Wednesday, November 30, 2005

The success of your website marketing depends on your users' experience

Click Z has two articles about users today - and they both make the point that unless you provide a good online experience for your visitors your website marketing plan may be less than effective In my book WebSense I said that the biggest mistake in creating a website was creating content that fulfilled your needs, not the needs of your users.

A new study from Blast Radius shows that even the top retail sites can get it wrong. The researchers fiound many sites don't measure up to the promises made on the about us page. Drugstore CVS is cited as one example that stands out for its unfulfilled promise to make the "overall shopping experience as easy as possible."

No surprise that Amazon tops the list of the ten best online retail sites. PCMall gets top spot on the worst online shopping site list. Let's hope they get the message and do some user testing before the next holiday shopping spree.

Reminds me of the user testing done by Jared Spoole at UIE. Even when they gave people the money to buy a desired item online only 33% completed the purchase. What stopped the others? Bad content, couldn't find the item, not enough info, difficult navigation. His comment was: When they can't buy, they won't buy. Seems very obvious, yet too many sites don't do user testing.

WebSense: effective website marketing strategies for entrepreneurs explains how easy it is to do basic user testing that will find the major errors on your site.

Saturday, November 26, 2005

Web Marketing Strategy Now Vital For Small Business Success Online

More than 80 percent of holiday shoppers plan to buy online this year. And 63 percent say that small businesses with niche, hard-to-find items are high on their list. source: Yahoo! Small Business survey

Yet many small businesses don't have any search engine visibility - when you search for the keywords that describe their business their website does not show up on page one. So no matter how many interested holiday shoppers are looking for your kind of product, if you are not seen when they search, they can't buy from you.

WebSense, a website marketing strategy e-book specially for small business owners is a gift that every small business owner could use in their stocking this year.