October 2009 - Newsletter

 

The Best Advice Hand Picked

Pick your own applesOk, so you’re trying to work out if this is just another piece of useless spam in my inbox? Not by a long shot!

We know that you are probably flat out preparing for the Christmas rush, so rather than leaving it up to you to search through screeds of research on how to improve your website results, we thought we would save you the hassle and bring you a few highly relevant tips - direct to your inbox!

PS: What with this being our first newsletter, we've had to take a guess at who would get the most benefit from this information - so if there is someone more appropriate for us to be talking to, or you know of someone else that could benefit from these tips, please let us know or simply reply to this email with their details. Thanks!

You've got 3 seconds... or I'm gone!

Roadrunner - More Free Bird SeedResearch shows the average visitor that arrives at your website will give you about 3 seconds to spark their interest, give them a reason to read what's on your page, before they leave your site.

That's right … 3 measly seconds! And if you fail to do so, they won't even read the content on your page, let alone click on the links you want them to click on, and complete the objectives of your site. This makes headlines extremely important when it comes to improving the results of your website.

So what makes a good headline?

“Customers don’t want quarter inch drill bits, customers want quarter inch holes”.

Or to rephrase – customers aren’t going to purchase your products simply because you have a great product. They are purchasing it because they have a need or problem that your product can fulfill. By focusing your headlines on your ability to solve their problems, the benefits your products provide your customers, you will find your headlines are far more effective at sparking interest and enticing your visitors to read on.

For some more tips on writing a great headline, check out “Using the Headline to Grab Attention” in the Zeald website resources section.

The Sleep Store: An Award Winning Business

The Sleep StoreThree years ago, Louise Tanguay started a web-based business selling products that help babies sleep in perfect comfort. What was supposed to be a “pocket money” generating business soon turned into an award winning operation when Louise started using a low-cost marketing tool – email marketing.

Since then, Louise has successfully built a database of 18,000 customers, which has significantly improved the number of return visitors, ongoing sales and referrals to her business.

Read more about the amazing story of The Sleep Store.

Optimise Your Checkout Page: Payment Methods

Shopping CartChristmas is just around the corner and I know, like many other businesses, you will be looking to squeeze every last possible online sale out of the coming months.

The checkout process is an essential part of any ecommerce website as this is when the customer has to part with their hard earned cash. This makes it a likely point that a customer could back out of the transaction so you want to do everything you can to avoid this.

One key area to look at is to ensure that your website makes it as easy as possible for the customer to pay you. This means offering as many payment methods as possible at the checkout stage.

Not all customers like using credit cards, so include direct credit, cheque and cash on delivery options. If you have business-to-business or on-account customers, offer a purchase order method. Obviously, many people do like the convenience of paying by credit card so make sure you have this as an option too. In the end, if a customer is willing to pay, you want to make it as easy as possible for them to do so.

If I put myself into the shoes of a typical customer looking to make a purchase from your website using a credit card, one of the key fears I will face will be regarding the safety of my credit card details. If I enter them on your website, are they safe in your possession? Recent studies show that your checkout page can be 11% more effective at getting a potential customer 'across the line' simply by reassuring them about your online security.

How can you do this? The best way is to use a well known secure payment gateway such as DPS or PayPal. This means a customer’s credit card details effectively bypass both you and your website and go direct to the banks via the payment provider. This virtually eliminates the chance of credit card fraud through your website and communicating this to your clients through a clearly published security policy is another great way to reassure them.

As a premium partner of DPS, we have managed to pull a few strings to adjust the standard DPS plans to be more suitable to you, bringing you some great deals in the process! Article to give you some more detail about this.

We hope you enjoyed the read. If you have any further questions regarding the content of this newsletter, or any of Zeald's products or services, please feel free to contact your E-Business Consultant, or the Zeald Support team.

Thanks and best regards,

The Team at Zeald