Website Design and Promotion

The 'Buy Now' Button

Might seem a bit strange to commit a whole post on the 'Buy Now' button, but after reading "Does your buy button suck? How to make a buy button that customers will love to click" in the WebmasterWorld Forum, I have to admit it's worth discussing. If your business sells green products, you need to consider all the details of your online marketing strategies.

The author stresses the importance of making your buy button work for you and covers the following aspects (and manages to relate them to Einstein's theory of relativity):

1. Size. As they say, size does matter (well, at least they did in that Godzilla movie ad, didn't they?). In general, the bigger the better. Aside from the photo of the item you're selling, the buy button should be the largest image in the page's content.
2. Placement. Location, location, location. First off, on the item's page, the buy button should be near the photo and above the copy for the benefit of those that don't want to read about the item first or are too lazy to scroll. You can have a second buy button at the end of the copy too, if you wish. And, always place it on the right side of the page — for the simple reason that that's where people expect it to be.
3. Color. Don't try to blend the button in with the rest of the design. It needs to stand out.
4. What's on the button. Whether it says "buy now" or "add to cart" make sure that the words are easy to read and eye-catching. You might also want to add an icon for extra effect and for those that can't read.

How Well Does Your Website Perform?

The Guerrilla Consulting Blog has a website self-assessment test that you can complete for free. Once completed it will analyze the results and send you a report with suggestions on how you can improve your site.

I think it's a worth while test to do and agree with most of the questions.  Questions include those related to:

• The purpose of your website.
• The importance of your website to your overall marketing strategy.
• Who visits your site.
• How much content is promotional vs educational.
• What people can learn from your website.
• How well different types of visitors can find the content that they want.
• How well your site allows visitors to interact with it.
• What communication tools your site has (blogs, RSS, etc.).
• If visitors can send you feedback from every page of your site.
• If you use pop-up windows on your site.
• If your Web site offers visitors some of your proprietary information at no cost.
• In order to download information from your site, what information you ask visitors to supply.
• If at least five clients tested your Web site before it was released to the public.
• If a visitor scan scan pages on your site and grasp the key ideas.
• If your Web site home page used an attention-grabbing flash introduction.
• If your Web site includes these features: Contact Us, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), Privacy Statement, Terms of Web Site Use, and Search.
• If you monitor traffic to your site, and if so, how many unique visitors view the site, what pages visitors look at, how long visitors stay at the site, and what site referred them to your Web site.
• If you use images you use to enhance the appearance of your Web site.
• If your Web site been effective in generating leads for your practice.
• If your site helped you build relationships with your existing clients.

I think it's a very useful tool and agree with most of the criteria. However, like many marketers, I am not big on flash introductions as they can distract from your message. I am also not big on pop-ups. They do work, but they are intrusive and can be somewhat cheesy.  

After having 400 consultants take the test, they have summarized the results here. Here are some interesting statistics from the websites that are successful:

• Less than half of respondents (43%) reported that their Web sites have been successful in generating business and building client relationships.
• 70% of successful websites had updated their sites within the last 30 days.
• 80% of successful websites offered information to clients at no cost.
• 90% of successful websites monitor traffic patterns and 59% monitor those patterns very carefully.

Take the test here.

Search Engine Optimization in Newsweek

Newsweek's Dec. 19th issue ran an interesting story on search engine optimization worth reading. It talks about the importance of SEO and how it's become a huge business (and growing).

Of course, with this boom, comes all sorts of opportunists — ethical and not-so-ethical. The common terms for the two types are "white hat" and "black hat" — you can probably guess which one is which. It saddens me to see any unethical business having success, but some of the black hats manage to. It also really scares me to find out some of their methods. In particular, the Newsweek article touches on one anonymous black hat SEO who managed to "forcibly inject" a link to his site from Stony Brook University's site, thus getting his site a higher ranking.

There may be a certain lure to using a black hat SEO person/firm to get quick results, but keep in mind that they usually, eventually, do get caught and then the web site gets blacklisted by Google et al. Anyone who's unethical in their SEO practices probably is unethical in general business too, so don't expect your money back either.

Write Powerful Copy: Don't Write for the Search Engines

Robert Bly, the well known copywriter, wrote a great article on why he doesn't believe you should write your copy for the search engines.

Bob explains that you need to have a single core audience in mind if you want to write powerful copy. If you write for the search engines, then you are catering to them and not the reader.

His main points:

• Write the strongest selling copy you can aimed at the human reader and forget the search engines.
• When finished, check to ensure keywords are appropriately placed, but ...
• Never change a word of strong selling copy if that change will make it even one iota weaker, even if SEO best practices would endorse that change.
• Once the page is up and working (i.e., generating strong conversion), optimize for engines by experimenting with word changes, testing to ensure those edits don’t reduce conversions.

Bob includes comments made by other copywriters he spoke to and most agree with his point of view.

I also use a method similar to Bob's. I write the copy first (or help my clients write theirs) and then go back and do some keyword research and make modifications to the copy, inserting keywords where appropriate as long as they don't take away from the copy itself. I find that well written copy that is geared to a specific target audience naturally will include a lot of the key words people use when searching for a particular product or service on the web.

Carnival of the Green

City Hippy and  Triple Pundit have started The Carnival of the Green. Inspired by Carnival of the Capitalists, The Carnival of the Green travels to various green blogs. Each Monday a green blog hosts the carnival and then links to several other green posts of interest to the host.

This week's carnival is hosted by Jen's Green Journal. Jen has included posts on a variety of topics including green gift giving, a post debating real vs fake Christmas trees, recycling pros and cons, green washing campaigns by McDonald's and Walmart and a whole lot more.

Next week's carnival will be hosted by Dee's 'Dotes.

Check out the carnival. The hosts are posting a lot of great info that is of interest to socially responsible and ethical businesses, so go see what you can learn. And if you want to to act as a host for the Carnival of the Green you can go to City Hippy for information.

Update: Nathaniel and I will be hosting the Carnvial of the Green on May 22. See you there!

Blog Design Basics

For all you out there starting up your own blog, here's a good primer: Blog Design Checklist, posted on Successful Blog.

Really, in designing a blog for your socially responsible business, you want to follow pretty much the same advice we're always preaching here for designing and effective website — i.e., keep it simple and easy to read, well organized, easy to navigate, quick to download, etc. With a blog, even more emphasis goes on readability (not that that should be overlooked on your website!). And in the checklist, they emphasize being able to easily find the author's bio/contact info.

Size Those Images

A rather simple — and obvious to some — tip: when you're including an image on your website, size it down to the dimensions you want, in your image editing software, not in the HTML code. What this means is if you have a photo that is 400x600 pixels and you want it to show at 100x150 pixels on your page, use Photoshop, or whatever image editing software you use, to scale it down. The file size will be much lower and the image will download so much faster than if you leave the image large and rely on the browser to scale it down for you.

If you're using thumbnails of images and then asking viewers to click on those thumbnails for a larger view, I  recommend creating two versions of the image — one for the thumbnail and one for the larger version. Most people don't mind waiting a bit longer for the larger version to download if it was their choice, rather than having to wait for a page to load simply because the creator was lazy.

Comparison of Green Hosting Companies

A while ago, I pointed to a green web hosting service offered by sustainablemarketing.com." the greener side" blog has done a comparison of several green hosting companies that use solar or wind power certificates. Prices and services included are competitive with a lot of hosting companies.

And for all you Canadians who want to keep your $ in Canada there is The Green Web Host Inc.

Nathaniel has had some dialogue with Green Web Host Inc. about their plans but neither of us has transferred our service over yet to a green hosting company.

The Needle and the Vice vs the Rattle Approach to Marketing

Seth has a good post on how to market effectively using a combination of the "needle and vice approach" as opposed to the "rattle" approach.

In a nutshell, the "needle" approach requires focusing on "the right person, the right message, the right moment". These are targeted messages geared towards specific folks on a consistent basis that have an impact.

The "vice" approach involves spreading your message far and wide and eventually the word spreads.

The "rattle" approach is used by those who try out an approach here and there. Perhaps give up on the approach when they don't get the results they want and then and try another method for awhile and still don't get what they want. They get more obnoxious and louder as they try to get attention.

Seth concludes:

The best marketers, of course, use the needle and the vise at the same time. They don't assault, they don't demand, instead they earn attention. And they apply their marketing pressure so consistently and in such a measured and relentless way that sooner or later, they profit from it.

Marketing successfully takes careful planning and strategy. For small businesses in particular, I can see no better way to market effectively than using a consistent, strategic plan that you implement over a long period of time to a specific group of people who become your fans. Permission-based methods of marketing do work amazing well if you are patient and apply them properly. These techniques are also the best suited to socially responsible business practices.

For more information on permission marketing, check out Seth's book here.