eBusiness Resolutions for a Healthier Business in 2010

If you’re a retailer, after the busy-ness of the season, you now have a little time to reflect on your business and how you’d like to do things differently or better in 2010. If you have another type of small business, you are looking at your successes and wondering what you might do to make things even better in the coming year. If successes have been thin on the ground, then you’re looking at ways to improve. This brings me to my eResolutions.

eResolution 1: Crawl before Sprinting

Most of us have had an experience of diving in and trying to fix everything at once. How did that work for you? Right!

So start small. If you’re a retailer, consider setting up a Twitter account. You can start following other people and seeing what’s going on while you plan the next part of your strategy. You can read more about Twitter on this blog in this series of posts on Twitter strategy.

eResolution 2: Put your Website on a Diet

Unless the name of your business is, All Things to All People, then you know that you have to specialize. Does your website reflect this. The average web home page has about 80% too much stuff on it (my wild statistical generalization). Remember, people who search for you have searched for something specific. Give it to them. Statistics show that you have 2 to 3 seconds to give them what they want or they’ll leave. This is even shorter than the average window shopping experience. You can read more about this on my Landing Page posts from last fall.

• It’s what you do with Traffic to your website that counts.
• Landing Page Optimization for Small Businesses on a Budget
• Landing Page Optimization – the best video from youtube.com/

eResolution 3: Make Good with Google

Google has numerous free tools to help you manage your online presence. You can access them once you have a Google Account (free). Here is a list of useful Google tools as well as posts on Google.

• Google Webmaster Tools
• Google Adwords
• Google Analytics
• Google Local Listing – how to get listed
• Add a coupon to your local listing in Google

eResolution 4: Face up to Facebook

I suggest that you set up an account and think about how you might use your “Page”. Take a look at my articles on using Facebook to see how to get started.

• Setting Up Your Page on Facebook, Part I
• Setting Up Your Page on Facebook, Part II

eResolution 5: Make social media an integral part of your business plan

Take a look at this post; 5 Ways to Integrate Social Media in Your Marketing – a Presentation by Jason Baer. It’s worth your time.

Bonus eResolution: Consider what you might be able to do with YouTube.

Youtube.com is one of the most visited sites on the web. Good, fun and interesting video attracts audience. It can be a good way to raise your profile. In future posts I’ll address this issue in more detail.

Here’s wishing us all a happy, healthy and prosperous new year.

I welcome your questions. Please question or comment via the “Comments/No comments” link below. If you found this article useful, please share via your networks. Thank you so much.

Search Trends of 2009

1. The most searched for term: Michael Jackson – there was a big spike in search for his songs and his name around the time of his death.
2. Fastest rising global search terms after MJ?
   1. Facebook
   2. Tuenti (popular Spanish social media site)
   3. Twitter.
3. The three fastest falling search terms?
   1. Beijing 2008
   2. euro 2008
   3. heath ledger
4. Vancouver 2010 does not show up on the fastest rising search terms for sports. No, l’equipe football is number ten with Olympics no where in sight.
5. In food, acai berry is number one and peanut butter recall number 6.
6. The top three recipes searched for? Chili, meatloaf, cheesecake. Does that say anything about a recession?
7. Top five how to’s globally? How to kiss, draw, knit crochet and flirt. Does this mean people are staying home more and want someone to stay home with?
8. For Canadians, how to kiss, draw, flirt and meditate come ahead of crochet. Maybe Canadians already know how to crochet.
9. Are Canadians obsessed with their health. Of the top six News category searchs, three are related to the flu: swine flu, H1N1 and simply flu.

Probably the greatest predictor of search fame is that you’re already famous. And, you can see that plumbing services does not top the year’s search terms. That’s good. How is it good? Well, the term is a lot less competitive and you have a greater chance of being found. Also, with Google increasingly putting weight on local search, your plumbing business is even more likely to be found by the people you want to find you.

For 2010, having a fast loading, easy to navigate site will be extremely important. If you’ve been thinking about revamping your website, now might be the time. A student of mine was surprised to learn that there are fashions in web design. There are and if your site is loaded with Flash entries and busy pages, it’s out of fashion. People have become much less patient and if you don’t give them what they want now, they’ll leave and never come back. You can learn more about thoughts on landing page design from my series of posts on landing pages.

If you’d like to read the whole report from Google. you can find it here. Be prepared to browse for while. It is a window into what we’re thinking and it’s fascinating.

If you’re not sure why you should care enough to watch an hour long video then at least watch the first few minutes. Tim tells you exactly how much you can increase your business with good landing page optimization. The presentation, entitled “The Seven Deadly Sins of Landing Page Design” has some excellent examples.

He says everything I’ve been saying (which I learned from him in the first place) over the past few posts and he says it better and with great illustrations.

Here it is. To view it in full screen mode, click on the icon next to the HD at the bottom right of the window.

We in Canada are familiar with this concept. On many Canadian sites, the first page offers a choice between French and English. That’s segmentation.

How should segment your audience

No one can answer that for sure. You can try a number of different ways, such as by:

• Age
• Interests, i.e. sports fan, culture vulture, shopoholic
• Profession, i.e. medical student, pharmacist, dentist, doctor
• Product, i.e. shoes, bags, accessories

You won’t know which one will work until you’ve tested some variations.

People are impatient

Have you ever observed your own search patterns. How long do you wait for a page to load? How long do you hang around a site if you don’t find what you’re looking for immediately?

Hard to find what you're looking for.

So, how can you keep them?

Give ‘em what they want and give it FAST! If there’s something they came to your page to do, then make sure they can easily find where to do it. Even if you have a hundred things on your page, make sure you have the fewest major categories possible. Tell them immediately what’s new.

Good Landing Page - Easy to find your way

Let them know where they are. If your ad offers a free trial, make sure the first thing they see is a free trial. The landing pages for people who find your site by chance (organic search results) and the landing pages for people who come from an ad should be different. On the generic landing page, you’ll have more options and more navigation options. For people who come from an ad, be sure to give them what they want and few options.

Give them reasons to trust you

When people land on your site they want to know if you’re some sort of scam or spam. Give them a reason to trust you. If you’re affiliated with known professional organizations, show that. If you use VISA or MasterCard, show that. Have a link to your privacy policy. You can also have a testimonial or two.

How do you know if you have good landing pages?

Ask yourself these questions and if the answer to them is, “no”, then you need to put some time into improving your landing pages.

1. Does our site have different pages for chance (organic) visitors and for visitors arriving from an ad?
2. Does our site have different landing pages for different ads?
3. Do our landing pages allow for quick and easy segmentation?
4. Do our landing pages for ad related visitors have fewer than four alternatives?
5. Have we kept choices to a minimum?
6. Have we kept our contact form short and ask for only the bare essentials?
7. Is our bounce rate (rate that people leave your site without engaging) lower than 30%?

What should you do first?

I suggest that you first create some excellent landing pages for your ads. Each ad should have it’s own very specific page. Remove everything extraneous. Be tough.

Next, take another look at your goals and the main page of your website. Can you simplify it? Can you make it load faster? Can you offer an outline of what’s available without a clutter of confusion? If you can do any of these, then do it.

Finally, run tests. To learn more about this, go to Google Website Optimizer. You can find all the information you need to get started.

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