Underground Web Designs Blog

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.

No matter what business you’re in, Google is the reason you should have a website.

As a business person, you are in business to make money. In order to make money, you need people to find you. How do you do that? Do you put up a sign, buy classified ads, or put your name in the phone book? 

News-flash: I can’t even remember the last time I looked up ANYTHING in a phone book. I don’t even know if I have one.

When I want to find someone, I use Google to look them up online. If I want something and don’t know where to buy it, I look it up online. And I’m not alone. Why do you think the record companies are struggling? 99% of the time, I find what I want ad then buy it from whoever owns the website I found it on.

If you don’t have a website, you are choosing to ignore everyone who does a Google search for your products or services. 

That doesn’t sound like good marketing to me.

It seems like every time you check the technical section of the news you see something about yet another “social networking” or “social bookmarking” service. As a business owner you may just shrug and move on, if you read the technical section of the news at all. Social media isn’t something you can just ignore though, especially if you want to get the most from your website.

Social media sites –sites that facilitate communication between peers– are among the largest websites for a reason: people like to talk to eachother and share their opinions. Now, your business may not be in the area of social networks, or even in the area of communication. That’s ok. No matter what your area of expertise is, social media is still an important concept for anyone who does business online (and if you have a website, you do business online).

How can you use the popularity of social media to boost your business and increase sales? Well, it’s both simple and difficult. The concepts are simple, but pulling them off can be easier said than done. The best way to leverage social media is to get people talking about your product or service. A good first step is to post fun, interesting, or educational videos on YouTube, and be sure to leave the comments open. Another good idea is to start a blog. Blogs are very easy to create and maintain, and best of all they provide a place for people interested in your topic to agree, disagree, and discuss what you write about.

There are some people that think that since social media is so powerful they should throw everything they have at it, in as many places as they can. Others will even offer their “services” to put your videos, articles, or links on hundreds of social media sites. Beware of such “spam” tactics. Remember that the power of social media is in people talking to each other and sharing things they like. If you post something on one popular site such as YouTube, and people like it, they will tell their friends to come check it out. If you put a video on 100 video sharing sites and nobody likes it, your reputation may well be tarnished.

If you remember that social media sites are the ultimate democracy then you will be able to make full use of them to grow your business and sell your products. If you forget even for a minute that anyone can (and will) make it known to the world if you mess up, you’ll soon find out that social media has a downside as well.

SEO has become a monster.

For those of you who haven’t thought about it recently, SEO stands for Search Engine OPTIMIZATION. The “O” being the key letter. SEO does not stand for search engine ranking, or search engine traffic. It does not mean getting lots of links or putting a site on lots of social networks. At it’s core, SEO is simply optimizing a site so that search engines can easily and efficiently crawl it.

Instead of this simple definition, time and again you will hear SEO “experts” talking about this or that linking strategy, or the latest and greatest software to submit your site to all the major search engines and directories. How does any of this fit into optimizing a site for search? Really, it doesn’t… more often than not it has to do with gaming the system.

SEO is misplaced. I truly believe that if a webmaster does his best to make his website open and available to people, he will naturally be ranked high in the search engines. Remember, search engines do not exist to bring you traffic. They exist to bring searchers to relevant sites.

If you design your site and marketing strategy to attract people, no doubt you will soon find you’re attracting search engines as well. Asking (or buying) a link on a popular blog will not only get you visitors directly, it will bring with it Google page rank. Similarly, writing quality blog posts or powerful content on your website will naturally result in Stumbles, Diggs, and other social networking attention.

In Short: attract the people, and the robots will follow. Remember, people design robots, not the other way around.

I don’t know about you, but there are some types of marketing that I find just plain annoying. Some TV commercials are ok, and then some look so unprofessional, poorly planned, and just plain BAD. So what makes the difference? Ultimately, it comes down to what your focus is. There are two things you can focus on with your marketing.

1) You can focus on making the best possible product that meets a very specific need in the market, and then telling people about it.

2) You can analyze the data, crunch the numbers, come up with a product that should make you a million bucks, and then employ the latest in persuasive science to get people to buy it.

The thing is, people can recognize what kind of marketing you’re doing from a mile away. And I don’t know about you, but I sure don’t want to buy something that someone invented just to make them money. I want to buy something that was made because it will benefit me somehow. That’s why the best marketing really ISN’T marketing… it’s just spreading the word about a good product. What message does YOUR marketing portray?