I love it when you get a bit of feedback on a website. This isn’t about me, but I found Goldcoaster ranting and I agree with what he says. It’s just nice to hear it from someone else once in a while and know I’m not alone. It’s worthwhile visiting his site and seeing his comments as well but paraphrased, they are:

1. Pop Ups
2. Extra software to view site
3. Registration required to visit the site
4. Slow pages
5. Outdated content and dead links

snoskred chips into the comments and Snap - Yep - I agree with that too - although I did need to go through my testing stage of course.

I have been playing heavily with Google Analytics last week and I like what I see. I last looked at it some time ago and wasn’t impressed but it has come on a hell of a lot and I think I may be converted from Hitslink, which does cost, compared to the Free Analytics, but stays right up to the second, which Analytics doesn’t.

I intend on highlighting some of the better features of Google Analytics in future posts as I get historical data, but this article on Search Engine Land is a good introduction in terms of this Google tool and three others. They are definitely worth investing some time into learning for your small business online marketing:

1. Google Analytics
2. Google Maps / Local
3. Google Base
4. Google Web Optimizer

I have toyed with all but the Optimizer so far as I haven’t had the right website to do it on. The others, however, all have their place.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is great for measuring your traffic, sources, etc. but the real initial benefit I am seeing is the goal setting feature.

Basically you can set various goals and measure how well they do. Most of us need people to do certain things when they get to our websites.  I need conversions into leads or sales, for instance. By goal setting we can get a better picture of how that process is (or isn’t) working for us and, if necessary, change it.

Google Maps / Local

I only see a real benefit to this feature for businesses looking for geographical customers. eg. a retail outlet, or local business (hence the name Google Local - doh!).

I have used this for the beauty salon in Farnborough, although I still don’t think Google Maps has really taken off yet. I certainly don’t see a noticeable amount of link-throughs to the website. That said, it’s free and easy to get in there and localises your offering.

Google Base

Google Base is a database of content within Google. This could be any data and is used a lot for products in Product Search (formerly Froogle).

I have played around with this for both articles and beauty products, but to be honest, have not had the time or patience to create enough. It does create quality links into your website though and it is an area I need to spend more time on making effective for my sites.

With the product side of thing, many shopping directories interact directly with Product Search, enabling you to put your catalogue of products into the Google Base directories to create links and sales.

Google Website Optimizer

Imagine changing one little thing to a page that could transform the amount of conversions you make when someone lands on your web page (landing page). Then imagine how you could test different versions to find out what the tweaks could be that would make the difference.

Through Adwords, you can use Google Website Optimizer, that lets you test your landing pages automatically and measure the results.

Conclusion

Investing a little of your own time and doing some of the basics tactics, can make a difference. You won’t necessarily see the benefits for a few months, but if you have the patience, and more importantly a longer term vision, you can make the value work.Also, if you find out where your business is really coming from online, the benefits may even surprise you further.

Via All Facebook comes a Compete profile for August for the social networking site of the moment. I am playing with Groups at the moment but obvsiously, people being people, the voyeuristic journey takes over.

My belief is, in terms of marketing online, creating the happy accident of discovery for your group is one part of the equation, the other being to offer members of that group a reason to stick with you, potentially buy from you, but more importantly increase the chance of more ‘happy accidents’ of discovery.

I stood in the station last night staring at a billboard wondering about the title of the book it was advertising, Paul McKenna’s “I Can Make You Rich“.

Now, Paul McKenna is very good at what he does and I respect his abilities and being into NLP myself, as is he (albeit much more than I), I am sure he knows full well that he can’t make you rich, you would have to do that yourself.

But, It’s obviously not about that. It’s about selling books more than you becoming rich. So that’s the words the book uses.

I can imagine his audience love the fact that he will do it for them, the same way that he has “made people thin” or “give up smoking”.

I am sure the people who read this will make Paul McKenna rich[er] but not themselves. If they were that keen, they’d be doing it without the need for a book.

So, back to my point. What you say, and how you say it is all about the audience. Whether you play on their fears, their hopes and dreams, even their laziness.

Whatever flicks their switch, you can guarantee that the appropriate [sales] story is there, waiting to be written. And, taking that concept on the web, you can test to your hearts content.

I had a conversation with a disgruntled website owner today. His website used to deliver him traffic and business a couple of years ago but one fine day, Goggle made a big change to their search algorithm with Jagger it changed everything for him.

His ranking slipped, and his once competitive website began to slip. We built a new one for him but to no avail, the traffic is becoming harder to come by.

This highlights two major points for me:

1. Relying on a search engine for your business is a dangerous thing. Companies have tried (and failed) to sue Google when these things happen but their business is not yours - we all need to become less reliant on one source of traffic.
2. Search, and the internet in general, is become ever more competitive. Bigger players are entering the market with larger resources. SEO is so mainstream now, a new ‘edge’ needs to be found - with a more diversified approach to relevant markets.

It can be done but it takes hard work. Small niche businesses are thriving on the web but are maybe too reliant on search, a problem larger eTailors don’t seem to have.

So, that gives us content, and content propagation. ie. Write some good relevant articles and then tell the world about them. Social sites (such as Digg, Del.icio.us, etc. all the way through to Facebook) are good for this or you could try buying into some Directories. Of course, you could try making your own site more social and, if you are a small business, or one man band, you could, yourself, become more social online.

So, I had an interesting one last week when I checked my web stats to see that someone had been trying to fill in the contact form on my website and had kept refreshing the page.

It seemed that something happened at the hosting end that disrupted the form working - a lost lead for me!

This highlighted something that spurs me on to test my websites on a more regular basis. Web stats play a big part in this, but going through the sales process on a website will highlight it from a user experience.

I also often find things to improve as I do this.

Another better way of doing this is do sit someone else down to do it and watch them.

The world is changing thanks to the web [especially] and one industry feeling the brunt of it is the music industry.

Radiohead are about to push the envelope on that front with their new album “In Rainbows” due out on October 11th when they ask you to pay what you feel it’s worth…

Radiohead fans will be able to choose how much to pay for the band’s next album, In Rainbows, which is available for download on 10 October. Instead of listing a price for the music, the group’s website simply states “it’s up to you” - and then adds: “No really, it’s up to you [BBC].

They have the luxury, having built a reputation and fan base worldwide over their seven albums to date. But, think about it, how soon will it be with out the need for record companies? Lilly Allen built her career on MySpace.

Which begs the question, how soon will it be before what you or I do becomes redundant as a service? … or even an industry.

Gulp…

I guess it comes down to cost versus value but I have had two episodes in the past 24 hours that highlight potential issues with using online services and have given me a crappy day to boot.

1. One of our web hosting companies facilities went down last night at 7.30pm and went back up again at 8.50am this morning. Worst part is that we couldn’t get hold of them to sort it out. It’s the second time it’s happen this year and at £395 per month I may start looking for a new solution. (ASP managed server if you know anyone in the UK).
   This just so happened to coincide with my first Facebook group e-mail - bugger!
2. I love Campaign Monitor for e-mail marketing, but it’s the first of the month, I have three e-shots waiting to go and the system isn’t working after some ‘routine maintenance’. I’ll be fair to them as it’s a great system and very cheap to use but it puts me in a hole right at this moment.

To be fair to both of these issues, it’s cost and systems versus value. I can’t afford to write my own e-mail system and host my own websites, and even if I did, I couldn’t guarantee that it would be working 100% of the time.

As for my hoster’s 99.9% up time guarantee, that’s been blown, but having seen the Service Level Agreement, it would be hard for me to do anything about it anyway. I bet they keep on advertsing their up-time though!