible to read

These are all excellent sales preventers and something I’m sure you dont want in your site.

Is my site W3C compliant ?
Fortunately W3C has an easy to use validation tool that you can check each page in your website for compliance. http://validator.w3.org/

I suggest you discuss any W3C errors your find with your Web Dev as some are trivial and might cost you a lot to achieve very little.

http://www.browsershots.org/ is also an excellent free resource to see how your site looks in a wide range of other browsers.  It also interesting just see see how many there are out there…

Where to from here

• Monitor the traffic in your site
  I strongly recommend Google Analytics. Its free and world class.
• Use Analytics to check your website’s visitor clickstreams to see if they are doing what you want them to do. If not, take action.
• Use Analytics to identify then check correct display for the more popular browsers used to access your site.
• Check the main pages in your site for W3C compliance

Summary

Dont assume that everyone sees the same as you online. Your Clients may have a very difference experience, and its their reality that determines your online sales success.

This blog is based on the Succinct Update newsletter from July 2010.
You can subscribe directly to our newsletter here

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Dean took some advise I provided in recent internet marketing presentation at the Gawler BEC & turned it into some international business by bringing together two of his customers, Living with Wildlife and Compliance & Competency Management

Now that’s really providing value to your clients! Well done Dean!

Read more on Dean’s blog

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Actually it is really what visitor activity tells you, and the only way to ‘hear’ this is through interpreting website statistics.

In this case the client had a temporary parking web page while they underwent the arduous task of implementing a new website.

Recently installed, Analytics (my fav web metrics tool) revealed that the site was attracting visitors from searches nicely aligned with this client’s business and in their target geography. Great news!

The bad news was Analytics revealed these visitors were immediately abandoning the site, apparently unimpressed with the parking page.

Until I revealed this today the business had no idea how many sales opportunities it had lost, and as you would expect, the website refurbishment is now a top priority.

How may sales leads are you loosing because you can’t hear what your website telling you ?

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But how do you decide which paid search services your business needs, and importantly how do you decide which service provider to use ?  Could you DIY paid search ? Not sure? Read on.

What is Paid search?

Paid search displays an advert to someone who has just searched for your products and services on the internet.

Paid search even allows you to display those ads in a targeted geographical area i.e. you can only show your ads in SA, or just SA and Vic or just Australia or even globally.

IThere’s two great things about paid search for small biz:

Get a slice of the action – however small
Unlike commtting to a print advertisement that you can only afford to run once, paid search allows you to set the budget you’re comfortable with, and you the exposure proportional to that.

You get to play with the big boys; at least for the time your budget allows.

Just the facts Ma’am
Adwords gives you access to high quality information about your target market that you can even use in your off-line advertising:

Paid search facts

• Google owns internet search in Australia with over 95% of all searches conducted on Google.com.au. For maximum exposure it makes sense to use Google’s AdWords paid search.
• Paid search = Auction:
  Paid search is literally a keyword auction. You bid to show your ad when someone searches on a keyword. If they click on your ad then you pay a click price. If they don’t click you don’t pay. What value! Imagine if you didn’t have to pay for the brochures that clients didn’t read!The prospective client is automatically taken to your website where they can find out about what you can sell them that they where just searching for.

• Bidding:
  Its an auction, so if your bid is too low your ad wont be seen.
  If you bid too much you are wasting money.
  If you bid for searches or ‘keywords’ that don’t clearly represent a customer, then you’re wasting your money.Poor bidding can burn money and get zero results if you are not careful.

• Keywords:
  Cultivating a selection of successful keywords is the most important component of a successful paid search campaign. This is followed closely by creating compelling adverts that entice searchers to click and visit your site.

• Tuning:
  Most search term volumes fluctuate over time. Some are seasonal (i.e. Christmas), others follow fashion, fads even current affairs (i.e. green house). If you don’t proactively manage your bids and keywords over time your campaign will drift out of tune and will either waste your money or stall altogether.

Setting up Paid search

Actually setting up paid search is really easy! Well at least setting up a basic campaign is.
But if your market is already strongly represented online, suddenly it gets much more challenging.

There is an arsenal of AdWords tuning tools and 3rd party products to help you be more competitive.

DIY

It is quite viable for self-motivated and marketing savvy individuals to create a paid search campaign. There’s lots of online help and Google even has a ‘Starter edition’ to make it even easier for you.
Go to www.google.com/adwords and register.

If there’s not much competition in your online marketplace then this is probably all you need to do to dramatically increase the number of sales leads to your website. So do it!

If you find your campaign is not working or it seems to be ridiculously expensive for a click then you probably need assistance from a professional.

Paid search specialist

There is a growing number of good providers (& sadly bad ones too!) offering paid search support, even your web developer maybe able to assist you in setting up an AdWords campaign and getting you going.

Assessing Paid Search results

AdWords includes a very useful management console that shows the status of individual keywords and ads over time. The system can even email you regular reports to keep you informed.

Google Analytics is Google’s free website traffic tool.
Analytics provides cross medium (AdWords paid search and organic search) data, and the ability to comine and compare is extremely valuable.

I routinely use paid search to research optimal keywords to improve the website’s organic performance.
Paid search’s immediatecy means you get quick results.

The data is live not historical (like predictative tools) and you are using your target client base to test it – an online focus groupof throushands of clients – Wow! Paid search data  has enormous creditability.
Its marketing gold!

You can do all of this and much much more, but only if the Analytics and AdWords accounts are linked.

Paid Search traps

These are some of the major issues I see

• Changing rules for paid search
  In an effort to improve its paid search ‘relevance’, Google is penalising paid search campaigns that have a poor quality score which mainly relates to the target website’s landing page. This signals the end of the simple paid search campaign era and heralds the need for a broader internet marketing strategy that balances paid and organic search to avoid the penalty of inflated click prices.

• Bundled fees = poor information
  Paid search providers who bundle their service fee with click fees mask ROI information and so inhibit your ability to evaluate and tune individual keywords, or even the campaign.

• Fixed fee packages
  Paid search providers with fixed fee prices somewhat naively assume a constant keywords click price. You will either pay too much per click or the keywords will be under budgeted and therefore ineffectual.
• Analytics & AdWords linkage
  You need to link AdWords to Analytics to assess the quality of keywords and ads in your campaign.  If your provider won’t allow you access they are hiding something; most likely their profit margin for their bundled campaign.

Where to from here?

Research: Your online marketplace.

Search for the generic terms that describe your offerings or the problem they solve in Google.  See how many AdWords ads are displayed on the right hand side under ‘sponsored links’.

There are only eleven positions available so if they are already occupied then there’s already competition for that keyword.

Do it: Set up a paid search campaign

If you don’t have time or the interest use a Paid Search provider or internet marketer.

Measure: Your website’s performance

Add Analytics to your website so you can critically examine its paid and organic performance

Assign: Your website a sales budget

Treat your website like a sales person. Set a budget and demand results.

Investigate why if it fails to meet the budget. You may have to invest to get results.

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In Australian a significant portion of “onlineâ€? sales are actually facilitated by personal interaction via email, telephone or even meetings. 

In these sales scenarios, the website’s role is to “generate sales leadsâ€?. 
The leads are passed onto a (human) sales person for following up and closing the sales.

In these cases the information flow between website and the sales person is key for maximum sales effectiveness.

Lets review some of the more common discussions and issues:

Who deals with the leads?
A classic issue is that the website leads are received by a non-sales person.
It is likely that a sales person could close more of the leads rather than a non-sales person.

Response time
The website enquiry might languish for a few hours or days before being directed to the person responsible or with time allocated to respond.  Respond to website leads promptly and enthusiastically in the same way you treat clients off-line.

People and particularly customers treat emails as near real-time communication, so no response may be interpreted as no interest. 

Don’t forget that the enquiry may have also been submitted to competitors at the same time too, so “the early bird will get the wormâ€?.

Ensure your website ‘auto-responds’ to the enquirer with a meaningful message like:
“Thank you for your enquiry. Our sales representative will be in contact shortly.â€?

Spam spam spam
The scourge of the internet, spam affects website owners in several ways:

• Are Spam filters swallowing your leads?
  Unfortunately over-enthusiastic spam prevention on your email client can block or hide your website sales leads.  Check with your IT service provider to see if they can minimise this for you.
• Website Harvesting & bombing
  Spammers ‘harvest’ email details from your website and use them in spam broadcasts.
  Sophisticated software attacks on your website can generate what appears to be a genuine sales leads.Discuss strategies to minimise your website’s exposure to these attacks with your website developer.
• Dealing with time wasters
  Much like off-line, there are people who just waste your time needlessly.
  A well structured website contact form can ensure the enquirer provides identifying information and any other criteria to allow you to immediately evaluate the worth of the lead.
   
  This will save a lot of time and angst following up bogus leads, and also increases the value of your website generated leads. 

Website Sales Budget?
Does your website have a sales target? If not why not!

Make it ‘accountable’ to generate the number of sales leads you require by incorporating it into your sales and marketing strategy. You get to keep its sales commission, but you may have to invest in it initially to get it working effectively as a sales tool.  Treat it like a sales aid and it will become one. 

Web Statistics
Accountability starts with measurement, and for websites there is no more cost-effective web analysis tool than Google Analytics.  It’s free; world class and geared to extract sales information from your website. Get it implemented on all pages in your website and start getting ‘sales reports’ for your website rather than technical gibberish.
What does a new Client cost?
Calculate your Client Acquisition Cost (CAP); that is ALL of the expenses involved in acquiring a new client; marketing advertising, cost of sales etc then divide this by the actual number of new clients you got.

Make sure you are sitting down when you do this – you may be surprised how expensive your CAP is.

Consider leads generated from the various forms of advertising your business uses and typically you will find that the CAP for website leads are a fraction of the cost of alternatives such as Yellow Pages, print media etc.

This information can then be used to allocate your marketing/advertising budget to where you get the best ROI.
You don’t get any website leads !?
If your website is not generating leads it warrants closer inspection.

Some businesses tell me their website is not a sales tool, however I argue passionately to the contrary. Every website is or has the capacity to be a sales and marketing tool.

If your website is not generating leads then something is wrong!

I recommend:

• Access and scrutinise your website’s statistics
  Insist on be given access to your website statistics
  If the stats aren’t meaningful get Google Analytics
• Are you getting visitors at all ?
  Be aware that a HIT is not a VISITOR
  VISITORS buy things; HITs happen to website servers, so count VISTORS not HITS.
   
• Are your visitors actually prospective clients?
  Interpret the keyword(s) they used to find your site
• How do visitors register interest in your offerings?
  Do you have a contact form ?
• Who receives website leads?
  Is someone accountable to follow-up these leads?
• What do they do with it ?
  Are website leads and conversions tracked in your sales reports?

I hope you find this helpful information to integrate your website into your sales processes.

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