The Secret to Choosing the Right Web Site Images

Yeah, yeah, “a picture is worth a thousand words”, yadda, yadda. The problem is, if an image isn’t right, your web site could have a thousand words against it before it even starts.

You need the right image. The one that gives you the most bang for your thousand words.

The first rule is: there are no rules. Unless you are a rock star designer, it’s difficult to say whether your snazzy shot of grapes will properly convey your toxic chemical manufacturing company’s green initiative.

For most of us, it’s best to choose an image that complements the web copy. If yours is a residential roofing company, a beauty shot of a home with a nice roof is a good, safe choice.

If you want to get creative, go ahead, but make sure the creativity enhances the connection to the content. For the roofing company, maybe a shot of a few homes in the rain, but one of them is glowingly dry (I don’t know – you get the idea).

Here’s the (not so) Secret Bit: Your copy should be about your customers; providing answers to what they seek on the internet. If your image is supposed to relate to your copy, and your copy should be about your customers, then… BINGO – make the image about your customers too.

What about a shot of a couple happily entertaining friends in the backyard of their stunningly roofed home?

By Stephen Da Cambra

Insulate Your Home, Not Your Web Site

We recently finished developing a web site for a customer who, long after he approved designs and layouts, would still point out other sites that he thought had some redeeming feature.

Without fail, within seconds of seeing the other sites, we were able to point out why his site design will be far better at generating business. 

Fortunately, the customer understands that generating new business on the internet means driving traffic to his web site.  He has contracted us to carry out SEO (search engine optimization) and PPC (pay-per-click advertising) campaigns, both of which will get him lots of traffic.

So, how can we tell, from only a quick glance at a homepage, that another site will probably not generate as much business as his?  (Even if they do lots of SEO and PPC.)

Our customer’s product helps to insulate homes and that’s what the other sites were doing – OK, they didn’t increase the R-value in anyone’s house - but they insulated their web visitors from a call to action.

None of the other sites had a contact telephone number, or even an email address, plainly visible on the homepage.  There were a few nice designs (some almost as good as ours!), but still, web visitors would have to click on the “Contact Us” page, or scroll deeper in the homepage, to find a number to call or some other way of converting.

These extra steps are like layers of insulation between your customer and the most important information on your site.

The more “insulation” on your site, the less chance you have of converting your hard-earned visitors.

Driving traffic to your site isn’t an end, it’s a beginning.  Once you get them there, you should make it as easy as possible for web site visitors to become customers.

By Stephen Da Cambra

The Story of SEO & PPC

You may wonder whether SEO or PPC is better for achieving your business goals.  Their purposes are the same – to get your site listed on the top pages of search results.

As with most internet marketing, there are few rules to follow in making a choice.  Many companies rely on the “quick to the top” guaranteed rankings that come with PPC advertising.  Others prefer to avoid the click charges and concentrate on the “natural” rankings that SEO produces.

As with most internet marketing, you go with what works for you.  But don’t let what works for you blind you to what can work better. 

As with most internet marketing, there are downsides to individual tactics.  PPC ads will get your site listed on top search results pages almost instantly, but most surfers are aware that PPC ads are paid advertising and prefer to choose from the natural rankings. 

SEO will get you those coveted natural rankings, but it will take a long time and concerted effort to do so.

To avoid the downsides of SEO and PPC, and take advantage of the upsides, use them together.

If you have a long-term internet marketing plan, and you should, make sure it includes a concerted SEO and PPC strategy. 

The real beauty of a combined SEO/PPC strategy is that the advantages of one counteract the disadvantages of the other.

If a first page natural search ranking is your goal, there is little chance of getting there quickly.  Especially with a new web site, the search engines have to find the site, register it and then monitor it for legitimacy and relevance.  Unless you use buckets of cash, it can take many months or more than a year to get a decent natural search ranking. 

That’s where PPC comes in.  PPC immediately puts your site on the first page of search results, so it get’s exposure while you build the site’s reputation naturally with SEO.

When you start seeing decent rankings from your SEO efforts, you can start reducing your PPC spend until the natural rankings are where you want them to be.

By Stephen Da Cambra

The Secret of Internet Marketing Balance

“Balance” is becoming an increasingly popular word.  Instead of careers, some of us now pursue a work/life balance.  Long ago, many of us ate what we pleased and suffered the consequences of not eating a balanced diet.  There’s even Balance TV.

The word’s popularity is well justified; too much of anything is not good and balance keeps everything … well … in balance.

 

Marketing is no exception.  Taking time to develop a balanced marketing mix will increase the payoff from your marketing budget. 

The right balance is especially important for internet marketing.  Unlike most other forms of marketing and advertising, there is no lag between message and action on the internet.  In seconds, a web surfer can go from not knowing of something to owning it.  The lack of mediating time between messages and customer conversion can make the consequences of unbalanced web marketing more severe than with other forms of marketing.

Fortunately, the secret to balancing your web marketing is simple – balance your web marketing goals.  The ultimate goal of any marketing is to increase sales – no balance needed.  On the internet, making a sale or generating a business lead results from completing a chain of three main goals:

First goal: To be found.  Your company or product needs to be found when potential customers search for it.  If your web site does not rank highly in search results, it is invisible to potential customers.

Second goal: To be chosen.  Search results are crowded with competing messages.  Customers will choose the result that addresses their needs most directly.

Third goal: To convert the visitor.  On retail sites, a conversion is a sale.  Your conversion may be different – provide a quotation, arrange a consultation or get customer information.  Whatever it is, it is the ultimate goal of your web marketing.

Not keeping the goals of internet marketing in balance creates a weak link in the chain – and you know what they say about the strength of a chain.

By Stephen Da Cambra

Your Web Site & Your Brand

Ask people for a definition of “brand” and the answer will likely be interchangeable with the definition for “logo” or “trademark”; something along the lines of “a trademark or distinctive name identifying a product or a manufacturer” as one definition on Dictionary.com states.

Only part of that definition is correct.  A brand identifies a product or manufacturer; or person, or advocacy group, entertainer, assembly line worker, the crew of a dragon boat, a city, etc..  In short, a brand is identity.  A product is shown to be distinct from other similar products by its brand.

What constitutes an identity, or brand?  Not just a logo a trademark, but everything about an entity, everything it does, forms its identity (or brand). 

For example, how do you identify McDonald’s Restaurants?  By the golden arches? Or by the fact that their food has high fat content?  Or by the fact that they run a charitable organization that helps families of seriously ill children?  Regardless of your answer(s), for you, the McDonald’s brand, or identity, is the feeling you have about the company and that brand is affected by everything McDonald’s does, from the food they prepare to the programs they sponsor – and the golden arches too.

What is your company’s brand?  What comes to mind for your customers and prospective customers when they think of your company?

Now, look at your web site.  Everything about your web site is part of your company’s brand.  Not just the design, but the layout, words, links, images and its effectiveness at solving your customers’ needs. 

Does your web site support your company’s brand?

By Stephen Da Cambra

Hook 'em With Headlines

You may have noticed this blog, while professing to “simplify the internet” for SMEs, has mostly dwelled on internet marketing and web sites.  The former to encourage you to use the power of the internet to promote your company and generate web site traffic, and the latter to make sure that, when you do the former, your web site converts as many visitors as possible.

Our previous post on landing pages outlined the importance of confirming for your visitors that they are on the right path to a solution.  You have lit the path well when people choose to visit your site.

Following the advice from the previous post, when they do, they would land on a page that made it clear they are still on the right path.  In most cases, you have a few seconds to do so before your visitor loses the path and clicks away.  While the look of your page and images are important, you also need to confirm quickly in writing that the page has the information they seek.  But, they will not read very much, if at all.

Now what? 

Hook them with your headlines.  A visit to your landing page begins with certain visual clues, your company or product logo, perhaps an image of the product, but the real confirmation that the content is what your customer seeks must be in the headlines – that is, the main headline and a sub-head. 

We don’t have the space to get into the how-tos of great headline writing – as this blog matures, we will go into detail – but it is important to understand the importance of your landing page headlines.

If there is one overall direction that your headline, sub-head and indeed all your web copy should follow, it is to do everything possible to get your customers to stay on your path and take the next step.  In other words, reading your headline should lead them to the sub-head, and reading your sub-head should lead to rest of your copy.

If you want to learn more about web copy, but have limited time, start with headline writing.  

Sometimes that is all you will need.

By Stephen Da Cambra

Happy Landing Pages

In case you are as confused as I was when I first heard the term “landing page”, let’s start at the beginning.  A landing page is the page on which web surfers land after they click on a link to your web site.  In many cases, your web site’s homepage will be the landing page for most links to your site. 

That’s all fairly straightforward, so let’s throw a curve.  Your homepage is probably not the best place for potential customers to land on your site. 

Why?  Because your landing page must fall naturally in the path your customer follows to get from “need” to “solution”.  If the page on which they land is not a natural step on the path, it increases the chance of them leaving the path and going elsewhere.  

Your homepage is a great place to land if they do an internet search for your company.  The problem is, unless your company has a high profile in the public’s eye, most potential customers won’t know enough to search for your company name.  Many might never have heard of your company – so how could they ever search for it?

Instead, they are more likely to search for generic products or services, similar to those your company provides.  When they do so, studies show shoppers look for a path that leads to what they seek.  If they lose the path, they look elsewhere for it.  Show them the path and they will come right to your door.

Customers will choose the path of least resistance – the easiest one to follow.  When they enter a term, millions of results might appear.  In the midst of that unfamiliar forest, they need a path.  They look for something familiar to help show them the way - the path of least resistance. 

As they hunt through the results, the most familiar thing to surfers is the thing they seek - the search term they entered.  Anything else seems off the mark and not a path worth pursuing. The better your link reflects the search term used, the more likely it is to be clicked on. 

But, you are not out of the woods yet, and your customers aren’t either.  What happens after they choose your link is very important.  If they land on a page that does not make it clear that they are still on the right path, there’s a good chance they will click away to look for another path.

That’s why your landing page is so important.  It’s also why your home page probably does not work as a landing page for all your products and everything your company does.

You will have a better chance of converting customers if they land on a page that confirms they have found the right solution.

By Stephen Da Cambra

Your Economic Stimulus Package - Internet Marketing

“Fantastic!”, I thought when our small company launched its first web site in 1996 (otherwise known as 2 BG – 2 years before Google).  I immediately grasped the awesome possibilities and saw the future of this powerful new medium -  “I won’t have to hand out so many brochures!”

If you choose to use your web site as a surrogate brochure or calling card, that's fantastic.  But, it is like using the roads for a donkey cart instead of a tractor-trailer.  A donkey cart can carry a lot, but a tractor-trailer uses the same roadway to do so much more.

As each new medium comes along, its content has a tendency to imitate the content of the media that came before.  Until we realized its power to entertain, radio programming was a rehash newspaper copy.  The first television stars were old radio personalities; doing what they did on radio, but in front of the cameras.

The same is true for the internet.  Even the old “information superhighway” name probably originated in reference to the idea that the web could convey any print, audio or video content, but it does not reflect what the internet has become.  

Like the media that preceded it, the internet has matured and forged its own identity by connecting all of us in ways that other media cannot.  Not just single lanes of traffic, like a highway, but multiple communication pathways, going in every direction – like a living organism.

When you use your web site only as a surrogate brochure, you are not taking advantage of the internet’s ability to connect.  Connect to your markets, connect to your customers, connect to your competition.

Internet marketing offers the opportunity to connect along those multiple pathways – whether your customers are “kicking tires”, or ready to buy; whether they need lots of info or they purchase on impulse and whether they are looking for the purple widget or green thingme.

When you connect with your potential customers on new levels that relate directly to their buying process, you increase the chance of converting them to paying customers.

With the right internet marketing, you can turn your web site into your leading source of business and business leads.  Just the economic stimulus package your company might need.

By Stephen Da Cambra