This year, we’re thankful for the clients that have made us too busy to update this website as much as we’d like.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Nov 26
Any small business owner should be aware of their behavior online when it comes to their work. While it can be tempting to respond to nasty reviews in a heated manner on sites like Yelp! and on blogs, Joseph Larkin proves that you may want to wait before doing so.
One of the things I get from clients quite often is that they want to get on page one of Digg or they want lots of StumbleUpon visitors. While these sites can provide a staggering amount of traffic, the value of it can be highly variable depending on what your business is and how much value the audience gets from what you’re offering. Here’s a few things I’ve noticed about traffic from these sites.
- The vast majority of clicks are going to bounce instantly. Whether this is because these people are Digg addicts who open everything in a category or that you’re just not offering what they think they want, this is a hard fact. With a toolbar at the top of your site that gives them access to the next shiny thing on the internet, you’re having to struggle with a short attention span and an urge to see what else is out there.
- Short, on-message videos or funny pictures, charts, and graphs seem to work best. Your 50-page PDF about office organizational systems is not what they’re looking for, but a comic strip about someone’s travails in their new office environment might be.
- It’s completely possible for your site to get 50,000 or more visitors from Digg and not see a single conversion or even a click on an ad. Unless you’re selling a cheap item that’s relevant to their interest like ThinkGeek or offering an mp3 or the like that they can download and enjoy instantly, the siren song of the toolbar and the “next” button is likely to be stronger than your own call to action.
Social media can drive traffic to your site and build brand impressions, but in an increasingly noisy space where thousands of companies just like yours are competing using the same methods, it takes a savvy mind to be able to profit from that traffic.
Here’s two questions for you.
What are the three things that people are looking for when they’re visiting your brick and mortar operation’s website?
- Your Address. They want to know where you are so they can come there and give you money.
- Your Hours of Operation. They want to know when they can come to your business and give you money.
- Your Phone Number. They want to be able to call you and get answers that may allow them to give you money or make reservations to give you money.
If these are not immediately viewable above the fold on your front page, then you’re going to lose business.
What are people not looking for when they visit your brick and mortar operation’s website?
- Fancy splash screens. If they want to watch cartoons, there’s a whole network dedicated to them.
- Music, unless you are a music store. Are you selling music? No? Then there should be no music on your website. If you are selling music, then make it optional.
- PDFs. Restaurants, I’m talking to you and your menus. If you’re that worried about the formatting, offer it as an option, but there’s no reason I should have to fire up Adobe Reader to check to see if you’re offering clam chowder.
- A link going to your MySpace page instead of any actual content. That this happens in 2009 when there’s any number of high-quality, free content management systems is galling.
Should your site be well-designed? Of course. Should it reflect your business’s overall aesthetic? Undoubtably. Should your site make people work to get to the three things they want? No.
…because I’ve been too busy working, which is a happy problem to have, especially in this economy. Social Media and internet marketing boffins might want to look at this post I made on my personal blog, however, as it discusses how Marvel Comics uses Twitter and the brand erosion that can result from such activity.