4 Website Mistakes Small Business Owners Make

There are a lot of misconceptions about websites within the small business community.  Here are four mistakes we see business owners making every day:

Misconception #1: Your website is an online brochure

Sure, when the web was first emerging, a website was the equivalent of a brochure online.  News flash – we’re no longer in the 1990’s.  Turn that Pearl Jam song down, put that flannel shirt back in your drawer and update your website!  Treating your website as if it were a virtual tri-fold is a huge mistake.  So many print brochures are created with great effort and toil only to sit on the shelf.  Don’t let your website sit on the shelf collecting dust.

One of the biggest advantages of the web is that it allows for two-way communication and it can be constantly changed and updated at a very low-cost (unlike a printed brochure).  Update your site; promote it; use it to start conversations amongst your prospective customers.  Your goal with your website should be to create a community – a community of people interested in and looking for your products and services.

Misconception #2: You can only have one website

I don’t know who started this idea that you can only have one website, but they should be found, gagged and locked up.  Because so few small businesses invest in accurate analytics and tracking, few realize that they have many different audiences coming to visit their website.  Instead of trying to make your website all things to all people, why not create niche websites that speak directly to a particular audience?  Suppose you own Joe’s Print Shop.  Do you think that people visiting your website directly (those that already know you enough to be able to type your website address – by memory – into their web browser) should be greeted with the same virtual sales rep as someone searching Google for “printing companies in mytown, USA”?  Of course not!  Someone that knows you can be treated much differently than someone interested in your product or service, but that has never heard of you prior to visiting your website.

If you want to be found by people in the research phase of a buying decision, you have to create massive amounts of helpful content.  On the other hand, massive amounts of helpful content can be distracting to someone who wants to buy now.  You can blame having one website on time or budgets, but if you find a business that is employing the multi-website strategy and ask them if it’s worth it, I think nearly all will tell you that it’s working so well that they’ll never go back to the single-site mentality.

Misconception #3: Focusing on the design instead of the content

Unless you are selling web design services, you should pay little attention to the design of your website.  There are hundreds of “themes” of websites and any one of those can serve as a perfect template for your business.  Ad agencies and creative firms would have you believe that a fancy website design is the difference between your $1MM widget store and McDonald’s.  Don’t believe them.  The differences extend well beyond your website design and your marketing budget (sorry)!

Pick a “standard” design that works for your business and then focus on what’s really important to your success – content.  Generally speaking, when it comes to marketing performance, a 100 page website will outperform a 10 page website and a 1,000 page website will easily trump both.  Don’t believe me?  Set up a test of your own.  Install accurate tracking on two websites.  Start with 10 pages on each site.  On one website, focus your time/money on a fancy design – but keep the site at 10 pages.  Use a “basic design” on the other site and instead spend your time/money creating page after page of relevant content 500 words per page x 100 pages.  Then review your analytics and tell me which site gets more traffic, generates more leads, revenue, profit, etc.  I already know what the answer will be.

On the web, relevant content is king.

Misconception #4: I know what’s happening on my website – I ask my customers

How many visitors do you get to your website each day?  Is it their first time to your website or have they been there before?  Where do your visitors come from?  What keywords do they use to find you?  Which pages of your website do they find confusing?  Do you really know the answers to any of these questions?  You should.

You’ve heard it once and you’ll hear it again – “you can’t effectively manage what you don’t accurately measure.”   If you don’t know exactly how much traffic you receive today, where your visitors come from or your website’s true conversion rate, you are losing business – no question. What do we mean by true conversion rate?  Of XXX visitors to your website, exactly how many contact you – either via online form or via phone.  Outside of direct visits and visits from branded search terms, where do most of your contacts come from?

You can’t set S.M.A.R.T. goals if you don’t know exactly where you stand today, but recognize the value of tracking isn’t in the data or the pretty graphs and spreadsheets – it’s in the action you take as a result of seeing it.  If you need help determining what the best metrics are or how to derive action from them, that’s easy to fix.  There are many companies that can cost-effectively provide this information for you – Blue Corona is one of them!

What are your website goals for 2010?  If you don’t have them defined, I’ve just given you the perfect small business New Year’s Resolution!

Happy Holidays!

5 Simple Web Metrics & How to Use Them

Do you find yourself staring aimlessly at your website reports waiting for an epiphany that never arrives? Don’t worry; you’re not alone.  There’s no shortage of data available on the web, but there is a lack of actionable takeaways.  Here are 5 great web metrics and how you can use them to improve your website’s performance:

1. Visits vs. Unique Visitors

Do you want to grow your business?  Is your path to increased growth driven more by introducing your business to new prospective clients or by selling more to current clients or both?  Generally speaking, a unique visitor is a person coming to your website whereas a visit is an interaction between a person and their browser.  In other words, one unique visitor can result in multiple visits.

If your business is grown by up-selling existing customers, focus on increasing both visits and unique visitors.  If you’re a churn ‘em and burn ‘em organization, just focus on getting new unique visitors to your site.  Determine which is most important to you, set some goals for improvement and then get busy testing and tracking.

2.  Top Traffic Sources

There will always be more potential marketing strategies – particularly on the web – than you have time or money to implement!  Success – especially for small businesses – is about prioritization.  Look at your top sources of website traffic.  If you wanted to double your current traffic levels, where would you focus first?

Recognize that some traffic sources are difficult to influence while others can be turned up at the flick of a switch (ex. Direct Visits vs. Google CPC).  Ask others in related industries to tell you their top traffic sources.  Most will oblige – if they know!  How do theirs compare with yours?

For local services businesses, Google Organic and Google CPC should be at the top of the list.  If they’re not, you need to think about investing in and testing these!!

3.  Top Keywords

Google has been referred to as  “the database of intentions” because every search term carries with it implied intentions (as well as questions).  By reviewing your top keywords, you can get a better understanding of what your website visitors are seeking.

Depending on what you find, you have – at a minimum – two options:

• Add new content to your site and watch to see if your top keywords change or
• Restructure your content in a way that better addresses the intentions and implied questions of your current visitors based on the search terms they use to find your site

Have a keyword phrase in your mind – something you think prospective customers would use to find a business like yours?  Add content to your website based on this keyword or phrase and then monitor your top keyword report over time – you’ll be amazed at what happens.

4. Conversions

Most business owners don’t want “visits” – they want visitors that take certain actions.  Depending on your business, this might be someone filling out a lead form, calling your sales team or signing up for your email newsletter.  Almost every analytics program can be configured to track these events as conversions.

Once you do this, you can start to see what types of visitors produce conversions; what keywords they use; what pages they view leading up to a conversion and you can use this information to dramatically improve your website’s performance.

For example – does placing your phone number and a mini-contact form on every page of your website cause conversions to increase?  Once you have your analytics program configured the right way, this is an easy question to answer and the business impact can be profound!

5. Traffic by Segment

Break your traffic into two segments – Branded Search & Direct Visits and Non-Branded Search & Non-Direct Visits.  This is easily accomplished in Google Analytics.

People that use branded terms (your company name) or visit you directly, by typing your website address directly into their browser, already know you or were made familiar with your business from offline branding and advertising.  You might decide to use upticks in this traffic segment as a proxy for your offline marketing performance.

Getting more people who know you to your website is a great goal, but if you’re looking for fast growth a key to your success is getting more traffic from people looking for your product/service that don’t already know you!  This segment of visitors is best represented by Non-Branded Search & Non-Direct Visits.  If you are investing in online marketing strategies like SEO and PPC, make sure that visits from this segment are on the rise.  If not, it’s time to re-evaluate your strategy!

There’s no shortage of data available on the web.  They difficult thing is not getting overwhelmed by it.  Keep things simple and actionable.  Set goals – test, track, tweak and repeat!

Social Media Marketing not Social Media Networking

Here’s a newsflash for all you business owners out there:

There will always be more advertising and marketing strategies than you have time or money.

Success is about prioritization.  I see more and more business owners setting up fan pages for their companies on Facebook, activating Twitter accounts, uploading photos from the staff Halloween party on Flickr and trying to make new friends on LinkedIn.  On the one hand, it’s exciting to see business owners embrace new technology.  On the other hand, it’s painful knowing that many are only doing so because a friend or fellow business owner told them that they’re missing out.

Before you jump in the social media mix or send us a tweet about what type of coffee you’re about to have (hint: we don’t care!!), it’s important that you A) have clear, measurable goals and objectives for your social media activities and B) you understand the difference between social media marketing and social media networking.

Why are you investing your time (which should have a cost associated with it) in social media vs. other online marketing strategies like: online article submissions, PPC ads on Google, Yahoo and Bing, SEO, re-targeted display ads, email marketing, etc.?

If you don’t know exactly what you’re trying to achieve with your social media activities (in measurable terms), you need to take three steps back before you move forward.

When I see a business owner with a fan page on Facebook, 20 followers on Twitter (when they’ve been on Twitter for several months) and a half-completed LinkedIn profile and I don’t see their business in the first few pages of Google and I don’t see them writing online articles or keeping a blog, I know that their making a colossal mistake.  They’re taking a “me too” approach to their online marketing and following the masses.  They are also probably engaged in more social media networking than social media marketing.

Each online marketing strategy has pros and cons – depending on the business you’re in – and can be used to achieve a particular result.  If you own a service business, you should never invest in social media before maximizing your visibility on the search engines – using a basic SEO and paid search strategy.  Search engine marketing will net you far more new customers (that is your goal, right?) than getting a few of your friends and family members to become your “fans” on Facebook.

Before you get started with social media, make sure that it’s the best place to spend your (limited) time – based on your big picture marketing goals.  After a quick review, you might determine that setting up a blog and an email newsletter are a far better way to achieve the result you’re seeking than constant status updates on Facebook and Twitter.  Alternatively you might find that the audience you’re targeting is only found within the LinkedIn community.

If, through your goal setting process, you determine that social media marketing is a priority for your business, make sure that you’re actually marketing and not just wasting time social media networking!  Social media marketing is using social media websites to find prospective customers, raise awareness with them and motivate them to take an action deemed desirable by you.  Social media networking is interacting with people via social media channels and unless it’s the result of a targeted social media marketing effort – it’s likely a waste of time.

There are many highly effective social media marketing strategies and most involve little to no networking interaction in order to achieve your desired goal.

A fantastic social media marketing strategy (IMHO) is as simple as:

1) Creating compelling content.

Give your prospects information that is truly valuable to them – information that they can use to make a better buying decisions.  Don’t worry about those that will take your “free” advice and do things themselves – they’re not your target customer.  Create content and share your expertise.

2) Sharing your new content via social media websites.

Think of the social media websites as an extension of your website.  Your website is like a large fishing vessel out in the ocean.  While you may have schools of fish swimming around your boat, there are other schools of fish miles from your boat and many will never find you if you stick to your current course (marketing strategy).  “Seeding” content on social media websites is like launching smaller boats from your main boat so that they can lure new fish back to the mother ship.  Compelling content is like well-baited hooks thrown from the smaller fishing boats!

Of course, the difficult part of this simple social media strategy is creating compelling content.

The reality is that for most people, creating great content is very difficult and often time consuming.  Doing it well requires the rare combination of subject matter expertise, the ability (and desire) to write, knowledge of your audience and a touch of creativity.  If you have these attributes, get busy writing (or recording – podcasts and online videos are great ways to create content).  If you lack some of the skills required to create great content, enlist the help of an expert.  All sorts of companies offer copywriting or online video production.

Killer content is necessary if you want to maximize your social media marketing return – there’s no way around it.

This leads us back to one of the openers of this post – there will always be more marketing strategies than you have time or money to implement.  For most small business owners, time is the most precious resource.  Remember this as you sit down to write your third draft of a blog post!

Today, marketing success often depends on ignoring the masses and focusing your finite resources on leverage points within a targeted niche strategies.  This might mean social media marketing, but it might also mean a geo-targeted ppc campaign or a vertical social media network on Ning.

Having trouble prioritizing your online marketing?  Enlist the help of a good business coach, consultant or an analytics and tracking service like Blue Corona.  The question of whether your time/money is best spent on pay per click ads, SEO, email marketing or social media can (and must) be answered.

Think about this next time you tweet to us about what type of coffee you’re about to drink this morning (reminder – we don’t care!!!)!