August 2005 Issue:

• Avoiding Web Site Mistakes
• Web Site Promotion is More than SEO
• Know Your Audience - And Your Psychographics

Archived Issues

Avoiding Web Site Mistakes – Advice for Three of the Biggies

We all know that web sites have become standard marketing procedure for most businesses today. Whether they are used to sell products, educate potential customers, distribute products or services, or communicate with customers, web sites have really become necessary for businesses.

So if you have created a web site for your business, make sure you are using it to your fullest advantage. Here are three ways to avoid some common mistakes that many web sites make:

1. Pay Attention to Design, Content, and Capture.

Make sure your site design, site content, and information capture mechanisms are up and working on your site. For example, a poorly designed site can be confusing to customers and reflect badly on your company. If your site looks unprofessional, customers will assume your company is also unprofessional.

Content is probably the most important element in building traffic to your web site. Make sure your site is updated often and information is “fresh”, or the search engines will stop visiting your site, as will your customers.

Make sure you have a registration process in place so you can capture visitor information. Make it optional, of course, but offer visitors a way to communicate with you, sign up for your online newsletter, get on your mailing list, etc.

2. Optimize Your Site!

Optimizing your web site is a necessity today, since so much shopping and purchasing is now done online. If your site can’t be found, then that’s a problem. Staying on top of the all the changes to search engine methods and techniques can be a huge job. Educate yourself on what it takes to keep your site optimized, or hire a professional to optimize it for you.

3. Watch Your Stats

Do you know how your visitors interact with your site? Which pages are popular and which are not? How long do they stay on your site? How many unique visitors are coming through each month? All of these statistics (and many more) should be freely available from your web hosting company. Make sure you check your stats on a regular basis so you can make adjustments based on what is working or what is not.

By paying attention to these three "biggies", you can make sure your web site is working for you and bringing new traffic and visitors on a regular basis.

Web Site Promotion is More Than Just SEO

In most cases, the success of any web site depends on the amount of traffic it receives, and the number of sales it generates. Many web sites seek visitors by pouring most of their time and budget into a single method of advertising: Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

While SEO is necessary for your web site, it should only be one part of your overall advertising program. Search engine rankings are pretty unstable and change all the time, but they are not the only source of bringing visitors to your web site.

What’s the best way to bring new traffic to your site? Links. Links are the way that people travel around the Internet. Links can come from all sorts of sites, not just Google or Yahoo or MSN. Consider listing your company in web directories, placing banner ads on other sites, or advertising in industry newsletters and publications. Any site that has a link to yours can bring new visitors and traffic. Yes, these inbound links may also help you with your search engine rankings, but the best links are those that are relevant and get clicked on!

Building steady traffic to your web site takes work, and not just in web site optimization. Be sure to use every advertising option available to you, such as using a pay per click ad campaign, entering your site into relevant competitions, participating in link exchanges, writing articles, case studies, white papers, etc. Don’t just depend on search engines to send web site traffic your way; get out there and take advantage of as many ways as you can think of to promote your site!

Know Your Audience – And Your Psychographics

We all know the importance of defining a target audience, right? Well, that’s only half the picture, as most target audiences are determined by demographics only.

Today, you need to consider an additional method of determining your target audience – psychographics.
Psychographics focus on customers' irritation -- their “pain” in trying to solve a problem or get something done. Psychographics cuts across all demographics; customer frustration is not limited to age or industry or geographic location. Instead, it targets a problem, something specific that is causing a customer to become annoyed and frustrated.

For example, one of the hottest products right now is the iPod, a portable music player which is popular among many different demographic groups. This new technology gives teenagers, travelers, fitness fanatics, students, business executives and, yes, even grandmas and grandpas the ability to store a huge amount of music files, podcasts, etc. on one little portable device. Older portable CD players were big and bulky and required users to carry around their CD collection. The iPod now solves a common problem: it makes it convenient for users to store all of their music on a single device, as well as the additonal convenience of being lightweight and portable. The new iPod technology alleviates their annoyance or "pain."

Adding psychographics to your demographics can be a powerful way to reach your target audience. To use this one-two approach:

1. Find the problem that most annoys or frustrates your audience. (The psychographics.)

2. Create a strong message. Make sure your message includes how you can alleviate their “pain.”

3. Gear your psychographic message (the problem) toward your demographic audience.

Using the double benefits of demographics and psychographics can help you to better understand your target audience and reach them in a way that is more compelling and relevant than using demographics alone.

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