Utah SEO Marketing Blog

25 Items to Address in a Website Redesign

June 5, 2009 – 8:49 am

Here are some notes I came across from a while ago on items to address when you are going through a website re-design so you don’t have to do another one in a long time.  This includes online marketing items mainly and does not address web design in and of itself much - more on the lines of search engine optimization and persuasion architecture.

 

Website Refresh Items

1. Define value from customer’s perspective and multiple personas.
2. Focus on emotion.
3. Focus on end-benefits (from all clients)
4. What are the customer’s real needs/wants?
5. “Why should I buy from you?”
6. What other options are there?  Address them.
7. How is your product and company different from others?
8. What process does the client go through to buy the product/service?
9. What information do they need to know before they buy?
10. Establish trust!
11. Identify clearly points-of-action.
12. Internal linking!  Link keywords to relevant pages.
13. Find “hidden area” – information they are looking for that they can not find anywhere else.
14. How? Why? Who? What?
15. Be relevant – address needs, values, beliefs.
16. Make copywriting personal!  “you” not “We” – address feelings.
17. Establish confidence!  Use emotion to appeal.
18. Scanning - use headings, quotes, links, bullet lists.
19. Homepage – communicate UVP and get them to click deeper.

 

Generating Leads

20. Time is precious to clients, value it and get their attention by showing how you can help their business by speaking in their terms.
21. Questions potential clients have:

1. 1. How will this service help my company?
   2. We’re doing okay, why do we need it?
   3. Is there another company out there that is better?
   4. Will their solution really work?  Can they prove it?
   5. Is the company credible?
   6. Can we afford it?

22. Focus on the positive aspects, not negative pain points.  Ask the client ‘where do you want to be after this project?’
23. Automate lead generation with items such as messagemaker that are based on actions and behaviors taken by the lead.
24. Use stories and case studies to communicate with your leads.
25. Increase the likelihood of closing deals:

1. 7. Design marketing communications for each phase of the sales cycle, from awareness through consideration to purchase.
   8. Focus your marketing efforts on points in the buying process where high potential prospects are leaving.
   9. Increase face-face time you have with clients.
   10. Track marketing leads that close.

 

Popularity: 9% [?]

Posted in User Centered Design | No Comments »

Website Usability Checklist

April 7, 2009 – 12:40 pm

Here is a website usability checklist I recently put together for a shipping company when we were preparing their website to get ready for some PPC traffic from the search engines, hopefully it can be of use to others.

 

Usability Checklist

1. Current location within the site is shown clearly
2. Link to the site’s main page is clearly identified
3. Easy to use search function is provided, as needed
4. Clear Visual Page Hierarchy
5. Main idea digestible in 3 seconds
6. Clear path to objective
7. Minimal resistance to complete call to action
8. Clear path to contact information
9. In-text links descriptive (not ‘click here’)
10. Links easy to identify in all elements
11. Number of links/buttons under 15
12. Company logo linked
13. Main heading clear & descriptive
14. Critical content ‘above the fold’
15. Bold/Italics used sparingly
16. Main copy specific and concise
17. SEO Friendly URL

 

Specific Actions

1. Change out page photos to include a descriptive/specific headline
2. Add contact forms to key pages
3. Update Headlines

 

Headline Examples (current vs. new suggested examples)

1. Mission Critical Shipments
   1. Shipments On-Time 98%
   2. 24/7 Live Monitoring
   3. The Secret to On-Time Shipments
2. Electronics and High Value Specialization
   1. How We Handle Electronic Shipments
   2. Guaranteed Electronic Shipments
   3. Everyone Should Handle Electronic Shipments Like Us
3. Sophisticated Transportation Solutions
   1. Beyond Just Pickup and Delivery
   2. Before Pickup and After Delivery
   3. Need More Than Just Point A to Point B?
4. Value Added Services
   1. What Our Competition Does Not Usually Provide
   2. Extras All Shipping Brokers Should Provide
   3. Extra Shipping Services at No Cost
5. Trade Shows
   1. Stress-Free Trade Show Shipping Solution
   2. The Easy Way to Transport Your Trade Show
   3. Don’t Worry About Your Trade Show Equipment

 

Popularity: 27% [?]

Posted in Landing Page Optimization, User Centered Design | 2 Comments »

Website Redesign SEO Checklist

March 27, 2009 – 12:40 pm

Here is a seo checklist of items I compiled for a client recently that is in the process of a website redesign and wanted to know what things they should be concerned about when they make the site live. Hopefully the list is useful to others; items with a * mean it can be worked on slightly before the new website actually goes live.

1. Send an updated XML feed to Google and Yahoo – This will involve generating a new fresh xml sitemap file for Google and a urllist.txt file for Yahoo and submitting them to the search engines so they pick up the new pages as quick as possible and remove old pages quicker.
2. Check for dead links – Once the site is on the live domain we should run a quick test for dead links to ensure there are none in existence.
3. *Update/review all title tags and meta descriptions – This will be a good opportunity for us to review and update all title tags and meta descriptions.
4. Setup 301 redirects for key pages – As many people will be hitting old pages that are no longer live we should setup custom 301 redirects for pages that had considerable traffic to them and redirect them to the new equivalent page.
5. *Fill in empty alt tags – We should ensure there are no blank alt tags on the new website.
6. *Setup internal linking from subpages – We should double check that we have a strong internal linking structure with the new website content.
7. *Setup custom 404 page not found webpage – Again, since many people will be hitting dead pages we should create a custom 404 error page where they can quickly find what they were originally looking for.
8. *Setup a custom HTML sitemap page and link to it in the footer – We need to make sure there is a custom HTML based sitemap page that includes a link to all pages on the site to help the search engines index the new pages faster.
9. Create custom robots.txt file – We can create a robots.txt file to tell the search engines to not index any of the old page urls anymore.
10. Request manual deletion of old pages via Google webmaster tools – Once we have the robots.txt file up we can actually tell Google directly to remove old pages permanently from their index.
11. Modify goal conversion tracking in Google Analytics – Since the URL structure may be changing we need to make sure the conversion tracking for Google analytics is still functioning.
12. Ensure Google Analytics is working properly – We should double check that google analytics is functioning properly and still capturing data so we can compare stastics from the old website to the new one.

Popularity: 25% [?]

Posted in Search Engine Optimization | 4 Comments »

Use Facebook Advertising for Awesome Online Marketing Insight

March 10, 2009 – 8:12 am

One major advertising advantage Facebook has over Google adwords and other ppc platforms is that Facebook has access to real demographic and user preference data that few other systems contain.  Since a user of Facebook enters in their demographic information and have the access to join groups and note their personal preferences this data is real; not assumed like other platforms.While I have not yet tried Facebook advertising yet for any of my clients (I am planning to this week though) I have heard that it is not super effective.  Hopefully with the recent changes they have made it will become more effective.   In the end it will depend on the industry you are in if Facebook can deliver value or not.  This is a whole other story though.

There is something you can utilize right now on Facebook without actually sending them a dime that can be of great assistance to your marketing efforts online, offline, etc.  When you create an ad you can choose different options of who you want to target your ads to on Facebook.   Through process of elimination you can gain some valuable insights of your target audience through this simple system.  For example - lets say you are a camping gear manufacturer and you think hikers are usually interested in camping as well - you are considering advertising in a hiking magazine for your company.  You could narrow your search down to those who are interested in hiking then AND camping with this method.  The results are as follows:

47,469,140  - Total U.S. Facebook users
980,840 - Those who have an interest in camping
1,036,800 - Those who have an interest in hiking
1,719,120 - Those who have an interest in hiking AND/OR camping
980,840 + 1,036,800 = 2,017,640 - Those who have an interest in hiking OR camping (including DUPLICATES)
2,017,640 - 1,719,120 = 298,520 - Those who have an interest in hiking AND camping
So about 30% of campers have expressed an interest in hiking as well on facebook.

You can also take this down to a much more simple level by simply finding things such as if males or females are more interested in parenting, if there are more dave matthews band fans in Georgia or California, if engaged people are more likely to be interested in photography, if more college graduates are associated with coke or pepsi, and the list goes on and on.

Of course this data is not taking into consideration the entire world but it seems to be a fairly good sampling, 47 million users in the U.S. alone is very impressive. If you have had experience with Facebook advertising I would love to hear your comments.

Popularity: 27% [?]

Posted in Social Media Marketing | No Comments »

How to Track & Measure Website Goals

February 10, 2009 – 1:55 pm

Too many times I get asked the question from people interested in SEO, PPC, or other online marketing strategies how to measure success of whether the strategy was successful or not.  I always respond that it is very easy yet difficult to measure success of online marketing campaigns, here is some elaboration.

Whats The Scoop on Analytics Tracking?

Usually the most difficult aspect of setting up goals and objectives to track on your website is determining what those goals are and finding out how to track them online.  It seems fairly easy, but when you really dig in and ponder it you may find its more complex than you originally thought.  Lets take a  local doctor as an example.  Obviously a major goal or objective of the website will be if people come to the website, become interested, and contact the doctor to ask a question or even setup an appointment.  The easy objective to setup would be if the website has an online request form that you can track how many times people use it to send an email.  The only problem is that many emails may be from non-client communications.  Some examples may be someone who is emailing to ask about a job, a current client emailing to find out when their next visit is, or an insurance company contacting the doctor to try and get him to service their clients.  Unless you have separate forms or handle different requests in varying methods you can not weed out which emails are which easily.  Even more so what do you do about people who do not fill out the form?  Some website visitors may prefer to call the office instead of send an email; this would be difficult to track unless you only put your phone number on your contact page and keep track of how many people visit that page - even that method lacks credibility because you do not know how many of those people actually called in.

The good news is that the technical aspects of tracking success is actually fairly easy, straight forward, and quick to setup.  I am most familiar with Google Analytics which is a free anlaytics tracking program that is currently the most popular web analytics system out there.   In Google Analytics you can setup a goal for almost anything you want to.  If you are an ecommerce website you can set it up to track revenue, if you are a ski resort you can set it up to track ticket sales, if you are a web design company you can set it up to track incoming emails, etc.  Sometimes all you need is the url of the ‘thank you’ page of a goal or action that you want to track.  You may run into problems with technical integration if your goal or action is delivered by a 3rd party vendor who will not allow you to enter the tracking code onto their website.

8 Easy Ways to Improve Your Tracking

1. Concretely determine what your main goals are. Make sure you have thought through and you really know what factors contribute to the overall success of your company and which do not.  For example it may be as simple as tracking revenue for an e-commerce site, or as complex as tracking orders over $500 and for customers who make more than one purchase per month.
2. Don’t be afraid to have more than one goal to track. You may have multiple goals and objective for your website, don’t be afraid to track them all.  You may track online email requests, people hitting your contact page, and people who sign up for your newsletter.
3. Determine offline goals via offline methods.  One simple example is having your staff who answer the phone start to ask how they found out about you so you have that information to supplement your analytics statistics.
4. Place a dollar amount to every action.  Find out what every objective you are tracking is worth.  You may learn that 5% of people who sign up for your newsletter purchase your products at an average value of $95.  That way you can place a value of $4.75 per newsletter sign-up.
5. Work Together. Coordinate with other departments to get as much information as you can to work together. Offline marketing, online marketing, sales, management, support, and customer service all should work together to ensure goals are being met.  You may find that you have an excellent sales record but because of poor customer service you never have returning clients.
6. Ensure your web analytics are working properly.  If your analytics are not working properly and capturing as much traffic and data as technology allows then you may make big mistakes based off of inaccurate data.
7. Work with 3rd party vendors or get rid of them.  If you have vendors that will not cooperate with you to track analytics on their systems you should look into finding a new vendor who is more willing to work with their clients.
8. Learn from your metrics!  If you find out your banner advertising is not paying for itself then axe it!  If you find out SEO or PPC are doing really well and bringing in a profit then boost it!

Popularity: 35% [?]

Posted in Search Engine Optimization, User Centered Design | 2 Comments »