thinks

Customers feed business. And we’re all hungry. In the Maslow Hierarchy of Business, customers trump product, service, capital and personnel. Which means we’re all looking for ways to find customers. Especially in these trying times. Business tough right now? Here’s a some good thoughts on what customers are looking for. And how you can use the Web to look for them. Read on, Big Thinkers.

• Jackie Huba at Church of the Customer blog leads off with a profile of one small business and their process for gaining repeat customers. Jackie’s also got a phenomenal interview with Rob Walker about what happens to your brand when customers get their hands on it. Best quote: “Consumers determine brand meaning whether anyone ‘allows’ them to or not. And they don’t need a special website to do it.”. Well worth the read. Getting customers comes with risks. Good. Get over it.
• One of those risks is that customers will expect more from you. Seth Godin offers two examples, one that asks whether small businesses have the right to whine about being small, the other addressing how companies use email to reach customers and how to do it better.
• Analytics can tell you lots about what your customers want. The fine folks at GrokDotCom picks up where we left off looking at bounce rate to set priorities and examines what your bounce rate is trying to tell you. And FOT Linda Bustos shares Get Elastic’s recent webinar with Avanish Kaushik, who looks at what your other metrics are trying to tell you, too.
• Jackie Huba’s partner Ben McConnell adds to the story, explaining why online WOM matters. Why? As Ben points out, “61% of respondents to a recent survey said they check review sites, blogs and other customer feedback forums before buying a new product or service.” Sounds like a good reason.

Enjoy, folks. See you here next week!

Like this post? Subscribe to thinks and learn more about ecommerce and online marketing every day.

The headlight on my wife’s car burnt out the other day. Instead of
taking it to the dealer - overpaying for a simple repair - I
decided to do it myself. One quick Google search later, and I learned
exactly how simple the repair is. It just takes a replacement bulb.
Cheap. Easy. Happy. Right? Not exactly.

A search for the part took me to an online auto parts store, a brand I’ve
never heard of. that’s OK. They get good ratings, have reasonable
prices, and the part is in stock. But what’s this?

(Note: This is just a representative display in order to protect the guilty)

Why do they show the same part with two radically different prices? Is
one higher quality? Will it last longer? Or is the higher priced item
simply a 10-pack? The site doesn’t tell me. Damn. What if I make a
mistake?

And that’s the key. Your customers don’t want to buy the wrong thing. They don’t want to deal with returns. They don’t want to hate the experience. They don’t want to feel stupid.

What do you do about it? You can act like Zappo’s and make the return
process painless, to ease the customer’s decision. Offer reviews.
Improve your copy. Provide click-to-call or chat to answer any questions that the customer might have. But every company, every site
must do something.

Or you can lose the sale. Just like those auto parts guys did.

Did you like this post? Want to learn more about ecommerce and online
marketing? Addthinks to your favorite reader now and learn more every
day.

Holly Buchanan’s excellent piece at GrokDotCom reviews how social works best when talking with women. But she’s onto something much bigger than just women. Her key advice: “Start with people.”

Holly couldn’t be more right. People are what social is about. Social is people. And what people want are authentic discussions with other people. That’s how you sell inside a social network. That’s how you connect with more customers. And that’s how you use these tools successfully.

If you’re serious about social, take a look at Forrester’s POST methodology, which emphasizes people first, too (that’s what the “P” in POST stands for). Seems to me that the folks who think social is something different than people are the ones who insist social isn’t ready for business. They’re wrong. Period. Customers want companies who want to listen to them, who genuinely pay attention, who genuinely have something to say, who are friendly.

So, really, the question is, “is your company about people?” What’s your answer?

Like this post? Subscribe to thinks today and you’ll never miss an update.

Earlier this week, we took a look at how simple tweaks can often improve your site’s business performance without requiring a total redesign. But what if that doesn’t do enough? What do you do next? Wouldn’t be great if there was a simple way to know where you should focus your efforts?

Actually, there is. It requires very little work and it will tell you exactly where to put your energies. It’s a simple technique designed to put your attention where your pages - and your customers - need it most.

And make sure you read to the end. Once we’ve explained the technique, we’ve made it even simpler for you to do.

Ready? Let’s get started.

As with most things when running a website, we’re going to start by looking at a key metric. In your favorite analytics tool, find the report that shows how many visits you get to each page on your site. In Google Analytics, we’ll use the Top Content report which looks like this:

Order the report by the number of Unique Pageviews (we’re using that as a proxy for visits) and expand the number of entries until you can see most of your site’s traffic (25 or 50 usually gives you both a meaningful number as well as a manageable number for later steps).

You’re also going to want to look at Bounce Rate. Fortunately, Google Analytics provides this in the same report. Ultimately, we’re going to pull this data into Excel, so if it’s on a separate report in your analytics tool, that’s OK, too.

Open up Excel (or Numbers or Google Spreadsheet or what-have-you) and create a new workbook with four columns. The first should contain the page name or URL, the second should have your visits per page, the third bounce rate and the final should contain a calculated field called Lost Prospects. Calculate that field by multiplying visits times bounce rate.

Got that? Then copy in your visits and bounce rate data. When you’re done, your spreadsheet should look like this:

You’re looking for the pages that have the most highest Lost Prospects value. And that’s where to start your optimization efforts. By lowering the bounce rate (anything above 25%-30% is very high) on your most visited pages, you have the greatest chance of moving customers along your purchase path.

If you’re dealing with more than just a few pages, it’s often easier to chart it, like this:

In this example, while “Page 1″ gets over three times the traffic, the higher bounce rate on “Page 3″ has over a quarter more Lost Prospects than any other page. After changing “Page 3,” the next steps would be to look at “Page 1″ and “Page 6.” Focusing on just these three pages has the greatest potential, accounting for almost half the Lost Prospects in this example. You don’t always have to think in terms of redesigning your site. Think in terms of improving your customer experience on key pages first.

Cool, eh? Well, now for the really simple bit. Here at thinks, we like to make your life even easier. We’ve gone ahead and created an Excel spreadsheet for you to create this chart. All you’ve got to do is plug in your numbers and the chart will show you the problem pages.

By working to improve high-traffic, high-bounce pages you’ve got the greatest opportunities to help your business grow. So, what now?

Like this post? Subscribe to thinks today and you’ll never miss an update.

A friend lamented how little value he was seeing from his website when he remarked that it really needed a redesign. He gets much of his site’s traffic from search engines (more organic than paid), but doesn’t convert much of that traffic into sales. Should he redesign? Possibly. But I doubt it.

A quick look at the site called out several little things that could make a huge difference to his business performance:

• Make the company phone number prominent on every page (right now it’s buried on an About Us page)
• Add the storefront address to every page (also on the About page)
• Increase the font size
• Add specific calls-to-action on product pages
• Improve online-to-offline tracking (where I suspect the sales their site does originate are going)

Many of these probably seem obvious. But here is a successful business, with a well-trafficked, well-indexed website that reflects their brand well. Sometimes you will need to redesign. It happens. Maybe you’re altering your brand positioning or updating your creative to reflect changing tastes.

But more often than not, you’ll see great returns from effective tweaks. Sometimes, the least you can do is the best.

In honor of America’s birthday, we here at thinks are giving you a present. That’s right. All of the Friday link goodness, delivered right now. It’s a proud moment. For you. And for the United States of America.

OK, enough snarkery. On with the show.

• First up, the ever-wonderful FOT (that’s Friend of Thinks), Linda Bustos has not one, not two, but three separate articles this past week about images and conversion, starting with “Can Product Images Improve Conversion?. Part 2 asks “Do Customer Submitted Photos Add Value?”, while part 3 finishes up with an overview, “How Top Retailers Show Product Images”.
• And this isn’t just popular with the Divine Ms. B. The GrokDotCom gang also looks at how you can “Boost Conversions With Better Product Page Images”. Speaking from past experience, I’ve seen product images drive better conversion rate as well. Nice to see folks looking more closely at the subject.
• Now those images may do more than improve online conversion rate. They may also improve offline sales, too. Avinash Kaushik revisits a favorite topic with “Tracking Offline Conversions: Hope, Seven Best Practices, Bonus Tips”. You can read our past coverage here.
• Continuing the imagery theme, Search Engine Land has a great write-up comparing visual search engines called “Visual Search The Future? Spare Me The Eye Candy”
• And speaking of pictures, Seth Godin discusses great motion pictures with “Bravery and Wall-e”. Which is exactly where we’re going today. We hear it’s good.

Enjoy the holiday if you’re in the States. And enjoy your weekend if you’re not. See you all on Monday.

And remember, be sure to subscribe to thinks to never miss an update.