Blue Wrench

Foggy or undefined business goals – your web site needs a purpose. For example, the purpose of my web site is: “to support word-of-mouth, yellow pages, print and classified advertising of our web design services to small businesses and sole traders in the CBD and southern suburbs of Brisbane. I will know if it is successful if it generates an average of at least five enquiries or three sales per month.”

A Bad Business Model – a great web site will not save a bad business model. If you cannot state in one sentence what you have to offer, or why you are different to your competitors, then you have major marketing problems. Remember, your web pages are competing with 21 billion other web pages on the Internet. Without a good business model and marketing and PR support, your business will have difficulty in succeeding.

Becoming an internet dreamer. You would be stunned the number of people who think having a web site is having a business. They are pretty easy to spot. They’ve read The Secret, talk about Paying it Forward, and look forward to the day where they make lots of money while crusing on their yacht. I’ve got no problem with The Secret or Paying it Forward, what I do have a problem with the belief that making money online is easy. It isn’t unless you are extremely lucky. A web site is not a business. And for those of you who think you can make money blogging and selling ad space, you can – about 1.5 cents per unique visitor !

Focusing on style rather than substance – it’s easy to waste a lot of money on fancy Flash pages, Java script, music, graphics and other techniques that add little to your sites value and make it slower to download and harder to navigate. When in doubt – don’t do it. Your web site should be designed so that even people with older versions of browsers and slow old modems can still get the information they need quickly. And don’t be tempted to have videos or sound that automatically start playing when a web page is opened. It is very annoying and people will leave your site in droves without reading what you have to offer.

Trying to be all things to all people – getting found on the Internet means a focused approach to marketing. Pick one product or service offering and build a web site around that one offering. By appealing to different markets with unconnected products means that your search engine rankings will suffer. Pick a profitable niche and focus on that niche.

Using a generic domain name – the more unique and memorable your domain name, the better. Domains like pets.com or computer.com describe the product category, not the brand. google.com, dell.com , yahoo.com are easy to say, easy to remember and excellent brand names for the web. Do what they do, choose your online name carefully.

Not having a domain name at all – the use of a web address like ispname/~fashionshop looks unprofessional and “small-time”. Invest the $40 or so it costs to have your own domain name.

Not thinking like a customer – your web site should anticipate your prospects’ questions and be designed with them in mind. What do they want to know? What’s the best way to tell them? What proof can I offer? Consumers don’t necessarily want to make the best buying decision, they are usually happy just avoiding a bad one.

Not listing prices – the second question all prospects ask after “have they got what I’m looking for” is “how much is it?”. If you can give straight pricing, do so. Prospects are looking for value, not necessarily the lowest price. Value = offer/price. If you have a strong offer and your prices are reasonable you will represent value to your prospects. If you don’t state your prices then the value can’t be calculated. If you charge by the hour, state your rates for the type of work you do and a typical project cost.

Bad spelling, punctuation or grammar – there’s no excuse for typos, bad spelling or bad grammar. Always get your web site proof read by an independent party. If you do find an error, fix it promptly.

Not allowing for growth or updates – your web site design should allow for growth in content and easy changing of content. New product lines, additional locations, extra consumer information should all be catered for without the need for a major site redesign. This website uses what’s called a content management system. To add a new page takes less than 1 minute.

Investing too much in electronic order taking systems – if you expect to receive less than 10 orders per day from your web site, it’s probably far easier to use a simple order form and manual credit card processing using your EFTPOS machine than building real-time electronic payment processing systems. For low to medium volumes, another option is the range of merchant tools from PayPal. It takes about 5 minutes to insert a Buy Now button on your web page that allows customers to pay immediately by credit card. Paypal is the world leader in online payments for a good reason … it works.

Investing too little in online marketing – in most cases it pays to invest in online marketing. Unlike traditional media, with online marketing you can choose your daily budget and the cost-per-click of your marketing campaign. With good reason, Goggle Adwords is the leader in pay-per-click advertising. Learn about Adwords or hire a consultant who does. For as little as $5 -$10 per day you can get yourself a source of steady, qualified leads.

Not considering search engines – The primary way people will find you online is via search engines like google, altavista and sensis. By adding key words to the header of your web pages, using paragraph headings, linking to related sites and other techniques, you can improve your ranking in the search results dramatically.

Not responding quickly to inquiries that come from your web site- the Internet works very quickly. It takes less than a second to send an e-mail from Australia to Europe. Internet users are impatient. They want immediate results. If you take a few days to answer and e-mail there’s a good chance you’ve already lost the sale to someone who understands this and acts quickly. Check your e-mail twice a day and once a day on weekends if possible.

Unreadable pages – your pages should be clean, simple and readable. Red writing on a black background may look rather funky, but it is hard to read and will lose visitors quickly. Similarly with fonts. Only use fonts that you would usually see in a mainstream newspaper or magazine.

Unprintable pages – if you use lots of graphics and coloured text on coloured backgrounds it my be difficult for prospective customers to print out your pages. Black on white/cream works well. It’s easy to read as well as cheap and fast to print. You would be amazed the number of prospective buyers who print out web pages for future reference.

Using cheesy stock photos and graphics – photos can really ad impact to a web page, but don’t be tempted to use the same stock photos that everyone else does. You know what I mean, “man with briefcase running” or “business meeting” or “close-up of pen on table” or even “business handshake closing a deal”. These are the sort of cheesy images a 12 year old would put in a school project. If possible, use original photos of you and your business. If that isn’t possible, there are some excellent stock photo sites around where you can buy quality images for less than $2 a pop. The photo on this page is one such example. Cost? $1.65 Australian.

Bad site navigation – it should take a maximum of three clicks for your reader to find the information they are looking for. 40 seconds is the average time a person will spend scanning your web site to see if you have want they want. Deliver.

John Hacking is a Brisbane web designer. For web design Brisbane, contact John today.

Your brand image is primarily an emotional construct. Emotion is probably always more powerful in swaying people than reason, but people like to be able to rationalise their choices. This is where awareness of another advertising theory – the USP - can be helpful to you.

The USP, or unique selling proposition, formula was developed by Rosser Reeves, an ex-copywriter who became head of the Ted Bates agency in New York. He wrote an excellent book, largely dealing with this theory but also covering other aspects of advertising, called Reality in Advertising.

To establish your USP, you compare your product or service with your competitors. Then you determine one feature you have which no one else can offer. This is your unique selling proposition. It is this which you must promote singlemindedly.

A 1987 issue of Marketing Week, the British trade paper, gave a wonderful example of how little the average marketing executive understands the phrases he deploys with such gay inconsequence. The subject was ‘Store credit cards’. A bank executive said: The whole point of a Marks & Spencer, Boots, Dixons or even Fortnum & Mason card is to bring people into the store – and to provide a bit of a LISP’ (my italics).

How a credit card can be a unique selling proposition when the same facility is offered by any number of retailers is difficult to comprehend. It reminds one of people who refer to things as being ‘rather’ unique, or ‘fairly’ unique. Here are some typical USPs:

‘Cleans your breath while it cleans your teeth.’

Colgate toothpaste. ‘The too good to hurry mint.’ Murraymints. ‘There’s more for your life at Sears.’ Sears Roebuck. ‘It ain’t fancy but it’s good.’ Horn & Hardarts. ‘The mint with the hole.’ Polo Mints. ‘It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken.’ Perdue Chicken

And, finally, another gentleman in the chicken business: ‘It’s finger lickin’ good.’ Colonel Sanders

One of the problems with the USP is that you sometimes have to rely upon some pretty trivial points of difference to arrive at your proposition – as you can see from the list above. And although, for simple products a good USP may often supply a successful selling idea, I think it is difficult to arrive at one for complex services such as American Express or The Consumers Association.

However, comparing yourself against your competition to discover what USP may exist is a great aid to clear thinking. For example, I was able to improve results for Odhams’ Kathie Webber Cookery Club by writing a headline which was simply a personal way of expressing a USP: `My cookery cards mean you control your weight without giving up luscious food you love to eat.’ This did well in the UK, and even in France, home of gastronomy. Moreover, subsequent approaches to selling this product revolved around this original thought.

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Once you have decided on possible positionings for your product or service, it’s wise to research them and see which of them your target market finds credible and appealing.

For instance, one of our clients sells a wide range of kitchens, bathrooms, bedrooms, doors, windows and the like to the public through retail outlets. We wanted to find out what the right positioning for them could be – and then reflect it in their advertising.

Accordingly, a number of lines were written, each reflecting a different position. I am going to give you these lines with a brief indication as to how consumers reacted to them. This should prove salutary if you ever feel tempted to boast or misrepresent what you offer.

• ‘The best DIY store in town’ – consumers appreciated that the stores were not DIY outlets, so this was seen as inaccurate.
• ‘The ideal home improvement store’ – consumers thought this dealt only in superlatives, which were glib and self-congratulatory.
• ‘The store for top quality home improvements at value for money prices’ – consumers thought this was not distinctive; it was overused phraseology; nor did it appear credible – people expect to pay a premium price for quality.
• ‘The home improvement store where service really is personal service’ – the idea of service was good news, but not enough; products had to be good, too. In any case, this claim was seen as something other stores like Marks & Spencer could make.
• ‘Find out what “the trade” has always known’ – people had mixed feelings about the trade. Some thought of it in association with craftsmanship; others thought of cheap workmanship and cowboy operators.
• ‘The store traditionally used by the trade’ – here the same negatives aroused by the previous trade line came up, though in a better sense because of the use of the word ‘traditionally’. One problem, however, is that the line implies such products need proper experience to install.
• ‘Made to last by us. Sold direct to you’ – this conveyed that the company was personally involved in the making of the products, as opposed to being an importer.

Moreover, the line was seen as patriotic, because it clearly meant these were British goods. It also conveyed craftsmanship, durability and the good value you get by buying direct. Readers also appreciated that the line was to the point, not gimmicky. This line came out on top.

Successful companies tend to have a clear positioning from which they rarely if ever deviate – and then only with great care. I make no apology for reintroducing American Express. It was positioned single-mindedly for many years as ‘the world’s most prestigious financial instrument for business travel or entertainment’. This positioning came out in everything American Express did. For instance, the letter sent out to solicit new members which began: ‘Quite frankly the American Express card is not for everyone …’. This reflected the positioning so well that for many years in most countries of the world it was the most cost-effective direct mail used.

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