10 Common Business Website Mistakes

I've managed many different website projects and now feel that it's time to show the 10 most common business website mistakes out there.

1.  Using A Brochure Design

Numerous businesses basically take their print brochure and turn it into a website.  A website isn't a print medium; websites and printed material are used differently by their audiences, the interaction with the reader is completely different for both, and hence the designs and user experience need to be completely different.


2. Not Having A Strong Call To Action

What do you want visitors to your website to do?  Fill in a form?  Visit a download page? Call you? Focus on what the primary action is that you want your website visitor to take and ensure that the action is obvious.  Use buttons that are a different colour to anything else on the site to draw their attention.  Use a subtle shaded background to draw their attention to particular pieces of information or calls to action that you want them to take etc.

3.  Ignoring SEO

I must admit that I've been guilty of this myself, but it's important to get some of the basics right here.  Ensure that all your pages have the basic Meta Tags completed (specifically the TITLE and DESCRIPTION one as these could be used and displayed in search engine results.
Read my Real Basic SEO Tips for more information.

4.  Paying for Design and Not Copy

Too many businesses will pay a heap of money for a great design then ruin the finished product by inserting all of their old, lousy content into the site.  If you are willing to pay for a designer then you are willing to pay for a good copywriter!  Even if you can't afford much and can't afford to rewrite all of your pages then just search Google for "Cheap Copywriters" - remember to get a few quotes before you pick one!

5.  Failing To Define Who They Are

Your brand is important to you and your business; without it you are nothing.
I guess you know what your brand stands for, so here is a quick test for you.  Visit your website and see if you can see evidence of your brand promise or value proposition within THREE seconds!  If you can't then I'm sure your visitors can't either!

6.  Contact Forms

People really hate filling these out and many website just have them to ask for [name], [email address] and [comments]!  What's the use?  Just provide an email address and your prospect will supply you all this without asking and without they having to complete a silly form!

7.  About Us

Much of what a website should be about is providing some element or trust and confidence in your business and brand ... so why do so many sites miss out lots of information about themselves in the "About Us" section of their sites.  As these are one of the most visited pages on your site then this is one great chance to sell yourself and your achievements.

8.  Using Flash Intros

Don't do it, no-one likes them and they add absolutely no value to your website at all!  They are just very annoying.

9.  No Goal

Some business owners make their sites an extension of their business cards and as such their sites lack a direct goal.  Every website should have a purpose whether it's to generate a lead, generate a sale, build brand exposure or give more information. Homepages should be making visitors click though to a great landing page that will convert.

10.  Ignoring Social Sharing

Whether you simply have your Twitter account in good view or allow visitors to share the page they are on through their own social networks, you need  to include them.  More and more of us are engaging with social networks and we are happy to promote great content through them.

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Google AdWords Quality Score

Google uses an algorithm to decide an ads Quality Score, the higher your Quality Score the more your ad will be shown and the cheaper each click will be!

Whilst the exact working out of the scoring system is a big Google secret we can confidently say that the main elements that decide the Quality Score are - Ad Click Through Rate (CTR), Relevancy of the text used in the ad and the relevancy/quality of the landing page.

It’s estimated that the importance of these are:

Ad CTR = 65 percent

Relevancy of ad text = 20 percent

Relevancy of the landing page = 10 percent

Other = 5 percent

It seems clear therefore that the best thing you can do to get more AdWords clicks to your site and pay less doing it is to improve your ad copy; doing this will definitely improve the CTR and improve your Quality Score in doing so!

I’ll take more about how to improve your AdWord Ad copy later.  Keep watching.

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Eight Hour Marketing Plan™

Develop a basic Marketing Plan in only 8 hours with the 8 Hour Marketing Plan™
I first published my eight hour marketing plan in 2000 when I worked with a number of online businesses to try to get them to understand how easy it was to develop a simple plan.  This is a little out of date now and I will get around to updating it at some time; but I thought it was worth publishing anyway.

Hour 1 - Information gathering about your business

Get yourself a large box. Gather as much information as you can in one hour. This may not seem like long, but believe me after one hour you will be glad to stop ... and surprised at how much information you have gathered!.
Do not stop to read any of it ... this is the gathering phase. You may enlist others to help you in this or any other phase, but keep them within the same one hour restriction.

Your gathering should include all of your past advertising and marketing materials. Include items such as letterheads, envelopes, business cards, direct-mail pieces, magazine ads, Yellow Pages ads, invoices, statements, counter cards, sales samples, packaging materials, press releases, PR stories, promo items, print outs of web pages and anything else used to market your company.

Next, add sales statistical information available about your company. Place sales reports from the past three years in the box. Look for breakout information such as sales by year, month, product line, customer and geographical area. Place any target information or sales rep information in the box. When your time is up, stop. If you happen to run across something else, drop it in the box, but don't spend any more time on this. The secret is to keep to the time limit.

Hour 2 - Information gathering about your customers and competitors

Use a second box to gather information about your customers and your competitors, but again, do so within a one-hour time frame. Put in the box copies of your customer/client lists, details about your top customers, mailing lists, etc. If you have time, talk to your best customers and ask them why they do business with you.

Competitor information can be easily gleaned from several sources (web sites, in-house material etc).
Find copies of their magazine ads. Focus on the information that is readily available.

Hour 3 - Preparation

This third block should be used to compile the documents you have gathered into meaningful information. Again, give yourself one hours of uninterrupted time and, this time, you may want to consider getting away from your office or normal place of work.
Spread out all of the contents of your first box onto a table. With a note pad handy, start by looking at the sales numbers. Take a few moments to jot down the answers to these questions, as well as others you may have:

• Who are your biggest clients?
• What do they buy from you?
• What months are the most successful for you?
• What is your best product line?
• What are your sales trends?

Next, look at all of your marketing materials. Spread them out on the table. Think about each piece, as well as the entire collection. Obviously, you could spend a whole day critiquing your sales numbers and your marketing items. But by keeping the exercise to just one hour (remember you can build on this work later), you will better focus your attention. Here are some questions for this part of the exercise:

• What do your marketing pieces say about you?
• Is there a consistency to your approach?
• To whom are you speaking?
• Do the pieces tell the message you want told?
• How do your message increase sales?
• What relationship does your marketing team have with your sales team?

As you're making these notes, take one sheet of paper and designate it the "ideas page". As an idea comes into your mind ... no matter how crazy ... write it down.

Hour 4 - More Preparation

Now, put the sales numbers and the marketing materials aside.

Take the information and materials about your clients and your competitors and place them on the table. Select your three strongest competitors and your 10 best customers.

Spend a few minutes (3-4) thinking about each of them. Then ask yourself the following questions:

• Why do your best 10 customers choose you instead of your competitors?
• Do your competitors spend all their money with you or some with your competitors too?
• Do you offer your customers anything unique?
• Why are these competitors good? (if they are!)

This is the critical step in this process. An hours sounds like a long time on this, but it isn't!.
Once you have finished, put everything back in the boxes and stop (remember the time limit).

Congratulations ... you are halfway through the process.

Hour 5-6 - The Outline

Get your notes (for this part you can refer to specific items in the boxes if needed).
Unlike the other sections, you need two hours of uninterrupted time to complete this next stage. Beginning with your notes, build a brief outline of where you are. To help in the process, I've put together the following questions; most questions should have between three and five answers:

• What were your sales in the past three years?
• What do you want your sales to be next year?
• Why do your best customers do business with you?
• Who are your main competitors?
• Why do our customers do business with someone else?
• If you lost 2% of your average sized customers, what revenues would you lose ?
• How many customers are you losing each year?
• What does your current marketing materials say about you?
• What is the single best thing you do to market your business?

Hour 5-6 - The Outline

Remember you have two hours to complete this Outline stage, if you are asking the right type of questions, and really thinking about the answers, honest, truthful answers .. you need the two-hours.

Hour 7-8 - The Plan

This is another two-hours stage.

Use your notes and the items you have in the boxes to help with this final stage. You are now going to prepare the first draft of your marketing plan.

The idea is that you now have enough information and ideas to put together your marketing plan.  Don't worry if you find you cannot complete yours as shown here, just do what you can with the information you have, use your plan as a start of your activities and go from there.

What you have done will start as a guide for your day to day marketing activities, and you should be able to answer simple questions like; what do you want to say? why do you want to say it? to whom do you want to say it? where do you say it? wow do you want to say it? etc.

If you spend the Eight hours wisely, you will have a simple plan for marketing and the beginnings of the full marketing plan.

Hour 7-8 - The Plan

Remember that this is another two-hours stage.

What you have done will start as a guide for your day to day marketing activities, and you should be able to answer simple questions like; what do you want to say? why do you want to say it? to whom do you want to say it? where do you say it? wow do you want to say it? etc.

If you spend the Eight hours wisely, you will have a simple plan for marketing and the beginnings of the full marketing plan.

Continue working on the plan on a day by day basis, NEVER let it gather dust, you really need to revise the plan at least every quarter to get the most from it, and next year, it may only take you one hour to completely revise for the new sales year!

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Real Basic SEO Tips

10 very basic SEO tips for you today ....

1. Understand what a user might type into a search engine to find your products/services - these are your keywords/keyphrases.
2. ALWAYS use ALT & TITLE TAGS on everything - ensure that your keywords are in these tags.
3. NEVER have a link that reads "click here" or "for more info" the link should read something like "For my tips on SEO click this link" - simply because you need to get a keyword in that link text.
4. Use HTML Tags like H1, H2 etc - these are not only useful from a usability perspective but thet also help search engines prioritise and understand the information on your page.
5. Use Google Webmaster Tools to help understand if Google has any problems with your site. Verify the website and install Google Analytics
6. Add your website to as many search engine indexes as you can
7. Backlinks are important but remember that a backlink from a large, respected website is worth hundreds of backlinks from unknown/low user websites.  So concentrate on popular sites for backlinks.
8. Image names should be present and relevant "picture 1" means nothing, "Picture of the Batman leaping from car." will be indexed by search engines and is useful if anyone tries viewing your site using an audio reader.
9. A sitemap is important for SEO - make sure you have one.
10. Keywords and Meta Tags should be concise and unique on each page - concise means concise!  Limit yourself to no more that about 8-10 keywords

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Elements of a Marketing Plan

I just wanted to publish this really quick Marketing Plan template for you all.

1. Executive Summary
Write 2-3 paragraphs that just explain the document that the reader is about to read. I would suggest that your write one paragraph on what business you are in, one on your target markets/customers and one on where the revenues are going to come from.

2. Situation Analysis
What business are you in maybe some high level figures (sales, market share etc). Anything on any specific threats or opportunities.

2.1. Market Summary
Where are your best sales generated from ? (what type of customers?, which products etc).

2.1.1. Market Demographics
An overview that profiles your best markets/customers (i.e. what sector are they in, how big are they etc).

2.1.2. Market Trends
Any trends spotted in your notes, and general market trends of forecasts noted.

2.1.3. SWOT Analysis
During your note taking, you will have noted your companies strengths and weaknesses, and also any opportunities and threats when you looked at your competitors.

2.1.4. Competitor Analysis
Any notes of interest about your competition, especially if you believe its why they are good at what they do.

2.2. SWOT Analysis
Write down your companies strengths and weaknesses and any External Opportunities and Threats that you have made a note of, you only need bullet points.

2.3. Competition
Do your competitors fall into certain categories?
Name your largest competitors, do you know what percentage of the market they have?

2.4. Services
What services do you offer your customers?
Again, bullet points are fine here, you just need basic information for now.

2.5. Keys to Success
Do you know what these are ? They usually center around:

• Customer Satisfaction
• Growth
• Customer Retention
• Operations Effectiveness
• Products
• People (your staff)

2.6. Critical Issues
Do you know what these are ? They maybe things like:

• Customer Retention
• High operating costs
• Poor brand awareness
• Poor market focus
• Little marketing effort
• People poorly trained and lack motivation

2.7. Historical Results
Jot down those old sales figures, note anything activity or product you were particularly successful at.

2.8. Micro-environment
You may not be able to fully answer this right now, but use the following headings later.

Consumer trends - what's generally happening in the market.
Economic changes - is the market spending? General business economy good or bad ?
Technology advancements - technology is advancing, are your products ? what are your customers expecting ?
Competitive activity - is competition increasing ? What sort of customers are they winning ?
Political and legal environment - is your business related to political changes ? This could include tax, legislation etc

3.0. Marketing Strategy
Based on what you know, you should have a good idea of what you need to do, this is your Marketing Strategy, write it down.

It could be based on revenues, operating costs, customers or market share

3.1. Mission
You might be in a position to suggest a Mission for the business.
There are a few basic elements that a good mission statement offers:

• It identifies your organisation
• It identifies your customers
• It tells the world what you do

3.2. Marketing Objectives
How do you intend to achieve your stated strategy?

3.3. Financial Objectives
If you want to, you can set yourself some financial objectives. These really need to be worked out with the sales teams too.

3.4. Target Market
What are your primary target markets?

3.5. Positioning
How do you intend to position yourself in the market.

I recommend using the following template ... "For [Customer Segment], our [Product/Service] is [Your USP's or SSP's]".

3.6. Strategy Pyramids
A Strategy Pyramid if correctly written will show in bullet form your proposed Short Term, Medium Term and Long Term strategies.

3.7. Marketing Mix
Write an overview of what (if anything) has worked well over previous years.

3.7.1. Services Marketing
An overview of the services you will be offering your customers.

3.7.2. Pricing Policy
What pricing policy will you adopt ?

Is it to charge less than your competitors ? Cost plus model ?

3.7.3. Promotion Policy
Provide an idea of the value of the budget you might adopt for marketing (if you really do not know at this stage, quote between 1.0 - 2.0% of revenues.

What type of media would you expect to use ?

• TV
• National Press
• Regional Press
• Trade Magazines
• Advertorials
• Exhibitions
• Direct Marketing
• Telemarketing
• Business Gifts
• Case Studies
• Newsletters
• Literature
• Presentations
• Sponsorship

3.7.4. Product Policy
Do you have any specific product policy in mind ? Any products sold well in previous years that need updating ? Any products not selling and need withdrawing ?

3.7.5. Distribution Policy
Will you be using a direct salesforce? Indirect salesforce, Internet ?

3.8. Market Research
Will you be conducting any market research ?
Are there any areas of the market you have little or no knowledge ?

4.0. Financials, Budgets, and Forecasts
Financial overview, include marketing budget, potential forecasts, and any assumptions you may have made.

4.1. Breakeven Analysis
If you have the time to quickly workout your breakeven point note it here.

4.2. Sales Forecast
What sales are you expecting for the year ?
If you can, break it out by month, product and sales area.

4.3. Marketing Budget
Have a quick think about the amounts of money you need to spend on marketing and start detailing it here, just use a 'rule of thumb' if you need to right now;

example:

Business Press ... 34%
Literature ... 10%
Exhibitions ... 14%
Direct Marketing ... 8%
PR ... 4%
Regional Newspapers ... 15%
National Newspapers ... 15%


4.3. Marketing Budget - Return on Investment
You know what you want to spend on marketing, you have made an assumption about the value of the sales, therefore you can work our your return on marketing spend.

5.0. Controls
What controls will you put in place?
Recap on your objectives, pull out some milestones, and sales goals..

5.1. Tactical Plan
Make a chart, marketing activity up the left hand side and quarters or months along the bottom. Suggest some headline activity that should be taking place.

5.2. Marketing Organisation
Quickly draw your marketing organisation, show where they feed into sales

5.3. Contingency Plan
Always plan for the worse, some things that can go wrong include:

Revenues EXCEED projection - can your after-sales team support the effort ? You may need to hire additional staff, and bring in more equipment.
Revenues MISS projection - you have to prepare for the possibility, you may have to redouble your marketing efforts (you MUST NOT decrease marketing spend ... things will then get worse!), you have to get your message out to the market clearer.

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How to deal with negative comments on social media sites

If you are unlucky enough to find an extremely negative comment on one of your social media accounts (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc).  How should you deal with it?

Even if you have spotted it quickly, then the chances are that other have also seen it; in the case of Twitter, within moments of it been sent it could have been ReTweeted 100 or 1,000’s of times (and I bet that your competitors will jump at the chance to publicise it or capitalise on it in some way).

In any case, a negative comment from a customer or prospect is a negative comment and it needs to be dealt with fast.

Ultimately, Social Customer Service is all about immediately addressing your customers' concerns quickly.  Where possible you should immediately respond with a holding statement to let the complainant and anyone else that see’s the comment know that their concern has been acknowledged and that you are dealing with it.

If you haven’t got all the facts from the negative comment that has been posted then politely contact the complainant asking for more information on the problem.

You should plan to fully respond by the end of that business day, and absolutely no longer than 24 hours later.  Failure to deal with any problems effectively could mean that it goes viral very quickly!

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External Links Should Open in New Tabs

It might be me, I might be old fashioned in my views on life, but I really think that web designers/developers are missing a trick with how they treat external links within their websites.

I guess going back a few years the majority of web users complained that when they clicked an external link from a particular website it opened a new window, and depending on how it opened it was at times confusing (I personally never used to mind it!); but the wonderful introduction of browser tabs this has all changed.

Instead of opening up new windows, you can now magically open links to external sites in new tabs. The big and important difference here is that browser tabs are easier for users to manage than browser windows.

I know that there is also an argument that if a visitor to your site clicks on an external link that this new link should be seen as part of a seamless customer journey and they should see this new site in their current browsing session …. Bunkum!

And surely when you open an external links in the same tab for a user and they want to continue their journey on the original site, you create back-button fatigue for them; this doesn't sound like a very good user experience! Does it?

I know this is a personal rant, but I feel that it’s an important one, I’m getting fed up of following links to external sites that interest me, for me to only need to fight my way back to the original site to follow my original journey.

And I know that I can Ctrl and click to force a new tabbed session, but that’s not the point, I bet only a small percentage of web users actually know that anyway.

Quite simply, links that take users to a different (external) website should open in new tabs. Links that take users to a different page on the same website should open in the same tab. This is the right and sensible approach to take.

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LinkedIn - successful lead generation

If you have ever spoken to a B2B businesses about their online lead generation you'll find some discrepancy about how much business they get from LinkedIn, some seem to get absolutely loads of leads and traffic from this professional networking site where other get very little or none at all! If you want to be in the camp that get lots of leads, then follow these simple tips.

Create a company profile page

OK, it seems fairly logical, but still not that many smaller businesses actually have a company profile page on LinkedIn. Ensure that you complete your profile as much as possible and also ensure that all of your employees a) have a personal profile on LinkedIn and that their profile links to your company page.

Tip: Including keyword rich descriptions on your LinkedIn company page, product and services tabs . All of these elements are an essential part of the SEO approach and will help you get found from within LinkedIn's own search functionality and potentially from an external search engine too.

Promote the page 

You are still going to get businesses and individuals that find your business website first, if they do ensure that they easily find a link to your LinkedIn company profile page so that they can follow you. Only by building company followers will you add social proof and generate credibility to your company profile.

Status Updates

Having followers on LinkedIn is no use unless you engage with them; so ensure that you post regular status updates. Your followers will then see your updates and have the option to engage with you and amplify your messaging around their network.

Tip: Aim for at least two updates each week, this maximises your chance to get your status out across more of your network.

Create a Group

I also recommend that you engage with others in your target market by joining Groups that are of interest to them and contribute. BUT a more important strategy is create your own open Group. Lots of businesses still don’t understand the presence and the power of LinkedIn groups. Groups that contain lots of your potential customers/clients do not exist on Twitter, Facebook or anywhere else for that matter; Groups on LinkedIn are basically Communities of prospects for you.

My advice would be to start by making a niche Group; a software developer in Yorkshire for example might start a “Software developers in Yorkshire” group, start my inviting relevant individuals from your network to get and get the discussions started; you'll quickly find that you'll start to get lots more interested individuals to join in,

Once you have a successful Group then organise some events to get some face to face time with prospects.


There are many more ways you can get more business from social networks; if you need more customers or need help understanding how social media fits into your strategy then get in touch with me today.

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