If you’re looking to sell products or services via your website, it’s important that you understand what actually happens when your customer clicks on that mighty ‘Buy Now’ button. This post will briefly explain the process of online payment and then look at four ways to increase the number of converting customers.

The Four Steps of an Online Payment

There are several different ways for websites to safely take money from their customers, but the below is the most common method:

1. Your customer selects the product or service that they want to purchase and clicks the ‘Buy Now’ button. (It’s a good idea to install shopping cart software to make this part of the process easier for the customer and potentially more fruitful for you.)
2. Clicking the ‘Buy Now’ link takes the customer to a webpage with a secure form (ie. with an SSL Certificate). This is where they’ll enter their card details.
3. Those details will then be stored by a Payment Gateway, an agent that can be thought of as a kind of mediator between your merchant account and the customer’s bank.
4. The Payment Gateway will query both yours and the customer’s bank to check the payment can go ahead. A confirmation is then returned back to the website and, if all is well, the transaction will occur.

Now you understand how the payment process works ‘behind the scenes’, let’s talk about how you can get more customers clicking your ‘Buy Now’ button.

Four Ways To Make the Buy Now Button More Clickable

1. Test the language – Are you sure that the phrase ‘Buy Now’ is right for your business? Why not try testing a few different approaches, such as ‘Invest Now’, ‘Purchase’ or ‘Order’. If you’re offering a service such as a paid-for newsletter, or access to some resources, try testing phrases like ‘Sign Up Now’. There’s a great website called Ninja Button that makes this kind of testing easy.
2. Test the design – As with the language of your Buy Now button, you can’t be sure you’re getting the most out your design until you test it. Could it be bigger? Brighter? A different shape or a different colour? Again, Ninja Button, or Google’s Website Optimizer will help with this process.
3. Testimonials – Make sure to add testimonials from happy customers at all stages of the purchase funnel on your website – that includes somewhere close to your ‘Buy Now’ button.
4. Payment methods – Despite the omnipresence of ecommerce, some web users are still understandably nervous about handing over their payment details online. One way you can reassure them is to offer well-recognised payment methods. Paypal has wonderful brand recognition, as does Google Checkout.
5. Professionalism – There are many ways you can convey the professionalism of your business. A well-designed and well-built site is paramount, as is well-written, error-free copy. It can be tempting to draw attention to your ‘Buy Now’ button with flashing or moving content, but this rarely looks professional; best avoid!

If I had to narrow this list down to just one action, it would be testing. It can seem like a bit of a hassle to set up in the beginning, but testing different combinations of language and design can make huge improvements to your bottom line. It’s worth doing!

I often get asked by small businesses how they can improve the results that their website is getting if they don’t have a significant marketing budget and any specialized design or programming skills. It’s a great question, and I’m going to share the answer with you right here. The expertise I’m about to share comes from over seven years designing, developing, and marketing hundreds of different websites.

1. Benefits not Features

Rewrite your content to be focused on your customer, not on you. This focus on your customers has increased the percentage of visitors taking action in every case that we have seen. But how do you turn this somewhat vague concept into something you can implement? Simple: check out this tool provided at Future Now Inc.. It will measure the percentage of “me-focused” content (features) and “customer-focused” content (benefits) on any website URL you provide it. Rewrite your content on your homepage and key pages to be over 60% customer-focused and watch your sales rise.

2. Don’t Make Your Visitors Think

Visitors online do not read, they scan, As a result of this, they are not interested in trying to understand complicated writing that is getting in the way of what they are trying to accomplish. Check out this helpful tool provided by Added Bytes, and rewrite your content on key pages to a 6th-grade level. You will see your number of confused support calls drop and results increase.

3. Make it Easy to Contact You

Add your phone number (and maybe your address) to the top right corner. A significant number of your visitors are driven purely by convenience, and will be turned off if they cannot immediately find your contact information. Check out this answering service website for a good example of what it will look like to add your phone number to the top right corner. An example of using your address in the top right corner can be found on my website design company’s homepage. Make this change and watch as your prospects start contacting you instead of your competitors.

4. Add Something for Your Visitors

Many of your visitors are not in a “ready to buy” state right now, and they will not feel comfortable contacting you directly or giving you their contact information. Create something of value for them that they can download or read on your website and this will keep you top of mind for when they are ready to buy.

Not sure how to create something like this? Make a list of the top 5 ways that someone can achieve some sort of benefit (save money, save time, make more money, meet new people, improve their home value etc.) without spending money. You can create this in Microsoft Word, add your logo, convert to a PDF, and just like that you have a valuable resource to share.

Now go start improving your website!

For most people the upcoming holiday season will be one for relaxing and spending quality time with the family. But, for some of us it gives us the opportunity to roll up our sleeves and do some SEO work. Here are 10 suggestions for SEO work which can improve your ranking in time for 2010.

Image Optimisation Tweaks

Optimising images across the site can help drive up web traffic from Google image search and normal search.

1. Rename your images – To help the search engines index and rank your images, you’ll need to help them just a bit. Each product or service should have its own image with a descriptive name as close as possible to the product or service. For example, blue-mobile-cover.jpg has much better potential to rank well for the term ‘blue mobile cover’ than blue-4567-s.jpg.

2. Save in the correct format – Another important factor for optimising images is saving them in the correct format. The best results I’ve seen are when images are saved as .jpg as apposed to tiff or bmp.

3. Populate the ‘alt text’ field – The search engines cannot see the image however they can see its name and alternative text. You can view your ‘alt text’ by surfing your site with the images switched off. Take the time to add ‘alt text’ to each image including the product or service title.

3 Content Optimisation Tweaks

Here we are increasing the worthiness of each page to rank better.

4. Forget the manufacturer’s description and write your own – We all do that at times. We get the product live and use the manufacturer’s description word for word. While it might save you some time, other sites have used the same text as well which will make your version less unique. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel, just add some notes of your own which could be as simple as ‘recommended for…’ or ‘product benefits….’. 

5. Use keywords within the text – The keywords for which you’re trying to rank for should appear in the text. Avoid keyword stuffing because mentioning terms 10 times won’t improve your ranking. Instead place the keywords within the context of the page and make sure it reads well. Remember the search engines aren’t your customers, you and I are!

6. Add quality content – One of the best ways to increase your worthiness is to add quality content that your competitors don’t. It could be in the shape of editorial reviews, customer reviews and even how-to guides.

3 Code Optimisation Tweaks

7. Unify homepage versions – Your homepage is your most valuable page in terms of SEO potential. So it makes sense that you’d have one version of it instead of multiple versions. The most common versions of homepage duplication which will require your intervention are www and non www versions, .co.uk and .com versions and the biggest perpetrator is different file extensions such as sitename.co.uk/index.php / index.html etc. You should unify around one version of your homepage and set 301 redirects from duplicates to the source.   

8. Speed up the site – Google recently announced that at some point during 2010 the speed of your site will effect your ranking. SEO aside, it has always affected your conversion so you should look to improve its speed regardless. The more costly option is to invest in more hosting resources and the cheaper option is to display less products or services on one page,  save images as jpg (see tip 2) and improve your text to code ratio. 

9. Find and fix error pages – These 404 error pages could prove to be a pain. Some of them, such as old product pages, old press releases and newsletter copies might have some SEO value as back links. Try and point them to more appropriate pages on your site using 301 redirect to such pages as the product’s category or a closely related product.

A final piece of advice

10. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket – Optimising your site to achieve high levels of web traffic can take time, sweat and a few tries to get it right. In the mean time, look at other channels of traffic such as social networks, paid search and even affiliate marketing.

Good luck in 2010!

This is a guest article by Joseph Eitan founder of Photo Paper Direct. Inkjet consumables online store selling products from Inkjet cartridges to photo paper. 

When I’m talking to people about what I do, one of the most common misconceptions I face is that there’s still a strong belief that running a website is easy to do. Running a successful website is far from easy, it’s blooming hard work!

So I’ve put together a list of the top 7 problems and issues you’ll soon discover when running a website. My goal is not to put you off, but to highlight that it takes experience, skill and bucket-loads of effort to sustain a great website.

1) Web hosting downtime and poor response times

Your web hosting will go down at some point. Forget those claims of 99.9% uptime guarantees from your hosting company, which mean nothing anyway. Sometimes the server might still be accessible, but the page loads so slowly that your website becomes unusable.

Just accept it. When you least want your website to go down, it will go down. The trick is to find a web host who is proactive about their server management, namely that they’re already working on fixes by the time you’ve noticed your website is not working.

2) Random drops in visitors

Any seasoned website owner will agree with this problem. At some point your visitor levels (and/or sales) will just drop for no apparent reason. You’ll spend hours looking over the statistics trying to work out why. Sometimes you might be able to determine that you’ve had a a random drop in rankings in the search engines.

Get up, dust yourself down, and move on. Often it’s better to spend time getting more visitors rather than establishing the actual cause of the drop.

3) You get demotivated and bored

When you’ve been running a website for a while, you do lose interest. Perhaps your earnings aren’t increasing as quickly as you’d like? Perhaps you’re not making any sales? Perhaps you’ve run out of ideas? It’s usually people who persevere through the low periods that become successful.

Try to find ways to inject new ideas and inspiration into your website to give you fresh motivation. I recently wrote a great article on how to come up with fresh ideas.

4) You’re being sued

If you have a website that allows visitor-generated content, such as reviews, comments or forum posts, then there’s every chance that you’ll end up with something offensive on your website. Offensive remarks, in their various guises, can lead to law suits.

Moderate all visitor-generated content. No exceptions. If the content sounds as if it might be an issue, remove or reject it. Moderating user-created content is hard work, but it’s cheaper than being sued.

5) You have no time to update your website

Updating your website includes many aspects, such as moderating comments, adding new articles, adding new products, adjusting the site design, etc. Great websites are constantly evolving and growing.

If you don’t have the time to update your website, then hire someone, be it by outsourcing, via a contract or an employee. If your time is worth more focused on other tasks, then it’s worth spending a little money to keep your website fresh and up-to-date.

6) You need to promote your website

If you want your website to grow, you need to promote your website. However, promoting a website is easily one of the most time consuming aspects of running a website. You need to spend time getting links to your website, you need to create a presence on social networking platforms, you need to establish relationships with other individuals in your community, you need to spend time on marketing materials, etc. The list just goes on.

Just because you have a website, it doesn’t mean you’ll automatically get visitors. Promotion is hard work, and there are no quick solutions either.

7) Competition and copycats

Once you have a great website, it’s not long before someone copies you or starts doing something that’s very similar to you. It’s often because someone wants to replicate your success for themselves. However, they usually don’t realise that they’d be better off doing something different and unique.

Don’t resort to childish behavior (as tempting as it might be to throw a tantrum)! Sometimes you might have a legal case if there’s a copyright dispute. However, I’ve found that working with the competition can yield some great results. This includes advertising exchanges, selling adverts on your website, possibly selling your website to the competition, or even buying the competition!

Any more challenges?

These are the challenges that I’ve personally faced with running my portfolio. What challenges have you encountered with running a website?

If you’re looking to create a website, here are a few tips that are strongly recommended to help you get off to a great start. This page is frequently updated, so do bookmark it!

Table of Contents

• Common Web Terms
• Registering a Domain Name
• Visitor Tracking
• Content Management Systems
• WordPress Resources
• Google Tools
• Building Backlinks
• Growing a network
• Business Cards
• Logo Design
• Asking Questions and Getting Help

Common Web Terms

These are terms and acronyms that you’ll frequently come across whilst running a website.

URL – Uniform Resource Locator

String that identifies a specific resource on the web

e.g. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8054699.stm

HTTP – Hypertext Transfer Protocol

Way of transferring data from server to web browser

HTML – Hypertext Markup Language

A basic language defining structure and content of a web page

CSS – Cascading Style Sheets

A layer on top of HTML, adds formatting. e.g. fonts, colours, sizes, alignment, position

SSL – Secure Sockets Layer

Cryptographic protocols for securely transmitting data over the internet

PHP – Hypertext Preprocessor

Server-side programming language

AJAX – Asynchronous JavaScript and XML

A group of internet technologies for interactive web applications/pages/web sites

RSS – Really Simple Syndication

Format for delivering info from a regularly updated website

There are loads more common terms. Here’s where you can find out more:

• W3Schools Web Glossary
• Daily Blog Tips – Bloggers Glossary
• Web Design Industry Jargon: Glossary and Resources (very useful)

Registering a Domain Name

There are lots of tips and tricks for registering a domain name, so I’ve dedicated a whole site that gives you a great deal of UK domain name advice, called Pure Domains.

Visitor Tracking

You should track who visits your website. This allows you to determine how people are finding your site, and what keywords they use when searching for your site on the search engines.

• Google Analytics – probably the most useful free tracking tool. You get very detailed analysis of your traffic, more than you’ll need for quite a while. Excellent for beginners and advanced users.
• StatCounter – a free tracking tool that gives you up-to-the-minute updates on who’s visiting your site. The analysis tools are not great, but it’s useful if you’ve got a massive peak in traffic and you want to know why. More suited to advanced users.

Content Management Systems (CMS)

Content Management Systems are a fancy way of saying:

software that allows me to easily update the pages on my website without fiddling with the design aspects

There are many free content management systems, since they’re developed on the open-source model.

• WordPress – My personal favourite. Primarily a blogging platform, but is perfectly suited any website where there are potentially lots of pages of information.
• Drupal – A popular CMS, but definitely aimed at users wanting more technical control over their site.
• Joomla – more of a portal-based CMS.
• Want more? You can try out lots of open-source content management systems for yourself at Open Source CMS

WordPress Resources

WordPress is an extremely customisable content management system (CMS), originally designed for running blogs, but is suitable for running any website that releases periodic information (such as news articles). WordPress is not suited to ecommerce, but you could use WordPress for pretty much any other type of website. WordPress allows you to have multiple users with different access who can contribute and help run the site.

• WordPress.org – The organisation that develops WordPress, and where you can download it to install on your own web hosting.
• WordPress.com – Where you can create your own free WordPress blog without having your own web hosting. A great place to start if you’ve never used WordPress before.

Google Tools

• Google Webmaster Tools – Allows you to submit a sitemap, which allows Google to find all of the pages on your website. It also provides statistics on how often your website is being crawled, and what position your site appears in Google search results for keywords.
• Google Local Business Center – Allows you to register your business address and contact details. When someone searches for a business like yours in your area, your details will typically be shown about the normal search results. Those details will be shown on a map with a pin pointing your business location. It’s free, and it’s a great way to get your business, club or society listed in Google.

Building Backlinks

The Do’s

• Do ask for links from related sites
• Exchanges (ok if only a few)
• One way links (ideal)
• Do get involved in guest blogging
• Do put your link in forum signatures
• Do build up networks (on and offline)

The Don’ts

• Don’t buy links
• Don’t spam blogs/forums/etc
• Avoid getting links from unrelated websites
• Don’t ask for links on link pages
• Don’t focus too much on directories
• Don’t do too much of any 1 thing.

Recommended Resources

The do’s and don’ts listed above are very high level. Here are some more detailed tips on link building.

• SEOMoz – Link Building from A to Z – SEOMoz are highly respected in the SEO world. These tips are the current best practice tips.

Growing a network

Growing a network is one of the most important ways to promote your website. Find people with similar interests if you run a club or society. If you run a business, find a business networking group to expand your contacts. This is a great way to get visitors to your site, and sometimes a way for you to exchange links.

Business Cards

If you run a society or a business, business cards are a simple and easy way to remind people of your website. I really recommend Moo.com for getting business cards done. They are pretty cheap (around £10 for 50 cards), and extremely high quality. The best aspect of their service is that you can choose up to 50 different images per order, which means you can create really interesting cards at no extra cost.

Logo Design

Creating a logo that represents your website or business is a fundamental step that can help you establish your brand. Having a memorable logo also means your customers and visitors are more likely to remember you.

I’ve written a detailed article on how to get cheap logo graphics designed, which I highly recommend if you need a new logo.

Asking Questions and Getting Help

No doubt there will be questions that you have in the future, so here are two forums that I recommend where you can ask all kinds of website questions.

• LovingTech Forums – Forums dedicated to everything that’s webmaster related.
• UK Business Forums – Forums dedicated to UK business, but they have very good Internet and IT boards.

Something that I struggle with is too much time in front of a PC. I have what’s otherwise known as a Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI). For me, this means that both of my arms hurt when I use a PC for longer than about 14 hours a week. Something that’s entirely incompatible with being a software developer or web developer.

However, to solve this problem, I have been looking to partner up with a skilled web developer in return for a large share of profits from my ideas. I know my ideas will work, it’s just a matter of getting them implemented. However, I never thought it would be easy finding a business partner, but I’m finding it impossible so far!

I put up a request for business partners (on a couple of forums), but get people who respond who haven’t read my requirements. This is what I’ve been getting:

• offers from people with a wildly different skill set (i.e. .NET/SQLServer when I want PHP/MySQL).
• offers from people who have no time, but they are looking for a web developer. erm, I have no time, that’s why the advert is up! Basically offers of the opposite of what I’m after.
• offers from people wanting me to use their web development services. A big requirement is for a partner, because I don’t have the startup capital. Therefore by partnering, I keep costs low, profits high. If I wanted a web developer, I’m spoilt for choice. There are around 150 in my post code area alone!

To their credit, I have made some good contacts on the back of my adverts, and they’ve been people who’ve made offers in one of the categories above. So they weren’t people I was looking for, but I took the opportunity to network.

However, I have been contacted by 2 people who were really keen to strike up a deal. We exchanged a few emails and things were going well, but I haven’t heard from either in a few days now. Interestingly, a deal with someone who contacted me is going ahead and seems to be going fine so far.

I’d love to know what I’m doing wrong. I seem to be scaring off potential partners! I would have thought that a few websites that make money without too much effort would be desirable?

Perhaps there are so few people who share my commitment and drive to implement my ideas, that I’m struggling to find them? Looks like I’ll be flying solo for a while, despite my efforts.