Websites that are at best pretty, and at worse damaging those businesses.

So here for you today is my quick & dirty guide to building a great website, for very little money.

Please, please use WordPress. (make sure you use wordpress.org NOT wordpress.com)
Fancy designers will turn up their noses, but it’s free – as opposed to being locked into an agency’s own, proprietary system (which means they’ll charge you $100-150/hr for all changes!)
It rocks! and best of all, it enables YOU to be in control & easily change info whenever you like (as easy as changing a word doc)

Check out the Fantasic Thesis Theme, or the better looking (but less powerful) woothemes.com for some ideas on design
A typical theme (the look & feel) will cost you $50-100
WordPress is free (we like free)

Google Analytics (for tracking) is free
Google AdWords will get people to your site for around $1 a time (ask us if you want some training!)
And if you really need more, all the wordpress plugins (extra bits that do all sorts of fancy goodness) are either free or very cheap

also check out 99designs.com (a great little Melbourne company) where you can get a ‘custom theme’ created for you for about $300-500
the best thing with 99 is that you get to see ALL the designs & then pick the winner.

You’ll need a domain name if you don’t already have one – I recommend Net Registry for .com.au domains (Melbourne IT charge way over the odds!)

And you’ll need hosting – we use WebCity & love them. #update – we use the Business Pro#1 pack – just $9.95/month

Oh & if you need images use iStockPhoto.com ~$3-7 each

And there you have it…

everything you need to get your old website replaced for under $1000.

So you can focus on what you do best – and not being ripped off by graphic designers that don’t know the first thing about marketing

From this we can tell that a decent, benefit-driven Ad highly relevant to that keyword & a decent Landing Page will probably cost about $3-4 per click at the top of the page.

And yet 2 of the top 5 results are for American sites (complete with American credit check jargon that most Aussies wouldn’t begin to understand) and another site is broken – see image.

How to avoid a broken AdWords campaign:

1. Check your Landing Page regularly – at least once a month – on all 3 major browsers (IE 6 or 7, Firefox & Safari). There are websites that will show you what your site looks like if you don’t own a Mac

2. Ensure that your list of countries (in your AdWords account) is limited only to those countries that you regualrly sell to. Once you know your account has a great ROI, then by all means extend your reach – but do so with a different campaign, a specific landing page, no jargon & ideally a domain name for that country. A .com.au domain for an Australian AdWords account will make a huge difference to your CTR (how much? it varies by industry, but we’ve seen accounts triple their CTR overnight with a .com.au & that’s without further testing)

3. Ensure that you can actually sell to the countries that are on your list! If your only payment option is PayPal, are residents of those countries even allowed to open a PayPal account?

4. Use Google Analytics to check your Bounce Rate regularly – at least monthly, if not weekly. A higher than normal (whatever normal is for your site) bounce rate indicates that visitors are not getting what they expected. GrokDotCom has an excellent post on this topic this week.

5. Common sense is sadly under-rated! As often as you can, sit down at a computer with someone that’s not a staff member & look over their shoulder as they navigate through your site. Try to stay silent & just watch! You’ll learn a lot. Do this often.

6. Install ClickTale & watch movies of your visitors trying to use your site – probably an eyeopening experience.

7. Hire an expert to look over your site & give you objective feedback.

Did I miss any? Feel free to add more below in the comments. Thanks, Mike

Springwise had a feature about a great new site www.adperk.com. So I went to have a look & decided to request a media pack – this looks perfect for a side project we’re working on.

Now, I should admit that we Aussie’s often have trouble filling out forms on some American sites because the format of our phone numbers is different… but this was crazy!

Here’s part of the email I wrote to them… but please don’t just read it – make sure your site doesn’t make this very serious error

I just found you via springwise as did I’m sure a few hundred (few thousand?) other people.I requested a media pack as I’m very interested in both using use to advertise a product & as a case study in an upcoming keynotehowever – the phone number field is almost impossible to complete. I had to read the source code of the site in order to get past your form!! Not many people will go to that effort.

I imagine that the techs that set up the site were given the spec of your CRM system
that says numbers have to be either 999-999-9999 or 999.999.9999
the problem is your customers & prospects don’t know that
(999) 999 9999
999 999 9999 (just spaces!)

neither worked!!
& as for my real number +61-408-297 802
not a chance!

I can understand only wanting American advertisers on your platform… but you HAVE to make it easy for them to get in touch. Let your visitors enter their number however they like (or at least AT A MINIMUM give them an example to copy)

Make it easy! Why not just have your staff member enter the number into the CRM when they actually make that call – it’ll take 3 seconds.
Better yet – have a techie write a bit of code that accepts the number & turns it into something your CRM can cope with.

I hope you change it soon & I hope the business grows.

I don’t like to beg, but I will. Please spend 30 minutes of your life to watch the masterful Bill Strickland speak at TED 2002

You will be inspired, amazed, provoked & yes you may even be compelled to take action

Please enjoy the talk

It’s just such a joy to use. I had lunch today (at the wonderful Corner Store in Richmond – the BLT is amazing) and spent 15 mins chatting with a lovely couple who saw the iPhone & wanted to have a play. It’s a conversation piece, as well as a phone, browser, iPod etc etc!

The lesson for our businesses? How do we make something so mind-blowingly gorgeous (not just to look at, but to use) for our own customers? What benefits/features can we add? More importantly, what can we strip away?

How do we create services that make people smile everytime they use them? Please join in & post your thoughts below… we may not have Apple’s funds, but we can certainly start to think like them.

Have a wonderful weekend!

The number of visitors to your website not using Internet Explorer (IE) is growing daily. If you’re site is like most, you’ll have 10-20% using Firefox and another 5-10% using Safari – the browser that Macs use.

Why does this matter to you? If your site doesn’t display correctly on a non-IE browser, it’s costing you in sales, subscribers & readers. In short you’re throwing money away every day. For no good reason!

So take a quick trip over to www.browsrcamp.com, enter your website URL & bingo – you’ll see an image of how your website looks to all those Mac users. You can even choose to see how it looks on various screen sizes! Very useful

And – phew – it looks like WebSavvy passes the test

It gives some great examples on just how easy it is to use these days & has this interesting quote from Fabio Rosati, CEO of Elance

We’re just coming out of the early adopter phase. We’re starting to see more and more mainstream people … people that are not Silicon Valley technofreaks, that are not online entrepreneurs

If you have some jobs on your to do list, from the mundane ‘re do the graphics on the homepage’ to the somewhat larger ‘build a customer database’, then give elance, rentacoder or www.guru.com a try

You’ll love the price & the quality – most of the time – is excellent.

 

Hopefully you’re already using it to track the changes you make on your website & ensure that that all important conversion rate gets better and better over time.

So today, here’s a quick look at one of the reports that’s had a makeover, the Goal Funnel Report.

You can easily see where the holes are in your website & exactly how many people are dropping out of them! Then you can use the 80/20 rule to prioritise: and patch up the largest holes first.

Every hole you fix means more conversions, more happy customers & more profit.

The example below starts at the beginning of the checkout process as this client’s current store software doesn’t allow Google Analytics to be added to each page (yes, we will migrate to a more sensible solution very soon!). Even so, the report clearly shows that the checkout page needs some improvements (remind buyer of benefits, larger product image, less navigation options etc). While the Ship/Pay page is obviously working very well.

Which pages on your site do you need to track? What one thing could you tweak today (right now!) to help improve your conversion rate just that little bit?

But the experience of trying to book that ticket was so bad that I wanted to show it to you as a small case study in how the big boys so often get it wrong on their websites. Let’s look at how not to follow the clues every visitor gives you, completely ignore them & make buying from you as difficult as possible!

Remember that every visitor to your site is a human being – not just a click! We all know that if we treat our customers as the most important part of our businesses that we’ll win in the end.

So regardless of your marketing budget (more about that crazy phrase another day) let’s take a look at how the big corporates keep managing to lose customers. Even customers that are ready, willing, able & *wanting* to buy what they have for sale.

Let’s try to buy a ticket

I thought why not. I’ll surprise my girlfriend (until she reads this!) and book a trip up to Byron Bay for a weekend in July for my birthday. This part was easy, scroll down the page until I find the link for the trip I want. Obviously that’s what they want me to do… otherwise they wouldn’t go to the trouble of choosing from one of the 59 (yes I counted) links!

Great – almost there… I’ve picked my flight, I know the price. But wait! What’s this. Why In The Name Of All That’s Decent have they taken me to their normal booking screen

ok – I guess I can enter in those places again… only take a few seconds.
Now I remember something about restricted dates from the headings on that long list… but I can’t remember them. That’s cool though – I’m sure they won’t let me book if it’s not allowed. So I pick the dates for my birthday weekend .. and get that horrible windows-knows-you-screwed-up noise & this wonderful message

Hmmm, useful. Then it drops me back to the previous screen & off we go again.
So I change the date to an ‘allowed one’ and of course… because I’m no longer surprised by their stupidity… I get this:

So I leave & go to the ever-easy to use VirginBlue site & buy my trip from them.

Please listen to the clues that your visitors are giving you. And don’t forget information they’ve already told you (like a destination, or a country, or their name!)

Treat your visitors like human beings & you’ll win. And the good news is, even the smallest business can outsmart the big boys!

Seth wants a (TypePad) plugin to show the best posts from his archives. I couldn’t find one either when I was designing this (WordPress) site, so I asked Jahufar (via rentacoder) to write one for me. Personally I think he did a great job creating the four categories in the sidebar of this blog – please let him know if you agree (or need some programming).

Like Seth, I wanted a way to showcase my most popular content. So I chose four main categories and I can include as many links under each as I like – 5 seemed like a good number. I can change the links very easily (Jahufar made it drag & drop so even I can do it) and even change the category and/or graphic if I need to.

Of course I also have a link (top right) to the main archives & as I add more & more content I’ll change the way that works so you can search by month and or category (adwords, analytics etc).

From looking at my own analytics, it seems to work… please let me know if it’s not as good as I think!

Seth – I hope this idea sparks something & we all look forward to you bringing The Dip Tour to Australia sometime soon