Coaching For Success
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About The Internet Business Coaching
Being Able To Complete E-Commerce Transactions Is Vital
Feb 25th
If you own an e-commerce type of internet business, one thing you definitely want to make sure of is that there are as few barriers as possible between a visitor to your web site becoming a customer.
Report Shows Task Completion Issues
A report issued recently by iPerceptions on the retail/e-commerce industry for the fourth quarter of 2010 indicates that e-tailers need to start paying closer attention to the ability of users to complete tasks on their web sites or risk losing opportunities to convert prospects into sales.
The Numbers Are In – And They Don’t Look Good
A full forty percent of people visiting a site who fully intended making a purchase were unable to complete their intended task. This makes for particularly bad reading in view of the fact that the fourth quarter of every year is the time when online retailers usually see a huge surge in traffic volume, more often than not the highest volumes of the year.
While it’s reasonable for web sites to concentrate most of their efforts on educating users for most of the year, conversions must be the primary objective during the busy fourth quarter shopping season, when most consumers aren’t in a very forgiving mood.
Retailers Must Think Long-Term
Regardless of the time of year or during which quarter an online transaction is being performed, one of the things that can kill customer loyalty and ruin the chance of repeat sales is the inability of a user to complete a desired transaction.
Also, support is another area of concern for consumers and one that needs to be addressed, so that, should a consumer be unable to complete a transaction and look to customer support for help, they should not be disappointed or that may well be the last time they’ll visit that particular web site.
Problem Areas To Be Examined
While it’s not unusual for visitors to drop out somewhere along the way through the sales funnel due to dissatisfaction or inability to complete a phase of the process, when the percentage rates are high, then that is cause for concern.
Of those who failed to complete the buying process, 39 percent weren’t able to find the product they wanted, while in 33 percent of cases the desired product wasn’t available.
8 percent cited lack of product information as the reason for them abandoning their shopping cart, while 4 percent hit a technical snag. The next most common cause for incomplete tasks was a concern over a site’s stated shipping policy, including shipping costs, return policy, etc.
Preparation And Testing Are The Keys
These problems should be addressed as soon as possible to avoid ongoing issues with purchase completion. In the case of site technical issues, stringent and regular testing of all customer-facing interfaces is required all the way through to the final checkout phase. All products should be correctly labeled and carry adequate descriptions, as well as be stocked in sufficient numbers to ensure completion of the product fulfillment phase.
Your goal, as an e-commerce internet business owner, should be to achieve the highest conversion rate possible, so removing all obstacles to achieving that goal should be your highest priority.
A UK internet business consultant can provide the help and guidance you need to set your site up to achieve maximum conversion rates, so contact one as soon as possible to avoid losing prospective customers.
A Three-Phased Approach To Optimised Press Releases
Feb 23rd
Internet marketing is all about getting your internet business, and, by extension, your brand in front of as many people as possible and eventually, with enough exposure, into consumers’ subconscious.
One of the best ways of getting exposure for your brand is through the use of press releases, provided they are properly optimised and distributed through appropriate channels.
Optimisation of a press release consists of three distinct phases, which we’ll discuss here.
1. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
In order for your press release to be found through the search engines, it needs to be optimised for your business’s keywords. And placing keywords strategically in specific sections of your press release is what will produce the best results, so let’s look at the areas we need to target:
a) Title Optimisation
The title of your press release carries the most weight as far as the search engines are concerned, so placing your primary keyword as close to the beginning of the title as possible will help your release rank and be found.
But, your title should be written not only for search engines but also for human visitors, so it needs to be not only keyword-focused but also attractive and enticing enough to get searchers to click on it in the search engine results.
b) Summary Optimisation
The second most important area to optimise is your summary, where you can introduce one or two additional, secondary keywords. This is where you should expand on your release title, while incorporating your additional keyword phrases.
You should look on your title and summary as the press release equivalent of title and meta description tags, following the same rules for SEO.
c) Keyword Anchor Text Linking
When a press release is published, some distribution sites will push your release as a full page addition to other sites which provide valuable backlinks to your site. The anchor text linking back from such sites to yours should be optimised to use the relevant keywords.
2. Click Through Optimisation
The main objective of an optimised press release is to drive traffic to your web site. Here we’ll look at strategies you can use to position your business for substantial traffic from your release.
a) Use Multimedia
The addition of photos, videos, etc., will help draw readers further into your content, so incorporate as many such multimedia elements as possible.
b) Call To Action
A press release is a vehicle to get traffic to your web site, so you need to make it clear to readers what you want them to do and why. Some compelling reasons you can offer them for clicking through are a free report, more details on your product or service, or a subscription to your newsletter for more tips and information.
3. Must Pass Editorial Standards
Sites that publish press releases are news sites, so your release needs to follow the guidelines for a correctly formatted release.
Human editors check releases for editorial correctness, so follow these 3 points:
a) A Clearly Stated Company News Item
A press release is designed to deliver a news announcement from your company, such as a new product, upcoming company event, etc.
b) Must Be Written In Third Person
Other than a direct quote, a release should be written in the third person and should not refer to the reader as “you” or the company as “I” or “we”.
c) Claims Must Be Attributable
Any claim made in a press release must be directly attributable to a particular party and not as a generic claim.
A properly optimised press release is a great internet marketing tool that can rank in the search engines and work wonders for your internet business and your brand.
A UK internet marketing service can supply the expertise to help you with your press release campaign and maximise your internet marketing efforts.
Long Tail Keywords Attract More Traffic And Higher Profits
Feb 21st
In internet marketing, search engine optimisation is one of the most important strategies used to get web sites in front of users’ eyes, and one of the important factors in search engine optimisation is the selection and optimisation of the correct keywords for your web page content.
But, what are the correct keywords? Well, the exact nature of the keywords you use on your site obviously depends on your market and the particular topic of your individual web pages. But, Chitika, an online ad network, has recently released the results of a study, which shows that, if you can rank high for keyword phrases of three to five words in length, you should be able to achieve optimum results for both traffic and conversions.
In other words, the correct keywords for your web site are ones from three to five words long that are relevant to your site and the topics of your site’s pages.
Multi-Term Keywords Produce Best Results
The study looked at search traffic coming into the network over a period of six days and was based on a sampling of more than forty-one million impressions.
Three word searches accounted for 26 percent of all search traffic, while 19 percent of all traffic was generated as a result of keywords made up of two terms and 17 percent of search traffic came from searches where keywords were made up of four word phrases.
An interesting side note is that one word keywords accounted for only 14 percent of traffic, further emphasizing the power of multi-term keywords.
Also, queries longer than five words result in much less traffic, an indication of just how fragmented the traffic resulting from longer queries is.
Longer Search Terms Result In More Revenue
Another interesting fact that surfaced from the survey results is that it seemed that the more words used in a search query, the more likely the searcher was to click on an ad. In fact, the most profitable queries in terms of ad clicks were those consisting of 5, 6 and 4 words, in that order. In other words, the longer the search query in terms of the number of words, the more profitable it was likely to be, with the magic number once again appearing to be 5.
So, what does this mean for you and your internet business? It means that, if you’re not targeting traffic using keywords of 3 to 5 words in length as part of your search engine optimisation strategy, you’re missing out on some substantial and potentially extremely profitable search engine traffic.
For help optimising your web site for these long tail keywords, contact a UK internet business consultant who will set your web site up for success for longer search terms.
Increasing Your Twitter Use For Business
Feb 18th
Twitter is a great tool for Internet businesses that wish to grow awareness of their products and services. It allows you to connect to people who share similar interests and are within similar niches to your own. Unfortunately there are also a lot of Internet marketers who spam people and the last thing you want your business to be known for is that.
Getting the mix of self promotional internet marketing and unread tweets right does not need to be so difficult the key is to be someone worth following and have an understanding of how and when to best to use Twitter in your business and above all engage with and increase your potential customer base. Below are a few steps to make this process easier for you:
- It is important you time your internet business tweets for peak time which is usually working hours 9 – 5pm, if you cannot do it yourself just use auto scheduling tools like Hootsuite so people see content during peak.
- Try to follow people within your niche; this will help you with finding good content to retweet. Use listorious.com, and twellow.com to help you do this. Build a list of sites you would like to get links from and then find Twitterers from those sites to communicate with and share Internet business content with. If you give links and retweets you will usually get them back.
- Instead of choosing people to follow blindly why not use other Users’ Twitter Lists and “Following” Links. This should help you identify people or organisations on Twitter with similar offerings to your own. Just make sure to follow the individual users on a list and not just the list itself!
- If most of your business is local to your geographic location then use tools like Localtweeps.com and Trendsmap.com to connect to local consumers in your area. Also try tapping into influential local circles within your market or locale. Using tools like Twittergrader can help you find possible influential people or markets to follow then you can look at their lists to find the true people of influence in your area who you can follow.
- Check what topics are trending in your industry and get involved by sharing your information, knowledge and tips related to trending topics within your niche. You can find hashtags on topics of interesting using wthashtag.com and use that as a way to find questions and tag answers you provide this will help people trust you and show your expertise.
It is important for any Internet business owner to take time to respond and engage with their followers on Twitter. Twitter is a powerful tool, that can help you increase your internet business presence through proper use of its two-way communication process, which you if used correctly in your internet marketing efforts to engage with followers can help increase your potential customer base.
Social Video Is Going Viral
Feb 16th
For internet business owners, advertising via video provides a great return on investment, especially when shared across the social networks. This is a relatively new form of internet marketing known as social video that is taking on great significance for online business owners.
Recent Study Identifies Top Trends
A study conducted by Jun Group, a provider of social video solutions based in New York, discusses trends in social video using data compiled from over 6 million views of social videos. The study was conducted on behalf of Fortune 500 and leading entertainment companies during the last few months of 2010.
Here are the major trends identified by the study:
1. Facebook Is Tops (so what’s new?!!??!)
Videos on Facebook are shared over 200 percent more than via email and Twitter combined.
2. The Shorter The Better
Videos 15 seconds or less in length are shared about 37 percent more than those between 30 seconds and 1 minute in length and around 18 percent more than videos over 1 minute long.
3. Lady Power
The ladies love their social video, and account for 57 percent of the views. They also share 30 percent more than their male counterparts.
4. Generation Y Loves Social Video
Social videos are very popular among 18 to 34-year-olds, who watch over 55 percent of such videos, with the average age of the viewers being around 27.
5. Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) Companies Are Setting The Pace
Consumer packaged goods, in case you’re unaware, are consumable goods, such as soap, detergent, toilet paper, etc. (basically anything that is consumed and needs replacing sooner or later), and the companies that specialise in such products are blazing a trail when it comes to internet marketing and social videos. They’re driving more social video views (19 percent) than companies that specialise in entertainment, retail, media and consumer electronics combined.
6. Activity Varies Depending On Location
In the U.S., the study found that social video activities appear to vary depending on geographic location. For instance, people in the south watch more video than people in other parts of the country, whereas mid-westerners tend to share more video, while people on the east coast share video via e-mail the most.
Sharing social videos as part of an internet marketing strategy on the social networks is a great way for advertisers and internet business owners to spread the word about their products and services and to take the message viral. This is an exciting new medium that engages viewers and has the potential to turn prospective buyers into potentially life-long customers. This study shows how powerful this medium can be and the way users interact with each other and the medium.
A UK internet marketing consultant can help you take advantage of internet marketing using social videos and the trends outlined above.
