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The Best Way To Use Facebook For Ecommerce
May 4th
If your internet business is of the e-commerce variety, you may have been bombarded with reports about how amazingly well Facebook storefronts are faring these days.
Facebook Good For Social Sales
But, the truth of the matter is that, despite the fact that Booz & Company, a consulting company, predicts a 600 percent, or $30 billion, increase in product sales on Facebook by 2015, Facebook is not a medium for the majority of online retailers. This increase represents a mere 4 percent of the projected total of all sales online.
Facebook is more suited to the sale of socially relevant categories such as games, entertainment, travel and music, for which various applications and platforms already exist to make that possible.
Effective Use Of The Facebook Platform
Attempting to use Facebook directly for ecommerce is simply not feasible for most non-social product categories, since, according to the same report from Booz & Company, most Facebook users (73 percent of the 600 million users) are reluctant to shop on the platform due to privacy and security concerns.
So, if you’re not involved in selling any of the aforementioned product categories online, what’s the best way to take advantage of the massive potential customer base Facebook represents? Let’s look at some examples of how companies trading in non-social product categories make the most of their presence on Facebook.
1. Budweiser
This company’s Facebook page is all about audience participation. Go to their page and you’ll find yet another smart way in which the brand is put front and centre in the audience’s mind without any attempt or need to sell. You’ll see the extra-large logos and the chilled beer bottles, and next thing you know you’ll be adding a six-pack of Bud to your shopping list.
2. REI
Pay a visit to REI’s Facebook page and you won’t see any way to buy any of the company’s products. Instead, you’ll find all the information you can use to decide whether or not to make a purchase, along with videos, reviews, expert advice, company blog, etc., all connecting to the REI home page, from which you can make purchases to your heart’s content.
3. Newegg
Chances are you’ll arrive at Newegg’s Facebook page to find a sweepstakes of some kind, giving away such things as a complete home entertainment centre. In fact, join any of Newegg’s half million fans at any time and you’ll find many deals, promos, etc., waiting for you, but nothing to buy; take advantage of the offers on the page and you’ll be taken to the company home page to buy any of Newegg’s products.
4. Skittles
One look at the rainbow logo on the Skittles Facebook page may have you running to your nearest corner shop to grab a few bags of the tasty treats. And chances are you wouldn’t be alone – with 15 million users liking the page and enjoying its dozens of videos, over 1,000 photos, etc., making it clear Skittles know how to both entertain and engage users.
Obviously, if you can make your internet business‘s Facebook page as entertaining and interactive as possible, appealing to the social aspect that is Facebook, you can succeed in using Facebook as a launchpad for your ecommerce ambitions.
Utilise the Facebook expertise of a UK internet marketing consultant to set your page up for ecommerce success.
The Basic Principles Of Web Site Design
Apr 27th
As far as internet businesses are concerned, one of the most important aspects of that type of business is the web site. In fact, having a web site is more or less essential for any company these days, so any discussion of web site design is relevant to practically any business.
Regardless of changes in technology, media, methodology, etc., the basic tenets that relate to web site design never change. And the principles that make for great web site design never change either, and, despite the fact that some companies may use the finest software available, their web sites still don’t look particularly professional, mainly because they just don’t look good.
Making Your Web Site Look Good
There have been many articles, even books, written detailing exactly what needs to be done to design a first-rate web site, but here we’ll look at the basic building blocks needed to create the foundation for a first-class web site.
Choosing The Right Colours
Colour is a very important facet of web site design and sets the tone upon which the rest of the design is based by creating unity, providing emphasis and creating interest.
But problems can also occur through such things as using too many colours, so it’s important to strike a balance. Start with your company logo and choose a colour that relates to the logo, and, simultaneously, your company brand.
Setting Text Font And Appearance
The appearance of the text on a site says a lot about how professional or not a site looks. Using too many fonts for emphasis can result in the opposite effect, leaving a site looking a mess with everything emphasised, meaning nothing is emphasised.
Also important are such things as paragraph width and length – too wide and readers may lose track of where they are; too long and readers may just skip it.
Grid Format
When it comes to design, working in threes seems to appeal to the brain, so creating a grid of three sections for a site is optimal. This way, all the elements on a page can be aligned to create an overall sense of unity.
Creating Relationships With Photos
The photos on a site need to relate to elements in the design to make them stand out. If you can do this in a unique way, it can really make your web site stand out. There are many ways of doing this, such as the use of tools such as PhotoShop.
Convey Brand Through Logo Elements
A company’s logo is not its brand, but it is used to visually convey the brand. Elements of the logo should be incorporated in the web site design to help bring attention to the company brand. This can be done through the use of logo elements such as shape, colour, text, etc.
Use Of Hierarchy
When a visitor arrives on your web site, you don’t want to leave to chance how they interact with the page on which they land. Creating a hierarchy on a web page allows you to lead a visitor through the various elements on a page in the order that provides maximum benefit for both the visitor and your business.
These are the basic concepts of web site design, which, when applied, will help establish your web site and your internet business as a creative, professional entity.
A UK internet business coach can bring web site design expertise to bear on your web site, whether it be initial design or re-design of an existing site.
Use An E-mail Service Provider To Push Your Campaigns Into Overdrive
Apr 25th
E-mail marketing is still not only a relevant option for internet business owners, but it’s actually thriving, with e-mail newsletters still a very effective marketing tool.
In fact, a Pew research recently found that some 56 percent of internet users subscribe to e-mail newsletters of one kind or another, while online business owners are utilising this platform increasingly to transmit their messages.
Content Counts When All Said And Done
The trick is to provide subscribers with content that keeps them interested and wanting more, as well as increasing the number of subscribers, thereby expanding your business and its revenue.
Here’s a list of several e-mail service providers that can give your business the boost it needs:
1. Posterous
More a microblogging site than an e-mail provider, Posterous recently added a feature that allows bloggers to convert their content into e-mail newsletters. They’ve also stated their intention to enhance their e-mail services in future, so this is well worth looking at.
2. MailChimp
One of the most popular e-mail services, MailChimp provides tools that are easy to implement and use, including features for mobile and social marketing. A free trial is available, while packages are available costing up to $240 per month for up to 50,000 subscribers.
3. Constant Contact
Simple editing tools, mobile and social functionalities, as well as almost 500 templates for newsletters to which companies can add their own logos and colours are just some of the features that make this service such a standout. It’s priced from $15 a month (500 subscribers) to $150-plus a month (25,000-plus subscribers).
4. Campaigner
For a startup this is an excellent service that provides many features that allow users to create, send and keep track of their e-mail newsletters, as well as providing the ability to edit images without the need for additional software. The cost is $10 a month (includes 30 day free trial), rising to $55 a month for as many as 10,000 subscribers.
5. Campaign Monitor
An Aussie (Australian) company that’s mainly focused on design but is a full-service e-mail marketing provider. The service has a complete set of features to facilitate a company’s e-mail marketing campaigns, and its offerings are priced from $15 for 500 subscribers to $500 for as many as 50,000 subscribers.
Give your internet business and your e-mail marketing campaign a shot in the arm with any one of these fine services.
Check with a UK internet marketing consultant who can assist you with all aspects of your company’s e-mail marketing strategy and work with you to increase your subscriber base substantially.
Google Rings The Changes Yet Again With +1
Apr 14th
If you want to succeed as an internet business owner, you’ve got to stay abreast with Google and the changes they’re constantly making to their search results.
We recently reported on what became known as Google’s Farmer Update, which basically put greater emphasis on quality, original content influencing search results. Well, Google keeps ringing the changes, the latest one being “+1″, which is all about where search and social meet.
Google’s Growing Love For Social
Google has already acknowledged the growing importance of social media by including Twitter updates in its search results, but now Google’s taking the importance of social in its results up another notch. In future you’ll see a button alongside search results which can be clicked to recommend a result to your social graph as defined in Google Profiles.
This acts as a citation and creates a backlink for SEO. When a user performs a search, results that received votes from within that user’s social graph will be profiled.
This Is Big, Really Big
While the implications of this latest change to Google’s search results aren’t yet fully known, what is certain is that you and your business need to be ready to take advantage of it, because, if it’s big for Google, it’s big for you.
If you don’t already have a Google profile, now’s the time to change that. Then you can check your connections in Google Dashboard’s “Social Circle and Content” – the more people you are connected to and that are connected to you, the more you can influence their results. It goes without saying that expanding your circle of influence should be a major priority.
If you have a subscriber list, check for gmail addresses and import them into your Google social graph.
Video is already a major factor in search results, but that may also be about to increase in importance so be sure your company’s channel is properly branded and set up for social connections through friends and subscribers.
There’s also a +1 button that can be added to web sites that will allow visitors to vote for a page and help improve the page’s search results.
Vote For Your Favourite Ads
The +1 vote button will also be added to Adwords ads, allowing users to recommend ads that appeal, causing them to display as recommendations to personal contacts.
For advertisers, this means making their ads as appealing as possible in order to garner as many recommendations as possible.
Don’t Forget The Other Social Networks
This is Google, after all, so this is something to act on, but it’s too early to tell how much effect votes will have on search engine results or even whether users will take the time to vote.
And while you and your internet business should take advantage of Google’s new initiative, don’t ignore the other social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, since they are very powerful vehicles in their own right. A balanced approach is advisable at all times.
Let a UK internet marketing consultant help you to make the most of Google +1 and the other social networks to boost your search result rankings.
Learn The Terminology And Improve Your Landing Page Testing
Apr 11th
One thing that’s vital to the success of your internet business is conducting regular and thorough testing of your web site’s landing page. But, in order to do so, you need to be prepared to learn what might almost seem like a foreign language, such are the concepts and terminology associated with landing page testing.
And this is further complicated by the fact that, while the names of the concepts are the same, they may carry different meaning in some areas of the testing community.
What’s The Big Idea?
The goal of testing a landing page is to find out how visitors react to the page and the various elements on it. It starts with collecting and summarising a small sample of data (known as descriptive statistics), and then predicting people’s behaviour once they land on the home page from the same traffic sources (known as inferential statistics). Ultimately, it’s all about finding the best possible landing page from all the various permutations available.
Elementary, Dear Tester!
Let’s look at the various elements involved in testing and their function.
1. Input and Output Variables
Testing consists of 2 basic factors – input variables (also referred to as “independent variables”) that can be controlled and manipulated by you, the tester; output variables (also referred to as “dependent variables”) that are used to measure and evaluate results.
2. Variable
Refers to a tuning element and can vary in coarseness or granularity from just a landing page heading to the re-design of an entire page. A single variable within a multivariate testing strategy is referred to as a factor.
Multivariate testing involves several variables so each needs to be identified separately. An example might be using a capital “V” for all the variables plus a number to identify each one uniquely.
So, say you’re testing a headline, sales copy and a button (the call-to-action), here’s how those variables might be designated:
- V1 = Page headline
- V2 = Page
- V3 = Call-to-action button text
- V4 = Call-to-action button colour
Variables don’t have to be associated with items in different locations. Take a look at the example above – the button has 2 variables associated with it, one for text and the other for colour. Nor do they have to refer to a specific location. For instance, you may want to check the effect changing the font on your landing page has, so that would affect the entire page rather than just one area.
3. Value
A value is the state of a variable at a given time, and, since, for multivariate testing, values are generally consistent across a given range, it makes it fairly easy to predict intermediate values when needed. So, if an engine produces 100 horsepower at 1000 rpm, and produces 200 horsepower at 2000 rpm, we can safely predict that at 1500 rpm, the engine produces 150 horsepower.
But, most landing page tuning involves variables with discreet values, such as our button example, in which the button may be assigned various colours, say green, blue and red. The distinction would be shown by assigning a different lower case letter for each colour to the variable name, with the letter “a” assigned to the original, baseline value, as follows:
- V4a = blue button (the original colour)
- V4b = red button
- V4c = green button
4. Branching Factor
This is the number of values a discreet variable may contain, which must be at least 2, the original value plus an alternative. In our button example, that variable has a branching factor of 3.
When it comes to traditional multivariate testing, the number of values a variable may hold is known as the level of the factor.
5. Recipe
A recipe is a unique set of values assigned to variables for a given test. Given our example above, let’s say the variables are assigned the following values for a landing page test: V1a, V2c, V3b, V4b. The recipe in this case would be:
acbb
All recipes are unique, with the initial baseline test being assigned all a’s and all subsequent testing compared to this.
6. Search Space Size
Calculated by multiplying all the branching factors of the variables that are part of your testing, this represents how many unique recipes make up your testing.
Using the variables mentioned earlier, let’s say we have 2 headlines, 3 different versions of the sales copy, 5 calls to action and 3 button colours. Here’s how the search space would be calculated, with BF being the branching factor:
– BFV1 X BFV2 X BFV3 X BFV4
= 2 X 3 X 5 X 3
= 90
Obviously this is a very small size, and in reality this would normally be larger. But, too large a space may make testing very cumbersome and exceed what’s practical for tests such as standard A-B split testing.
With an understanding of testing terminology and methodology, you’ll be in a position to map out the testing strategy you need to take your internet business to the next level.
Contact a UK internet business coach for help defining and executing your landing page testing strategy.
