On the popular GrokDotCom they’ve commented on a piece of research that shows e-commerce is still too complicated. Not just for the over 65′s but for everyone pretty much equally.

If it’s too complicated people will leave the site rather than confuse their brain cells further.

So in the interests of improving web sites sales here’s a few thoughts:

1. Above all do not make the customer click through page after page to make a purchase
2. Have a facility that remembers customer data in case they abandon the page so you can email them and ask if they’d like to continue
3. Make the sales page clear, straight forward and leading directly to the sale, don’t deviate
4. Put in some testimonials but don’t make them half a page long, make them short, to the point and, if possible numerical focused
5. Always get hold of customer email and name so you can add to your prospect/customer list
6. Provide a nice gift for prospects signing up to your list
7. Don’t write vast amounts of verbiage – maybe I’m guilty here
8. Educate your prospect
9. Don’t let images dominate the objective of the page you’re creating
10. Use landing pages for campaigns so when people arrive at your site they know they’ve come to the right place

They’re just a few points to bear in mind as you go through designing and adding content to your web site and blog.

Remember the world and his wife have got web sites. And you can bet that if they’re in business in your industry and trying for your customers they’ll say the same as you.

So make sure you’re different. Look at their web sites and blogs. How can you be different to them?

Have you got any points you’d add to the list?

And yet businesses keep rolling on. The reality is that customers are still there. The further reality is that they still need or want the goods and services that companies have always provided. Overall the market’s consumers may be spending less but you can bet your last dollar someone somewhere is spending money like water on things your company provides.

The big idea here is to do more marketing during a recession because you can bet your competitors are doing less. Therefore, you get cheaper access and potentially more of your prospects too. After all if your two top competitors stop advertising and you continue who will your prospects know about? Again if you’re doing direct mail and your competitors stop and you continue who will be at the top of the mind for your prospects?

The answer of course, is YOU!

A study conducted in 2005 and highlighted in 2008 by PennState SMEAL College of Business (“Does Proactive Marketing During a Recession Pay Off“) studied over 150 marketing executives and identified 3 traits that would enable them to survive and prosper during a recession.

They were:

1. The business needs a marketing emphasis. Trying to just “do marketing” doesn’t work normally and is a disaster if you don’t know what you’re doing during a recession. You need to increase marketing to get more prospects to convert to customers.
2. You need an entrepreneurial culture. More marketing is needed, the investment is risky, with an entrepreneurial culture you’re more likely to take the risk.
3. You need money. Increasing marketing requires cash, no cash you can’t do anything.

The problem, of course is that the only way to improve your business in this way is to have the 3 traits listed. Suddenly deciding to invest in more marketing without considering marketing strategy, the investment you’d need and your expected return is suicide.

Of course bringing in a marketing  expert to help you decide your strategy and to work out the tactics will resolve the first issue. Maintaining an entrepreneurial approach is more difficult and an experienced coach would be able to guide you and your workforce. And to do both those things you need money!

Recession Proof Marketing

The other alternative is to work with your marketing expert to create marketing strategies that cost very little to implement. For example, an ongoing PR campaign, or a direct mail campaign, or an email campaign. You could improve the pull of your web site and I’ll go into more detail on that topic next time.

So with the aim of reminding myself and helping others I’ve compiled a further 5 tips to help you write.

#6 – Start Before You Write

Preparation is one of the keys to making the best possible use of your writing zone.

So, before your writing zone time starts make sure you’ve listed out everything that’s in your head. So that means creating or amending your to do lists. If your zone starts at 9am like Michael’s it’s better to write your to do list the previous night and then add on the very few thoughts you have in the morning.

#7 – Bank Inspiration

Any writer needs some inspiration at one time or another. With blogging or copywriting you can easily come across other posts or marketing materials that make you go Ah-Ha! Put those away in a special place and take them out if inspiration dries up.

#8 – Don’t Avoid Sidetracks

When I’m writing I can suddenly find that I’ve an idea for another article, post or other piece copy. Recognise it’s an interruption and deal with it by quickly noting it down and returning to your other writing. I use TextPad to note down everything and it means that when I come back to my writing I’m not continually wondering (a) whether I’ll remember the idea or (b) what I should write into it.

#9 – Give Yourself A Deadline

Whatever you write give yourself a deadline. That is if you’re writing an article write down the article title/working title and put down the date you’ll have completed it by.

This is part of pre-planning your work week. Your subconscious then piles on sufficient pressure to make you undertake your task and (usually) complete it by the deadline.

And by the way, your subconscious doesn’t know the difference between a completely made up deadline or one imposed by your client or your editor!

#10 – Edit Afterwards

When you’re writing don’t worry too much about grammar, spellings or structure just let the flow of your ideas spread across the page. Maybe you’ve a tendency to be long-winded and you know your pieces should be shorter. Or you use too much jargon. Whatever, your normal excuse for editing is realise it’s an excuse and just write and write some more.

Once your zone time is finished…

Then you can edit. Although don’t edit out the passion or creativity. Simply bring in a little more structure, make sure spellings are correct and grammar is reasonable.

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I was talking to a networking friend on Wednesday  and he told me he’d met a web expert who’d said the place everyone looked at on a web page was the bottom right hand corner.

I disagreed. And the reason was that I’ve seen eye tracking research and yet more eye tracking results from Jakob Nielsen’s company (Nielsen Norman Group) which show exactly where people look. His book, shown above, draws amazing reviews at Amazon. One reviewer who’s had a website since 2002 said,

“if you run a website, or have any say whatsoever in how your website is designed, this book is an absolute must read. That’s a “must” with 18″ bold Helvetica letters. And get your entire web team to read it, discuss it, and beta test their ideas using Nielsen’s and Loranger’s suggestions.
If it doesn’t pay off for you and you don’t think the book was worth it, just get a hold of me and I’ll buy the book from you.
Oh — and the only reason I’m giving it five stars is because I can’t give it ten.”

The reviewer was getting 2-3 leads from his site (per month) it’s now up to 2-3 leads per day!

Nielsen is a widely acknowledged real web usability guru whose company specialises in practical experiments to check how us “normal” people really use web sites, blogs, ezines and more. And their eye tracking experiments conclusively show users look at a web page in an “F” pattern. Which almost invariably excludes the bottom right hand corner.

Anyway, with that cleared up  and even though I’m on Nielsen’s mailing list I checked what else he had to say.

Email Blasts Through And Ends With a Whimper

Interestingly enough there was a link to the Sydney Morning Herald where one of his studies on emails is reviewed.

The study notes that often people don’t unsubscribe from newsletters as “it doesn’t feel good to sever the relationship”.

The latest study’s conclusion was that users have much more of a “what’s in it for me” attitude than the last time users where surveyed. Nielsen Norman has updated its study and concluded that the email target audiences are getting tougher. more people understand what spam is. And more of them use spam filters to remove unwanted email.

Users decide whether an email is worth reading even more quickly that in the last study are weighing up email messages in even less time, scanning rather than reading.

“In our first study, 23 per cent of the newsletters were read thoroughly. In our second study, two years later, only 11 per cent of the newsletters were read thoroughly,” (Nielsen Norman email study report).

Blogs Should Have Long Posts!

And although the previous study relates to email newsletters you can bet that the same applies to blogs. Does that mean the short and snappy over the long sale letter argument has been conclusively demonstrated on the web?

The answer of course, is no!

In fact another Nielsen study notes that if you want to become known as an expert you need to provide real, useful deep content that demonstrates your own expertise. And you can’t do that with a short blog posting. The reason being that you can’t provide anything useful in just two or three paragraphs.

What do you think Simon?