The Weasel Clause – that’s what Seth Godin calls it when you hide something nasty in the fine print. Offer one thing & then sneakily hit them with something else when they’re not looking. A sucker punch to the head!

As you may already know how much I don’t like GoDaddy & am not a fan of their practices… which is why I cancelled all of my domains with them months ago…

So you can imagine my surprise to wake up this morning to an email & a charge on my credit card from GoDaddy “according to our agreement”….The cheeky buggers!

Yep I know, I agreed to the T&Cs, I should have read the agreement more closely, 10% my fault. I get it.

BUT – as the master Godin points out in this Influence economy, trust is a fragile thing. Mess with it once & it goes away. Forever. And the disgruntled talk!

FYI I highly recommend namecheap for .com domains & netregistry for .com.au – neither company is sneaky.

Common AdWords Mistakes

Over the coming weeks, I’ll be expanding on this list & telling you how to solve every one – it’s part of a new free product we’re putting together.

Have we left any out? Did you make any other mistakes when you first started using AdWords?

• Bidding too High
• Only using 1 Campaign
• Only using 1 AdGroup
• Bidding too Low
• Too Few Keywords
• Too many Keywords in each AdGroup
• Not checking Quality Scores for Keywords
• Not Testing Different Ads
• Not testing different URLs
• Allowing Google to control which Ads are shown
• Not using the target Keywords in the Ad
• A broken link!
• Not testing the Landing Page
• Ignoring Geographical targeting
• No Negative Keywords
• Ads Running on Content & Search in the same Campaign
• Ignoring Content Network completely
• Not tracking results on the Content Network sites
• Copying Campaigns to Content & not changing bids
• Not Using Conversion Tracking
• Not using any kind of Tracking
• Sending all Visitors to the Homepage
• Not using Keyword Matching Options
• Using DKI without Conversion Tracking
• Not offering anything Unique in the Ad Copy
• Not checking to see what the competition is advertising
• Not using Image Ads
• Not growing the keyword list
• Failing to find out exactly what visitors were searching for

I’m an idiot. I tend to leave things to the last minute. So it should come as no surprise that I’m getting on a plane to speak in Fiji tomorrow & don’t have any business cards to take with me to the conference! Told you – idiot!

So I do what any normal Aussie does in this situation: call in a favour & jump on Google.

The favour was to an excellent graphic designer (if you need a website designed, artwork done etc let me know & I’ll put you in touch with Karl – he doesn’t want me to link to him here).

Google was to find a 24 hour business card printing service. What follows are two examples of how to sell & how not to sell online. And once again the winner is the little business not the big corporate.

I know there’s a Kinkos around the corner from me, so I jump on there site & fill in the online quote form. It’s not specific to a store – but I figure with my postcode they can figure it out.

Imagine my surprise when I get this email back:

I am currently on annual leave from the 22 – 25th of August, please leave me an email & i’ll get back to you.

Quote  requests have been redirected to Leonie to distribute to sales rep.

Thank you
Sendy

I kid you not. When Sendy goes on holiday, all online quoting appears to stop! Unbelievable. But true.

A better way to get customers:
Now compare that to the guys at ePlot

• instant online quote – that changes as I change my specification. Transparency wins online!
• a local address & phone number that gives me the assurance I need that I can walk around the corner & see them if I have to – or in my case cycle round there tonight to pick up my finished cards!
• quick & easy upload of artwork (thanks again Karl!)
• quick & easy payment. OK so PayPal was the only option, but at least it was an option (see Yaro’s take on PayPal here)

The lesson? Make it easy for your prospects to start the process – and make sure the process works all the way through to delivery. Oh & maybe a vacation autoresponder isn’t the best method to use (anyone at FedEx Kinkos reading this – feel free to get in touch & we’ll talk about how we can help ;)

Sendy – I hope you had a great vacation.. there’s probably a fair bit of email awaiting your return!

Regulare readers will know that I’m not the first to jump up & down to recommend GoDaddy – quite the opposite.

Just in case you were still considering using them, here’s Ian’s tale of woe & woeful mismanagement

Take a peak around his site while you’re there – some excellent info

It’s a wonderful thing. More & more businesses are becoming aware of how important their Landing Pages are. Regardless of how someone found your site (ppc, email etc) that first impression on your Landing Page will have a massive effect on your conversion rate.

So two excellent resources today that I highly recommend – each will take you about 1-2 minutes to read & could make you thousands of $

GrokDotCom is always excellent. Here Jeff explains 5 keys to increasing conversion on your pages: scent, transparency, specificity, proof & readability:
http://www.grokdotcom.com/2008/07/09/5-copywriting-key%E2%80%99s-to-landing-page-credibility/
Likewise the ever-informative CopyBlogger. Roberta covers the first 7 reasons why many big businesses fail with their email campaigns:
http://www.copyblogger.com/how-crappy-landing-pages-kill-email-campaigns/

Have you tested a new Landing Page recently?

Yes this is a whinge, but it’s also a lesson on how not to treat your customers.

If you provide an online application process (like NAB do for corporate credit cards) please don’t call your potential customer (more than a week later) & say “congratulations, you’re approved for that card – I’m going to email you a form to complete & sign so we can send your card out”

Why Mike? What’s the problem? Can’t see a problem so far… in fact this all sounds quite good.

Except “complete & sign” means start from scratch! What they mean is “Fill in a completely blank form even though you spent 15 painful minutes a week ago completing 28 pieces of information … we’ve managed to ignore all of that & would like you to go through the entire painful process again, but with a pen this time, not a keyboard.”

Your prospects (& hopefully customers) deserve better. If you’re going to treat prospects as a commodity, please turn off all of your advertising now. Today. Before the weekend. Save us all the hassle of dealing with you. Argh.
Of course I know that only big businesses are this dumb. I know you business isn’t… but please do me a quick favour. Try walking through your site this weekend from the Landing Page to the Thank You page… and see how easy you are to deal with. Have a great start to Winter/Summer :)

Why do companies spend hundreds of thousands on great PR, advertising & building buzz to drive you to their website, only to completely mess up the last hurdle?

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.

 

If you’ve been online for more than a year or two, you’ve probably registered a .com domain with GoDaddy. And why not! As long as you don’t get sucked in to the gazillion options on the way to the checkout it’s hard to find a cheaper registrar or indeed one as quick and easy to setup.

However, if you’ve been around online awhile, you’ve probably also heard horror stories of what GoDaddy can and does do to domains if you violate their terms and conditions.

Now we at WebSavvy do not condone spammers in any shape or form. We’ve never ever done it – never will. However, it only takes one person to receive an email from you, forget they signed up to your list, and report you as a spammer – and things can go pear shaped!

Should the worst happen & GoDaddy receive a spam report, they will lock your domain. They won’t give you access – at all. Got other domains in the same account, they’re in danger too! No problem you say, I’ll give the a call & sort it out. Nope – that department doesn’t have a phone! You have to do it all by email & they make it very hard!

Luckily it’s never happened to me or friends in Australia – but every month there’s another post on the Warrior forum detailing another account of woe. So it’s time to be proactive & move them before anything happens!

Mike Filsaime recently recommended www.namecheap.com so I’m going to give them a go & I’ll create a CheatSheet for you tomorrow to detail the steps of the process – because they ain’t obvious!

(by the way, I use www.namescout.com.au for Australian registrations)

See you tomorrow.

Not directly related to AdWords or Analytics today, but a very useful tool for those of us who don’t yet own a Mac.

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 :)

You don’t have millions to spend building a brand with traditional media. You want action, direct response, more customers and to let the brand build over time as more & more people know about you. Care about you.

So what can we learn from the guys at the big end of town? Yet again, it seems they insist on giving us lessons in what not to do.

I’m sure you’ve seen the very pretty ads on tv for HP. They helped create Shrek & sponsor Formula 1 cars. Wonderful.

After much research for a new printer, I discovered that they had a new version of the 7400 series due out in June. I prefer the look of their models to the Canon multifunction printers, so thought I’d send hp.com.au a quick email asking when the 7500 series was due out & where I could buy one.

Of course I got the usual “thank for your enquiry, we’ll be in touch” autoresponse. But, over a week later, nothing. Not a peep!

So what can we learn?

Don’t spend money on flashy Ads. Spend it on looking after customers & (if you want more) looking after prospects.

Don’t spend tons of cash trying to get people interested, if all you’re going to do once they identify themselves is to completely ignore them.

And DO listen. Listen when customers speak. Listen when they suggest improvements. Listen when they try to help.

Now get out there & help a customer! (and don’t even think about advertising on tv – at least for another month)