Dootch » Marketing

New website – eCommerce Economy

Luke — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 01:23:35 +0000

Hi Everyone, Just letting you know I’ve built a new website where I’m sharing all of my information on building websites, internet marketing and online business. It’s called eCommerce Economy. Check it out! Cheers, Luke Related posts:Make sure you have a phone number on your website 8 questions in an ecommerce conversation Top 8 reasons [...] Related posts:

Why you shouldn’t trust inexperienced web designers

Luke — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 06:11:03 +0000

An old client of mine contacted me today in an utter panic.

When I worked for him, we got his site to #1 for a pretty competitive keyword, and we also setup an Adwords campaign for him.

A few months ago, they asked me to quote on a redesign for their site. I submitted a quote, and apparently so did the 19yo grandson of the boss.

Well the bosses grandson won.

Over the last few months, the new site was made, and a few days ago it launched.

So the e-mail I received today was to the effect of: “Our site is nowhere on Google! Our organic listings and Adwords have dissapeared. Now I’m getting blamed from my boss for not having any sales!”

So I investigated the issue, and what I found was this line in the code in the new website:

For those that don’t know, this line tells Google that it shouldn’t keep this page in it’s index.

The Adwords issue turned out to be that the landing pages were removed, and the ads were disapproved accordingly.

This is why good web designers are important.

Making a website is relatively easy.

It’s the extra stuff that newbies will mess up.

They don’t pay attention to detail
They don’t understand important issues (like the noindex one!)
They don’t take the time to make sure the integration will be seemless (like forgetting pages that were used as landing pages?)

My client said it best:

I’ve always trusted your work and advice, but times are tough with us and why i couldn’t get you to do the website last time. But now we’re learning from the mistake because it was done by an amateur!!

Super fast responses and happy customers

Luke — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 08:35:07 +0000

I remember in uni, we had a topic about “expectations”. Firstly, through marketing communications, the marketer sets the expectation for the product or service.

If you deliver on the expectations, the customer is satisfied.

If you under deliver on expectations, the customer is dissatisfied.

If you over deliver on expectations, the customer is pleased, happy, sometimes even ecstatic.

So the point I’m getting at is that buyers have an in built set of expectations. This set comes from past experiences they’ve had with other companies. For example, as a buyer, an in built expectation I have when hiring an Indian programmer is that they will do the least possible work required to get their money. So if I find one that isn’t like that, I’ll be very happy.

Another example is, when you ring into a big company, you expect it to be a pain in the arse, that you’ll have to wait on hold, that you’ll have to navigate at least 3 menus. So when you have an experience where you speak to someone in 3 rings and they can help you, you get happy.

And so it is with email response times too. People have an expectation of receiving a response in a certain time frame.

My experience is, people don’t have high expectations on response times. If I had to guess, it would be that people expect a response in about 8 hours.

So you see where I’m going. All you have to do to give a customer a warm fuzzy, is to answer emails quickly.

Over the last month or so, at Photography Orders I’ve made an extra effort to answer all emails as soon as possible.

The effect has been quite interesting.

A majority of recipients have made a good comment about the quick response. It might be like “thanks for the quick response!”. (no worries)

But what was also cool was that those warm fuzzes directly translated over into product satisfaction.

When I answered someone quickly, they were more likely to send unsolicited good feedback about the product. And not just straight away, but over time as well. The product experience plays a bigger role in satisfaction than the actual product.

I should mention here that I haven’t done statistical testing on it, and that these are just my observations.

The main point I’m trying to make is this.

People have in built expectations
Exceeding expectations is the key to euphoric customers
Super fast responsiveness blows away these in built expectations and results in happier customers

Agree? Disagree? Am I stating the obvious? Let me know in the comments

Why small accommodation businesses don’t use Adwords

Luke — Sun, 30 May 2010 00:23:01 +0000

I was speaking to a friend yesterday about making a website for a motel. I was saying that of all mum/pop type businesses, motels have got the most to gain from a good website and search engine marketing, but that a lot of them have shitty websites that are not SEO’d. While I would say a decent portion of them do have websites, almost none use Adwords. When pressed, I couldn’t think of why, just that they don’t.

That shitty logic didn’t sit well in my mind, so I’ve now thought about it and come up with some reasons why motels and other small accommodation businesses don’t use Adwords to drive traffic.

Not educated about Adwords

When these companies go see a web designer, generally they go with those cheap web designers that offer affordable websites. They buy a 5 page package, get their website done, and thats the end of the story. The companies that sell affordable websites aren’t experts in driving traffic, and even if they were, the small ones don’t know how to sell that service and the bigger “affordable website” companies are big because they’re specialised and streamlined their process of making websites, and don’t mess with anything else.

So motel owners are never educated about Adwords, and most probably don’t realise it exists.

It isn’t sold to them

There are a couple of reasons that Adwords consultant’s don’t go after motels.

Firstly, the projects aren’t very big. There isn’t a lot of money in selling Adwords services to a motel.

Secondly, it’s hard to sell web services to motel owners. Partly because they get sold to A LOT from companies that can profit off them (see below), and partly because, motel owners seem to be tight with their money. (I don’t have evidence for that, but they’re small businesses with relatively small profits. It seems to me that they guard them closely).

Because of those reasons, it’s not appealing to try to sell Adwords to motels.

They get sold lies instead

Instead, what is sold to motels are listings in tourism directories. These are sites that have listings of things to do, places to stay, places to eat, etc.

These directories sell themselves as a solution to getting online. They sell rhetoric about showing up in Google.

I don’t believe these directories represent good value for motel owners. Firstly, they’re listed with tons of their competition, and secondly, the directory generally doesn’t do push marketing – they’re just relying on search volume that’s coming in because of their listings.

I have done some telemarketing to motels in the past. One of the most common objections I heard was “we already have a website”. Upon further investigation, they didn’t have a website at all, but these directories sell themselves as a solution to not having a website.

Bring it all together

So the reasons I think Adwords isn’t so prevalent amongst small accommodation places are:

Motel owners aren’t aware of Adwords, and the way they get their websites built doesn’t help them discover it
It isn’t profitable enough for companies to sell Adwords services to motel owners
They’re taught they don’t need it by directories that are taking advantage of them

For more information about AdWords, check out “How to write high performing ads in Google AdWords”

Pick the low hanging fruit

Luke — Fri, 28 May 2010 13:29:39 +0000

So today, the iPad was released in Australia.

I want one, so I went to an electronics store and asked for one. The shop assistant looked at me like I was weird. They didn’t have them in, and didn’t know when they were getting them in.

So I went to another electronics store. This one, I didn’t get approached by customer service and after looking around for a while, it was apparent that they also didn’t have any iPads.

At this point, I think I must be going crazy and the iPad isn’t released today. So I look on twitter, and there are photos of people getting their iPads in Sydney and Melbourne. So I’m not crazy (well not in this instance anyway).

So now instead of just going into the other electronics stores, I figure I might save myself some time, and call ahead to find out if they have any in. So I called all the other stores that might sell an iPad. KMart said they didn’t have them and didn’t know if they were getting them. The story was the same at Harvey Norman. Big W kept me waiting for ages before giving me the same story.

Then I rang a small store (and approved Apple reseller) Dataparts. I was told they haven’t received any, nor have they heard from Apple when they are getting them. The guy apologised, and offered to take my number and he would call me when he knew more.

Now this incredibly drawn out and boring story has a point.

I’m a customer ready to buy. I’ve made my decision, and I’m just here to make the purchase. I don’t care who I give my money to – the price is the same everywhere.

Harvey Norman, KMart, WOW, Big W, The Good Guys. They all have massive marketing budgets. They have TV ads on all the time. Yet not one of these companies is taking advantage of all the marketing they’re doing. I called them first, but they won’t get the sale.

Dataparts, the small local store, was making a list of people to call back when they get stock in. They’re helping me out by ensuring me that I’ll get an iPad, and they remove the need for me to look around. And obviously, at the same time, they’ve won themselves the sale.

They’re picking the low hanging fruit. Here I am, a customer thats ready to buy, and presumably I’m not the only one (Dataparts told me they would have already sold 30 if they had them in stock). It’s so easy to sell to me, because the last remaining ingredient in the sale is just the stock! The hard part, the decision to buy, was already made. I was low hanging fruit.

Wherever there are big companies that have cracks in their sales funnel the size of the grand canyon, there are opportunities for smaller guys to jump in, and pick the low hanging fruit.

Now if only I could get my hands on an iPad.

The effect of design on conversion rate

Luke — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 02:30:52 +0000

One of the cool things about doing both client work and having side businesses is being able to use the side businesses as a testing ground and data source. Client work still makes up the majority of my income, but I’ve learnt some cool shit from having side businesses.

Here’s an example of that.

I launched Freelance Total in June last year. The initial public facing web design was pretty crappy; a template that I designed myself quite a few years ago that I had sitting round. Then, in August, I changed the site to use the feature pitch theme from Woothemes. Then, at the end of December, I changed the theme to Optimize, also from Woothemes.

Here’s how they all converted. (I’m counting signups to the trial as the conversion rate)

Jun-Aug - 1.26% conversion rate

Sep-Dec - 3.16% conversion rate

Jan-Feb - 4.15% conversion rate

There are other factors than just the design that went into the conversion rate increasing. I didn’t test these individually, but some of the things I did was:

In v3, I took out the “Choose plan” page. Instead, people were signed up to the basic plan, and they could choose their plan once they were in the application
Simplified the signup page – took out a bunch of stuff that wasn’t needed
The feature tour was improved at various points
I did some testing using Google Website Optimizer on the signup page
Traffic was coming from different places. When I first created the site, it got a lot of initial traffic from being reviewed on a few app sites. I’m not sure if that adversely affected the conversion rate.

Because of the factors I mentioned above, and other factors beyond my control, I’m not sure I can make any scientific conclusions. But I think it confirms what many people (especially designers) think is obvious (I don’t happen to think it’s obvious), and that is, that better looking design leads to better results… at least in the freelancer industry.

I’ve had a similar experience with another side business – PHP Credit Card, though I don’t have the figures as easily available, and that also had price changes that affected conversion rate. Maybe I’ll write about that one another time.

Cheers,

Luke

P.S. Don’t try signing up for Freelance Total right now (April), you won’t be able to. We’ve sold it and are currently in the process of changing the accounts and licensing system.

Negativity in business. A poison that corrodes money

Luke — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 12:00:27 +0000

Running a business, a community, or anything, takes a lot of dealing with other people. Advertisers, customers, staff, contracters etc.

A key to being successful is getting the most out of all your relationships.

I was conversing with Brent Hodgson from Market Samurai about ways of getting people on board to become affiliates and/or promote a product. Brent is super smart and has loads of experience. He said to me “1) Find the people you want to promote you; 2) Get them to like you; 3) Do whatever they want. ”.

I think it applies to more than just finding affiliates.

In any relationship, being positive and getting people to like you is key to building mutually beneficial relationships.

Getting prospects to like you makes it easier to close sales.

Getting advertisers to like you makes it easier to sell advertising.

Having a positive attitude towards relationships and opportunities equals better results.

Earlier today, I received a newsletter from a certain photography forum. I emailed the owner of the forum to ask if he would be interested in an advertising arrangement where I could advertise to his newsletter members. He responded and said that it was against his privacy policy and that I couldn’t. Fair enough, no problems there.

He went on to check my account on the forum, and found that I had done one post in two months, and that post was an answer to a question where I put a link to one of vec3t’s products, Photography Orders.

He said this was against the terms and conditions, and that he’s removed the post and banned me from the forum permanently.

Fair enough, it’s his forum, he can do what he wants, and I did break his rules.

From a business sense though, what an idiot!

Here I am, asking to advertise on his site, and instead of trying to sell some advertising, he bans me.

Why would he do that? The only thing I can think of is that he’s become jaded after managing a community for so long. He’s fed up with illegitimate spammers trying to post shit on his forums. He’s fed up with going through loads of spam. He’s seen so much of it, he just assumes everyone is like that. He’s seen so much of it, he’s formed a negative approach to anyone that contacts him about promotion.

You see this all the time if you hang out in an industry forum long enough. On pretty much any type of freelance forum, you see stuff like “people are cheap, people don’t want to pay fair prices for “.

Back to our photography forum guy. What would have worked better?

Instead, if he had of said, “only advertisers can promote on the forums, and here is a link to a page with some information on my advertising rates and benefits. You’ll need to sign up for one of these packages or I’ll have to take down your post as it’s against the terms and conditions of the forum.”

He could have taken a positive approach, and probably made a sale.

The point is, if you take a positive approach to relationships, you’ll get more positive results for your business.

If you approach every relationship and opportunity with negativity, you’re leaving money on the table.

Timing and selling to small business

Luke — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 14:53:00 +0000

I’ve just gotten back from a short break in Metung, and had a bunch of calls to follow up.

One was a new lead that called on Monday. I called back, stated who I was and where I was from, and mentioned that I was returning a call. The guy said back to me “Ah sorry I’ve already figured something out, thanks anyway”.

I’ve also been in a situation where I returned a call almost instantly, setup a meeting, and was told during the meeting that they had contacted 5 other website designers, but none had called them back yet. By the next day, I’d already pitched and won the job.

Being quick to respond to leads shows them you’re on top of your game.

Being quick to respond shows that you’re excited about getting their business.

Being quick to respond gives you an advantage over your competition.

It’s not just the initial call where it helps to be speedy.

I like to setup meetings as soon as possible, and get the proposal out quickly after that as well.

Being speedy helps build momentum and excitement, shows you’re responsive, and ultimately, helps seal the deal and win the work.

Collecting testimonials

Luke — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 06:00:30 +0000

As a web designer, I’m always advising my clients to maintain a library of photos. Whenever they complete a new job, get some photos of it. Whenever they bring out a new job, get some photos of it. I tell them to constantly keep their library up to date, because it makes it so much easier when doing any advertising.

As freelancers, our library should be of testimonials. Since late last year, once a site is completed, I’ve been asking my clients to provide a testimonial. The testimonial sits near the screenshot of their website on my portfolio. Experience and our previous success is what we sell.

Real testimonials work. They show prospects that you can fulfill objectives. They show prospects that you make happy customers. They bring a more personal aspect to your site, and they give the prospect something they can relate to.

Are you collecting testimonials?

Benchmarking is bogus

Luke — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 09:17:58 +0000

For tiny businesses, benchmarking is bogus. Most freelancers are tiny businesses.

It doesn’t matter what freelancer A is charging. It doesn’t matter what net profit ratio freelancer B is making.

You shouldn’t set targets based on what other people are doing.

You should set targets based on what you can do and what you want to do.

I imagine that most freelancers are pretty unique in how they run their business. Some prefer longer projects with more security. Others like lots of projects on at once. Others like to grind low level work. Some like to outsource as much as possible.

As freelancers, we are dealing with a tiny tiny sample of the market. When the economy goes bad, most of us are working with too small a sample to have any real say on what is happening. At any given time, we might be working with 1-15 customers. The market size at any given time for a specific area is absolutely massive and orders of magnitude greater than what we are working with. The normal ebb and flow of freelancing offsets any data we might think we have. (This is why, freelancers that do the same thing as us are rarely competitors.)

When you combine the tiny data set and the different personal preferences between freelancers, it turns out that benchmarking numbers is next to useless.

What is useful, on the other hand, is learning from other freelancers. Ask, what is this freelancer doing that could also work for me? What techniques or documents or strategies fit my personal goals?

Answering these questions is much more helpful than questions like, what should my net profit ratio be? What should my charge out rate be? These later questions give answers that are useless without also knowing the reasoning behind them.

Limitations for freelancers are placed from the inside, rarely the outside.