Suzannah Porter's Library tagged Marketing →  View Popular

9. Be Clear, Open and Honest

If you have a product out of stock, say so. Few things annoy users as much as reading all about a product they are after, adding it to a cart, and starting the checkout process - only to find out the product isn't actually available.

The same applies to pricing - a user might spend $100 on a product, but when they find out the shipping is $100 on top of that, they are unlikely to continue the sale. Showing delivery pricing is tricky business, but not impossible. An Ip to Country database will allow you to work out where a user is from and show them a likely delivery cost, for example. If you can't do that, show delivery prices for the countries most appropriate to you - where your products are most often delivered, or for major world regions.

8. Don't Waste Time

One of the biggest mistakes sites make is asking for too much information. Your conversion process may be sale, or it may be a request for information. Either way, don't waste the user's time asking for things you don't need to know. This is, of course, doubly important when it comes to asking for information the user deems private, and that they don't want to give out without good reason.

You don't need to demand the user's email address before letting them download a PDF. You don't need their phone number when they fill out an email enquiry form. A user may not want to buy from you twice - so why make them create an account so they can buy again later before processing their first order? You can give the user the option to do all of these things by all means, but make sure it's not compulsory.

7. Help The User Trust You

Most people are still cautious when buying online, and rightly so. There are plenty of people you really shouldn't give your credit card information to! It's important to give the potential customer every reason to trust you.

An address - bricks and mortar, not a P.O. Box - is a good start. A phone number, with people answering the phone, also helps. Showing a privacy policy and explaining shipping procedures clearly can also help the user to trust you. If you have a SSL certificate, show the "VeriSign Secured" logo to the user.

Design and content also play a part in trust. A poor design gives off an unprofessional feeling. If a company can't afford a decent website, or won't spend the money on it, how can a user be sure their order will be treated with the importance it deserves? If content is inaccurate or badly written, the same applies - show that you take pride in what you do.

6. Have a Clear Returns Policy

Returns on the web are, and are likely to remain, a major issue for consumers. With a bricks and mortar shop, the customer knows where the shop is and that to return the product they simply have to go back there and explain the problem. With the web, this is more of an issue. This is especially true for clothing (where people cannot try things on before buying).

Users are impressed with sites with a good returns policy and are more likely to buy from them. Have people phone for returns - they can then explain the problem to a real person, which is always a good first step. Free return shipping is usually a good option, if commercially viable. People don't like to pay to return things, especially if it is a mistake by the retailer. Finally, give the user plenty of time to return things. 28 days is fairly common, but if it takes you that long to deliver a product, what use is the return policy? 28 days from the date of delivery is better.

5. Keep the User Informed

When somebody buys something online, they want to know when it's going to arrive at their door. People are impatient, after all. Giving them an estimated delivery date during the checkout process is a good start. Emailing them when their product is dispatched is great. Giving them a tracking number if using a delivery service that supports online tracking is even better. Keep the user informed at every step of the process, before and after sale, about as much as you can.

How will this improve your conversion rate? Leaving the customer happy once they have made a sale means they are more likely to speak favourably about you later. They may even recommend you to their friends and within online communities. They are also far more likely to buy from you again.

Think about it like this - if a salesman is doing their absolute best to help you, and to make your life easy, and answering your questions, you might buy what they were selling. If they completely ignored you after you'd bought from them, how would you feel about them? They might well have undone all the good work they put in, because once you'd completed your purchase they see no immediate value in you. A company that shows it cares about their customers, even after they've finished shopping, will make a user far happier and far more likely to return.

4. Offer Different Payment Options

It might sound obvious, but you should offer the user a reasonable selection of methods of payment. Not everybody has a credit card, and those that do don't always want to use them. You don't have to accept cheques, but when deciding on payment methods, consider alternatives to the usual methods. Make the user's life easy and give them what they want.

3. Improve the Value of Visitors

People that buy from you are doing so because they like what it is they see. If a user adds a product to a basket, show them other things they might like as well. If they are viewing a product, the same applies - show them similar items. While they might not buy the product they first saw, other similar ones may not have issues that put them off the first. Upselling and cross-selling are tried and tested sales techniques, and there is no reason not to use them on the web.

2. Be Memorable

A good site will include information. A poor one is just an online catalogue. Information (articles, advice, reviews and so on) all help the user early in their buying process. Users start with research online, just as they do offline. If you can make contact with the user at that stage of their process, and give a favourable impression, there is a good chance that they will come back and buy from you when they finally decide to make a purchase.

Being memorable, and making sure you stick in the user's mind, is dependant on a lot of factors. You must have a USP (see the next point), and branding is important (no good if your visitors remember why you are great but don't remember your name), as well as the quality of your site and information.

1. Know Your USP

Finally, the most important point of all - your Unique Selling Point (USP). Your USP is what sets you apart from your competition. If a visitor goes to several sites looking for a product, why would they decide to buy from you instead of somewhere else?

Many companies do not know their USP. Almost all companies have one, but not all of them are aware of it. If you are a family run business, that's a potential USP. Great customer service, low prices, products that can't be bought elsewhere, free delivery, great support - all of these are USPs. Tell your users what yours is. Shout it from the proverbial rooftops.

Step 1. Evaluating your overall competition.

You can either do it ‘at home’ using Google search and Excel or try paid tools returning complete competitor’s report. I usually perform all possible ways of analysis because I (1) cannot fully rely on reports compiled by someone else (be it an automatic tool or another person); (2) do not feel I have the full understanding of a niche unless I spend long hours on searching Google and compiling data into tables (yep, preferably multiple ones, and then combining tables into one table; but that’s just me, you can safely get along with a single solid report).

The idea is simple: you throw all your keywords into a spreadsheet and add the following information:





1. Google daily/monthly estimated reach (I was using data provided by Aaron’s keyword research tool);
2. Overall number of results in Google (broad match);
3. The site ranked #1 for each term;
4. Number of results for [intitle:keyword];
5. Number of results for [inanchor:keyword];
6. Number of results for both [intitle:”keyword” and inanchor:”keyword”] (hat tip to Ciaran) - this is your exact competition, i.e. those who use SEO (optimized titles and incoming links anchor text).

Step 2. Finding your direct competitors

After you compiled your targeted keyword list, you can sort by ‘#1 in G‘ column and see the sites that is most often ranked high in Google for your chosen keywords:

Be sure to explore your most successful competitor’s on-site optimization: titles, H1 and H2 tags, internal site architecture, etc. I have singled out two approaches that help me to perform this kind of analysis:





1. Don’t be too skeptical. Unfortunately most often experienced SEOs analyzing onpage optimization think they can do much better. This thought can bring you to wrongful conclusions.
2. Learn from their mistakes. (I know, this somehow interferes with the first one, so the most important is balancing between the two.) We all know how to do it right. So analyzing what a competitor did well doesn’t help a lot. The art of seeing mistakes and at the same time being able to keep from underestimating (see #1) always brings to the right solution in the end.

2. Compete.com (paid with a few trial searches) also provides some helpful type of analysis that can help you to evaluate your competition:



• “Keyword Share” shows the percentage of total referrals a site receives from a particular keyword compared to its other referrals (= this keyword referrals/other keywords referrals).
• “Keyword Engagement” shows the average time visitors tend to spend on the site after being referred by this keyword.
• “Keyword Effectiveness” all people referred by this term/total time spent on the site.



While these metrics represented by Compete.com look really promising and useful, I mostly use them for self-education and out of curiosity - just because I am more used to ‘old school’ method of looking into my referrals and learn people’s actual behavior in practice. However this can still be very useful for learning the competitors’ referrals and visitors’ [probable] behavior.

3. Authority

In 1963, a Yale psychologist proved people are more willing to adhere to an instruction if given by an authority figure. The infamous Milgram experiment demonstrated the link between influence ability and authority.

In the experiment, a biology teacher with no professional scientific background played the role of a scientific researcher by simply donning a white lab coat. By playing the role of an authority figure, he was able to convince complete strangers to shock someone with up to 450 volts. Some participants questioned the authority and hesitated to administer the shock, but ultimately, it was ultimately proven that people will easily and almost blindly adhere to someone they see as an authority.

Bloggers aren’t looking to shock anybody. But, if you are trying to influence actions and establishing yourself as an authority figure increases your ability to do so. No matter your blog topic or niche, you should strive to be an authority figure in that field.

You can build your online authority in many ways, including having other website mention and point to your blog. Also consider proving useful and insightful information on a consistent basis, which your blog should do anyway.

Goals and Objectives - I constantly come back to this point in most of my tips posts on a variety of aspects of blogging - but it’s so important to be thinking of the long term vision that you have for a blog when you’re making decisions like those about domain names.




• What is the topic of the blog? - an obvious starting point - most blog names reflect their topic
• What do you hope to achieve with your blog? - is it about having a hobby, is it about building your profile/expertise, is it about earning an income via ads, is it to support an existing business
• What style will it be? - is it a blog with one or many authors? What length of posts will it have?
• What tone and voice will it be written in? - Will it be conversational, newsy, rant-ish, humorous?
• Who is the intended audience? - Are you wanting to appeal to professionals, young people, cool people, geeks?

Source of Traffic - I’ve seen many articles on how to choose a domain name written but in very few of them (if any) have I see a discussion on the type of traffic that you will be wanting to build your website/blog around. To me this is a crucial question (that emerges out of your overall strategy) and one that will help you answer some of the important questions that we’ll discuss below. Let me flesh this out a little:






Traffic to a blog generally comes from three main sources:




• Loyal Readers
• Search Engines
• Referral Traffic (from other sites)




I’ve talked a little about each of these types of traffic in this previous post - they each have their own distinct advantages and disadvantages and can be the result of different strategies. One of the many things that can impact the source of your traffic is your domain name. I’ll explain this more below but think it’s worth naming what type of blog and traffic you’re after up front. If you want a blog that is high on SE traffic you might well end up selecting a name that is different to a blog with traffic based upon repeat readers. As I say - I’ll expand on this below.

Keywords and Branding - Many discussions on domain name decisions talk about a choice between choosing a domain name with keywords in them to domain names that are more brandable or generic. It’s worth stating up front that it is possible to achieve both (I guess anything is brandable to some extent) - but that this type of choice often comes into play. In my opinion comes at least partly back to the type of traffic you’re hoping to attract to your blog. Let’s look at each in turn:






1. Keyword Based Domains - these domains, as the name suggests, incorporate keywords that your blog is about in them. This is good for a number of reasons. Firstly it communicates something to your readers very quickly with regards to what your blog is about. The other positive is that Search Engines take a good look at the words in your domain name when deciding what your blog is about and how to rank it. As a result if you’re after SE traffic then these types of names can be worth looking at. Examples of blogs with keyword based domains are Cellphone9, the Movie Blog, Sims Gamer and Digital Photography School.
2. Brandable Domains - these domains might often have some relation to their topic in terms of their feel or sound but are much more about creating something memorable that can become an identity in and of itself. In terms of traffic strategy - these blogs would be suited ideally to developing a blog that is aiming to build a community of loyal readers. Of course these blogs can also do very well in search engines but this is usually for other reasons (keywords in URLs are just one of many factors). Blogs that have these types of domains include Boing Boing, Gizmodo and Dooce. In fact if you look at Technorati’s Top 100 blogs - you’ll see that most of them have brandable names and not Keyword based ones.

Thinking of the Future - another factor to consider that is related to my first point of goals and objectives is to consider what your blog might look like in the future. I’ve seen a number of bloggers start up blogs with domains that fit with the topic of the blog initially but which outgrow the domain down the track. In one instance the problem was that the blog started on a fairly narrow topic (a sub-niche) and on a domain that reflected this but that in time it expanded it’s topic as the industry changed. In the end the topic and name just didn’t fit.

Another ‘future factor’ to consider is how many blogs you’re thinking of starting on your domain. Take a look at About.com for an example of how it’s possible to have one domain with many blogs running off it. They blog (yes they are blogs - run by MovableType) ‘about’ hundreds of topics and have a domain name that suits this perfectly. I myself have fallen into the trap of not thinking ahead in this way with my livingroom.org.au domain where I currently have a blog on Digital Cameras. I guess this is an example of how ultimately it doesn’t matter what domain you start blogs on as it’s a blog that does pretty well - however I often wonder how much better if could have done if I’d just thought ahead a little more!

Lastly on the ‘future front’ - don’t pick a name that you suspect might date quickly. Picking a name that is time specific in any way might find you searching for a new domain when it is no longer relevant at some future time.

Name Length - there are a range of opinions on what the ideal length of a domain name is. Technically you can have one with up to 67 characters in it but it is generally accepted that short ones are better for a number of reasons including that they are easier to remember, that they leave less room for making mistakes when typing them in, they are good for word of mouth (online or offline) marketing, that they are more visually pleasing (eg on your business card) etc.

The other argument is that if you are looking for SE traffic that you might like to consider a longer domain name with a number of the keywords that you’re looking for traffic on.

My personal preference these days is for shorter domains if possible, but not just for the sake of being short. Plus short names are very popular and hard to find these days so you might be forced to consider something a little longer anyway.

Dot What? - Along with the debates over domain name length comes many different opinions over what is the best to have at the end of your domain after the ‘dot’. These letters (ie .com, .net, .org etc) are technically called the Top Level Domain (TLD) and are divided into two types. Firstly there are country code TLD’s and secondly there are ‘generic’ TLDs which signify different types of organizations (in theory at least).






As I say there are a variety of approaches to selecting which TLD to go for:




• Legalities - The first consideration is the legalities of your choice as different countries and generic TLDs have different requirements but the
• SEO - This is where many of the arguements over TLD’s come in. I’m not going to get into it in much depth except to say that most people believe .com to be most powerful and that .net and .org are also good. Also if you are starting a blog with a localized focus it is well worth considering a country code on your TLD as it will help you get indexed in local search engines (I get a lot of traffic on my .au domains from Google Australia). If you’re going for a more global audience try for .com or .net.
• Memorability - One of the frustrations I have with ProBlogger.net is simply that people assume that it can be found at ProBlogger.com. Of course when I came to register this domain I tried to get the .com but it was unavailable so I decided that .net would serve my purposes (which it has). The only cost is that .com is so ‘normal’ that many people make the assumption that yourblog’sname.com will always be your address.

Hyphens? - Another eternal debate with domain names is over the value of hyphenated names. For example a hyphenated version of this blog might be Pro-Blogger.net. There are a two main reasons that some people prefer hyphenated names:




• Availability - one of the main reasons for going with hyphens is that ‘all the good names are taken’ (or at least it can seem this way). Adding hyphens to names definitely gives more options.
• SEO - hyphens are said to identify keywords to search engines more clearly (once again there is some debate over this).

Of course for every positive there is a negative and the arguments against keywords include:




• Memorability - adding hyphens can make it tricky for readers to remember your name
• Difficult to Communicate - have you ever tried to tell someone a domain name with a hyphen between each word? It can be quite an annoying process
• Increased Margin for Error - the more characters in your domain the more chance of a mistaken keystroke
• Cheap and Nasty Factor - there is a perception among many web-masters that domains with lots of keywords and hyphens are spammy. I personally don’t mind a domain with one (maybe two) hyphens in them but domains-that-have-lots-of-them-frustrate-me-and-turn-me-off.

Some tools you might like to use in selecting a domain name include:

NameBoy

DomainsBot

Whois Source

As a blogger, you’re able to profit from helping in that purchasing decision. Simply:





1. Locate the products that you are willing to put your name behind.
2. Find a merchant that sells that product and has an affiliate program.
3. Then whenever you blog abour that product (either as a review or in a passing mention) use an affiliate link.

More Than Self-Service

If you aren’t already an affiliate blogger, it will help to have some help along the way. After all, when you first join an affiliate network or program, it takes some time to figure out its ins and out.

Every network has has an array of products to promote, and affiliate managers often know which products work best on which sites/blogs. Being able to chat with one those managers will help you choose which products in the network to focus on promoting.

Affiliate networks/program are also all powered by different affilate software. If you want to really optimize your affiliate marketing efforts, you’ll want to get the most out of that software and the analytics it provides. Dedicated affiliate manager can also help you with that.

Finally, some affiliate programs offer more marketing tools than others. As a blogger, there are a few different ways you can promote products (e.g. sidebar ads, in-post links, etc…). An affiliate management team that’s willing to look over your site, recommend tools (and programs that offer them), can save a lot of time and energy when it comes to setting up your affiliate account.

Dedicated Support

Providing support across an entire network requires staff and that can be costly. Consequently, some networks only provide support to some of their biggest affiliates. This happens with both smaller networks that don’t have a lot of resources, and massive networks that prefer to work with so-called super affiliates. In either case, such networks only want to invest in support when they see an immediate return.

On the other hand, there are network that see affiliate support as a longer-term investment. That is, they believe in the long tail, and know that if they invest in an affiliate, that affiliate will become a better affiliate and make both of them more money. They also know that that affiliate will also stay more loyal, and continue to (effectively) promote products within the network for years to come.

As a blogger, you’d probably be more comfortable with a network that offers such dedicated support. First, they’ll be there through your growing pains, giving you the kinds of support mentioned above. Secondly, they’ll listen to your (and other affiliates’) feedback, and that intelligence will trickly back into the network/program, making it a better, and more competitive place for both advertisers and publishers.

Choosing to be an Affiliate Blogger

To succeed as a blogger, you have to passionate not only about your topic, but about your readers/users. You have to build a community and develop relationships with its members.

If you’re going to monetize your blog through affiliate marketing, then, it makes sense to choose an affiliate network/program that shows a similar appreciation for relationships and treats its members as a community. A network/program that takes the time to develop a relationship with you and it other members will not only provide better support, but will better understand what you and the rest of the network members (the community) need to succeed. Not to mention, that relationship approach is also likely to attract better advertisers who are actually interested in growing their program, rather than just moving a couple extra units during a seasonal down-turn.

The Theory...




I like being able to check my rankings real quickly without worrying that some SEO company is aggregating my data and/or spying on me. This tool is open source and hosted your computer - designed with privacy in mind.




Looking at the rankings of a couple of your sites that you know intimately well and tracking how they change over time allows you to



• learn how to read the search results
• appreciate and understand general algorithmic trends
• be one of the first people to know when the relevancy algorithms change in a major way



This tool is designed to be quick and easy to use, but to also give you the opportunity to gain the level of insight needed to compete with other SEOs at the professional level. Here is an image of what the tool looks like:

• If your site is not listed in the top 200 results you will see a - (there are a few of them in the above picture).
• If you have long URLs and/or long keywords some of them may be cut off in the results display. If that happens you can still see the full page names and keywords by scrolling over them.
• You can verify your position in the search results by double clicking on the URL...this will open the associated search results in Firefox.
• If you are logged into your Google account in Firefox this tool will show you personalized ranking results (which tend to make the rankings appear better than they are in many cases). If you want to, you can turn personalized web search off in the Rank Checker options / preference settings window.

First Things First:




In the status bar at the bottom of Firefox you can click on Rank Checker at any time to turn this extension on.









This extension has courtesy settings which allow you to ping search engines for data at a slow rate. You probably want to set the delay to at least 2 or more seconds. If you set it at 0 do not be surprised if some of the engines at least temporarily block you for scraping data. To set the courtesy feature you need to



• click on the word Tools at the top of your Firefox browser
• scroll over the words Rank Checker
• click on the word Options
• at the bottom of the options window you can enter in the Delay between queries: whatever value you feel comfortable with (in seconds)

Uploading Keyword/ Website Data

You can upload keyword and domain name combinations directly in the Rank Checker interface by inserting them one at a time.

Next to the add keyword button is a link for adding multiple keywords. It allows you to upload a keyword list matching a domain.

If you want to quickly create a relevant keyword list just to sample how well your site is doing I recommend using our keyword research tool, or our keyword list generator.

If after using the tool you want to clear out the interface you can simply close the tool, or if you want to use it again you can click the clear button.

Firefox Rank Checker Extension Advanced Features:




This free rank checking tool allows you to check your rankings in Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft Live search results, and has the following features:



• International: in the options section (mentioned above) you can select to pull results from international versions of Google and/or Google.com.
• Presets: allows you to grab a list of keywords that you can research data on at any given point in time.
  
  • useful for segregating data for different websites, different categories, etc.
  • you can save a preset list by clicking on this button inside of the Rank Checker interface
  • you can open a preset list by clicking on this button inside of the Rank Checker interface
  • Scheduled Tasks: allows you to look up any of your keyword lists daily, weekly, monthly, or at any periodicity you choose.
    
    • After you have created a preset list of keywords you can use this feature
    • To use this feature
      
      • click on the word Tools at the top of your Firefox browser
      • scroll over the words Rank Checker
      • click on the words Scheduled Tasks
      • at the bottom of the scheduled tasks window you can what keyword lists you want to run and how often to look them up
        

Want to Export Your Data?

With our free rank checker you can easily export your data to a CSV file. At the bottom of the tool window there is an export button for saving a spreadsheet of your rankings, which is convenient for providing a quick ranking report for clients.

These results can be viewed in any spreadsheet program like Microsoft Excel, Google Docs, or Open Office.

Inside the presets window there is the option to download the history of that keyword list to a CSV file, which shows you how your rankings for keywords change over time

This spreadsheet lists historical data for one keyword at a time

Possible Future Upgrades:



• The tool currently has issues with special international characters. We are working on fixing this ASAP.
• Add proxy support (although this is already baked into Firefox - there is even an extension for switching proxies).
• Will see. Depends on feedback :)
• Leave feedback here.

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Other Useful Related Firefox Extensions and Goodies:




There are a number of other browser based extensions display other related SEO information. Advanced users may want to give SEO for Firefox a try. We offer a list of related useful extensions on our SEO extension page.




Have Feedback? Know of Any Conflicting Extensions?




If it does not work then throw your computer out the window, or leave feedback and read comments left by others here.