Underground Web Designs Blog

Does your website sell people what they need, or what they want?

Take a look at your website, read the sales page… and think about what you are selling. Not what product or service you’re selling, but what idea you’re selling. Are you making people feel that your service is something they need, or are you making them feel that it’s something they want?

If you’re selling to a customer’s need, consider revising your copy to focus on wants. You see, the simple fact is that most of the stuff you sell, your customer doesn’t really need. You may think they need it, but do they really? In fact, everything but water, simple food, and basic shelter is things we want.

If you’re selling strategy is focused on convincing people that they NEED what you’re selling, you’re setting yourself up to fail. There are too many options, and people are getting too smart. I know I don’t really need the latest pair of brand name running shoes… but since all my friends have iPods, I really WANT an iPod. So I’ll go buy the iPod, even though it costs more.

So how do you do it? How do you sell your products to people’s wants?

• Ask them what they want, then create the product to satisfy those wants. It’s hard to guess every time, and with the internet you don’t have to. Just ask your customers what they want and build it into your product.
• Exceed expectations. Apple is great at this. When Apple released the iPhone, they capitalized on a want people had: a want for stylish cell phones. Then they exceeded expectations by providing a bigger screen, touchscreen capabilities, music, very good internet access, and much more.
• Sell your product emotionally. While it’s good to talk about the facts about your product, facts don’t sell things. Convincingly explain how your product will improve someone’s life, save them time, or bring them success — all things everybody wants already — and your products will sell.

What does the internet mean?

A quick google search will turn up several definitions, all along the same lines: 

Internet: A global network; an interconnection of large and small networks around the world.

Now, that may be what the internet is but that’s not what the internet means. When you think of the internet, do you think of a network of computers that spans the entire world? That may be part of it, but that’s definitely not all the internet is. The internet means much more than just a global network. The internet means easy, immediate access to anything. It means communicating with friends and family around the world in the blink of an eye. It means ordering what I want in 5 minutes from my office chair, and either downloading it right away or having it delivered a few days later.

If you’re in business and have a website, how does your website match with this “instant gratification” definition of the internet? Are you helping people find what they want, when they want it? Or are you trying to sell them something they don’t want? Does it take them a long time to find what you sell — or worse yet, to buy it once they’ve found it? Do you even know what your customers want?

In order to be successful online, you have to understand how people see the internet and work with them. Help them find the information they want quickly, easily, and simply. Make your product available to the people who are looking for it, but don’t annoy those who don’t. Interact, communicate, and listen.

What definition of the internet does your website follow? Are you still looking to reach everybody? Or do you provide exactly what a small niche is looking for?

I know, I know, everybody’s saying to use this or that social network to promote your business. Well, even though I don’t agree that every business should be using social networking, there are certainly some businesses that should use it, and use it well.

If your business is a local business– you’re offering a local product or service and don’t plan on shipping it all over the world — Facebook is the perfect way to promote it. In fact, a local business is the only type of business I would recommend use Facebook, for three reasons:

1. Local businesses match Facebook’s goals. Facebook is designed to connect you to your friends and let you share with them what you’re doing. If your business is a local thing, you can tie into this friend connection by creating a group for your business and getting friends to join, posting pictures of friends or others using your products, etc.
2. You can capitalize on interaction. Besides connection, Facebook is all about interaction — Who did what, when, and with whom. Use this dynamic to promote your product. Get people talking about you and your business with their friends. Make your business a part of their lives.
3. Make your business comment worthy. Facebook is all about short comments. Wall posts, picture comments, etc. Make sure that what you do is worth commenting on. If nobody comments on your business you will get no benefit from Facebook.

In order to promote anything successfully on Facebook, it has to be interesting to your current friends list. If you start a Facebook group for your business, remember that only your own friends will see it at first. If they find it interesting, it will spread. If they don’t, it will fail. If what you do is of no interest to your own friends, then don’t bother promoting on Facebook. Try something else. But if you can make what you do interesting to your friends — enough that they will comment and interact with you about it — you have the potential to grow a very large business using Facebook.

Now I’m just like the next guy — I won’t comment on just anything. But this whole post was inspired by a local business using Facebook for advertising and promotion. Take a look: Bake Me A Cake. Look at the pictures, read the comments. If you can do this with your business, then promote it using Facebook. If you can’t generate this kind of buzz, don’t waste your time.

As great as the internet is, there’s nothing quite like meeting other people who share your passion face to face. That’s why I’m extremely excited about the opportunity to attend the WebVisions Conference in Portland Oregon later this week (Thursday and Friday).

Even though I’ve learned a lot about the internet and how it works on my own from reading, research, etc. nothing is quite the same as having the chance to talk to people who know the business better than you do. The chance to ask questions, participate in live discussions, and hear the passion in someone’s voice is priceless.

That’s a good thing to keep in mind as we build websites too. Even though a site IS an online entity, not an in person meeting, people will be more willing to trust you if you can provide an “in person” feel to your site. Isn’t that why sites like Facebook and Myspace do so well?

Of course, not everybody can start their own social network — nor should they. However, if you stop talking AT your audience, and start sharing something your passionate about with them, it shows. Enthusiasm is infections, and if you can communicate to your audience that you care about them personally, and that you truly believe what you have to offer is the best thing for them, they’ll listen.

After all, why else would I fly across North America to learn stuff I could probably get from the net if I looked hard enough? It’s not about the information, it’s about how it’s presented.

PS: Keep an eye out for posts live from Portland and the WebVisions conference over the next few days. And if anyone who’s attending happens to read this, shoot me a comment, I’d love to meet up with you there!

It’s the latest big buzz in the internet marketing world: Web 2.0. But for all it’s popularity, nobody seems to know just what it is. Ask any 10 people in a room what “Web 2.0″ is, and you’ll get 10 different answers (unless 2 or 3 people say “what’s that?”).

From all my research as an website designer, the closest thing to a definition for web 2.0 that I’ve found goes something like this:

Web 2.0 describes a change of thinking about how the web works. No longer is the web about information — it is about networking and connections. Webmasters are no longer the only ones who write web content- everybody does.

With this in mind, how can “Web 2.0″ impact your business?

What do YouTube, Facebook, and eBay have in common that you don’t have?

• They all have communication and user feedback.
• Much of their website content is generated by users in the first place, not a webmaster.
• They provide their users with more than information, they provide them with an online community.

You see, the next generation of websites is not about telling your market to buy this or go here. That’s for TV advertising. People don’t like being yelled at, especially online. Instead, use the power of the internet to connect with your market. Talk to them, discover what they want, and then provide it. Because communication is what web 2.0 is really about. It’s not about slick designs or logos, it’s not about the latest and best technologies (though it does use them), web 2.0 is about making the internet a conversation.

How can your business enter the global conversation that is the internet? Here are some tips to get you started:

The internet used to be like a big old library encyclopedia. You could find just about any information you wanted in it, but you had little opportunity to make your own opinions heard. Now that is changing. The next generation of internet users  expects to be able to make their points heard. They expect the internet to be an interactive, engaging experience.

Is your business keeping up?

Where does your target market hang out?

Different markets spend time in different places, both online and off. With the advent of the social web, it’s now easier than ever to reach people where they spend a lot of time… but do you know where to look?

YouTube is loved by young people and teens, but few people who are out of highschool spend much time searching the site for the latest cool videos to watch.

Likewise, Facebook’s user base is mostly highschool students, college students, and young adults.

While I won’t argue that both Facebook and YouTube can be great potential marketing opportunities, I would suggest first thinking about who you are trying to market TOO. If your message is great for college students, then by all means, get an ad on facebook. If your target market is teens and pre-teens, make a super-cool YouTube ad. But if your ad is targeted at working class parents or baby boomers, YouTube and Facebook probably aren’t going to show a very high ROI.

The social web has more than anything divided internet users into groups. Different people use different services and get their news from different places. Different demographics spend their leisure web-surfing time in different places. So before you spend a ton of money on the next hottest YouTube vid, do some research into where in the online universe your target market hangs out, and advertise there.

You’re almost guaranteed a better ROI than just taking shots in the dark.

Every site uses images, after all “a picture speaks a thousand words” right? Well, now it may bring a thousand visitors as well. Rosanne from net business blog writes: 

until recently, the images found on your page played no role in search engine optimization. However, this is no longer true.

Farther along in her article Rosanne points to several stats that show that more and more searchers are searching for images, or using Google’s “universal search”, which turns up everything from web pages to images to weather reports. With such an increase in search beyond text it is becoming increasingly important to optimize your images for the search engines. But how?

Rosanne offers some tips in her article:

1. Use some keywords that relate to your image in the image’s filename.
2. Use some keywords in the alt tags of the image as well.
3. Make sure the text near the image contains the same keywords. This gives the keywords in the image filename and alt tags more credibility.

If you aren’t optimizing your images for the search engines, you’re missing out on potential traffic, plain and simple. With this thought comes a serious revelation. How well are your optimizing the rest of your site’s content? Are you doing all you can to optimize the videos, flash content, and even RSS feeds on your site? If search engines are now taking images into account, maybe they’ll soon be looking more closely at other kinds of content as well.

Something to think about.

James of Copyblogger wrote an interesting post yesterday about the power of optimizing your website not just for your target market’s demographics, but for their shopping style as well.

As James points out, different words reach different buyers. Some people are all about getting the best deals, whereas others care about the customer service, the environment, or simply getting their shopping done ASAP. Once you’ve figured out which category your target market falls into and optimized your copy to cater to them, is there more you can do to increase conversions? Sure there is!

Your copy isn’t the only thing that influences different visitors different ways, so does your website design. How big is the price in relation to your product descriptions? Do you prominently include customer reviews and ratings on the product page? How easy is it for your clients to find your newsletter? Take a good look at your website from with an eye for your target market’s shopping style and make a few changes to make the things they care about stand out.

If your target market is all about saving a quick buck, be sure to highlight your prices and especially highlight any special offers you’re running. If your audience cares more about a relationship with you and with others like themselves, be sure that ratings, reviews, and your newsletter signup box are prominent. And if your audience just wants to buy quick and go home, make sure the checkout process is as simple and pain free as possible!

Your website is much more than just the sum of the words on each page. Whenever you’re optimizing your site for a certain group of demographic, be sure to evaluate not just the copy but the design as well. The best web stores offer a unified experience, where the design, functionality, navigation, features, copy, and products all work together to create a powerful experience that reaches a certain type of customer.

How unified is your message?

No one denys the wisdom of diversifying your investments. By investing your money in several different ways, in different places, you may not be guaranteed a good return, but your chances of loosing everything suddenly are drastically reduced. 

The same could be said for your website.

Most business owners put up a website because they expect it to help them make money. Unfortunately, many people don’t use (or just don’t know about) all the ways that their website could be making them money. Because of this their website is like a single investment in only one company. It’s great if that investment does well, but if it goes bankrupt you’re going to loose money.

Instead of placing all your eggs in one basket, look at these other options your website might be able to use to bring in some extra money and diversify your web presence:

• Google Adsense and onsite advertising.
• Affiliate programs.
• Online contests
• Forums and community sites (with ads).
• An e-mail mailing list or RSS feed.
• A free give-away with a powerful upsell.
• Social media (youtube, facebook, delicious, etc)

You’ll notice that not everything on that list will make you money by itself. The biggest key to being successful online is not to focus only on money, but to diversify your efforts. Have a strong focus, and then try many things to accomplish your goal and build your brand. By spreading out your efforts to gain traffic, build your brand, and yes, make money you may not become an overnight millionaire, but chances are you’ll slowly build a successful site.

When running a bricks and mortar business your marketing options are limited by time, manpower, and cost. Online you have much more freedom to explore different ways of advertising your business, making passive revenue, and communicating with your market. So do a bit of research and try something new. You may be surprised at the results.

(Watch future articles for more details on setting up an affiliate program, google adsense, and more).

Everybody is talking about social bookmarking, social media, social networking, etc. So what’s the key word in all those names? It’s SOCIAL. Marketers: Remember that!

The whole idea of the social web is that everyone is involved, and everyone can make their feelings heard. As a marketer or business man, this sounds like a dream come true. Countless opportunities to get your message heard! Just don’t forget that the social web works because it’s a two way street. You get to say what you want to say… but then everybody else gets to say what they think of it. If what you offer isn’t up to par you’ll be ignored, or maybe even labeled a spammer.

Now maybe people are quick to judge. But in the social web, nobody really cares. All it takes is one person who’s ticked off enough to write a negative review, and suddenly your integrity is in question. In the online world, one negative review can and WILL be seen by many, many people thanks to the power of Google.

So by all means, enter this strange new world of social media and spread the message of what you do. Just be careful how you’re presenting yourself. Give me a great product at a good price and I’ll sing you’re praises to the world. But if you rip me off, I’ll gladly trash your reputation forever.

Ye Have Been Warned.