The link between exam results and websites

Today was the day of reckoning for many as school exam results put smiles or tears on the faces of thousands of teens.  I was there at the school with my daughter, seeing how her efforts at school translated into results.

It made me think about the parallels between exam results and company websites.

In the case of my daughter, she needed to get certain results to guarantee a few things:

1. Getting into 6^th form.
2. Being able to do I.T. in 6^th form (if you do I.T. then you get to go on a trip to New York – yes, I know, not really the right reasons!).
3. Get a juicy £150 bonus for passing her Maths (which had been a problem subject).
4. Getting her 16^th birthday present of a flashy camera (needed to do photography if getting into 6^th form).

Unfortunately, the Maths grade was poor, which had the following negative knock-on effects:

1. Poor Maths grades = loss of £150.
2. Poor Maths grades = no option to do I.T. as a subject, which means no New York trip.

She’s highly likely to still get into 6^th form, because other results helped her and, let’s be honest, the education system is so dumbed down that it’s extremely hard to totally fail nowadays.

Back to how this relates to websites …..

• If more effort is put into school studies then better results will be gained.
• If more effort is put into website strength then better results will be gained.

• If school results are impressive then there are benefits (taking a subject that facilitates a trip to New York; getting a financial bonus of £150).
• If websites are impressive then there are benefits (more enquiries and sales).

• When you leave 6^th form, if you’ve taken your own education and, more importantly, attitude, to a much stronger place then you will have a chance of gaining work in the big wide world.
• When you’ve continued to build on your website strength, never accepting that it’s finished, then you will gain ever more business.

How many people in business are the equivalent of those who didn’t put in enough effort to get the better grades at school?   They are the ones that have websites that don’t get great results because they don’t put the effort in.  Some of them have websites that generate nothing at all – the equivalent of the dreaded ‘U’ grade in exams.

My message to those coming through the education system is this:

Although (in my view) attitude and ability to impress people are far more important than exam grades, the ‘system’ expects you to have put sufficient effort in to get the grades you need to impress those who could be in a position to pay you money.  If other people have more to impress people with, then they will do better than you.

In parallel, my message to those with websites that don’t gain enough business is:

The effort you’ve put into your website may be eclipsed by the effort that your competitors have put into theirs.  People have a choice of who to buy from and if your website is the equivalent of lower level exam grades (in the eyes of the viewer) then you will not get what you want in business and life.

Broken Britain

The picture below says it all.   A broken union jack umbrella abandoned in the doorway of a shop on a rainy day.

To me, it summarises the state of so many businesses in this country:

Cold, wet, and broken.

When you work in website consultancy you have different types of clients.  Many (thankfully) are really proactive, take on board recommendations, and keep pushing forwards.  Others (unfortunately) have businesses riddled with systemic failures and apathy.

Leading horses to water can become a full time occupation in the world of website consultancy.

While all client work is confidential of course, one of the ‘benefits’ of website consultancy is gaining insights into how companies truly work.   You can send tons of traffic to websites but if something else lets the company down then all that traffic generation has a reduced positive impact on the bottom line.

We see companies that receive emails about poor customer service, including products that haven’t been delivered.   We see companies that focus on marketing activities that are pointless when they should have been focusing on website strengthening recommendations.   We see many many things.

Above all else though, we see poor processes.  Companies that clearly need help with implementing effective processes in order to get them back in track, but who would also say “we don’t need any help – we’re fine”.

We’re not alone and I suspect that if you asked any web or marketing related company/person whether they experience similar, they would give that knowing nod of agreement.

Like the umbrella, so much of British business is broken.  The umbrella photographed was flimsy in manufacture and clearly couldn’t take the pressures of the wind and rain elements battering it.   Many businesses are the same – they have weak frameworks and when external pressures come (e.g. competitors being better than them) then they start to crumple.  If they’re lucky they end up like an umbrella that gets blown inside out but survives to live another day.  If they’re not, they end up crumpled on the floor as a failed statistic.

So what’s all this got to do with our core work of helping businesses get stronger through their websites?

Everything!

If a company has weak systems in place then it will find it difficult to:

1. Act on website and online marketing recommendations.
2. Fulfill the needs of the potential clients that come knocking.

The biggest enemy of business though is apathy and unfortunately it’s often with the senior management of companies who are usually busy being busy and can’t see that huge juggernaut lumbering towards them all the time that they don’t focus on what’s really important.

So what IS really important?

I’d suggest that the most important thing of all is comparing overall website traffic gained to the levels of enquiries/business that came out of that website traffic (within any given period of time).  The results of that alone should encourage dialogue aimed at making an improvement.  The dialogue may start off with a focus on what’s wrong with the website or the way it’s marketed but it can easily become dialogue about the underlying systems that are failing the company.

To give an example from an unnamed company – they sell certain products that are £1,500 each and effort is put into ensuring that potential buyers find those products online when searching for them.  The company has been advised to make enhancements to that part of their website (to encourage more clicks to become enquiries/sales), which they haven’t done.  This creates an effect of lower than desired levels of sales of that product.   To make matters worse the company doesn’t deliver these expensive items properly, which brings customers to send irate emails and the result is an overall feeling of dissatisfaction.   In short, the business systems let the company down and those buyers are highly unlikely to spread good news about the company, nor buy from them again.  The website lets the company down because they haven’t implemented what’s needed to make it stronger.

What should happen first?  That’s right – the company should halt all active marketing of that product, fix their broken processes, and then do what’s needed to make that part of their website strong enough before marketing it more aggressively.

Over and over again there’s gloom and doom about the British economy having a tough time.  External forces can, of course, have a negative impact on most types of company, but should that be used as a convenient excuse?  Of course not – get any company owner in a room full of different types of consultants (web, marketing, tax, accounting, etc. etc.) and within no time at all many issues will be brought out that prove that the business owner is very much in control of their destiny.

‘Web’ is just one spoke in the umbrella of a typical company.  All the spokes have to be strong together in order for business to prosper.  And the person running the business needs to feel confident that they can hold their umbrella up high, safe in the knowledge that their head is firmly out of the sand.

Internet years more than dog years?

They say that there are 7 dog years in a human year.  Similar could be said about Internet years because the technology/ways of using it moves so fast.

What I mean by this is that websites age very fast.  Taking just one human year, there could be two identical companies where one has:

• Created a Twitter presence and is actively using it.
• Put video of their products on their site.

… but the other company hasn’t done anything new except perhaps update their news page every now and then.

Another year passes and the first company adds in more features to their website and their competitor creaks into action by putting just one video on their site.

Another year later …. you get the picture.

It’s not purely related to the websites themselves either, because one company could be very active on blogs, Twitter etc., building up a presence for themselves, whereas the other company keeps plodding along.

There must be comments in company boardrooms up and down the country along the lines of:

“Sales are lower than even last year.  The marketing people don’t seem to be doing their job – we gave them budget to add a video onto the website this time last year and yet the sales haven’t increased”.

But in the boardrooms of companies that have realised the Internet moves fast and they have to move with it, the comments would be more like:

“Sales are up again, helped by the Twitter strategy, plus the blogging and videos.  It’s also been really useful to now be tracking the companies who are visiting our website so that we can then make contact with them if they didn’t make contact at the time.   For the coming few months we’re putting more budget into email marketing, having now proven that it works very well for us”.

Unfortunately, there’s still a well-entrenched view that the ‘Internet’ (including the company website) is a separate activity that has to be thrown a few pennies from time to time.  There’s little realisation that a human year equals many Internet years and in order to move forwards there has to be investment to ‘catch up’, followed by an ongoing programme to stay equal to, or ahead of the online presence of competitors.

A simple test for any company is as follows:

1. Type a phrase that you’d like to be visible under in Google.
2. Look at the websites of competitors that appear under that phrase.
3. Note down aspects of their websites that are different/more modern than what’s on your website.
4. Repeat steps 1 to 3 for as many phrases as you like.
5. Ask around people to get their feelings on how useful those ‘extras’ are.
6. If the answer comes back that your website/online strategy is Internet years behind your competitors then make the wise decision of investing everything necessary in positive change.

Old websites = lost business

What does an old website say about a business?  It could say any of the following:

1. We’re so busy and successful that we don’t need to focus much attention on our website.
2. We don’t innovate much.
3. We don’t keep an awareness of what our competitors are doing online.
4. We generally don’t have much attention to detail.

If you go to the website http://www.wintwire.co.uk/intro.html it immediately jumps out as being ‘old website’.   The copyright at the bottom of each page of the site shows as being 1999.   Wow, this website is practically an antique!

I went to the ‘Meet the team’ page (http://www.wintwire.co.uk/team.html) and I wondered whether any of those people are still with the company (or alive) and how interesting it would be to compare their photo now to how it was then.

Could it be that the company really hasn’t updated the website since 1999 as the copyright indicates?

There are many ways to find out how old website pages actually are.  One is using a bit of javascript in individual pages.   So I went to the intro page and removed the url, replacing it with:

javascript:alert(document.lastModified)

… and hit the enter key.  That displayed to me as:

Which means that the page was last modified on 15^th February 2002.  Wow – by the time the 2012 Olympics are here that page will be 10 years since being updated – it should have a birthday cake!

So there’s a double problem here: not only does the page display as a date of 1999 but the last update of 2002 is still over 9 years in the past.

What does all this tell me about that company?  For a start it tells me that it’s pointless looking at the website content because it’s so far out of date that they probably don’t even make some of the products now.  Secondly, it tells me that they’re not interested in capturing my attention because otherwise they would have updated their website more recently (at least to have come into the current decade).  Thirdly, it could imply to me that they have poor attention to detail overall and even though they could be brilliant at what they produce, my initial impression is going to stop me making contact with them.

But they’re not alone because in my experience the majority of ‘manufacturing company’ type websites are woefully behind the times in so many ways.  Which is a shame when it doesn’t cost a fortune to get websites sorted out and the return on investment could be relatively quick.

What exactly does your company do?

‘Helping companies win lots more business from underperforming websites’

That’s what Custwin does – nice and clear on our website home page.

But it’s often quite hard to find out what companies do.   Take, for example, the website http://www.kierbeck.com.   It starts off with:

Moving forward, embracing change.

(you’re change management consultants?)

Then moves onto:

We are committed to our valued clients and customers to providing our best quality products and services, and bringing more profitable benefits for them and us in the years to come. Team-work, vision, joint efforts, collective ideas, concerted strengths and discipline are the important requisites of a successful business. We are committed to delivering the highest quality and service.

(that’s all very nice but what do you do as a company?)

Then another paragraph of:

Kierbeck Thames Limited are part of the Al-Tuwairqi Group a ISO 9001:2000 and CARES certified company. The Group is a responsible corporate citizen with ethical practices and environment friendly waste disposal.

(so you’ve got some ethical credentials and are part of a bigger group, but I still don’t know what you do)

The final paragraph on the page is:

Through our stimulating working environment, we aim to attract and retain professionals who are committed to their work and achievements. We are dedicated to extending our services and providing continued technical excellence.

(I give up!!).

The pictures help, giving an impression that they are metal engineers of some sort and possibly they create the metal products, but how hard would it have been to come up with a summary sentence about what their business is?

I’m sure that because of their size, the website doesn’t play an important part in their marketing activities but if they were a smaller company who had popped up under a Google search then they’d be losing business through making it hard to work out what they do.

People have short attention spans online so it’s worth double-checking that your own website makes it very clear what you offer from the moment someone lands on your home page.

Website contact details 101

Many websites restrict the options to allow people to make contact with them.  Here’s a good (bad) example: http://www.subliminalezy.com/.

If you had a question about the product being offered you would find your way to the Contact page (http://www.subliminalezy.com/contact_support.html).  You’d see a link to FAQs so you may go there first.  If your question is still unanswered you may click on the link to use a contact form, which goes off to something that is definitely not a contact form (http://ww.subliminalezy.com/).  So you go back to the Contact page to see what other options there are:

• Phone number – great if you happen to be in Australia.
• Create a support ticket (which takes you to http://www.affirmwaresupport.com/) – that’s fine if you can be bothered to register an account in order to submit a support ticket (which most people won’t do).

And that’s it.  No email address or simple contact form that can be completed.

End result: unanswered questions result in lost business.

Although that’s an extreme example, many websites do get it wrong so it’s worth highlighting what forms of contact should be included on a website …

Telephone number

Some people prefer to ring.  Ensure that there is a system in place that handles calls when the phone isn’t manned.

Email address

Nothing is simpler than using an email address to make contact – particularly as you can keep your own copy of that email for reference.

Enquiry form

Not everyone would use an email address.  For example, someone may be using a computer to research something (e.g. at work) and they’re not going to use their email address (e.g. a work one) to make contact.  Therefore an enquiry form gets round this.  Many people also prefer to use an enquiry form even when they have the option of using their email address.

Postal address

OK, very few people would actually use this but it adds credibility when people see a physical address.

In my view all of the above four should be readily accessible on any website, as can be seen on our own contact page (http://www.custwin.co.uk/contact-us.htm).  Miss one of those contact options out and you risk damaging your potential to gain enquiries and business.

Why keyword analysis gets you more business

Launching very soon (currently in beta release) is a new software system created by Custwin, which will provide highly useful insights into how visitors interact with company websites.  One of the features within that system is the ability to analyse what happened with the visitors who came to the website having searched Google for particular search phrases.

Why is this important?

Because if enough people used a particular phrase to find your website, and you feel that such a search phrase is relevant to your line of business, then in theory, you should be converting some of that into enquiries.

Using a real example (please do contact us if this new software system interests you), we wanted to see how many times a client site had been visited (in recent weeks) when people typed phrases that were a variation on ‘union jack mirror’.  The results of that search are below, showing each individual phrase typed and how many people typed those phrases:

What we now want to do is look at those visitors in more detail.   We can tick the boxes next to the phrases of interest to see how each visitor interacted with the website.  However, we leave out phrases that we think weren’t useful – for example, this client doesn’t ship to Germany so ‘union jack mirror germany’ is not useful.  The client also doesn’t have a matching rug so ‘union jack mirror and rug’ is also not useful to analyse.  Everything else though is worth analysing.    We then get a view that shows us the individual paths that each visitor took through the website.  In all cases those people land on the union jack mirror page but what we’re interested in is where they go next (after all, we want them to buy the mirror!).  The screenshot below shows that on 7^th May someone had searched for ‘wooden union jack mirrors’, had landed on that page, spent 2 minutes 37 seconds on the page, then went to the page showing where the stores are located, back to the home page, then used the site search function to find the union jack mirror page again:

This screenshot below shows that someone  searched for ‘wooden union jack mirror’ but went no further than the landing page, which implies they didn’t find what they were looking for, or something stopped them from wanting to buy:

By looking at all those ‘union jack mirror’ type visits the client can assess how well (or not) those visits are converting into business.  After all, they’ll know how many of those mirrors they’ve sold compared to how many visits they’ve had, which is the most telling tale of all.  If they’re not happy with the results then they know that action has to be taken to make the page/website stronger.

There are various pieces of software that you can use to analyse keyword phrases that people used to find your website, and to dig deeper into how those visitors then interacted with the website – it just happens that the new system we’ve developed makes it incredibly easy.

Analysis of website visitors overall is vitally important and will become a growth business in the coming years (goodbye web developers and SEO consultants as job titles, hello “website profitability consultants”).   Analysing the keyword phrases that bring people to your website is just one aspect of visitors analysis but it’s a very good starting point because there’s some very simple maths involved, whatever product or service you’re offering:

Number of enquiries related to a particular product/service divided by number of website visits from that related product/service keyword phrase, multiplied by a hundred equals a good percentage or the opportunity to make your website stronger.

What relevant keyword phrases are bringing visitors to your website and how are those visitors interacting with your website?

A lesson from 10 tortoise eggs

Actually, there are two lessons:

1. The need to analyse how people use your on-site search function.
2. The need to make available a good range of products on an ecommerce website.

First, the tortoise eggs.  Here they are below …

Recently, ‘mummy tortoise’ laid 10 eggs in the garden.  If we lived in the Mediterranean that would have been ok but the good old British weather wouldn’t be sufficient for those eggs to survive.   So it’s necessary to put tortoise eggs into an incubator.

Problem: you can’t easily buy tortoise egg incubators off the shelf – you have to make them.  And I hadn’t made one, although did have a page of instructions and equipment needed.

I’d previously bought a tortoise light bulb from an online retailer (http://www.aquatics-online.co.uk) and it was delivered quickly without problems.  Therefore, that was the first place I went with my shopping list of equipment needed.  My persona as a buyer was “hell, these eggs need to be properly incubated so I don’t mind what the equipment costs, I just need it quickly and easily”.

So I used the search function on that website, looking for the products I needed.  I found one of them but the second product I tried couldn’t be found, and then the third.  So I did what any normal person would do and went to Google and searched for one of the products I couldn’t find on the Aquatics Online website.  That led me to the website http://reptilekeeping.co.uk where I found everything I needed and ordered through that website.   I also found that the tortoise light bulb that I’d bought from Aquatics Online was £11 cheaper on the Reptilekeeping website for exactly the same product – so I added one of those into the order.   A few days later my order arrived and the tortoise eggs are now ‘cooking’ nicely.

So where will I go next time I need any tortoise related products?  Reptilekeeping of course because they had a wider range of products that matched my requirements.  Apart from the extra light bulb I bought I haven’t got a clue whether the other products I bought were cheaper elsewhere – all I cared about was having the ability to buy them all in one place and quickly.  This is where things get a bit deeper …

Aquatics Online lost a sale and also a future customer.  If they’re not already doing so then they should be analysing their website statistics to pick up on search phrases that people use, that bring up ‘Your search produced no matches’ pages.  They would see that I had searched on ‘habistat pulse’ and got no results.   They would see, over periods of time, all sorts of phrases that people searched for, which gave those people a ‘no matches’ type page.   They would, I’d hope, start thinking “if people are searching for these things and aren’t finding them, then are we losing out by not having such products available?”.

In the case of Aquatics Online they lost not just a sale of one product, but a combination of products, plus the future potential business from a customer who was happy with them until this current requirement came up.

The same would apply to Reptilekeeping because although they got the sale, it could be that people are using their search function and aren’t finding what they want.

If a website has a search function on it then it’s imperative to be analysing not just the phrases that resulted in people finding products on the site, but also to be analysing what searches didn’t bring up search results … and then deciding what to do about that.

Where it starts to get more interesting is in assessing just how ‘on the button’ the successful retailer is.   This blog will go live and in theory, that retailer will be picking up on when the word ‘reptilekeeping’ appears online.  If they do pick up on that (easy, via Google Alerts) then they’d have the opportunity to make contact and try to get a positive testimonial from me.  They may also then find out that it could be worth offering a bundled package of products perfect for making a tortoise eggs incubator – people would pay a higher than average price for that convenience.

There’s a common misperception that success from websites comes purely from getting people to the website and having enough on there to make people buy.  That is, of course, important, but the ongoing success comes from digging deeper (e.g. into what’s happening with the on-site search function) and going through a process of ongoing refinements.

Sorry, No Dogs Allowed

I’ve had a few interesting conversations with clients recently and many similar conversations over the years.   The conversations go along the lines of:

Me: “I think that within your website we should do [suggestion here]”

Them: “Oh no, we couldn’t do that.  It’s not what’s typical.”

Most of the time it’s a case of ‘their industry’ working in a particular way and it wouldn’t be right to be seen to do anything different.

To take an example, the subject of putting guarantees on websites always raises hackles.   Some companies will put a weak form of guarantee on their website.  Others will go a bit further.   Only very few will really push the boat out.   There’s a fear that if you put a really strong guarantee on a website, that people will call you in on that guarantee and money will be lost.  Well, guess what …. if you DON’T stand out from your competitors with a fantastic guarantee then you’ve already lost potential business.   So what if a minority of people call you in on a guarantee – you’d have already won many more buyers because of the stronger guarantee anyway, so you’re hardly losing!

The picture below perfectly catches what I’m trying to say, taken on a recent walk through Canterbury with the Custwin team ….

For some of you it’s not immediately obvious what that picture means.   You could say that the picture is like a website that’s not got its strong message standing out enough.  So let’s zoom in a bit shall we …

That’s right, it says “Sorry, No Dogs Allowed” and the woman is pushing her dog around in it.   She’s breaking the rules.  Naughty her – smack her bottom!

What if that woman was a website owner and what if that dog in the basket was something big and bold within the website that broke what appear to be conventional rules?   Let’s say that ‘dog in a basket it shouldn’t be in’ translates to a ‘big “100% satisfaction or your money back” type guarantee plastered all over a website in an industry that doesn’t give guarantees’ (as an example – it could be anything).

What would be the end result?  Success? Failure?  Is lethargy better?

And most importantly, what are the consequences of competitor businesses doing things with their websites that seem to defy ‘what’s normal’ and stealing business away from you?

Think about the old lady with the fetching pink outfit, breaking the rules.  Then think about your business sector and your competition and how you could modify your website into the rules-breaking basket with a doggie in it.

Why some people shouldn’t be in business

On 18^th March I received an email from a fellow Chamber of Commerce member.  I won’t embarrass the company but the email was basically an eshot promoting their service.  There were three key flaws:

1. The email contained a link to their website, that went through to a dead page.
2. The email contained typos.
3. When I worked out what website the email should have gone through to, the website itself was woefully inadequate and not able to convert clicks to enquiries.

The email was week 1 of a 3 week series and I couldn’t let the company make that mistake again.   So I emailed them to let them know of the problems (in a nice way), without any form of sales pitch that we could do it much better for them.

I heard nothing back.

On 1^st April (funnily enough, April Fools Day!) I received part 2 of the 3 week series – complete with exactly the same mistakes.

So I rang the Managing Director (who was named in the email) and referred to the previous email (which he knew about).   He didn’t seem very concerned that his company was being actively marketed in an inefficient way.  He did give me the name of the person who was responsible for the email sendout, who I recognised as being an external resource (people who I have previously identified as being inefficient at what they do).   So I said to him:

“I’ve just highlighted the problem to you – I suggest you speak to them directly”.   He still didn’t seem bothered.

Let’s see what happens when part 3 of the email programme comes out.  Gut feeling is that things won’t have changed – there’ll still be a rubbish website and there will probably still be errors in the email.

Do I believe that particular person should be in business?  No I don’t!

Is it the fault of the people who have created the email shots?   Partially – they should have double-checked everything and they should also have stopped the company from doing an email promotion when it’s blatantly clear that their website is far too weak to get any results.

However, the ultimate blame lies with the Managing Director – it’s his company and he’s been alerted to issues that he’s done nothing about.   In his sector there are many competitors and however good his company is at what they do, the marketing done is an appalling waste of time and budget, and also damages his brand (what there is of it).

Unfortunately he’s not alone – there are numerous companies out there making similar messes.  If they recognise it and do something about it then great.  But if, like this person I contacted, they can’t be bothered to fix the problem then, in my view, they don’t deserve to stay in business.