JCH Media - Blog

The SharePoint User Experience

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:32:00 GMT

While users are expecting more from online resources, companies are looking to reduce IT costs by increased efficiency through best practice processes. SharePoint has become a system that has proven itself in adapting to meet these changing business needs. The trend over the past few years with SharePoint has been on implementation and integration within the business, while branding has been a secondary consideration.

Today, many organisations are conscious that users now look and judge online resources with a more discerning eye and that it’s not enough to just have an online presence. To manage this expectation requires an understanding of the audience, which will have an impact on the design and development of the solution so that both the user and the organisation have a positive experience and beneficial outcome. How the users feels when they first view the site, to accessing information, page structure, interactive experience and content will influence the user to continue or leave the site. Users often leave web pages in 10–20 seconds, but pages with a clear value proposition can hold people's attention for much longer because visit-durations follow a negative Weibull distribution (Jakob Nielsen's user report 2011)

With organisations understanding the importance of having a successful presence, they are now investing into the design and user experience along with an appropriate information architecture. This process can begin with identifying your target audience, creating consistent branding across all digital media, improving the quality of the content or rebranding and strengthening the organisation's brand.

To improve the user experience within SharePoint, an in-depth understanding of the system around integrating a custom design, managing dynamic content, site features and web parts is required.

Understanding the importance of user-centered design and how it has an impact on both the user and the site including content, design, layout and information architecture is also a requirement. All these elements contribute to the users experience whether the online resource is a SharePoint Intranet portal or public website solution.

SharePoint is a flexible and adaptable platform and has the foundation for a successful online presence. One of the key features is its ability to be customised to the user and the business, but to achieve this requires an understanding of the system and its capabilities.

Creating a positive SharePoint user Experience

SharePoint Capabilities

Understanding the capabilities in the version of SharePoint that you use will determine the options available in functionality and design. SharePoint 2010 is available in 3 different editions, these are: Foundation, Standard and Enterprise. The main difference between the editions is the suite of web parts and features as well the level of customisation that can be applied to the design and the end user experience.

Whether it is Foundation, Standard or Enterprise SharePoint has the capability to empower the organisation through intuitive tools, controls and resources.

Designing for SharePoint

When designing it is important that there is an understanding of how SharePoint deliveries and presents content within the framework. Contributing factors that will influence the design include the edition and version (Foundation, Standard or Enterprise, 2007/2010), type of site such as publishing, wikki or team site and out of the box SharePoint controls including: navigation, ribbon bar, web part property window, site name and general content (titles, text, images and text links). In early versions of SharePoint, customising the user interface was difficult due to the complex code and resources available. In contrast SharePoint 2007 and 2010 allow for highly customised websites that don’t “ look like SharePoint” but can still have all the capabilities required to deliver a solution that will meet the expectations of the business and the user, and be delivered within a reasonable time frame and budget.

Accessibility

SharePoint has evolved from 2007 now to 2010 and there have been major leaps and bounds in the ability to customise, create compliant code, deliver content, and provide more accessible websites for users. SharePoint 2010 now uses fully XHTML compliant code right out of the box, which allows for better browser compatibility and performance. With these significant improvements SharePoint by default is WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) 2.0 complaint. WCAG 2.0 is a set of recommendations to make web content more accessible for people with disabilities. The full guideline can be found at http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/.

When customizing the sites design and structure (master pages, page layouts, web parts, content, navigation, colours) it is important to have a good understanding of SharePoint, XHTML and WCAG requirements as these changes will have an impact on the sites compliance. Not all these modifications require a SharePoint developer, some these can be managed through the SharePoint interface whilst others will require a deeper understanding of SharePoint and its backend architecture.

Metadata

Metadata is widely used to validate site content and contributes to searching and indexing the site within search engines. It has often been a tendency to overlook metadata and its importance to the useability and success of the site.

The process of identifying valuable metadata upfront will aid with the content management processes and offer future benefits. For example, if all your sales pages have a metadata value called “Product”, you can then improve search refinements in SharePoint 2010 and allow your users to refine by Product.

This is where some of the great benefits of SharePoint Content Types and search really begin to pay dividends. The reality is that some metadata schemas can be large and time consuming for content producers. So we recommend the following approach when defining metadata:

Identify future metadata needs but be wary of trying to include everything.
Resist the urge to make metadata fields required as this hampers content creation
Implement default values wherever possible
Adhere to known formats and extend if needed

A new feature in SharePoint 2010 is the addition of centrally managed Terms and Syndicated Content Types. Terms are simply metadata values or lookups and in SharePoint are managed in Term Stores. Syndicated Content Types means they are defined in a central location and then made available to be consumed by other sites. This new feature allows for an enterprise strategy around metadata to be developed.

Consider a mining company, with SharePoint sites in different geographic regions around the world. Each time a new region or mine is built, should they need to update the available metadata values in every existing SharePoint site? In SharePoint 2007 this would have been the case. In SharePoint 2010 a metadata hub with syndicated content types can be created allowing their head office to add the new metadata value to a centrally managed Term Store. This information is then available to all the websites around the world saving time and allowing for the system to respond to the changing organisation efficiently. These metadata values (called Taxonomy Fields in SharePoint) can also be used in the search results. Often these types of metadata strategies are developed in large or government solutions, however thinking about appropriate ways to classify content will aid in any type of SharePoint site development.

Know your users

Today, designing and developing an online resource that will attract, represent and retain customers has become somewhat of a science. Many organisations are now conscious the impact that users have to the success of the site and now need to look at the entire experience holistically to make sure that the users’ needs are always met. To have a successful presence is to know your audience. Understanding your audience will help create a positive experience on a functional, accessible, and emotional level. To achieve this challenge is what we call “finding the sweet spot” which is the balance between business objectives, technical requirements and customer needs.

To define customer needs requires determining which research approach to apply and its appropriate application. The research methods you choose are dependent upon a variety of factors, including budget, schedule, development phase and business goals. By completing user research, it will help provide a greater understanding about the audience and contribute guidance and direction to the development of the site.

Where to now

To ensure the outcome meets the expectations of the business and user, invest the time in researching these areas, prior to the development stage. Having resources internally with SharePoint skillsets will reduce time, budget and risk. If resources are not available, don’t guess this has created false expectations and many other issues. Engage with a provider with a proven history working in the specific areas you require. To maximise your investment, training is a must for SharePoint particularly in site management and maintenance.

How to increase conversions by making your site more trustworthy

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 07:31:00 GMT

How your users views and interacts with your site plays a crucial part in converting these visitors to customers. These days your web site is you’re “Shop Front”, and potential customers need to feel comfortable and secure in making a transaction or inquiry through the site. Ask yourself this “would I buy through my site”, if your answer is no then, it’s time to do something about it. With uses becoming more confident with online retail transactions, it is vital that your site appealing to the eye, easy to navigate and find information, no system errors and clear and concise content, there is no need for pages of content as customers won’t read it.

Establishing an air of trustworthiness about a site isn’t a difficult thing to do, but it can be easily thwarted if you don’t take care to consider the buyer’s thought processes.

Here are ten key steps to making your e-commerce site feel safe enough to transact on.

1. Manage

There are many CMS (Content Management Systems) and ecommerce systems on the market, but which one? Do you use propriety based or open source eg (WordPress and Joomla)? The market is flooded and very competitive, but at the end of the day we recommend to our client’s propriety based systems. Why? Security and serviceability, as a business we need to guarantee our service levels and with propriety based systems we can as we have a company and a team behind us that can provide answers and solutions if we can’t with dedicated time frames.

Before making a decision look at features and value for money, make sure that there are no hidden costs. Try and look at a system that can be both a (CMS and eCommerce), they are out there like Business Catalyst. One system that can provide all the features that you would need to run a successful online shop.

2. Design

At the end of the day your product is only as good as the site it sits in. What I mean by this is, it doesn’t matter how great your product is, because if your site is poorly designed, hard to use, broken in areas visitors will not feel confident enough to purchase. How much is your site costing you?

Over the past 10 years I have seen and heard a lot of horror stories. You pay for what you get. Don’t comprise on quality for price, as you will find yourself back in the same position 6 – 12 months later.

Do your due diligence before deciding on the design firm and look into their client portfolio and invest. This will go a long way in the success of your online business.

3. Content

Web copy is hard and takes time but it’s one of the most powerful tools for bolstering confidence in a website, helping with search engine optimisation and distinguishing it from those of competitors. Having accurate, informed, well-written content will go a long way. Good content helps visitors make decisions and confidence in the company and product which in turn will create sales. It’s not an easy job, and can be the road block in stalling the production of the site. If you don’t have the resources or skills to write copy, look for a content writer who specializes in web. This will save you time and stress, and will keep the development moving. Read it before putting it out there and if you feel it’s to much or hard to understand, your customers will feel the same, so keep it simple and accurate.

4. Analyse, Update, Access

What’s working and what’s not? You need to have a way of finding whether or not visitors trust your site in the first place. While sales volume should indicate this to a certain degree, it’s also essential to know what aspects of your site are turning visitors away. There is not point having products or content if they are not creating results.

In order to check how people are finding and interacting on the site check your site analytics. This is a powerful tool to help you understand your visitors as well as improve the sites usability and performance.
If you don’t have access to any form of site metrics follow up with your agency to get access or set this up for you.

5. Prominent contact details

Making a prominent feature of your business’s real world contact details is a simple but incredibly effective step in building online credibility. Quite apart from the sales leads it can generate, a quick cautionary phone call with one of your actual employees can help to instill confidence in even the most skeptical of visitors.
One recommendation is to have a physical address in the footer and on the contact page, this is good for SEO.

6. Show them you’re secure

When it comes to the actual transaction, it’s important that your site can reassure visitors that their information will be transferred securely.

Invest in establishing secure hypertext transfer protocol (HTTPS) and secure socket layer (SSL) certificates for all transaction pages, and make a point of displaying the logo of your digital security provider for peace of mind. The larger and more trusted the provider, the better. This is not a large outlay for the peace of mind of your customers.

7. Use established payment gateways

In the same way that a prominent digital security provider can build confidence in your brand, so can a payment gateway by an established and respected financial institution.

Small businesses suffer from having no reputation for first-time customers to rely on, unlike the big-brand websites. The only way a small business can truly engender genuine and smart trust from its customers is to openly use big brand e-commerce providers to collect and process credit card details for them. The end result isn’t always the prettiest when a customer is directed to a financial institutions credit-card collection web page, but they always recognise and trust them. We find that small business clients always benefit from using something like Westpac’s ‘PayWay Net’ system, ANZ’s ‘eGate’ system and even PayPal shopping carts.
Before making a decision do your research, understand what the costs are before signing up.

8. Use social media

Having established presences on social media sites like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook not only works to boost your brand image, they can also greatly help to convince prospective customers you’re a real business worthy of their transactional trust. Work to build fans, followers and connections, and make an effort to communicate with them. Yes, this does create more work, you don’t need to spend hours dedicated 1hour a day to update and communicate with your fans, customers. At the end of the day it’s about numbers, increase numbers increases sales.

9. Start a blog

Similarly, hosting a blog within your website is an excellent method of building trust online. Quite apart from the fact that it shows there’s at least one knowledgeable person behind the digital façade, filling a blog with content that visitor’s value will help to establish your business as an authority. This kind of impression is indescribably valuable with respect to generating online trust and sales. If you’re the expert, they will want to buy from you. Try and set time aside once a month to write a blog around your industry, a topic that you feel is interesting to your customers. Another benefit is SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), it all helps to increase your profile.

10. Testimonials

Testimonials may effectively be social media’s antiquated cousin, but they’re still a valuable method of demonstrating your business is trustworthy. Whether the business is establish online or not, putting client testimonials online will help to secure your business as not only trustworthy but reputable in the eyes of visitors, which in turn creates sales.

If you have any questions please contact us, we are more than happy to give you guidance to help make you make a decision.

Are you mobile?

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 12:57:00 GMT

Is your company site mobile? Can users easily navigate, view and source information? These are important questions as Mobile internet devices (smartphones) are currently one of the fastest ways of getting your business in front of potential customers. The convenience of accessing the internet through mobile devices will see more search traffic and surfing online coming from smartphones. Taking this into account if your site isn’t mobile ready then fortunately, it’s not difficult to prepare your business and your site.

First and fore-most is test your company site using a smartphone to understand and identify any issues and also to understand how user friendly the site in through a mobile device. If your existing website has been created in accordance with today’s current web standards, it’s more than likely that establishing a mobile presence to complement it isn’t going to be too difficult.

When we mention best practice and web standards, we are talking about adhering to a series of commonly accepted practices in web design, established by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). These standards outline the correct way to use semantic HTML, and encourage things like the use of JavaScript for web animation and interactivity.

Not all digital supplies adhere or test against these standards as part of their development lifecycle. By not apply these standards your site can have a negative impact in visual appearance and user experience.

If a site has been created using the web standards from the W3C, it can be as simple as swapping out a few pieces of code and creating some exceptions so that it loads the same content differently depending on what device tries to access it. It's quite an easy procedure to do, provided the website has been planned that way from the beginning.

There are three basic approaches that business owners should be aware of when working with web developers. The first, is insisting that your site is built in HTML 4 or HTML 5, the site is tested across all platforms and adheres to W3C standards, and to encourage the appropriate use of JavaScript for animation and interactivity.

Many popular content management systems (CMS) actually feature modules or themes that allow the operators to create a mobile version of the site simply and easily.

A more complicated method of ensuring a site is mobile-friendly is to employ adaptive design. This means that all the pages on a business’s original website are coded to deliver different styles to different devices, so that the look and feel adapts to suit the visitor’s browser.

The most important thing to consider when creating a mobile site is speed: how quickly it downloads, how quickly it displays, and how quickly users can find what they’re after.

One of the big issues for mobile is that users are quite impatient, when on the mobile phone, if it hasn't happened within 10 seconds, the user will assume that there's something wrong and could go on to something else. Taking this into account we recommend businesses should always have the user in mind when considering how much information and how should it be presented on a mobile site.

This means making sure the active areas are easily distinguishable, it's easy to navigate, and that users don't have to scroll around too much to read or find the information they want.

Quite apart from the technical aspect of building a mobile site, it’s essential for businesses to use analytics to learn as much as possible about site visitors, and tailor mobile content to them. A retail site might have a very iPhone-heavy audience; a corporate site might tend towards Blackberries.

If you're business invests in email marketing, your audience will be more than likely to be looking at your emails on their phone, and looking at your site that way. “It's worth making sure that the landing page for your marketing campaign is going to be mobile friendly.”

It’s also wise to take advantage of the fact that mobile analytics allow businesses to be more aware of the visitor’s context. As a business owner this is not a daunting task, by simply contacting your digital firm they can help you go mobile!

Use Social Blogging to Grow Your Business

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 15:01:00 GMT

The big corporations have bought into it. Smaller companies, too. Even independent consultants use Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook to do business. It is a great way to get the word out about your product or service. It boosts brand awareness, it builds loyalty, and it attracts and retains customers.

But more companies are exploring ways to get a bigger pay off with social media. The next frontier of social networking and weblogging is social blogging. This ever-changing construct represents a way of communicating for people who like to inform each other about their daily activities and share common points of interest. This is usually done through continual updates that often include text, pictures, audio, or video.

In general, you want to use social media to increase your visibility, improve your search engine results, and drive more traffic to your company's website, which stands a good chance of increasing sales and growing the business. Social blogging is simply another tool to add to your overall social media strategic toolkit.

Business owners whose companies are at all levels of growth, from promising start-ups to established and mature firms, are looking for effective promotional tools that are also cost-effective.

Social media, be it weblogging, microblogging (i.e., Twitter), or posting status updates, is a different kind of marketing. It's not about creating a sales pitch for your product or service. Instead, it's about generating interest and keeping your audience current on news, events, and the latest product developments. A social blog is essentially a form or combination of microblogs (short posts) and status updates. Users post content such as short sentences, images, or video links to large groups of friends, followers, or co-workers. As with traditional weblogging, users can write messages on topics that range from "what am I doing right now" to thematic ones such as "best places to eat sushi." These messages can be transmitted via posting, text messaging, or e-mailing.

Businesses can use the concept of social blogging to provide up-to-the-minute news as they will find the need for quicker, current, and condensed information far more useful to their audiences, say social media gurus. But social blogs and status updates on Twitter and Facebook, for instance, aren't just limited to news content, businesses also can use these as effective forms of communication to reach large groups of consumers and associates instantaneously to learn about their needs and wants.

Starbucks Corporation is a social media giant when it comes to engagement, including incorporating blogs, status updates, tweets, and forums. When the trendy Seattle-based coffeehouse chain realized that its sales were stagnating and that competition was becoming fierce, it had to find ways to solidify and expand its market share. In 2009, Starbucks launched the interactive MyStarbucksIdea website and corporate blog. While some industry analysts doubted whether the site would catch on, well over 100,000 internet users had visited the site by the end of its first week online. The site allows users to submit ideas for new drinks, food items, packages, even store designs. Suggestions are voted on by Starbucks consumers with the most popular ones getting highlighted.

But Starbucks took it a step further, adding an "Ideas in Action" blog that gives updates to users on the status of suggested changes. Starbucks doesn't just communicate news and business developments with its audience, but it also lets them know which of their suggestions the company has really taken to heart. Starbucks also has fully embraced Twitter beyond notifying consumers about bargains; @Starbucks focuses on sharing interesting events and music information or brand- and charity-related topics the company would like to address. It's not a one-way monologue. Followers are not just entertained. They are being engaged in a brand and conversations around it.

Like Starbucks, Zappos embraces microblogging to manage customer relations. Tweets @Zappos are used to highlight interesting facts, and to talk to customers in a way that is friendly, helpful, funny and trustworthy. The Brooklyn Kitchen keeps foodies up to date on events from notices about the new book club in full swing to the next skills knife class kicking off. Amateur chefs Taylor Erkkinen and Harry Rosenblum opened The Brooklyn Kitchen in 2006 after scouring the neighborhood for kitchenware and coming up empty-handed. Today, their homegrown shop is crammed wall to wall with tools for both serious cooks and hobbyists. The duo focuses on providing useful and targeted information in their posts whether it's through their website, weblog, or twitter account. From videos on how to shuck oysters or saber a champagne bottle, Erkkinen and Rosenblum always provide real value for enthusiastic cooking fans.

This type of added-value and engagement translates to increased brand awareness and direct sales. These companies demonstrate the effective use of compelling and condensed content aligned with tangible business objectives. Here are some tips to help you make the most of social blogging:

Position yourself as an expert. When people are looking for a product or service, oftentimes they will first look for information about the subject on the Internet. In general, blogging is about having conversations in a public space that position you as a subject matter expert. "The type of discussions you ideally should be answering is what are people out there on the Internet are searching for."
Share experiences and information. Social blogging is often used to share experiences in addition to business ideas and concepts. Always seek unique opportunities to share your ideas and offerings with not only your readers, but their associates as well, which will eventually bring in more prospects. Announce upcoming events, awards, and other news. But do it in a conversational tone. Hopefully, your target audience will retweet or share your story. Don't overlook Tunmblr, which is popular in the microblogging realm. Users can post text, photos, quotes, links, dialogues, audio, video, slideshows and "Tumble" other posts. You can auto-syndicate to Facebook and Twitter. Users can track stats with Google Analytics.
Keep it fresh and mix it up. Frequent one note updates can be a major turn off for say Facebook fans, while Twitter followers are more accustomed to frequent posts. Try to mix it up. Spark up conversation with the help of images and videos. Marketing experts suggest businesses update their audiences on a regular basis but only if there's something new, informative and interesting to say. Even if you need to repeat an update to promote a current offer or a call to action for a project, put a new twist on it each time.
Encourage interaction and feedback. Your company can benefit from valuable feedback through comments and suggestions. Do a call for action in your posts. You can also gain insight about your audience using Q&A, bookmarking icons, link builder, wordtracker, Google Adwords and so on. Make it easy for your readers to share posts. Encourage them to share tips and personal experiences with using your products or services. Just make sure you are on hand to respond to any comments. Failing to do this is a sign that you don't respect or care about your audience.
Use schedulers and update apps. Seesmic is an app that supports Facebook, Twitter and even Yammer, which is a private messaging version of Twitter. Seesmic lets you update and view content from different social networks. You can follow trends, update statuses or write messages. Also, take advantage of status update schedulers for Facebook, Twitter, LikedIn, and other sites. Hootsuite is one favorite. It's free and it's capable of delivering updates to various social networking sites. Cotweet is another.

"It's been proven that there are certain times when people are reading blog posts and checking social media,". The most popular times to post or make an announcement are 9 am, 12 pm, 3 pm, and 6 pm throughout the business day. "The best days are the middle of the week, because on Mondays people are trying to get into the swing of things and on Fridays people are thinking about the upcoming weekend."
Make your blog the central hub. Have your blog serve as the central location for where you make announcements. "It should be the final resting place and then everything should branch out from there. Why? Because you are in control and at the end of the day when you look at Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn at any time they can change their policy and restrict how people access your data." You can create information on your blog and then promote it using other social network tools.
Link back to your website. Make sure everything you do is somehow tied back in to your company website. Use RSS feeds so your main site always has fresh content, which improves search engine rankings. Use your Twitter account to build links to your blog. Use tags and keywords that make your posts more searchable. Google Keyword Tools is a great device.
Use a personal touch. Having your employees or even the Managing Director post updates can help revolutionize how your business communicates with your customers and associates. Take Bill Marriott, chairman and CEO of Marriott International, he is one of the most famous corporate bloggers worldwide. His "Marriott On The Move" interactive weekly posts has won the site loyal fans. You can follow his updates on Twitter @Billmarriott. Marriott's personal involvement has had a far-reaching impact within the company. Since first launching their CEO's blog, the company has continued to grow in the social media sphere by adding more blogs, several different Twitter feeds and even its own online community for Marriott Rewards members.

Marriott exemplifies how an all-encompassing social media platform can impact customer satisfaction, generate direct sales, and provide crisis management—such as to set the record straight about a negative situation involving one of their hotel properties.

Always think about what value and what message you want to communicate to consumers. From there, share information, news, stories, and announcements that are relevant to your target audience. "Your most loyal customers will be your biggest cheerleaders online. Provide them opportunities to support your business and to part of your growth and your success."

Improve customer experience and inquiries with online form

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 13:04:00 GMT

With a well-designed enquiry form you can answer more of your customers’ questions more effectively and efficiently.

Online enquiry forms offer you and your staff a more efficient way of responding to and tracking the flow of customer enquiries.

A web enquiry channel won’t put the stop the phones from ringing, but it may reduce the number of calls and provide a more manageable way of responding. Plus, you also have greater control over what information the customer gives you, and how to then process it

The benefit for your customers is that it gives them another way of contacting you, 24 hours a day 7 days a week without waiting on hold. The other benefit with web forms is the data captured within the form can integrate into a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system. All details captured in the form will be email to you as a record but can also be stored in the CRM. This becomes a powerful communication tool, because now you can create email campaigns and extract your clients data form one central location. Depending on the data being stored within the CRM you can then target your campaigns specifically to groups, associations, gender, age as an example. This provides benefits to both parties; the customer doesn’t feel like they are getting spammed because the information they receive relates to them and for the business this can increase sales, brand awareness, customers, service.

But before you invest time or money into developing a web channel to serve your customers, ask yourself the following:

Do you get lots of calls for the same thing?
When somebody emails you do they often leave out important information?
Do you have the capacity to manage the possible increase in online enquiries?
Would you like a way to direct enquiries to the appropriate person or area?
Would your customers appreciate having this additional contact channel?
Are there potential cost savings or additional revenue opportunities?

If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, then you may be ready to design a form.

First, you’ll need to carefully plan what questions to ask, where to put the form and how to manage the responses.

General enquiry form

If you have a look at our contact form this is a good starting point. This is a basic form capturing base level information. To a user this is quick and doesn’t require a lot of input.

Why choose the basic option?

You only have one contact point for your business and you want all inquiries to be directed through that same contact
You only need to capture a small amount of information
You want to offer a general contact point near your company address and phone number

Just the facts

A simple enquiry form based on the structure of most emails may not look like much, but it does allow people to immediately create an email without firing up their email account, especially handy if they’ve logged on using someone else’s computer. Also with some scripting the form can have validation requiring the user to meet certain requirements before the form can be sent.

With a basic form like this, the responses are emailed to a designated email address.

The email received is formatted with each field set by you followed by the customer’s response.

While you can certainly direct the form to an individual’s email address it’s more than likely you will want to set up a generic email account such as enquiries@ yourcompany.com.au.

You can then give several people access to this email account and establish a process for responding to and tracking each enquiry.

Forms can be as simple as this one or very complex. With complex or large web forms you need to ask yourself would I sit down and spend 15min to ½ hour filling out a form. If the answer is ‘no’ then it’s more than likely that your customers won’t either. But in saying this there are some smarts out there today that you can use to make the process not so daunting. Break the form up into small forms so that is becomes a step through process, an example of this is when you make a purchase online, the process form checkout to payment processing is multiples form linked. You follow the steps to complete the task.

Other things to consider with web forms;

Where to put the form on your site

The best place generally is under a Contact Us section. You can then provide all the contact details in one place and then link to your enquiry form (or several forms if you wish to have one for each type of enquiry).

Other information to include

If you have many enquiries about the same thing you may like to include some Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) or help pages and provide a link to these at the top of the form. If you intend on asking your customers for personal information to help you help them, you should provide a link to security and privacy information.

Responding to the customer

It goes without saying that before you implement a form, you must have a good process and available resources to respond in a timely and efficient way. So ask yourself if staff have the appropriate skills and time to respond.

Also remember to design a response page, which appears after the form is submitted letting the customer their enquiry has been received and will be responded to. It’s also essential that any automatic email responses are clear and easy to understand.

If you have a networked content management system (CMS)

These days, most CMSes come with form functionality and with a bit of training you or your web manager should be able to create a form without any hassle. The system should include a way of managing the responses, such as sending an email or saving the responses in the back-end of the CMS. Speak to your CMS supplier about your requirements.

Where to from here?

Once you have decided that your business will benefit from an enquiry form, then the best person to create the initial design concept is you, as you know your business best. Once you know what you want, approach your web company to help with the build and implementation. Once it’s all done, you can sit back and enjoy the quiet hum of the computer without the buzz of the phone interrupting you… quite so often.

Introduction to Split Testing

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 13:01:00 GMT

It’s a fact of life that when people hire a web designer, they don’t just want a website, they want a website that does something! There can be a world of difference between these two things. The "action" they need the website to take for them can be one of several common things: selling products for their business (an e-commerce site), generating sales leads, and/or providing free information in the hope that the visitor will make a purchase from the company at a later date.

These aims differ slightly for some sites, like non-profits, blogs and communities; however business sites in general aim to generate revenue by one of the above methods.

Sometimes the client will split up these functions between two separate businesses – the website development will be taken care of by "Best Ever Web Designers Incorporated", while the marketing is done by "Your Ad Here Pty Ltd". However, if the push towards action (marketing) is created at the web design level, rather than externally, it is much more effective. The more effective your client’s website, the happier they will be; and the happier your clients, the better your web design business thrives!

More than that, you can create an additional ongoing revenue stream that requires a little effort each month at your end but can provide a significant benefit to your client in the form of increased sales or sales leads for their business.

Here we look at how to determine which aspects of your web design work is most effective to help the client’s website achieve its aims, by a process known as split testing.

What is Split Testing?

In website split testing (also known as A/B testing), a software application splits the traffic between two or more variants of the same web page, measuring whether there is a difference in the effectiveness of that page in achieving the website’s goals. Every time a visitor takes the desired action on a website, such as making a purchase or submitting a form, it is called a conversion.

Web designers might check whether:

A landing page with a graphic of a person encourages better conversion rates than one with a graphic of the product
A different positioning of the shopping cart button encourages more people to click it
A form with fewer elements, or different elements, encourages more people to finish filling it out.

Just about every aspect of a website can be split-tested.
Split testing involves a single element of a page being changed at one time. A different type of split testing is sometimes used to achieve faster improvements with a shorter number of tests; multivariate testing. In this type of testing, multiple variables are changed within a single web page. So, rather than having multiple versions of the same page, multivariate testing rotates different elements on the same page, for example, the headline, the call-to-action, the image and the opening paragraph.

The advantage with multivariate testing is that you can find the optimum combination of website elements in a shorter space of time and achieve significant improvements in the website’s performance; the disadvantage is that it takes a considerable amount of traffic to get accurate results.

For most websites, A/B split testing will be the optimum method of improving a website’s conversion rate over time.

Why Bother With Split Testing?

Split testing is what separates elite web designers from the rest because it provides them with the knowledge of which combination of website elements will produce the optimum results for the client and they can demand a higher rate as a result. Split testing can help:

Get visitors to stay longer on the website
Get visitors to interact more with the site
Get more visitors to request a consultation or join a newsletter
Get more visitors to buy from the site

It can also achieve these aims (depending on what the site is set up for) at a lower cost per action (CPA) than competing sites in the same niche. In some ultra-competitive online markets (home loans, insurance, accommodation, SEO, online dating, etc) split testing is the only way to guarantee that you will be heard above the noise of the competition.

Split testing also helps ensure that when it comes to advertising, you are maximising each and every dollar. If your website doubles its conversion rate from 1% to 2% using split testing techniques, you have just doubled your revenue using the same marketing budget. You will be able to spend more on advertising your site and earn a better return on investment (ROI) from each dollar you spend. Sounds like you’d be crazy not to, doesn’t it?

It becomes even more exciting when you start to examine the numbers. Many untested websites have conversion rates that run around 0.25%. This means that it takes 400 visitors to get one sale. With split testing, you don’t need to increase the number of visitors, just the rate at which they convert. Many success stories tell of conversion rates upwards of 10%. That would be the equivalent of a 40-fold increase in visitors, all of a sudden giving you 40 sales or sales leads out of 400 visitors, instead of 1.

Who Should Be Split Testing?

Ideally, the web designer should start split-testing as soon as the site launches, as they are the ones who have designed the site and have all of the source files on hand. Even if the owner feels that the website is performing well enough, the benchmark for "good" performance could be moved even higher through using split testing. Just keep in mind that split testing does require an established traffic flow because you need to people visiting your site to be able to split-test web pages.

Why is it ideal that the designer does it at the launch stage? Because it is much easier to keep the site as a work in progress after launch, not only visually and structurally, but in terms of its goals. It is infinitely harder for a third party to come along later and change things around, and in many cases, you wouldn’t want them to. That site’s your creation!

Doing the split testing yourself, as a designer, also gives you a real-world feel for what elements will work and what ones won’t. It adds an extra dimension to your sense of aesthetics, removing the guesswork that you necessarily engage in during the design phase. You are no longer doing what you think will create conversions, but implementing what you know produces measurable results. And this knowledge alone will increase the value you bring to your future projects.

Setting Up a Split Test with Google Website Optimizer

Google Website Optimizer is an A/B split testing and multivariate testing platform that allows you to easily see the effects that making changes to page elements has on your website conversion rate. It’s a free platform, and is robust and user friendly. One of the major advantages, though, is that you can use the Google Website Optimizer with existing web page URLs (e.g. yourdomain.com); some other split testing applications require you to use a custom URL (e.g. yourdomain.com/tracking.php) which makes it very difficult to split test non-paid website traffic, such as SEO traffic, referral traffic or direct traffic.

Google Website Optimizer serves different pages to different users, with hundreds of variations possible. In our experience, using the website optimizer tool does not affect your rankings and does not cause duplicate content issues. Here is the process for setting up an A/B test with Google Website Optimizer:

Identify the page or pages you want to test (usually the home page or pages that receive a lot of traffic).

Define which element you want to test. In A/B testing, you’ll only test element one at a time. Commonly tested elements are the headline, sub-headline, opening paragraph, image, call to action, and the submit button (look and/or placement).

Add tags to the original page, the variation page and the conversion pages to allow tracking.

Enter the website URLs you are testing into the Google Website Optimizer.

Preview how the pages will look before sending them live.

Google Website Optimizer will rotate the page that is displayed for every visitor, so that the first person sees version 1, the second person sees version 2, the third person sees version 1 and so on.

You can access the results and reports of various statistics within Google Website Optimizer to see which variant is the most effective.

What Should You Test with Google Optimizer?

These are the most commonly tested elements of a web page:

Headings
Sub-headings
Opening paragraph
Images
Call to action
Offers
Hyperlinks
Submit button
The location of different elements
Colors

The first six elements are the ones which generally have the most impact on conversion rates, and the ones you should test first. Google once tested 41 different shades of blue for their pages. They have the luxury of doing this because they get more traffic than any other website, and they have the drive to do this because performance is their life. They thrive on it! You don’t need to go to this extent but if Google places so much value on it, shouldn’t you?

Tips for Ongoing Split Testing

Split testing should be magaged constantly, on all your high traffic web pages. It takes time to get test results, and in the meanwhile customer preferences and market sensibilities are changing, along with the season and stock.

It is important to note that not all split tests will be successful. In fact, if you have a 20% success rate where one in five split tests improve the overall conversion rate of the site then you are doing well. The key point to remember with split-testing is that every success forms a new baseline, with considerable website performance improvements achieved after a number of different split tests.

The easiest way to manage all of the split tests is to set one day per month when you review results and then set up tests for the coming month based on those results. Every month you should track your results in a spreadsheet to avoid accidentally re-testing the same elements over and over again. This also provides a point of reference for when you are starting new projects – you can see which placements and copy types are most effective in which industries.

If your website grows to the point where you have upwards of 1 million visitors per month, you can use multivariate testing.

And don’t forget to check what competing sites in the same niche are doing, and test the same elements on your site!

Once you start split testing you’ll find that what you thought would perform better doesn’t and you’ll be very surprised with some of the results. The best part about split-testing is that the confidence you will gain from split testing will help you with your future web development projects because you will have an increased knowledge of what produces results and what doesn’t.

Getting your website to work

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 12:59:00 GMT

What kind of website your business needs?

Gone are the days when a small business owner could simply make an off-hand plan to just ‘have a website’, possibly bashed out after hours by the receptionist’s son-in-law because he is good with computers.

No matter the size or type of business, the absolute minimum website recommendation is a ‘credibility site’.

A credibility site is where a customer can enter a business name into a search engine and it is returned then, when selected the site is professional in appearance and easy to navigate. The site generally details an overview of the company including history, services, vision and a contact details for site visitors. This conveys a credible impression that will likely encourage the customer to take action and contact the company.

“Hardcopy business directories are becoming obsolete. Today many users, Google is the portal to the internet and to all information. Despite your best advertising plans, if your website isn’t viable, you risk heading in the same direction as the once-ubiquitous Yellow Pages – unopened and unused.

You should have a website, but there are many technical matters that must be considered. Will you host the site yourself or use a dedicated web host? Will you outsource the design? Do you have existing logos and imagery? Would you like to update the site content yourself? Would you like flashy animations? How much will it all cost?

Before emitting a single byte online, there are other non-technical factors to be determined. There are the four T’s of good website design: target, technology, test and track. Keep these in mind and you won’t go wrong.

Target

Who is your website’s target market?

Is your website aimed at the general buying public , industry professionals or potential investors ?In each circumstance, your design decisions should be different, including the information you present and your site’s general look and feel.

The use of a CMS (Content Management System) allows the owner to manage the site through an administration area, simple interfaces allow for ease of updates, adding features, and remove the need for technical skills. The day of when you invested into a CMS platform would break the bank have gone. These days CMS have no recurring licensing fees and some are freely available, though you might pay someone for the initial setup.

Technology

Next, you have to decide whether your site will be built with raw HTML pages – the hyper-text mark-up language which drives the web – or if you need a content management system (CMS). The point of a CMS is you don’t need to rely on HTML-savvy geeks to maintain your site because it enables non-technical people to add and edit text and imagery like a word processor.

A CMS works by storing the text, layout and images used on each page within a database. When visitors access your site, the CMS renders each page on the fly and delivers this generated HTML to the visitor’s web browser. The choice of CMS will also affect where and how you host your site because it will use a specific programming language and database platform.

Test

The third T is test. It is important to verify that your website actually works. While that sounds like a no-brainer, it would be a rare web surfer who has never come across a website which did not function as expected.

Like any business if the service is poor and you can’t get the answers you need, you won’t be back, this is the same online, if you have a poor design, and a site that doesn’t function you will lose customers. “Can you afford this?”

Track

“You can open a retail store in a remote location, which might be cheap, but if nobody is coming to that location, you won’t get sales. Likewise, if you have an online presence and it’s not found on search engines it won’t help your business.

If you have a well-designed and well-written website, money may not even be an issue. However, companies would do well to factor costs of ‘tuning’ a website to maximise search engine ranking when first considering the idea.

Like any other marketing medium, the question of how much a business should spend on a website depends upon the likely return they will receive on their investment.

Cutting the cost

So what should you expect to pay for your very first website? A good recommendation is do your research and be specific about the ideas for your site from the very beginning.

“If you don’t ask the right questions, the website designer knows your requirements will probably keep changing and factors in a buffer into the price. If you don’t know what you want your site to say, to achieve and to look like you will pay a premium price.”

Small existing business that already has logos and branding should budget between $3,000 and $6,000 for a website. It’s money well spent. The internet is tearing down geographical boundaries so you can penetrate new markets but your business will suffer from competition if you’re not known.

Five steps to consider in web user design

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 12:56:00 GMT

1. Looks are important

You may not like to judge a book by it’s cover, but online, appearance is the most important thing after search placement. If your site doesn’t look and function correctly, visitors won’t stick around long enough to find out if what you’re offering. "You site is your Shop Front".....Ask yourself this if you arrived at a business and it looked run down, and the service was poor, would you do business with them? Well its the same with your site. The very fact that Google has recently introduced Instant Preview – a function to allow searchers to vet websites according to a thumbnail of their homepage – is proof of this.

2. Design is about more than just looks

Design doesn’t just refer to the way your homepage looks. It also is in the structure and content of the site. A bit like a building: it’s design is like the architectural blueprints and floor plans of a house. In the same way you need to consider which way the door to each room opens, you need to make sure that each page on your site links to the others in a logical way. This is easier to stay on top of if you remember that less is more with web design. Start with the basics and work your way up.

3. Flash is not always the best option

Flash may look great, but it’s not very practical. When people visit your site, they want to be able to find what they’re looking for quickly and easily; lavish animation just presents another barrier. In saying this Flash does benefit certain online businesses including photography, gaming, personal and kids sites to name a few.

4. Avoid clutter "keep it simple"

Don’t have too much on your homepage. Having a cluttered page is going to scare your buyer away. A busy page is like a messy room: uninviting. If there is space for your homepage to breathe, it’s more likely that your visitors will stay for the 3-5 seconds it takes for them to figure out if your business is relevant to them or not. More like this, less like this.

5. Above the fold

As with email newsletters, the most important part of your entire website isn’t just your homepage – it’s the part of it that visitors see as soon as they arrive. The ‘fold' is the cut-off point for their very first look at your homepage, before they start scrolling down and exploring. It’s vital that the information that appears above the fold shows them that they’ve come to the right place. This site is a perfect example.

Track and Measure Success in Social Media

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 12:54:00 GMT

Social media has been one of the biggest buzzwords since 2009. You can’t even turn on the news without hearing terms like tweet, poke, event invitation, or profile wall. We see it in commercials, on billboards and even celebrities, athletes and government officials are using it.

While only a select few have learned how to harness and monetize their social media status, many companies are still looking for ways to use social media to make sales, broaden their reach and grow their company.

As more and more companies begin to use social media marketing, this question follows, “How do you measure social media success?”

Before talking about ways to measure success in social media, it’s important to understand how not to measure success. Don’t use metrics to measure your success that are irrelevant and don’t accomplish the goals of your company. This is often a highway to disaster. Never measure success by metrics such as how many fans on your Facebook page you have or how many people on Twitter follow you or how many people have recommended you on Linkedin. Although at the end of the day they may help you feel good about yourself, they’ve accomplished nothing toward the greater good of your company.

One of the simplest and quickest ways to measure success is by such metrics as how much traffic you’re getting to your website from social media. You can easily setup a Google Analytics account to help you track where your traffic is coming from. Use a url shortener program like Bit.ly to help you track it in Twitter.

An important thing to keep in mind, is to make sure you’re accurately keeping up with your numbers. Google Analytics often doesn’t pick up referral traffic from mobile phones and desktop applications, so you’ll have to use Google’s Url Builder to track your traffic more specifically.

Twitter can be another tough one to track. Use Bit.ly and Google Analytics to find out what kind of posts and things are working on social media and what’s not.

This can then help you come up with clearer goals and expectations. In addition, set some clear goals that aren’t limited to just how many visitors you’re getting from social media. Consider metrics such as click-through-rates, time on your website or inbound links.

Next time we will discuss some more specific ways to measure success in social media marketing, including how to better track sales from social media. So, do you have a social media success story? Has social media made money for your business? If so, how did you measure social media sucess?

What does Google Instant mean to SEO and your Business?

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 12:38:00 GMT

Following the introduction of personalised search results at the turn of the year comes Google’s latest offering – Google Instant. If your business relies on your online presence then this affects you.

What is Google Instant?

For a while now Google has been serving up suggestions for results as you type through ‘Google Suggest’, helping you hit submit quicker to see the results. Google Instant is the next step on from this – delivering the results as you type. As you continue typing, the results displayed will also change accordingly.

The Way Your Customers Search Will Change

Google want to deliver the results to Users as quickly as possible so they continue to use the search engine. As users begin to spend less time formulating their query it is also more likely they will click on the first few results they see. Being on Page 1 and in the top SEO results will be more important than ever.

How Does Google Instant Effect SEO?

There have been some premature suggestions that businesses will need to begin optimising for letters and combinations of letters as well as keywords. For example, a flower company would need to rank for letter combinations from ‘flow’ onwards to gain traffic. This is not true.

The displayed results are for the most relevant whole keyword term that Google suggests. If you begin typing ‘flow’ then you will be presented with results for ‘flowers’. Type a ‘c’ however and you’ll be presented with results for ‘flowcharts’.

What about long tail keywords?

Long tail searches are great. They delivery targeted, well qualified traffic and this will not change. Whilst a User may find what they’re looking for from a broader term, it is still highly likely that the same searches will be made from Users who are looking for a particular product or service. It will be interesting to see if long tail becomes more popular as Users get used to not being served the results they are looking for from generic broad searches.

What about PPC/Adwords Campaigns?

Google Instant will have a huge impact on your PPC campaign as the classification of an ‘impression’ will change and impact your Click-Through Rate (CTR). As results change for every letter that is typed, the Ads displayed will also change to retain relevancy to the search term. Flower or Flowchart ads?

"With Google Instant, an impression is counted if a user takes an action to choose a query (for example, presses the Enter key or clicks the Search button), clicks a link on the results page, or stops typing for three or more seconds.

It’s possible that this feature may increase or decrease your overall impression levels. However, Google Instant may ultimately improve the quality of your clicks since it helps users type queries that more directly connect them with the answers they need."

– Official Google Blog.

Ads that are momentarily displayed are unlikely to count as an impression and won’t effect your CTR, however if a User were to pause to review results for more than 3 seconds, then this will be measured as an impression.

Unlike SEO, we may find that companies begin bidding for single letters or letter combinations to ensure they are seen first in sponsored adverts. Again, with quicker search Users are also more likely to click on the first few results. If you are not in the top Ad positions, speak to one of our Certified Adwords Professionals today about how we can save you time and money with your Adwords campaign.

Google Instant is yet to be rolled out to Australia, but it’s coming soon. Are you ready?

49% of Businesses invest in Social Media

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 12:36:00 GMT

Social media is the hottest marketing trend in today’s marketplace. Companies everywhere are falling over themselves to figure this medium out and how to profit from it. I think the reason for this is the economy has tanked and is barely recovering. So should you invest? Marketing Sherpa’s numbers are telling and I’m going to make the case for an affirmative “YES!”

According to Marketing Sherpa, 49% of businesses are investing in social media but are doing it very conservatively. More interestingly though, 44% of businesses look at social media as a “free” tool and don’t invest much money or time into it regularly (or at all) in comparison with other Internet Marketing areas. What does this mean for you? It means get off your butt and start investing a lot more energy into your social media. I almost guarantee you’ll beat your competition if you if you build up your social followings on Facebook, Twitter, and other web 2.0 sites.
Marketing Sherpa also says that of the businesses investing in social media, 62% said they were increasing their budgets. Half of these businesses were increasing it at least 20% (13% were increasing by 50 %+). What does this mean? It means you need to get your butt in gear because competition is heating up! I can tell you to increase your budget but some people just have more money. Get savvy on these networks and get people talking. It doesn’t take money to create a viral video or a Facebook page people share with their friends. It takes time. Get out there and start taking the bull by the horns.
Print is going to continue to decline and the money formerly spent on print ads will be moved to social media. From 2009-2010, 56% of businesses reported at least a minor shift in budgets from print to social media. The reasons for this are pretty simple. It’s easier to track social media websites and you can reach a much larger audience than say, your local newspaper. So what does this mean to you? I suggest reducing your newspaper or Yellow Page ads and spend the money on social media marketing. I noticed a recent ad in Entrepreneur magazine for “YP.com.” The Yellow Pages is shaking in its boots and offers social media marketing among many other “non print” marketing tools. I don’t know about you but what does it say for print when Yellow Pages is focusing its print advertising on selling social media tool?

I think you should start using social media marketing. But don’t believe me; look at the numbers from Marketing Sherpa, a leading authority. Either way, it’s pretty hard to deny social media as an effective tool when a classic “old school” marketing organization like the Yellow Pages is pushing its own prowess in social media. So ask yourself this. Are you going to be one of the 49% of businesses investing in social media or are you going to be left behind like the 44% that are basically ignoring social media?