Don’t guess internet behavior based on your own – you’re wrong!

Define a goal

Every website has a goal, a reason for existence. The times of just being there for the sake of it are over. Even more so, your website’s goal should be supporting your integrated business model. In the best case scenario, you should define a multitude of goals. Even though not every business is suitable for the internet, keeping your finger on the wrist never hurts.

What is your website’s goal? Do you have an E-commerce site? It’s clear you that should know your conversion rate (which influences website visitors becoming customers), sales funnel, drop out percentage and returning visitors… But even if you’re not running an online shop, there are several metrics you should be monitoring that will give you valuable info, at no cost whatsoever!

Tagging

Before we look at the key metrics, what can we measure? By default free reporting tools will have standard metrics that share a lot of information. But did you know that with a few easy tweaks this tool can go far beyond your expectations? Common reporting tools have a code that is added to each page. It collects data from the visitor, such as language, origin, computer compatibility, popular pages and other data.

You can extend your arsenal however – you might have fancy pdf files that you’re offering for download; product and service descriptions, pricelists or anything else. Imagine the capability of having an overview of document download rates, allowing you to define your most popular products. It tells you how engaging your site is as well.Do you have an enquiry e-mail address instead of an enquiry form? Add a code to measure the number of clicks on your ‘mailto:’ enquiry. Compare this to the actual emails you receive through that referral. See any discrepancy? Act on it. Check the number of views your 404 error page gets. That will tell you something about site quality.

Key metrics

In Google Analytics you can go to these reports and click the “add to dashboard” button which allows you to see these at first glance.

• Bounce rate
  This is one of the most important metrics for your site. A high bounce rate (over 50%) will tell you that there’s a huge gap between what your visitors expect to find on the site and what you offer. Maybe you’re running a PPC advertising or SEO campaign. If you have a high bounce rate (1 page/visit), you’re throwing money out the window. Identify the pages with the highest bounce rate and improve them. Every website is different though, so evaluate this according to your website.
• Average Time on Site
  How much time are visitors spending on your site? Are you offering your extensive expertise? You even might want to divide long articles onto different pages to see how many people go to page two. It will show you how engaging your content is and how much visitors read this content.
• Keywords
  Which keywords (PPC vs. SEO) are pulling in the bulk of visitors? Why stop there? Check that metric in perspective and look at it cross-linked to your goals. Which keywords are converting? And which aren’t? You’ve got work to do.
• Actions
  Downloads and clicks on email links are by default unknown. Add a sample code to the link and see how engaging (converting) your site is, usually between 2%-3%. Identify the weak pages that convert poorly and optimize them.
• Goal Abandonment Rate
  Did you define a goal? Splendid. Now, how is your funnel abandonment rate, plainly stated, how many people are leaving your store with their wallets drawn? Identify your weak funnel pages and optimise these ASAP because you are losing money!Did you know that you can even check the progress of each individual field of an enquiry form? See how many people almost send you an enquiry but don’t quite get there.
• Conversion Rate
  Conversion rates are like missionaries in early colonies; how many people were converted to their belief? How many of your visitors are converted into prospects, clients or any role you define?
• Map Overlay
  Where are your visitors coming from? You probably have a good idea locally. But in times of expansion do you know where to turn?

Add value

Throw in a value for each goal you define on your site and you’ll see what’s going on for real. Define a real site value by working backwards. Let’s say for every 100 completed enquiry forms you make 25 sales. Each sale has a $20 margin. So $20 x 25 = 500 ÷ 100 = $5. In theory, each completed enquiry form brings you $5.

Online business compared to real life offers a priceless source of information about your customers. You would be unwise not to take advantage of that. Take that step ahead over your competitors and get smarter today. But remember, reporting is not the goal itself. It’s merely a tool to achieve your goals. So spend time where it benefits most, and you will soon start seeing the results.

As the world’s leading conversion experts, there is simply no doubt that Bryan and Jeffery Eisenberg are the best of the best in the conversion field, and this is why R.O.I. Media are thrilled to bring this powerful duo on board to advise on conversion strategies. Clients will gain from their extensive experience and expertise, and with the powerful combination of R.O.I. Media’s solid online marketing skills and the Eisenbergs’ renowned conversion expertise, results are sure to skyrocket to infinity and beyond!

Those who endeavour to increase conversion and do research on the topic will find a slew of online references that tout everything from eye-tracking to hover-to-click-ratio as the ultimate answer to conversion-related worries. Sifting through this heap of information can be confusing and frustrating to say the least. So, before you throw out the baby with the proverbial bathwater and shell out your hard-earned cash for a complete website redesign, we recommend that you take a good, hard look at your current website to see if there are simple adjustments you can make.

Ask yourself: where do I lose my customer? At which point along the browsing-to-purchase timeline does my potential customer become so frustrated/disinterested that they abandon their shopping cart rather than proceeding to the checkout point? The very first thing you should be looking at is your Call to Action buttons. When you look at these buttons there are two very important questions you should be asking yourself:

1.    When a visitor clicks on this link, what exactly will they see next?
2.    Will what they see encourage/discourage them to take the action I want them to take (i.e. make a purchase)?

Here are a few examples of buttons that will have your potential customer heading for the hills:

• The ‘empty cart’ button. How often have you filled your real life shopping cart with groceries only to be tackled by a store assistant who grabs the contents of your cart and puts it back on the shelves? Never? Well, why then do we assume that putting an ‘empty cart’ (identical in every conceivable way to the ‘place order’ or ‘proceed to checkout’ button) next to the button we really want the customer to click is a good idea? Time is money, and if you waste your customers’ they will take their business elsewhere.

• The completely irrelevant link. A good example of an irrelevant link is the distracting (and actually extremely irritating) banner advertisements that some sites put on their shopping cart pages. You have just gotten your potential customer to the very place you wanted them from the start, why break their concentration now?

• The ‘reset form’ button. How many times have you gone through the time-consuming rigmarole of filling out an online  form with all your personal details only to find that you have accidentally filled out those of your deceased grandmother? If indeed you have you will be one of very few people on the planet who have found the ‘reset form’ button useful. Placing this button next to a ‘submit application’ button has the potential to cause confusion, evoke swearing and even lose you a customer.

These are just some of the simple mistakes that website owners make every day. There are a myriad more. Why not contact us and set up a meeting so we may discuss the easiest way of improving your online marketing?

In Part 1: Online Brand Communication, we discussed the best methods of online branding and how this relates to the online user’s experience of your brand and website. The next step in claiming the online user’s attention is through effective web usability and brand interaction which can lead to increased sales and brand loyalty. By following this outline of best usability practices, results will be certain to follow.

What is Web Usability?

In a nutshell, usability is the art of ensuring visitors to your website can easily find what they are looking for, reach the relevant pages and take the desired actions before getting frustrated, generating negative feelings towards your brand and leaving your site feeling unfulfilled, never to return. Here we will present only the basics to give an impression of what is involved in the best usability process.

Understanding the Online User

One must understand how users relate to the web, the content therein and the desired actions to be taken. Online users can be divided into 3 general groups:

Click focussed, Search focussed and those in-between. Click focussed users will always look for links or buttons in order to proceed through a site while those search focussed will instantly look for a search field. In-between users will initially look for links related to what they are looking for and if they cannot find something relevant they will revert to the search field.

Furthermore, these points about how users interact with the web should be taken into consideration:

• Users will take the first reasonable option. When navigating through a site, it is not always the optimal decision that is taken; rather the quickest and easiest action presented is the one taken.
• Users scan pages. A user will very rarely read a whole page when looking for a specific item. Through scanning, a user can quickly target the keywords that reflect what they are looking for and decide whether there is any value in continuing to stay on your website.
• Users will muddle through. A user will risk making mistakes and having to click the back button instead of taking the time to correctly go through a page or without fully understanding the process will risk taking an action that may not be the correct one.

There are many reasons why users work in such ways; the important thing however is in learning the best methods to deal with usability requirements by adhering to a basic set of principles. These points may seem obvious; however they are too often overlooked:

• Create a clear visual hierarchy. Correct text use for headers, sub headers & body content to be used as visual cues.
• Use existing conventions. They wouldn’t be conventions if they didn’t work!
• Clear page headings.
• Make links & buttons obvious as clickable items.
• Reduce clutter & unnecessary busyness on a page.
• Use of clear navigation elements such as tabs and breadcrumb navigation.
• Use of effective site branding and identification.
• Displaying relevant information to the user at all times.

Usability is a great set of guidelines focussed on obtaining results. It relates to many areas of our lives and influences decisions we make on a daily basis. It is a broad subject and cannot be summarised into a singular blog post. As such, the ideas proposed above are more like helpful hints than rules to take to heart and merely touch the surface of usability related issues.

Reach through NOW!

Should you wish to find out more about our approach to usability or more information on R.O.I.Media and our services offered, please visit www.roimedia.co.za

Today’s internet user is endlessly bombarded with a tumultuous flow of visual impressions. This persistent imagery lodges itself in the human psyche like a worm wriggling through the earth in search of fertile soil burrowing its perception and creating an awareness, subtle or gross, which in some way or another leaves its mark. In this information age where fingertips can guide the online user to a heady state of overload, how does one break through and create a positive impression given the limited amount of time the active online user allows us? What effective tools are available to online producers, designers, developers, bloggers, e-merchants, brands and businesses whose offerings and ideas are useful, informative and full of worldly promise?

The answer to these questions is fundamental and the ability to reach through the visual clutter and communicate directly with your target audience is crucial at all levels of marketing. At the online level, this statement rings, rattles and smacks of truth. The online universe offers many opportunities to introduce and develop; build and associate; communicate and extend your offering and brand with the multitudes of potential users out there in the digital market place. Reaching deep into the belly of human interaction, society, marketing, technology, commerce, design and functionality, the answers proposed in this series of blog posts have the ability to add perspectives to the how and the why of online design and development, offer new ideas and give readers a baseline from which to go forward and enlighten their audience.

Your Brand Online

The numerous facets encompassing user interaction and online visual design comprise of a multitude of expertise, approaches and solutions. Successful branding, understanding logo interaction and corporate identification is the first step to ensuring your web presence is felt and communicates the right positive message to the relevant target audience.

It is safe to say that brand creation and design in general has been deeply impacted by online trends and the requirement for the extension of visual media to the web platform has in itself become a driving force as pixels reign supreme in our ever-widening digital age.

The Brand Breakthrough

The constant re-enforcement of shapes, colours and word flow of a brand infiltrate our visual cortex, enforcing its ever-presence into our consciousness. Over time, the effectiveness of a brand will increase as it penetrates the market, however, an effective logo design will make its presence felt instantly as it communicates its message directly to the willing viewer.

Traditional logo design still has its place in today’s online market and has, more often than not, been successfully introduced to all forms of new media including the web. Nike, Coca-Cola, BMW, Microsoft, Apple Mac, Sony and Nokia have championed the breakthrough from traditional to web media by ensuring an enduring and effective web presence which has served to re-enforce their market shares. These well known brands have kept up with the latest online trends by relying on some of the top Interactive and Web Design Houses who work hard to ensure the latest brands keep up to date with the latest online trends.

A New Breeding Ground

As online culture has developed and infiltrated our societal structures, its impact has been felt at many levels. Designers, who have traditionally taken their influence from their own visual surroundings, are more often finding inspiration online. This in turn has a roundabout effect as, with the introduction of Web 2.0, the web itself has become a breeding ground, an open canvas expanse and a virtual source of visual creation and stimulation.

From ASCII to plain text to the experimental pixel-boom and the power of Flash animation to the latest Web 2.0 trends, the online age of technology advancement has meant a never-ceasing flow of transformation. And this tech revolution has undoubtedly influenced our brand interaction and therefore our brand creation. One only needs to look at the expanding field of digital media to see the extent with which this phenomenon is occurring.

Online brands such as eBay, Google, Yahoo!, Skype, Amazon.com and PartyPoker were created to exist on the web and have since grown and expanded their presence to print, television and 20 foot high interactive billboards. Their brand identities were created to exist online, to have a web friendly-first presence and yet they have seamlessly infiltrated our popular culture in an unfounded and dominant way.

Reach through NOW!

So, where does one turn to when the need arises for a successful online presence? What qualities make up this ever-changing area of expertise and how does one choose the best solution?

Here is a guide to ensuring you find the best company to take your brand to the next level of web prowess:

• Use referrals as a basis. Listen to other people’s experiences to gauge the overall effectiveness of an agency and how seamless their solution has been implemented.
• Keep it in good company! See what brands an agency has worked with as partners and as clients to determine their professional attitudes.
• Any self-respecting agency will have an online portfolio. Review their work to see the level of production.
• Read testimonials and do a Google search to find out some further background information.
• Cost is always a factor, get quotes from several agencies to see what the industry standard is.

By following these guidelines, an overall picture will reveal itself and allow for an easy decision to be made. For more information on R.O.I.Media and our services offered, please visit www.roimedia.co.za

Many industries and companies have made many unsuccessful attempts to utilise the web as lead generation mechanism and have unfortunately not achieved a return on investment.

This is due to :

1. Paying exorbitant amounts of money to an online marketing company which simply failed to deliver on promises of rankings and traffic. R.O.I Media deals with new customers on a daily basis who have not had favourable experiences with SEO in the past.

2. Poor website conversion rates. Even if the traffic reached their sites, it needs to be converted into a sale, to generate ROI.

On the flip side. R.O.I Media is growing dozens of brick/click and mortar businesses in this economy. Some of our customer never EVER expected their website to be their leading sales channel, and are blown away by the results.

There are many different components to achieve this success and if outsourced to 4 companies, there is lack of accountability. R.O.I Media believes in managing and executing the entire process under one roof to ensure accountability and R.O.I.If this makes sense, contact us for a free consultation to explore ways of using the web as a new sales channel for your business. A successful SEO campaign should be a money spinner, and NOT an expense.

This is a huge problem for website owners all over the world. Unfortunately your website is a virtual drop in the ocean. Without a proper search engine optimisation game plan you really have little hope of ever being found online. Every day, millions of new sites, pages, pictures, audio files and videos are uploaded onto the vast plains of the internet, all competing for exposure. Your website or webpage is just another one of these many pages. So what can you do to make yours stand out from the rest (as far as search engines go, that is.)?

There are two main areas that you should look at improving on.

Your on page optimisation and your off page optimisation need to be carefully planned. Ideally you should address this BEFORE you begin building your website. Like any business model in any industry you need to make sure that you plan ahead.

Planning your on page optimisation means that you need to make sure you are targeting the right keywords for your industry. You need to ensure that your web pages are as search engine friendly as possible. A very important aspect of your website is the interlinking between pages. Make sure your site is accessible to both humans and search engine spiders alike.

Off page optimisation is equally important. There are factors that influence your rankings in the SERPS that have nothing to do with what happens ON your website. One of these things is incoming links into your website. There is a great deal of importance put on links.

So, do the research and optimise your site for the Search Engines. This will help you rank better in the Search Engines and as a result your traffic will increase and ultimately conversion will take place.

Quite simply, your conversion rate is the percentage of people that visit your site as browsers and leave as customers. More subtle definitions relate to the percentage of people that visit your site and take a positive action – such as, signing up for a newsletter or making an enquiry.

A good way to understand the relationship between web design and conversion is to compare them to architectural design and Feng Shui. (Even if you’re not a believer in the art of Feng Shui bear with us for the sake of the comparison).

While architectural design is purely about the look of the place, where the architect uses his skill to create the home the client desires, taking Feng Shui techniques into account when designing the house improves (according to proponents of the art) utilisation of space and the flow within the building structure, leading to greater productivity.

So, with conversion techniques being applied by the designer at the time of website creation, the new site won’t just look great, but will achieve the goal of increased conversion due to better structure and flow throughout the site.

Let’s look at some of these techniques.

Design with the user in mind:

It’s great to have a dynamic site that blows caution to the wind and breaks out of the mould – that’s the stuff award winning sites are made of. However, don’t forget your user also needs to feel comfortable enough on your site so that s/he doesn’t get lost or irritated looking for standard tools like navigation menus, login and search boxes that are put in unexpected, hard-to-find places. As with fashion design, we love looking at cutting-edge haut couture on the runway – but we don’t want to wear those outlandish designs when driving to work or dining out – we want style and comfort combined.

Ensure your user has an enjoyable experience on your site, not a frustrating or confusing one.

Create desire for your product or service by showing real value:

Aspects such as feature selection, product guarantees and user benefits all work together to create desire in your browsers that will turn them into buyers. This is not a once-off process; these tools need to be refined and optimised regularly. This is the way to maximise your online profits and make your venture lucrative.

The back-end (eCommerce engine) is the brains behind the ‘beauty’ of your site. A good web designer will make sure your site’s back-end functions are instrumental towards customer retention and client conversion.

Employ a web designer who understands conversion:

If your designer makes the most eye-catching, stunning sites ever, but doesn’t have the knowledge and expertise pertaining to conversion, your online venture could be doomed to die and leave nothing but the good looking corpse of your website.

Choose your web designer carefully and your website will be created as the silent salesman it should be – attracting customers, holding their interest and guiding them to make the purchase.