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Spider
09-13-2010, 12:55 PM
I have been thinking about revamping my Mentoring website and trying to weigh the pros and cons of the root layout. I've been told on this forum that I have too much "stuff." I have considered reducing the amount of content but cannot really see the advantage of doing that. The content is presently well interlinked (one can go from anywhere to anywhere else, quickly.) I can see that a visitor will have too much to read and not get to the "Decision" page fast enough. But, more content gives more opportunities for the SEs to place me well in their serps. Do you think I should consider less interlinking and more specific tracks to the Decision page, thus preventing a visitor from switching tracks - life to business, etc?

I have looked at a number of high-ranking coaching sites and they all have a lot of content. They range fairly evenly from the few, very long pages to the many, short pages. Mine is about average number and average length pages. Which design is favored by our SBF designers?

Business Attorney
09-13-2010, 07:33 PM
Well, I'm not one of the marketing experts but my opinion is that you should look at each page as a landing page and lead the user to the decision making page as soon as possible. If you have too much choice on a page, what keeps the user from just wandering from page to page until he wears out? That approach is fine for a newspaper or magazine website that is being paid to display ads on their site. They want to entice the reader to wander around and stay on the site as long as possible. That is not your goal, however.

Spider
09-14-2010, 11:45 AM
Thanks, David. I have a link (or several) to the Decision page on every page, so a visitor doesn't have to wander unless they choose to. I am not sure that preventing them from wandering is a good idea.

vangogh
09-14-2010, 12:26 PM
The issue with having too much on the page is that visitors don't know where to look and too many options actually confuse most people. It's a basic principle that more options only makes us less likely to choose any of them. Also when there's a lot of information it means the most important information doesn't stand out. Each page on your site should ideally have one or two goals it want's to achieve. A primary and a secondary goal. You might also have another one or two lesser goals for the page, though the more goals the harder it will be for the page to be successful at any one of them.

Everything that's not working toward one of the page's goals is actually working against achieving that goal.

Another thing you want to do is make it obvious what you want the visitor to do next. For example I'm looking at your building your business page. I take it what you really want me to do is click one of the links that goes to your mentoring options page. However those links don't really stand out, certainly not more than any other link on the page. If anything the email list form and the two green boxes in the lower left stand out more. You also have plenty of links in the sidebar competing with what I think is the action you want to take.

Why not make that link to mentoring options the most visible thing on the page. Make it a huge button you place at both the top and bottom of the page. Make it big and use a color that contrasts with the other colors on the page. Right now there's nothing visually pulling me to those links. In fact you've made them smaller than the rest of the text indicating the links are less important than what's around it.

Having said all that, I do think you've cleaned up your site quite a bit over the years. It's not as busy as it once was. The thing to keep in mind is what is the goal of the page What do you want people to do after visiting that page? Eliminate as much as you can that doesn't direct them where you want them to go and make what you want them to do as obvious as possible.

You'll also have goals for the site as a whole. For example your mailing list. Joining may not be the specific goal on one page, but it is for the site as a whole. Where it's not the main goal don't have it stand out more than the primary goal.

Spider
09-14-2010, 11:21 PM
Thanks, VG. Any thoughts on the "few, very long pages" vs "the many, short pages" question?

vangogh
09-15-2010, 02:03 AM
I've seen so many swear by one or the other. I think it depends on the type of content as for how long it should be. For an article I think you should let it be however long it wants to be. Say what you want to say. If it takes 100 words, great. If it takes 10,000 words, that't great too.

With sales copy I know there are certain formulas copywriters have typically followed. That's why you see the long sales pages, because they generally need that many words to get through the formula. One internet marketer by the name of Jeff Walker changed things to come up with what he calls a sideways sales letter. He's still following all the basic steps in the formula (I think there were 6 steps), but he breaks them up in their own page or in his case email. So he sends out part of in email one, then a couple of weeks later sends out another email that's part 2, etc. In the end he still sends out the same long sales letter, but it's sent out in parts over time.

The reason for the above is I suspect his approach is generally a good one online. People tend to scan more and read less online and the advice has always been to keep things shorter online. By breaking up a long sales page you can keep things shorter while still getting your entire message across.

I was looking for the video where he goes through each step, but it was for a class he was running that's currently full so the video is currently down. I did find a couple of other articles that may be of interest.

The AIDA Marketing Model in Web Design (http://www.noupe.com/design/the-aida-marketing-model-in-web-design.html) is a post that looks at how websites can be designed to in an AIDA frame of mind.

The 10 Essential Ingredients of Successful Sales Pages (http://www.copyblogger.com/successful-sales-pages/) is a post looks at what's needed in a sales letter. I think some of what's here are also part of the 6 steps Jeff Walker talks about.

In the end I don't know whether it matters much if sales copy is long or short as long as it does it's job and gets people to buy.

Harold Mansfield
09-18-2010, 08:35 AM
Just to reiterate, I don't think your problem is too much info, it's just the organization of it. I recently finished a client's site, who up until now had done their own site using front page. They'd done a good job but had maxed out what they could do by hand, one thing at a time and couldn't code any functions.

They informed me that they had a lot of pages and when I looked at it it seemed to be tons of pages...but it really wasn't.

Once we had a design, installed, and customized and I started to migrate content over to the new site, and what looked like 50 pages of content was all of a sudden more like 22 pages (Including product pages) once organized properly. Add to that a menu that is consistent throughout the site, changing articles into blogs posts and displaying them with excepts, inputting events into a calendar plug in (that takes up 1/4 the space), and organizing testimonials to rotate randomly in the sidebar rather than a big long page of quotes, and a few other things to organize the content and it came out much more streamlined..easier to handle, organized and easy to navigate.

The first thing out of their mouth's was "I can't believe how much space we were wasting".

Spider
09-23-2010, 01:13 PM
This is an interesting point. What amounts to good organization has changed over the years. Was a time you could get sued for "deep linking" - that is linking to any page on a site other than their front, or home, page. Google started that movement and more than one large company took Google to court over it. Now we want every page to rate well in SERPS and must consider every page a potential landing page.

I used to figure a site's home page should contain a link to every page on the site, not only to make it easy for SE spiders to index every page but to make it easy for visitors to navigate. By using a Menu listing of every page and including that menu on every page, anyone (including the spiders) could get from any page to any other page with a single click. = maximum navigation capability.

That works up to, say 20 pages. Over 20 pages, it gets a bit unwieldy. Thus, the next iteration was grouping pages and have a home page menu listing links to the section front pages and a separate menu on each of the section's pages. Now it took two or three clicks to get from anywhere to anywhere else.

The current philosophy seems to be - Don't let a visitor go to anywhere they want - Allow them to go only to the 'Purchase' page. Every page should be made to be the first page of a short chain of pages (one or two pages, no more) that culminates at the Purchase page and only have those links that lead a visitor accordingly. So, now, a visitor cannot get from any page to any other page, they can only get from the page they land on to the next and (possibly) another next and then Purchase or Go Away!

This is classed as progress. What are your views on the efficacy of these concepts.

vangogh
09-24-2010, 12:37 AM
The current philosophy seems to be - Don't let a visitor go to anywhere they want - Allow them to go only to the 'Purchase' page.

I wouldn't say that's the current philosophy. Naturally if you want to sell something to someone you want them to go to the page where they'll make a purchase, but I think most people will tell you there's no one way for directing people to that page. I think the philosophy is more about understanding the reasons people buy and don't buy and persuading them to get to the purchase page and then take the action of purchasing.

Some of that though allows for people to leave the most direct path to the page so they can get the information they need to take the action you want them to take. For example some people need to know others have enjoyed a product before they'll buy it. We create a testimonials page for that person. Not everyone needs to see those testimonials before buying so we wouldn't need to force people through that page. For those people that do need to see it we provide a link so they can see the testimonials.

I see it more as every page working to get people toward that call to action page, with the understanding that different people may take different routes to getting to that page. Every page should be persuading people to take certain actions on the page and also take some larger actions on the site. They don't all have to be driving you toward one single purchase page as quickly as possible.

Harold Mansfield
09-24-2010, 12:36 PM
This is an interesting point. What amounts to good organization has changed over the years. Was a time you could get sued for "deep linking" - that is linking to any page on a site other than their front, or home, page. Google started that movement and more than one large company took Google to court over it. Now we want every page to rate well in SERPS and must consider every page a potential landing page.

I used to figure a site's home page should contain a link to every page on the site, not only to make it easy for SE spiders to index every page but to make it easy for visitors to navigate. By using a Menu listing of every page and including that menu on every page, anyone (including the spiders) could get from any page to any other page with a single click. = maximum navigation capability.

That works up to, say 20 pages. Over 20 pages, it gets a bit unwieldy. Thus, the next iteration was grouping pages and have a home page menu listing links to the section front pages and a separate menu on each of the section's pages. Now it took two or three clicks to get from anywhere to anywhere else.
The first thing is not everything needs to be a page. Organizing your content will mean that you will stream line your site.

Your menu can, and should be consistent throughout your site, you don't have to sacrifice anything.

The second thing is, if you use a CMS like wordpress, you can use different functions for organization and not just retain, but increase how well that content is crawled, indexed and even found via search.



The current philosophy seems to be - Don't let a visitor go to anywhere they want - Allow them to go only to the 'Purchase' page. Every page should be made to be the first page of a short chain of pages (one or two pages, no more) that culminates at the Purchase page and only have those links that lead a visitor accordingly. So, now, a visitor cannot get from any page to any other page, they can only get from the page they land on to the next and (possibly) another next and then Purchase or Go Away!

This is classed as progress. What are your views on the efficacy of these concepts.

I don't think that this is necessarily the "current philosophy" not is it appropriate for your website. That sounds more to me like a 3 year old philosophy that pertains to sales pages, not business or company websites. It's easier to organize your site to accomplish a mission once you decide what you want it to accomplish. What is the ultimate goal?

My business website has one goal, provide enough information quickly so that people are enticed to call or contact me. Once they contact me, I am much more likely to be hied by them. I can't let the website dictate everything or give so much away that they can make a decision without talking to me.

You can't over analyze it. Some principles are going to be the same no matter what you read now and in the future. Nice design, Clean navigation, Organized content and you have to answer the basic questions just like we learned in grade school...who, what, when, where, why and how?

It's the web, but it's still the same as a good newspaper, magazine, TV or radio commercial. Marketing didn't change we just have a faster delivery system.

billbenson
09-24-2010, 03:10 PM
My business website has one goal, provide enough information quickly so that people are enticed to call or contact me. Once they contact me, I am much more likely to be hied by them. I can't let the website dictate everything or give so much away that they can make a decision without talking to me.

You can't over analyze it. Some principles are going to be the same no matter what you read now and in the future. Nice design, Clean navigation, Organized content and you have to answer the basic questions just like we learned in grade school...who, what, when, where, why and how?

Well, closure isn't always a sale. It could be getting an appointment, subscription to a newsletter, etc. There frequently is a path to an order and you may have several "closure" steps to get to the order. That was true before internet sales and is true today. Step 1 for me is usually getting a quote in the customers hands or perhaps technical documentation. Sometimes I get lucky and I get an online order as step 1, but I wouldn't call that the normal sale.

vangogh
09-24-2010, 04:49 PM
Picking up on the quote Bill just posted I want to add that your goal then is really to get people to contact you. Providing information is a way you do that, but the information you're providing isn't really the goal. I think you already know that, but pointing it out for anyone reading who might not.

If we now take getting someone to contact you as the goal we can think about the different ways you might achieve that. The first would be to provide as many ways for them to contact you as possible. Give them a phone number, an email address, and a contact form, which I think you do. You can also provide links to Twitter or Facebook or any other site where you have a presence in case they prefer to contact you through that site.

Since you want people to call you'd want to make your contact information prominent across the site, maybe include it on every page or make a prominent link to a central contact page on every page. Better yet turn that link into a highly visible button and place it at the top and bottom of the informational content. If you prefer one form of contact over another, make that one way to contact you the most prominent and have the other forms of contacts slightly less prominent.

Since the information you're providing is designed to persuade someone to contact you links or buttons should definitely be prominent within the content, ideally at key points where someone reading is most likely to call. The information should also be written in a way to drive people toward contacting you.

Everything on the site should ultimately be leading up to getting someone to contact you, though not every page on the site might have this singular goal. Some pages might have the direct goal of getting someone to bookmark the page or subscribe to your blog as a way to bring them back. Maybe it's the 10th or 20th visit where they decide to call. You could run a series of articles that first describe a problem your ideal contact might have and then describe the solution to them, showing in the process that you clearly know how to solve the issue, while at the same time showing that solving the issue is difficult or time intensive, thereby making contacting you and having you do the work the easiest solution.

Harold I'm not suggesting you don't do these things. This more for anyone who happens to be reading.

billbenson
09-25-2010, 12:08 AM
Just brainstorming here, but how many of us have really done an on paper flow chart of their site? Visitors enter your site by different entry points and for different reasons. You want to give each and every one of those entry's to your site the shortest path to giving you money (or whatever the reason for your site is). I certainly have never done a flow chart, but I bet it would be a valuable exercise.

Spider
09-25-2010, 08:52 AM
The stat program I use (StatCounter) shows that information on an individual basis but not on any total or analized view. I do look and see how individuals make their way through my site, though. It has been especially useful when I realize that a number of people are entering a particular section and none of them go any further.

billbenson
09-25-2010, 09:23 AM
I'm really referring to how you want them to go through the site and what action you want from each page. Say you figure out you have visitors who aren't sure if they need a coach so you need to steer them through an educational path. You have people that want a coach but want to know if you are the coach. You steer them through a different path. Etc. Are you really controlling the route they take and giving them the proper information on the pages that each type of customer follows?

Spider
09-25-2010, 11:02 AM
But how does one know what they want as they arrive? You don't! One has to tackle it from the other end - here's the route this person took, what does his route tell me about what he wants?

I am sure there are people coming to my site, for example, who don't know if they want a coach. (As for 'need' - everyone needs a coach!) But these people can arrive on any one of a number of pages. It would be great if they all started at the same point, but I'm sure they don't. There must be some similarity between all the people that arrive at page'X' - making a guess as to what that similarity is, could be used to offer relevant (and only relevent) links to other pages.

I think one has to follow the route taken by individuals and guess from that what they came looking for. Then decide whether you think they found it or not.

Harold Mansfield
09-25-2010, 12:26 PM
But how does one know what they want as they arrive? You don't! One has to tackle it from the other end - here's the route this person took, what does his route tell me about what he wants?


Yes, you do know what they are looking for when they arrive..or at least you are supposed to. You should be targeting people that are looking for your services specifically. It's not the other way around...you don't look at the metrics and then try change the site to match them. If people are coming to your site for the wrong reason, then they aren't finding the correct information, and that's because you are not targeting your demographic correctly.

You should be able to make the adjustments to insure that people are coming because of what you have to offer..then of course they will find it.
If you sell "Car Seat Covers", you don't target people searching for "Floor Mats". IF you are attracting people looking for floor mats then they are undoubtedly leaving quickly because you don't have that.

A lot of webmasters do this..try and target the key phrases that are close and will bring the most amount of searchers, and then hope to sell the small percentage of visitors that may have been looking for something specific...instead of targeting the specifics so that EVERY person that finds you did so because they were looking specifically for what you have. That may boost the numbers on the stats page, but it will do nothing for your conversions. I'd rather have 50 visitors a day that were looking for exactly what I have, than 500 that were looking for something else.

When I speak with people they tell me, "I was looking for xxxxxx, and I found your website". Great! That's what I want. They found me by searching for exactly what I wanted them to find me for, not something else.

vangogh
09-27-2010, 10:46 AM
Frederick you may not know exactly what one specific person is looking for when they arrive at your site, but you can have a pretty good idea what different types of people are looking for.

For example one type of person is looking for a business coach. You want that person to contact you after landing on your site. You're right that you won't know exactly which page that person will land on. You can though figure out what that person most likely wants to know in order to contact you. You don't have to place that content on every page, but you might want to leave a "scent" on every page to that content. You'd probably also want to prominently show a contact link on every page for that person.

Someone else might only be looking for information when they land on your site. You also want that person to contact you, but they probably aren't going to do that on their first visit. Think about how you can get that person to come back a few times until they are ready to contact you. Since that person is looking for information you might leave a different "scent" on most pages directly to information on the site. One reason a blog can work well is that people understand it means there will be more information coming in the future giving them a reason to come back. Maybe this type of person needs to read your blog for 6 months or a year before they decide to contact you. Again if the contact link is prominent they will when the time is right.

You can keep thinking of different types of people who may eventually contact you and think about what they need to do over time to eventually contact you. Develop your site so it can accommodate several different types of people and set up your marketing to attract those different types of people.

You're right that can't know exactly what one specific person wants, but you can anticipate what different types of people likely do want and build the site for those different types of people.

Spider
09-27-2010, 11:16 AM
...You're right that can't know exactly what one specific person wants, but you can anticipate what different types of people likely do want and build the site for those different types of people.This is what I had in mind that Harold seems to either disagree with or I wasn't clear. The "anticipating" that you envisage, VG, is how I would follow individuals through my site and try to figure out what they are looking for so I can - as you say - "build the site for those different types of people."

vangogh
09-28-2010, 02:51 AM
You may have been perfectly clear. It was early and I scanned everyone's comments more than reading them. My bad for that.

Harold makes good points though about targeting off the site too. As an odd example one of my posts started ranking for the phrase 'creme king of baits' because I happened to use those words (though I spelled creme as cream). It wasn't anything I tried to do. Later I wrote a post with that title showing some of the weird things my site pulled search traffic for. I still rank #2 with that 2nd post, fortunately behind the Creme company who deserves to be #1. King of baits is a fishing lure I think.

The reason I'm mentioning the above is some people might notice they ranked well for some phrase that was sending them traffic and then try hard to improve the rank and traffic without really thinking about whether or not that traffic would do them any good. No one searching for the phrase 'creme king of baits' is looking for my site. It would be pointless for me to try to gain more traffic from it. That's an exaggerated example, but how many of us get traffic that isn't a good fit for the page the traffic lands on. It happens a lot.

SEO is not solely about getting more traffic from search engines. It's about getting more of the right kind of traffic, the kind of traffic that is likely interested in what your site has before they even land on your site or specific page. Maybe some of the keywords you're targeting aren't necessarily as good as you think or maybe there are better pages on the site for some of those keywords other than the ones that are currently ranking.

Spider
09-28-2010, 09:01 AM
...That's an exaggerated example, but how many of us get traffic that isn't a good fit for the page the traffic lands on. It happens a lot...I have three whole sections to which something similar is happening — Joint ventures, prospecting and coaching styles. All of them are business topics and the people that visit those sections would appear to be possible targets for my coaching, yet although they consititute the majority of my traffic, the visitors never go to the rest of the site. As a solution, I am considering creating three new and separate domains for this material with links to my coaching domain. If the traffic is serving me no purpose, perhaps the links will.

Harold Mansfield
09-28-2010, 11:16 AM
This is what I had in mind that Harold seems to either disagree with or I wasn't clear. The "anticipating" that you envisage, VG, is how I would follow individuals through my site and try to figure out what they are looking for so I can - as you say - "build the site for those different types of people."

I understood and in my opinion this is backwards. You don't build the site to match the traffic, you build the traffic to match the site.

I could see this line of thinking working if you have a current events blog, or some kind of general ecommerce website selling all kinds of products. You would then want to follow the traffic to see exactly what products or stories people are looking for, and then adjust to "give them what they want".

But in your case, you have a business that offers a very distinct and specific type of service. You can't be everything to everybody and I would think that your target audience is people looking to hire or for more information about hiring a business coach.
If people are coming for some other reason, I don't think the move is to change the site to match the traffic, it would be to find out why they are coming for that, instead of what I really have or am really selling and attract people looking for it.

If people are coming to my site looking for products or services that I don't provide, then I am wasting my time. And if my core service (the one that I do best and I make the most money on) is not getting any traffic or interest then I haven't done my job there either.

I don't think VG would start selling fishing lures just because one post just happened to match a popular search term.

Spider
09-29-2010, 10:02 AM
Harold, I understand what you are saying as an extreme case - offering A, visitors come looking for B, changing the site to sell B. But this isn't what I'm talking about. I'm talking about offering A, people come to the site having searched for A but leave before reaching the purchase page.

By noting on which page they land, tracking them through the site, and noting their exit page, I can try to determine why they did not find what they were looking for. But first I must determine what they were really looking for, regardless of what they searched for.

Eg. They search for 'business coach' and arrive on my site. No matter where you land on my site, it's pretty obvious that you have found a business coach. So they found what they said they wanted but they didn't buy, so that tells me they didn't find what they REALLY wanted. That is what I must discover and make clear that I offer it.

Specific case - from my stats I see a person searched for "small business mentors advisors" - they land on a page of my site entitled (not surprisingly) "small business advisor." Exactly what they want, right? Then they go to a page entitled, "Build your business with a Business Coach." Then they return to their landing page and then disappear. What can I learn from this?

1. The "Next" page is about home businesses, which they did not click. Possibly they are not operating a business from home, or learning about doing so does not interest them.
2. Instead they go to the business section front page. This page addresses the reader as if they are already in business and want to grow their business.
3. Perhaps they were not already in business, perhaps they were just starting or considering starting their own business and wanted some "advice."
4. They spend 1.1/2 minutes on each page - enough time to read them through. Our visitor then returns to the 'advisor' page and departs.

My goal is to ascertain what this person failed to find. He said he wanted a small business mentor advisor and he found one by landing on my site. But he didn't find exactly what he wanted. Perhaps I offer what he really wanted but didn't ask for. Perhaps he was considering starting a business. If I want to serve people considering starting a business, I need to change my site to show that.

I hope that explains better.

Harold Mansfield
09-29-2010, 12:51 PM
Harold, I understand what you are saying as an extreme case - offering A, visitors come looking for B, changing the site to sell B. But this isn't what I'm talking about. I'm talking about offering A, people come to the site having searched for A but leave before reaching the purchase page.
There can be 100's of reasons that people don't purchase from a website. If you assume that they are buyers and not look-e-loos, and assume that you had exactly what they were looking for, had the money and wanted to make a purchase... then you have to turn to the site, the presentation, and determine what turned them off.

Assuming all the other factors are true, the biggest reason for not pulling the trigger has to come down to credibility.

Maybe they didn't like the design of the site
Maybe they determined that you are a 3rd party reseller and went to the source to get particulars on shipping and refund info.
Maybe they found a cheaper price.

It could be a million different things



By noting on which page they land, tracking them through the site, and noting their exit page, I can try to determine why they did not find what they were looking for. But first I must determine what they were really looking for, regardless of what they searched for.

Eg. They search for 'business coach' and arrive on my site. No matter where you land on my site, it's pretty obvious that you have found a business coach. So they found what they said they wanted but they didn't buy, so that tells me they didn't find what they REALLY wanted. That is what I must discover and make clear that I offer it.

Your head will explode if you try to separate "what they searched for" from "what they really wanted". You have to assume that what they searched for is what they wanted or else you will be chasing your tail all over the internet trying to compensate for every variable.

You also are not doing yourself any good by diverting away from your core search parameters. There is no reason to believe that if someone searches for a specific phrase that they didn't really mean it, they meant something else.
The problem is likely somewhere else.


Specific case - from my stats I see a person searched for "small business mentors advisors" - they land on a page of my site entitled (not surprisingly) "small business advisor." Exactly what they want, right? Then they go to a page entitled, "Build your business with a Business Coach." Then they return to their landing page and then disappear. What can I learn from this?

1. The "Next" page is about home businesses, which they did not click. Possibly they are not operating a business from home, or learning about doing so does not interest them.
2. Instead they go to the business section front page. This page addresses the reader as if they are already in business and want to grow their business.
3. Perhaps they were not already in business, perhaps they were just starting or considering starting their own business and wanted some "advice."
4. They spend 1.1/2 minutes on each page - enough time to read them through. Our visitor then returns to the 'advisor' page and departs.

My goal is to ascertain what this person failed to find. He said he wanted a small business mentor advisor and he found one by landing on my site. But he didn't find exactly what he wanted. Perhaps I offer what he really wanted but didn't ask for. Perhaps he was considering starting a business. If I want to serve people considering starting a business, I need to change my site to show that.

I hope that explains better.

I see you looking for possible reasons that want to point to people not searching for what they want, and I think that people are a lot more search saavy today, than they were 3 years ago.
Is it possible that you had what he was looking for, but he didn't like what he saw?

You have seconds to make a first impression to surfers. Given the competition out there, (because people will likely check out multiple sources on a single page of results) is your website better than the others?
Does it offer better information?
Is the design more appealing?
Is it more credible?

To answer the question of why visitors are leaving without taking action you have to make sure that you have covered all of your home bases before you start looking to the universe for answers.

I can go to 10 different websites to buy the same product but, why do I keep going back to Amazon? Even choosing to purchase from Amazon over the manufacturers website.

There is a reason that I purchased my HP from Amazon, even though I read the specs on the HP website first.

There are many reasons that people do or don't purchase, but credibility leads the list.

When I see such discrepancies in my stats, I immediately turn to the site, pick it apart and see where I went wrong. The way I look at things is, if they arrived looking for what I have and see that I have it and didn't take action, then I did something wrong...and the first 2 places I start are design and content.

billbenson
09-29-2010, 01:28 PM
One thing, Frederick, is you can track if they come back. It would be easy to do in a database by entering the IP's. Not sure what the easiest way for you to do it would be although excel can certainly do it (I don't know how though). By looking at the A,B and C series of the IP (IP == A.B.C.D) you can tell if the same person came back with reasonable certainty. The D segment usually changes frequently with dynamic IP's from your ISP. Maybe they are coming back later and you don't know it. There are probably stat programs that will track this as well. Not sure if G stats does?

If they do come back, where do they go? If they bookmarked a page, which page?

Spider
09-29-2010, 02:49 PM
Yes, Bill, I do that (although it doesn't occur overmuch.) Statcounter lists all visits by a certain visitor (IP address) during the previous however many stat entries, so a revisit, or several revisits, over a couple of weeks are displayed. That can be quite enlightening.

Spider
09-29-2010, 02:57 PM
...When I see such discrepancies in my stats, I immediately turn to the site, pick it apart and see where I went wrong. The way I look at things is, if they arrived looking for what I have and see that I have it and didn't take action, then I did something wrong...and the first 2 places I start are design and content.Harold, we are doing the same thing, except you look to your design and your content for what you did wrong, while I look to what the visitor did to explain what I did wrong which may be design, may be content or may be something else.

I feel you are guessing what you did wrong and I am trying to use the logic demonstrated by my visitor to tell me what I did wrong. Either way, we are attempting to do the same thing in a different fashion. You are starting with the cow to explain the tainted milk, I am starting with the bucket!

Harold Mansfield
09-29-2010, 04:01 PM
Harold, we are doing the same thing, except you look to your design and your content for what you did wrong, while I look to what the visitor did to explain what I did wrong which may be design, may be content or may be something else.

I feel you are guessing what you did wrong and I am trying to use the logic demonstrated by my visitor to tell me what I did wrong. Either way, we are attempting to do the same thing in a different fashion. You are starting with the cow to explain the tainted milk, I am starting with the bucket!

The cow is the most logical solution. You can analyze the bucket in about 2 minutes.
I have to look at it that way because it's the only thing that makes sense, AND, I have seen a significant increase in action by reevaluating the content and presentation.

If I have Blue, and people found me because they were looking for Blue, and they read the page with the Blue on it (1 , 2, and 3 down) and they didn't take action...it means I didn't sell it properly. I didn't engage them in a way that made them want to take action.

Everything else is correct... The right keywords brought the right traffic. The traffic was sent directly to the content..and then nothing happened. It has to be the last step.
It's not them, it's me.
I can go back and redo the keywords and analyze the traffic itself and make all kinds of excuses for what's wrong with the traffic, but the bottom line is..they were there. I got them. they walked into the door to see what I had and then went somewhere else.

When I was a Bartender I used to work with people all of the time that complained about certain customers and blamed the kind of people the were on why they didn't tip as well as others, but for some reason they always seemed to tip me well. Was it because we were the same kind of people? Maybe. Sometimes. But more often than not it was because I made them appreciate my service and want to tip me.
It wasn't the customer. It was the Bartender.

Spider
09-29-2010, 05:01 PM
I disagree that the cow is the most logical solution - the cow cannot be a solution - the cow is only the carrier of the problem - a germ, maybe. Just as the same germ could be in the bucket.

Your last analogy is also not hitting the point. Certainly it was the bartender rather than the customer but you, as bartender, analyzed your customers and found if you did this they tipped, if you did that they didn't. If you smiled when they walked up to the bar, they tipped. If you polished their glass one more time before pouring them a drink, they tipped. You may have discovered that the person who sat at the far end of the bar didn't tip as well as those who sat in the middle, where you could engage them, so you bunched all the stools closer to the middle and eliminated the stool at the end. Or, found that people who sat at the tables away from the bar tipped you more because you brought their drinks to them so you removed all the bar stools, added a couple of tables and served the drinks to the tables. You keep an eye on what happens in the bar and you do those things that encourage more tips.

The point is, Harold, you can try this or try that and you will hit upon some things that work better. Or you can watch your customers for signs that tell you this one wants a fresh glass with each drink, but this person wants one glass to last the evening; this one wants an olive and this one doesn't; this one wants the wisecracks and this other one wants you to be quiet.

It's not a case of serving them beer when they wanted a whisky, it's a case of letting them know and be able to choose between Scotch, Irish, Bourbon, Canadian Rye, single malt, blended, 5-year, 10-year, and so on. The choice may start out only as Bourbon, but by watching and listening to your patrons, you add the other whiskies as demand for them becomes apparent. And, likewise, you eliminate them when demand for them drops. You can only do that - and get the extra tips such service earns - by watching what your visitors want from you and providing it - as long as it is within your terms of what a bartender does.

In fact, it boils down to the same thing - either you learn what your visitors want subconsciously or consiously - but you have to learn what your visitors want before you can offer it.

Spider
09-29-2010, 05:12 PM
I have three whole sections to which something similar is happening - Joint ventures, prospecting and coaching styles. All of them are business topics and the people that visit those sections would appear to be possible targets for my coaching, yet although they consititute the majority of my traffic, the visitors never go to the rest of the site. As a solution, I am considering creating three new and separate domains for this material with links to my coaching domain. If the traffic is serving me no purpose, perhaps the links will.BTW, Harold - what's your view about spinning these sections off into three separate domains?

Harold Mansfield
09-29-2010, 05:34 PM
In fact, it boils down to the same thing - either you learn what your visitors want subconsciously or consiously - but you have to learn what your visitors want before you can offer it.

I still think you are looking at it backwards.
You already have the product that you are offering. Your job is to find the people that want it not the other way around.
I could see that analogy if you had a big retail site and were looking to figure out what to lead with, but that is not the case.

You have product "A". You want to sell product "A". Find the people looking for product "A" and prepare a nice presentation.
You don't need to learn what your visitors want because you should only be attracting visitors that want what you are offering. You already know that there is a market for it, so you already know what they want. You should only be looking to attract those people.

If you are attracting anything else you are shooting for too wide of an audience hoping to convert a small percentage, rather than concentrating on your core and looking to convert everyone.

I don't attract people looking for Flash website design. I don't attract people looking for Joomla websites. I look to attract people that are looking for Wordpress Website service.
I don't change my site to accommodate people looking for Joomla work, and actually, there should be no reason that they would land on my page looking for that. I don't target people looking for just "websites".

You are running around with a net trying to catch everything in the forest instead of just waiting under the acorn tree and letting them fall into the net.

Harold Mansfield
09-30-2010, 03:40 AM
BTW, Harold - what's your view about spinning these sections off into three separate domains?

I don't think spinning them off is the solution. It will take 3 times the work and you will be competing with yourself for traffic and splitting what you have.
I think the solution is better organization of what you have and narrowing in on a focus of exactly what you want to accomplish.
If your goal is to attract business as a service provider ( a coach) I think you need to structure your website like a service provider..Who you are, What you do, and How to contact or hire you.

If there are other pages that have products, links to ebooks or what ever that's fine. If you want to have a blog section to organize your articles, that's a good idea too (actually a great idea) but IMO, the problems you are having are organization and no clear direction of exactly what action you want people to take. What is the main thing?
If it's getting hired, then everything else is secondary and your site should focus on the main thing and rank for that above all else.

Spider
10-01-2010, 09:51 AM
Organization note accepted. The revamp is largely an organizational revamp pursuant to your previous comments about the importance of content organization. It's coming together nicely, if not exactly as you would have done it, but I think you will like it. I am, as I get into it further.

I am also taking on Bill's concept of "one page-one keyword" and VG's remarks about contact and direction. And other people's comments, as they arise.

See? I am listening! ;-)

Harold Mansfield
10-01-2010, 01:26 PM
See? I am listening! ;-)

I know you are and I can't wait to see the evolution. The amount of knowledge that you have deserves a great presentation.

vangogh
10-04-2010, 12:33 PM
Looks like I missed a lot the last few days.

Harold you're right that I wouldn't suddenly start selling fishing lures, however I would tailor and tweak my business and website if people were looking for something a little different than what I offered, An easy example is custom design vs themes. If I thought the market for custom design wasn't going to deliver enough business I might very well stop offering it and change everything to only selling themes. I'm not planning on doing that. Just offering it as an example.


Harold, we are doing the same thing, except you look to your design and your content for what you did wrong, while I look to what the visitor did to explain what I did wrong which may be design, may be content or may be something else.

Frederick if people are searching for a business coach, landing on your site, and leaving without taking any action, the problem most likely is your design and content or something else happening on your site. It's possible the people searching were only looking for information, which would explain why there's no immediate contact, but they clearly were searching for something related to what you do. I agree that understanding the intent of the searcher is something to consider and try to figure out, but there's only so much of that you're ever going to discover.

Search queries are usually one of three types, informational (seeking information), navigational (seeking a specific website), transactional (seeking to buy). Most queries are the first type. People aren't looking to buy during an informational query so what can you do to keep them at your site and coming back. Just because they aren't looking to buy now doesn't mean they won't buy later.

One reason you see me suggesting blogs so often is because they can capture these informational queries and by their nature get people to keep coming back. If you provided a blog that gave the same advice you would give to a client, you'd probably find that in time people would start contacting you through it. Sure you'd be giving away a lot of information for free, but some people would decide they want advice customized for their specific business. The blog helps convince them you're the right person to contact.

Spider
11-05-2010, 11:42 AM
The above discussion - for which I am most grateful - has culminated in a new - no, not new - a re-presentation of my website.

I have started a new thread in the Website reviews forum - http://www.small-business-forum.net/website-reviews/3843-finally-its-up.html#post39224