The Five Most Commonly Encountered, Offputting E

The Five Most Commonly Encountered, Offputting Ecommerce Errors

by: Marcia Yudkin

While getting less public handwringing than during holiday season, the กabandoned shopping cart problemก continues to wreak havoc on online sales. Recently I judged a raftload of sites for the Webby Awards (my second time) and for the Inc. magazine Web Awards, as well as for my own clients. Here are the five irritants and obstacles that most frequently disrupt the visitorกs shopping experience at ecommerce sites.

Lack of quick orientation for firsttime visitors. What does the site sell? Iกve had to poke around for several minutes sometimes to understand the focus of a site. Jargon is one culprit. Another is lack of context, like an airline site that sells tickets not giving a single clue on the home page in what countries or even what continent it flies.

Explanations that don’t explain. What does the product do and not do? Another basic, but it happens often that a site doesn’t explain whether their ‘turbocharge VT27Plusก is a onetime download, a subscription, a Webbased service or something else. An alternative payment systemกs site failed to offer a clear, systematic description of how it works.

Missing prices and shipping charges. How much? You shouldn’t have to put something into a shopping cart or enter your credit card information to learn how much an item costs, including shipping. Unfortunately, you still find this mistake at sites that have had plenty of time to get their act together.

Unreadable text. Say what? Creativity gone haywire seems to be the hallmark of some Web designers. Orange letters on a blue background, olive green on black, light gray on white and blue on blue were combinations that sent me packing, as did lettering too small for over40 eyes.

Inconsistencies. Huh? One site says, ‘to sign up, click on the Sign Up link at the top of every page.ก But the site does not have any กSign Upก link, only กSign In.ก Such carelessness wastes the time of earnest shoppers and gets them frustrated and fed up, never to return.

Blunders are equally rampant at wellfunded corporate sites and those from homebased businesses. The good news is that many of the errors are extremely easy and inexpensive to fix.

About The Author

Marketing guru Marcia Yudkin is the author of Poor Richardกs Web Site Marketing Makeover: Improve Your Message and Turn Visitors into Buyers, from Top Floor Publishing (http://www.yudkin.com/mmakeover.htm) and numerous other books on marketing. She recently began offering Web site reviews for just $40 (http://www.yudkin.com/sitereview.htm).

[email protected]

This article was posted on April 14, 2002

by Marcia Yudkin

3 BIGGEST Adwords Newbie Mistakes

3 BIGGEST Adwords Newbie Mistakes

by: Tom OกBrien

Google Adwords Tips

The 3 BIGGEST mistake Adwords newbies make

A Whirlwind Guide

Without doubt the biggest mistake a newbie to Adwords makes is compiling a long list of less than targeted keywords and whacking (technical term) them into a single adgroup.

Using broad match only

The unholiest of the trinity – not tracking results.

#1 The Single Adgroup

Although at first it may seem tempting – collecting all your keywords and lumping them into a single adgroup for ‘ease of administration’ is not a good idea for a multitude of reasons.

First off, let’s say you have managed to find 1000 keywords for your campaign and you pop them all into a single adgroup. Yes, you get a single point of administration (or more accurately a single point of failure) but look at what you miss:

The ability to group tightly cohesive keywords (which are the mindset of your prospects) and construct targeted adverts which are more likely to gain a click through to your site.

The ability to have specific landing pages on your site for specific customer psychographics. This alone will greatly increase your chances of getting a prospect respond to your call to action – be it an email address capture or a sale.

The ability to keep tight control over the budget of your ‘best’ keywords (where best are high traffic/high conversion). Sure you can adjust individual CPC’s within an adgroup, but the granularity and control is not there and the problems inherent with grouping too many loosely assembled keywords will ensure your efforts are thwarted and money wasted.

Have you ever had your account slowed? It’s a pain for sure but the more keywords you have administered in a less than disciplined way, the more of your keywords will be put on hold/intrial and/or disabled.

Remember Google rewards good advertising performance and looks at all advertiser histories & your advertising history when determining how well you are doing.

Adwords is not a fire and forget medium (unless you have a very niche market with very little competition – but the days of such markets are numbered).

Active campaign management is required to ensure you have not just a return of your investment but a positive return on your investment.

#2 Using Broad Match

Consider the keyword ‘widget’.

How many ways can you search for this keyword? In theory there are infinite number of searches that can be conducted but in practice there are considerably fewer thankfully.

However, how should you specify your matching options within Adwords?

Option 1: Broad Match

This specifies the keyword in an unadorned fashion within your list like so:

Blue widget

What this means is that should somebody search for the keywords:

Blue widget

Red blue widget

Widget blue

Widget who searches for these things blue?

Don’t need blue widget

Then, your advert would show for all of these. This is all very well when broad match (I’ll not talk about expanded match searching for fear of confusion!) shows your advert for terms relevant to you. But…

For every term relevant to your market there could be 10, 100 or 1000 others which are not (which is why when you utilise broad matching you should use negative keywords exhaustively).

The upshot of this is twofold:

Your advert will have more untargeted impressions which will result in a lower Click Through Rate

You will receive more ‘tyre kicking’ clicks from visitors who are not in the least bit interested in your product/service thus increasing your costs.

Option 2: Phrase match

This specifies the keyword by surrounding it in quotes like so:

ขblue widgetข

What this means is that should somebody search for the keywords:

Need blue widget

Blue widget

Blue widget where are you

Don’t need blue widget

Then your advert will show because the phrase is found within the keywords. This is the next most highly targeted form of search matching and is an ‘improvement’ on broad match – in terms of specialisation.

Option 3: Exact match

This specifies the keyword by surrounding it in square brackets like so:

[blue widget]

Now, your advert will only show if and only if the keyword

Blue widget

is searched for.

In an ideal world, you will know exactly what every keyword is that your prospects are searching for and you could therefore have an exact match for a keyword search. This would serve to both minimise your advertising expenditure and increase your return on investment simultaneously.

But, to get to a point whereby you know the keywords (or at least know as many as possible) which are profitable to you, you need to conduct some research within your adwords campaigns.

So which is the best matching options to use?

Starting off, it is best to utilise all 3 matching options within your adgroup because:

You get to know if there are keywords out there you have missed in your research and can dig further to find out if they should be specified with more targeted matching or added to your negative keyword list.

The assignment of your keyword status (on hold, in trial, disabled) is delayed because the impressions are spread between the variants of the keywords.

More targeted terms (using exact match) generally have higher conversion rates so you can assign different more cost effect cost per clicks accordingly.

Eventually, as your campaigns mature in time, you will have more and more exact match and less phrase & broad match. As a result your advertising costs will decrease whilst your return on investment will naturally increase.

#3 The Unholiest Error

Ok, this isn’t an adwords tip perse as it should be adopted and applied to each and every part of your online and offline advertising.

It’s time to be honest – for each and every piece of advertising/PR you have on the go, how well are you tracking results?

I mean can you categorically put your hand on your heart and say, ขYes, by handing out business cards, I generated £x of business last monthข (doh! – I’ve just got a new batch printed up and even I’ve missed out on this, slap my wrist, practice what you preach Tom!).

In the world of Adwords, you need to know what keywords are giving you results and focus your budget and efforts accordingly.

If you have an advert that shunts prospects to a generic landing page, which is not tracked and you have no idea as a result whether they signed up or bought a product/service.

Then, you are wasting tens, hundreds, thousands (bigger companies are some of the worst offenders wasting millions) of pounds every year.

Now you can no longer claim ignorance on the biggest mistakes made with Google Adwords. And I shall make sure my next batch of business cards are trackable!

Tom O’Brien

About The Author

(c) PDQProspects.com

Tom OกBrien

Director

ArticleCity.PDQProspects.com.

Google Adwords Campaign Mangement Specialists

‘targeted Prospects Fastก

This article was posted on March 04

by Tom OกBrien

The Top 6 Website Sins

The Top 6 Website Sins

by: Niall Roche

They say the eyes are the windows to the soul. Your website then is the window to your business. What would a passerby think of your กwindowก? Would they want to stop and maybe come inside for a few moments? Or would they just pass by without giving it a second glance?

The goal of any website is to make the visitor stay. The desired visitor response might be that they make a purchase, sign up for a newsletter, enter a competition or simply complete a survey. The end result is the same you need the web surfer to hang around your website for as long as possible.

There are, however, aspects of your site which can stop visitors from staying. Some of these are:

Sin #1

Slow loading

The ultimate website sin. Your homepage must, must, must load in 30 seconds or less. This is not optional. If a visitor has to wait more than 30 seconds they will stop what they’re doing and move on to the next website. Optimize your website to load quickly by using as few graphics as possible and then only use JPEGS and GIFS. Your website should be no more than 20% graphics and at least 80% text. Why? Text loads faster and also keeps your visitor reading about your site as it loads up.

Sin #2

Poor layout

A visitor should be able to find what they need on your website in 3 clicks of the mouse or less. Any more than that and you’re losing valuable visitors. Your navigation menu should be easy to use and every single link must work properly. Make use of a sitemap. Do not use fancy cursors. Do not use complicated menu systems. Text should be legible but not too big. Keep it simple. Imagine how a new internet user would react to your website. Would they love it or hate it? Could a new visitor to your website easily find the information they’re looking for?

Sin #3

Awful color schemes

Thereกs nothing worse than searching for a website for hours only to find what you need and then realize that you cannot read the text on the pages because the owner though yellow text on a light blue background was cool. If you need guidance on how to choose colors for your website look at any magazine for examples. Black or dark blue text on a white background is the simplest and most effective color scheme.

For your menus and other background colours bear the following in mind:

Red is stimulating and agressive.

Blue is peaceful and tranquil.

Gree is calm and refreshing.

Yellow grabs peoples attention.

Purple is wealthy and luxurious.

Brown is solid and reliable.

Orange is bright and optimistic.

Sin #4

Poor spelling and grammar

If you’re selling a product or service online and your website is littered with spelling and grammar mistakes then you’re on a loser immediately. I recently reviewed an ebook that had 4 very bad spelling mistakes including the word business misspelled in the opening paragraph. Inexcusable. We all make mistakes but keep them to a minimum. A visitor may forgive one typo. You may not get a second chance.

Hereกs 3 tips for checking your webpages.

1. Use a spell checker. Every wordprocessor has one.

2. Proofread anything you write from bottom to top. Youกll spot more mistakes that way.

3. Always proof read anything youกve written 24 hours later. Youกll be amazed at how many mistakes youกll spot.

Sin #5

Flashing graphics

Banners or logos that flash, spin, fade in and out and/or perform any other gimmick are a no go area. Don’t use them. Flashing banners and logos say กIกve never put together a website before. Cool, huh?ก Any website with this type of graphic element turns me off. A website logo or banner should be a static graphic or text. Online marketing surveys consistently report that animated icons and graphics on a website are a major turnoff for visitors.

Sin #6

Hit counters

Only used by amateurs. Take them off your website. Please. Any decent webhost can provide you with traffic stats which will provide much more accurate information than a hit counter. Having a hit counter on your website was a good idea 8 years ago. The online world has moved on. You should too.

Thereกs an old rule of sales:

กIf I could see through John Smiths eyes I could sell John Smith what John Smith buysก.

Design your website for your visitor and not for you.

About The Author

http://www.affiliateadvocate.com is packed full of web marketing advice and ebook reviews. Niall Roche is the content author & owner of http://www.affiliateadvocate.com

This article was posted on April 05, 2004

by Niall Roche