Enotia: News

Is Traffic REALLY King?

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 23:42:42 GMT

Imagine you operate a retail shop in the main street of your town or city. At the end of each month how do you measure your performance?

It's highly unlikely to be based purely on the number of customers who entered the shop. While this statistic is important, it should surely be just one factor in determining more important metrics such as profitability trends.

Since developing one the world's first proprietary content management systems (CMS) in the 1990's, Enotia has remained at the forefront of the corporate website industry by successfully anticipating market trends and investing in development of new products and services to meet future client demand.

Among the hottest issues in our business in recent times are Search Engine Optimisation and Search Engine Marketing - activities designed to attract more visitors - almost every potential client we meet has search engine optimisation and marketing near the top of their list of questions and requirements (by the way we believe we have all the right answers in this regard).

Attracting more visitors to your website is a fundamental aspect of increasing return on investment, yet it is only one factor and alone is no guarantee of real improvement of your websites performance.

For the record Enotia produced corporate website solutions offer access to comprehensive real-time website statistics that include vital information such as entry and exit pages, unique visitors, page views per visit, referring websites, search engine keywords and phrases used to find the website and much more.

The battle for top placing in search engines is becoming more intense every day. The cost of paid placement is rising and higher organic rankings are becoming more difficult to achieve, accordingly, I see conversion metrics optimisation: pro-active monitoring and management focussed on conversion of a higher percentage of visitors into customers as one of the next "big things" on the Internet.

In our experience fundamental oversights can dramatically affect the conversion rate of visitors into customers.

While we reserve extensive professional advice in this regard for the exclusive benefit of our clients, here are three simple tips for improvement that are so often overlooked in the real world:

1: Include clear calls to action in key areas of you website.

If you sell products and services online this can be as simple as a Buy Now button, if you only publish your product catalogue online for reference purposes, include a button that offers visitors the option to Enquire about pricing.

If you don't offer visitors a clear option to take the next step, in many cases they won't: and rest assured your competitors are only one click away.

2: Make certain to include your key search engine listing content (i.e. the Meta Titles and Descriptions and paid advertsing content) in the relevant landing pages on your website.

Visitors clicking search engine results and advertisements expect to see a webpage that contains information relevant to the listing or advertisement they clicked.

Investing into search engine marketing campaigns that include advertising content such as 50% off this week, which is not prominently repeated on the webpage linked from the advertisement, is simply wasting money.

3. Consider investment into a usability study.

While professional usability studies can be very expensive (Enotia's usability studies start from $8,000.00 and can easily run to $25,000.00+), they are also one of the most effective ways to identify strengths and weaknesses in your website.

If you don't have the resources to invest in a professional usability study, ask some of your key clients for feedback about your website. Does it contain the information they need? Does it encourage them to visit regularly? What do they want/expect to see? Do they get lost looking for information?

As most of us know, long gone are the "good old days" when simply having a corporate website justified the exercise.

Today, with more than 10 million Australians pro-actively searching for products and services online everyday (according to BRW), the Internet medium has seriously arrived.

If you're serious about gaining real return on your investment in a corporate website solution think about what visitors to your website expect and give it to them.

Don't be afraid to experiment: but carefully and regularly monitor key statistics and conversion metrics and make modifications as required.

Should Links Open in New Windows

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 23:28:27 GMT

Should links open in a new window? Contrary to popular opinion, when all facts are considered, the answer is a definate NO!

Website users are becoming more and more sophisiticated. The latest versions of most web browsers have been developed to provide greater control over browser behaviour. New features such as the advent of tabbed browsing has revolutionised the way many users surf the web. Providing users with greater control over browser behaviour has significatly improved the user experience. Forcing links to open in new windows effectively takes that control out of users' hands. Many users become frustrated (even irate in my experience) when confronted by sites that effectively hi-jack the control of the browser.

In the past the thinking was that if links from your website to external sites opened in the same window you would lose your visitors. The fact is if the content of a website is not compelling enough to hold the attention of the user or to motivate the user to return to the site, there is very little you will accomplish by making sure all subsequent navigation occurs in a new window. Additionally the browser's back button is one of the most frequently used navigation tools. If you open a link in a new window you effectively break the back button. It can be extremely confusing to users when they try to click back within the new window only to find the back button no longer works.

Users of the latest browsers now have control over whether or not to open links in new windows, new tabs, or within the same window. Those that use these controls to full effect are becoming increasingly frustrated with websites that fail to respect what they consider to be improvements in usability.

The World Wide Web Consortium have weighed in on the subject. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 released way back in May 1999 states that "new windows can be very disorienting to users" and suggests that until browsers provide the capability of turning off spawned windows "do not cause pop-ups or other windows to appear and do not change the current window without informing the user". Older websites generally used the link attribute target="_blank" to open a link in a new window. The use of the target attribute will no longer validate as standards compliant within HTML 4.0 strict and XHTML 1.0 strict websites.

There are rare circumstances in which it could be considered appropriate for links to open in new windows, for example links to PDFs. These should be the exception and not the rule. The aim is to treat your visitors with respect.

Efficiency = Survive and Thrive

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 23:21:28 GMT

Running a business at the best of times can be a challenge, but the current economic conditions doubtless relate to additional concerns for many operators.

While the "experts" endlessly debate the global economy, here's a fact you don't need an economics degree to understand: Businesses that operate more efficiently than the their competitors are better placed to survive and thrive in any economic environment.

The overall efficiency of a business is made up of many individual components.

Major changes to certain areas of business operations such as overhauling production or manufacturing processes may require substantial investment and lengthy lead-times to implement.

On the other hand, minor modifications can have major impact on efficiency in other areas of day to day operation.

An example of how relatively minor changes can have major impact is reflected in Enotia's recent implementation of a new sales process.

Our new sales process is designed to determine if a potential client is well suited for our products and services and if so stepping through a system of events that assists them to make an informed decision about investing in an Enotia produced solution.

To date the new sales system is proving to be a great success and we are enjoying the highest conversion rates in our business history. The relatively minor investment we made in developing this process has been returned several times already.

Technology, which plays a substantial part in our new sales process, is a great way to increase operating efficiencies.

The new Enotia sales process features a high level of automation and in that regard we are fortunate to have access to the same technology we provide commercially to our clients.

Other areas technology delivers efficiency to our business include publication of this website, which is a strong source of new enquiries. We also publish a website dedicated to technical support of our wholly owned iASP Content Management System, which provides our clients with direct access to a substantial knowledge base that in turn minimises the level of hands on client support we need to provide.

Enotia also benefits greatly from the efficiency our integrated CRM system delivers. The CRM system, which includes a client e-mail system, facilitates partially automated management of client relationships, sales, production, accounting and support process.

In all I estimate our investment in efficiency through technology is saving our business a minimum of 3 additional staff.

Enotia clients have access to substantial underlying resources designed to improve business efficiency and we are always pleased to provide confidential consultation relating to how best to apply these resources to your business on request.

Visitor To Customer Conversion

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 23:15:49 GMT

How many times have you visited a website that, whilst at first may have caught your eye, left you wanting that extra-little-push when it came to making a commitment? That commitment might have been something as simple as submitting a general enquiry, or registering your personal details, or indeed purchasing the vendor's online product(s).

The web is now such an ultra competitive medium that - as a bona fide vendor - if you're not mindful of current best practise ROI (Return On Investment) techniques you can be certain that some of your competitors are going to leave you behind.

So how do you convert more visitors into customers?

Most corporate website operators are now well aware of the importance of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Being "seen" in major search engines is essential, however, driving traffic to your website is just the first step - albeit an important one.

Fact: More than 40% of website visitors do not click beyond the homepage

Fact: Website visitors make judgements about the business publishing the website within the first few seconds of arrival.

Successful corporate website operators are employing innovative methods to instantly capture visitor attention and invite deeper website exploration.

For many businesses 'high-end' functionality such as production and publication of corporate videos and provision of live chat 24/7 are cost prohibitive. There are however many simple, cost effective methods that can dramatically increase the conversion rate of new web visitors to regular online customers.

Two of the simplest, most powerful (and sadly often overlooked) ways you can improve the conversion rate of your website are:

Testimonials:

Publishing positive testimonials from your existing customers at strategically important areas of your website can be a powerful influence.

According to leading Internet Marketing specialist Marketing Sherpa "Testimonials can differentiate your online subscription product. They can help convince visitors to give your service a try".

Calls To Action:

One of the golden rules of sales is to ask for the business.

Too many websites publish a wealth of information about products and services but fail to ask for the business by publishing any call to action.

A call to action does not have to be a big flashing button - it can be as simple as a link to your contact page - the important thing is to give visitors the next logical step to take in their buying decision.

If you're serious about increasing the conversion rate of your website visitors to customers contact Enotia to arrange a confidential discussion today.

Google Page Rank Explained

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 23:12:25 GMT

The Google Search Engine is fundamentally a popularity contest.

The more popular Google rates a web page, the higher it appears in relevant search results.

The primary "popularity rating" Google assigns to every web page is called the Google Page Rank.

In an imaginary case where two web-pages are otherwise identical, the one with the higher Google Page Rank should appear higher than the other in relevant Google search results.

Page Rank, which was originally developed by Google co-founder Larry Page at Stanford University, fundamentally relies on the link structure of the web, where a link from page A to page B is considered a 'popularity vote' by page A for page B.

The actual volume of 'popularity votes' each page receives is a factor in determining Page Rank, however, Google also analyses Page A (the web page 'voting' for the other page) and considers a link (or vote) from a more popular page to be more important than a link (or vote) from a less popular page.

The actual Page Rank is calculated via a complex algorithm and is expressed as a score on a continuous distribution between 0 and 1. The higher the Page Rank, the more popular Google rates the web page and the higher it will appear in relevant search results. Using tools such as the Google Toolbar, it's possible to receive an approximate reading of the PageRank of a given URL, expressed as a value between 0 and 10. In our experience, the actual effective 'value' of this figure is logarithmic (like the Richter scale) - that is, a 4 is an order of magnitude more important than a 3, which is an order of magnitude more important (and thus harder to obtain) than a 2, and so forth.

Google typically updates the 'trade-secret' algorithm that determines Page Rank values without notice around 4 times each year, often with major impact on the Page Rank of some web sites, so it is a good idea to regularly monitor your web site's Page Rank score via readily available tools such as: http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php, or by using Google's own Toolbar in your browser.

The Google Page Rank has proven to be subject to manipulation via various unethical means. Google vigilantly protects the integrity of Google Page Rank scores and employs advanced techniques to determine unethical manipulation. Where activity that unethically manipulates Page Ranking is detected, Google applies various penalties to the offending web site, which may in some cases result in the Google Toolbar and other tools returning an estimated Page Rank of '-1', indicating that the site may have been excluded from Google altogether.

Enotia is specialist in the field of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Our services include comprehensive performance analysis reporting that clearly shows website owners how their site is performing against their competitors and includes step by step instructions about how to improve.

Enotia's Reports factor numerous performance metrics, and typically the Google Page Rank accounts for 1/3 of the overall score.

For practical reference, even without dedicated search engine optimisation, the majority of properly structured web sites typically achieve an initial Google Page Rank of 2 to 3 within 6 to 8 weeks of being published on the Internet.

Is your current website doing more harm than good?

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 23:00:17 GMT

There are many practices I see commonly employed by web designers and developers that I believe are counter-productive and often detrimental to the overall performance of the website.

A good corporate website should be thought of as a virtual extension of physical business premises.

Whether or not you actually sell your products or services online is irrelevant - visitors consider your website a 'virtual shop-front' that reflects your real-world business.

To form and support my opinions about good and bad web design I often compare web-based practices to their 'real-world' equivalent. I've outlined five of my 'favourites' and will leave it to you to make up your own mind.

Real World Scenario:
As a customer enters your shop you greet them with "Welcome, you are the 1624^th visitor to our shop since January 2005".

Website Scenario:
You publish a 'hit counter' on your website.

Comment:
Customers couldn't care less about how many other customers have entered your shop, especially if it relates to a handful of customers each day, so why publish a 'hit counter' on your website?

Hit counters were one of the very first 'interactive' features developed in the 1990's, but they have long past their use-by date. Of course meaningful statistics that allow website owners to analyse where visitors are coming from, what they are doing on your website and where they are going to is an essential component of pro-active website management, but these should be 'private' and not available to the public. If your website still contains a hit-counter I urge you to remove it immediately.

Real World Scenario:
As a customer enters your shop you greet them with "Welcome, everything you see here is exactly the same as it was three years and four months ago".

Website Scenario:
You publish the 'Date Updated' on your website - and don't update the content regularly.

Comment:
While IASP's business is built on providing content-driven corporate website solutions, I appreciate that not every website requires updating every day, however, if you do not update your website regularly (at least once a month) for goodness sake remove all references to the 'Date Updated' and stop telling the world that the content they are reading was published when Adam was a boy.

Real World Scenario:
As a customer enters your shop a band starts playing loud music that wakes up the baby in the pram the customer is pushing.

Website Scenario:
Your website automatically plays an audio/video file when visitors enters your website.

Comment:
When integrated correctly, audio/video can be powerful inclusions in a great corporate website, but you must consider the consequences of 'forcing' media onto visitors without first asking their permission.

Consider the fact that you have no control over the volume level a visitor has their local computer set to - and you have no way of knowing the environment they are in when visiting, for example they might have a baby sleeping in the next room, or they could be at work, and as soon as they open your home-page the baby wakes up (or the boss wakes up) and you can kiss that visitor goodbye forever.

If you use media files, give visitors the courtesy of turning them on - not the inconvenience of turning them off.

Real World Scenario:
Your advertising, marketing, signage etc. works well enough to encourage a customer to walk into the front door - but instead of walking into your shop, they walk into another 'front door'.

Website Scenario:
The dreaded 'Splash Page' - a page published at the front of your website that contains a message along the lines of 'click to enter'.

Comment:
Apart from a means of providing graphic designers with a way to demonstrate their creative flair (and increase the design budget of your website), I cannot think of a single positive reason that justifies publication of a 'Splash Page' on a corporate website.

Splash pages are nothing more than a barrier to visitors - and if produced in Flash as is often the case - they also render the website virtually invisible to search engines such as Google.

If your corporate website features a Flash Splash Page and you disagree with my opinion in this regard, please post a comment on this article (please include your website address) and I'll reply after looking at your website with my 'human' eyes and then with IASP's special 'electronic' eyes (which allow us to see a website the same way Google does).

Real World Scenario:
Customers enter your shop to see some products are available but many of the aisles are closed and marked with 'Under Construction' signs.

Website Scenario:
Same deal: 'Under Construction' published on pages within the website.

Comment:
A great corporate website should be a work in progress, and the content/functionality available on day one will in many cases be only a fraction of the content/functionality ultimately available.

There is no shame in conveying to visitors at one or more strategic locations within your website that future expansion/improvement is coming, but ideally clear timelines should also be published (and adhered to).

Over-use of 'Under Construction' is a common practice with static websites (static meaning the navigation structure would have to be modified on every page to remove a specific link from a navigation menu), but even if your website is static, I believe it is worth the effort to totally remove navigation links to 'future' content to avoid over-use of the 'Under Construction' phrase wherever possible.

Traffic is King, Content is Queen!

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 22:59:16 GMT

It's important when first planning to develop your website that you have a clear set of objectives to work with. You need to be able to measure the performance of your website by pre-determined criteria.

Planning essentials include:

Who is your website targeting?
What do you expect to gain from your website?
How will you know if your website is a success?

A good corporate website must:

Clearly reflect your corporate image and branding
Clearly relate what you do and why your customers should do business with you
Lead visitors to a clear call to action

TIP: It's much better to have a smaller "completed" site that can be added to as you go, rather than a bigger site with areas "under construction".

Finally -- and vitally -- on the Internet, traffic is the King - attracting new visitors is one thing (check the 'See Also' panel to the right for more information about attracting first time visitors), but encouraging visitors to return is another thing entirely.

The best way to attract return traffic is to offer engaging interactive functionality; eBAY, YouTube and MySpace are successful examples of engaging web sites. Selling products and services online is also great way to engage customers and encourage return traffic.

Unfortunately most of us don't have the budget to publish websites with the functionality of eBAY, and many businesses offer products and services that are just not practical to sell online.

In this case, the most logical way to encourage return traffic is to update your website content regularly.

Unless your business has in-house website programmers, the most cost-effective way to regularly update your website is to use an integrated Content Management System (CMS).

Learn more about Content Management via the IASP CMS.

If you build it, they will come? Rubbish!

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 22:58:40 GMT

"If you build it they will come" could not be further off the mark than when it comes to publishing a corporate website.

Once your corporate website is live on the Internet, the real challenge of making it famous begins.

TIP: It's very important to understand that the way your website is developed has a fundamental impact on its overall search engine friendliness.
If it's not too late, ask your developer about the considerations given to the underlying programming framework of your website.
Best-practice development will allow search engines to regularly and accurately catalogue your entire website and if your developer is not up to speed on the latest techniques, you may be behind the 8-ball from the outset.

Once your website is live, there are countless numbers of ways and means to optimise the level of traffic it attracts.

If you're serious about the return on your investment, it's worth looking into professional Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) initiatives.

SEO and SEM services along with traditional mass media advertising can be highly effective yet often expensive, but don't depair; with some creative thinking, there are plenty of effective and economical ways to proactively market your website.

If you're clever (and lucky enough) to have secured yourbusinessname.com.au, consider producing an alternate version of your corporate logo that incorporates your .com.au identity.

I'm not suggesting that you throw away all your current corporate identity material, but, for example, if you sponsor a local sporting club, be sure to provide them with a logo that includes your website address so that potential customers who see the venue signage will have an easier way of remembering how to contact you than through your telephone number.

You might think it's obvious to suggest that you incorporate your website address within your corporate identity and in ALL of the proactive marketing and advertising that you do, however, I am constantly amazed by the amount of IASP client advertising I see/hear/read which does not include the company website address in Television, Radio, Yellow Pages, Press advertisements, or even on business cards and in other corporate promotional material.