But this may not be a bad thing as long as the content of the website provides the answers your visitors need. Ask yourself if you really need that page – or if the information that is parked there would be better on more relevant pages.

Frequently Asked Questions are not Questions You Wish They Would Ask

This is a common mistake – adding a page full of information about your products and services, in a question-and-answer format, that isn’t what your customers want to know when they click onto a “Common Questions” or “Frequently Asked Questions” page.  A genuine Frequently Asked Questions page should support your site by reducing the number of common enquiries submitted to you by e-mail or on your customer service telephone number – and should not replace having quality copywriting and search engine optimisation on your content pages.

If your customers really ask “how do I order this from your site? What payment methods do you take? How much does delivery cost?” your page content should be optimised to include these details on relevant pages to ensure your users do not have to go searching for it instead of completing their purchase.

For example, if your site offers personalised car widgets, and your goal is to have customers contact you for a quote, the individual product pages should answer the questions that you think your customers should ask – or that they might actually ask – about the widget. The fewer clicks they have to make to find out that the A2019 widget they’re interested in is made of chrome-plated steel and takes up to 3 weeks to customise, the better.

Are you writing the right questions?

If you’re building a Common Questions page to reduce the volume of simple enquiry messages or calls, make sure you’re asking and answering the questions in an accessible way your readers will understand. Assume that your customers do not have inside knowledge of your industry and simplify the language – instead of saying “What vehicle manifold will my A2019 fit onto?” phrase the question as “Where can I attach my new widget?”

Your answer should be equally simple – remember that your readers will be skimming the content, and may only read the first couple of words of the answer.  Answer the question briefly in the first sentence, and explain it further if necessary:

Q. Where can I attach my new widget?

A. Rear-view mirror or external aerial. The widgets are designed to clip securely, with a rubberised grip to prevent scratching.

What questions should my Common Questions page answer, then?

The best answer to this is “The questions your customers have actually asked.” If you have an enquiries form or a customer service number, note down the questions and topics you are contacted about. When you’ve assembled half a dozen or so questions that have been asked more than once, it may be time to consider adding the questions and their answers to your website.

You can also solicit questions from your readers, to find out whether your content is providing the information a user needs – if multiple people ask the same question, it may be helpful to add that to a FAQ page, or to update the copy on the existing pages in order to answer the questions asked and improve the page’s relevance to your users.

Any questions?

If you visit www.wsi-ebizsolutions.biz and look through the site, are there any questions you have that you didn’t see an answer for?

I’d like you to ask them in the comments for this post.

We were approached by the Committee in January to plan a new and modern replacement to the old website.  After meeting with the Committee we were able to develop a new website that promoted the Needs of the Charity.  Our main aim was to build a site that was really simple for the volunteers to work with so that they can upload their latest news and images onto the site.

In 1997 the Crossroads Centre was opened, funded by some of the money raised in the Crossroads Shop.  The premises are on Holmfirth Road in Meltham, opposite the Fire station. Free, confidential, advice and information is given by recognised agencies.  Advice is offered by the Citizen’s Advice Bureau, Ridley and Hall Solicitors, Work Link and Support 2 Recovery.  A counselling service is provided by UCHM (United Churches Healing Ministry) and clients are asked to make a contribution to the cost of this service.  Around 25 Crossroads Volunteers work hard to support the project and the running of the shop and centre.

The site was completed at the end of March and we were invited to a ‘Low Key’ Launch party.  We are looking forward to a great working relationship with the team at Meltham Crossroads.

Hi Steve

Thank you very much for our new website – we love it – its attractive and easy to use.

Thank you for joining us at our very ‘low key’ balloon launch this morning.  We look forward to a continuing relationship with you as you host the site.

All best wishes

Jean

Comparing your site to others in your industry

Although nobody wants their website to be a carbon copy of a competitor’s, it is important to check your competitors to make sure you’re offering at least as much information on your site as they offer on theirs.

Things customers might expect from your site, especially if your competitors provide it:

• Do you clearly display opening hours (if applicable) and contact details?
• Do you offer an e-mail address or a contact form?
• Do you show prices, a menu, services or a stock list if applicable?
• Do you show what payment options you accept, either on your site or in your store?
• Do you provide directions or a map?

What your potential customers might be saying about you

Social media – forums, blogs and networking sites – can also have a significant effect on your business. In the case of this particular shop, the majority of their online advertising has been done by word of mouth and user recommendations – and this has been a factor in their growth as a business.

But the negative reviews of the company’s newly launched website on a well-used forum with high natural rankings may have a long term effect – particularly when comparisons have been made and links provided to other industry standard websites that do contain the information that the site users want to see.

What could this company do?

A competitor analysis would provide an overview of other sites in the industry, either UK-wide or targeted to their region. This could provide an insight into the expectations of users based on their experience of other companies’ websites.

Performing a WebScan on their site would help ensure that the site is optimised, search-engine friendly and compliant with W3C standards.

And lastly, social media monitoring would highlight issues like the discussion of the current website, so that appropriate action – whether that be revising the website to meet expectations or responding to the discussion to explain the reasoning behind the current site’s design – can be taken.

Five Website Tips for Engaging Consumers Today
The web is not a static medium: as technologies improve, user expectations increase. As they do, meeting customers’ expectations will mean developing your marketing to be more appropriate, timely and relevant to what consumers want.

Here are five steps to develop your website to engage more effectively with your customers:

1. Study Customers’ Online Behaviour
Use your website analytics to learn from your intended audience – your customers – and give them what they want. Identify website hot spots that attract the most attention; understand when your email marketing messages will be best received; discover which social platforms are leading them to you.

If used well, your web analytics are a key component in understanding and fulfilling your customers’ expectations.

2. Consider Your Content Presentation
The first step in engaging customers is not only the quality of your content, but also the ease with which it can be read and its user-friendliness. A professional web design and carefully thought out content arrangement will help you make a great first impression – and draw your website visitors in.

3. Creative Content Formats
The web is no longer a text-based medium, and hasn’t been for a while. Even the less frequent web user will be used to animated imagery and video content. Be creative with your content to engage your visitors’ senses and get your message across dynamically, but ensure the technology doesn’t distract visitors from your pitch.

4. Emphasise Social Media Connections
Make it easy to share your content across multiple social networks, such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Reddit, Facebook and many more. Including an easy-to-use ‘Share’ widget with your content makes content sharing a breeze and demonstrates your intention to be engaging.

5. Make it Easy to Correspond – No Jumping Through Hoops
If you want to encourage correspondence, show it. Make it a simple process for site visitors to leave comments or get in touch to take ‘social conversation’ to the next level. Streamline your forms and have multiple points of contact through which visitors can leave comments.

Finally, with all the above, adapt your marketing mix to incorporate a coordinated, consistent approach. Developing a coherent online marketing campaign can be done very effectively at a fraction of the cost of traditional promotional activities.

Get Social Media Marketing Working for You
The choice of social media platforms continues to grow – with a plethora of social networking websites to choose from. While hugely successful sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube may be taking all the plaudits, there are many more social networking websites to consider. Your first goal is to establish where your target audience is active, and then ‘get on board that bus’.

A final word of warning before we move on to review the 20 social networking tactics for business. Don’t dive in too soon. Take some time to monitor and learn from your customers’ existing activity. This will enable you to participate in a similar fashion, rather than sticking out like a sore thumb.

20 Ways to Use Social Media to Promote Your Business
The following 20 social media marketing tactics will enable you to genuinely participate within social networks while simultaneously promoting your business successfully.

1. Highlight – and link out to – industry news or world news relevant to your field.
2. Share your own thoughts on topics related to your business.
3. Feature links to insightful articles and include an explanation as to why they are valuable.
4. Be helpful; share some of your expertise to help build a positive reputation.
5. Ask questions to get feedback and invite discussion on industry topics.
6. Recommend other social media users –they will usually reciprocate your recommendation.
7. Hold a contest and publicise it across your social media profiles. Competitions can spread like wildfire across social networks.
8. Announce business updates, including links to new products or special features.
9. Link to your website content occasionally; too often might seem pushy, but this doesn’t mean to say you cannot do it at all.
10. Link to rich media content, such as webcast presentations or videos that enhance your message.
11. Announce – and link to – the publication of your latest email newsletter.
12. Similarly, link to your latest blog post with a brief summary.
13. Post discount coupons and other deals exclusive to your social media audience.
14. Personalise your profile with your company logo and colours, and maybe even an image of yourself.
15. Think quality, not quantity. You don’t need to be the most prolific participant to impress.
16. Don’t be afraid to share some personality.
17. Pick up tips and tricks from other experts in your field.
18. Share links to your social media profile, or profiles from your website, newsletter and regular email signature.
19. Combine your content across multiple web platforms, including your website and social media profiles.
20. Identify the best times of day to engage with your target audience

In conclusion, remember that whether you are tweeting, poking or tagging, be yourself and enjoy participating in the social conversation.

WSI has franchises worldwide, and franchise members have been donating to the fund. WSI Home Office matched the donations from the entire IC network, which means that WSI collectively raised $8,000 toward the Haiti relief efforts!

WSI Home Office immediately sent this contribution to their contacts at World Vision to further their efforts in providing food, water, medical suppliers and shelter to the estimated 3 million people who were affected by the disaster.

Here is a statement received from World Vision:
“WSI has been a generous contributor to World Vision’s humanitarian efforts for years. With the recent crisis in Haiti, we needed immediate financial assistance to get much needed aid to those children and their families impacted by the earthquake. Without hesitation, WSI rallied up its franchise network and partners to raise funds for this purpose. I am so impressed with WSI’s dedication, commitment and hard work with their fundraising efforts. World Vision is thankful to have such faithful and committed partners like WSI.” – Richard Chapman, Development Advisor, World Vision Canada

Update from World Vision as of February 9:
February 9, 2010, Port-au-Prince – Nearly a month after the catastrophic quake, Haiti’s survivors face more than just staggering physical needs such as food and shelter. More than 9 out of 10 people World Vision staff members spoke to had lost loved ones — including friends, extended family, or close family — and need to make time for grieving and establish normal routines in order to recover. Access to the basics of life and some sense of control is also an essential part of coping with loss.

World Vision spoke to 150 people across three sites in Port-au-Prince, where our teams are providing emergency supplies and services to children and families. More than 40 percent of people asked had lost an immediate family member, while 14 percent said multiple members of their immediate family had been killed by the quake.

WSI is proud to be a strategic alliance partner of the Make Child Poverty History foundation.

At the moment I’ve not had a chance to have a play with it yet, but it looks to be offering an easy way to share content online with an improved mobile experience.

Buzz will show a thumbnail of YouTube video’s and make it easy to play in line.

With photos, it will show thumbnails, with a custom photo viewer, which lets you flip through pictures and see them “big and fast”. You can “like” and “unlike” stuff, and expand comments.

Public/Private sharing – The post box will let you post updates publicly or privately. If it’s public, it will go to your Google profile, and is indexed by Google’s real-time search.

In your in-box, you’ll see notifications that contain real-time comments. It will sit in the same in-box as your regular email, but you can move between your regular in-box and your Buzz stuff.

Mobile could be one of the biggest keys to the success of this product. Google says Google.com is the world’s most popular mobile home page, and Buzz can be accessed from there on iPhone and Android devices.

Buzz could also benefit businesses as an organisational tool. The first thing that comes to mind is the expansion of communication with existing contacts. When you’re frequently seeing what your Gmail contacts are saying, it will not only keep those people fresh in your mind, but it could develop further communication.

The question is, will Gmail users buy into this quick sharing? Google thinks so because it’s a part of the evolution from email, to IM, to status updates. In Google’s eyes, this is part of the evolution to the next big jump to Google Wave. Buzz could be the little step needed to get people to think about communicating in a way beyond email and IM.

The real reason it can be difficult to stomach replacing an existing site is psychological – people are hard-wired to do one thing that will cost them money instead of making it for them, even when it comes to websites.

The Sunk Cost Fallacy

Websites can be expensive, especially when you consider all of the modern bells and whistles that can be added – ecommerce, social media marketing widgets, video and so on. A fully featured website is a significant investment for any business. The key to this investment, however, is the return on investment that your website can provide. It’s there to bring you customers and attract them back for return business.

But when the investment on that website has been made, it is very difficult to take a step back a few years on and say “This was working for us in the beginning, but business coming from the website has steadily tapered off. This site just isn’t getting the job done any more – it’s time to replace it.” As people, we are very reluctant to replace something we’ve invested a great deal of time, money and effort into – even if keeping it or adding to it is going to cost us even more.

This is what’s known as the “sunk cost fallacy” – the idea that somehow plugging more money into something that isn’t doing the job and isn’t what you want is better than accepting that the original investment’s useful life has ended and starting with something new.

My Toaster’s Broken….

Of course, this idea isn’t doing you any favours – if your toaster was no longer working, and it would cost £20 to fix it or £15 to buy a new one with the same features … surely you’d buy the new toaster, right?

What if you had a broken toaster, and it would cost £20 to fix it, or £30 to buy a new one – it’s more expensive, but it has features you’d like to have and it comes with a one-year manufacturer’s warranty? Would you have your older toaster repaired then, or would you get the one that does what you really want?

If you’d spend less money but get significantly less for it, you’re falling prey to the sunk cost fallacy… and people do the same thing with websites. Older site architecture can be more difficult to bolt new features onto, and a fix that sounds cheaper on the surface than replacing the site as a whole can become a much more expensive exercise when adding new features causes problems with older ones.

Your Aging Website

Take a step back if you have an older website – is it still doing the job you need it to do?

If it doesn’t … does it make more economic sense to update it – or replace it?

Done right, PPC marketing provides an instant source of targeted traffic and can boost sales in a cost-effective way, helping you to improve your Internet return on investment (ROI).

Why Pay Per Click Marketing?

 Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is great for free traffic, but sometimes it can take time to rank well for the keywords that are most relevant to your business. Even if you are ranked well for your keywords, your PPC ads can reinforce your branding and drive even more traffic to your site.

A well devised PPC marketing campaign will enable you to target potential customers who are looking specifically for your service – and can pay for itself many times over.
 
Best Practice PPC Ad Techniques

There are several ways to maximize your PPC marketing efforts, including the right keyword selection, organising the campaign in to ad groups, landing page preparations and the all important ad copy. Here are ten best practice ad copy techniques sure to boost your PPC campaign.

• Use power words such as “exposed,” “secret,” “guaranteed,” “shocking,” or “incredible” in your ads to capture the attention of the viewer.
   
• For ongoing improvement to your copy, test two ads simultaneously in order to evaluate and improve on each ad’s effectiveness.
   
• Focus on the benefits of the product rather than the features.
   
• Use a strong call to action like “act now” or “contact us for a free report.”
   
• Use the keyword in the ad’s headline.
   
• Capitalise The First Letter of Each Word.
   
• Include a question in the ad.
   
•  Use abbreviations (and keep a thesaurus handy) in order to make the most of the limited characters.
   
• Consider using time sensitive offers to convey urgency in your call to action.
   
• Try to stand out from your competition by offering something they cannot or by using a more exciting approach to attract click-throughs.

Remember that the goal is to get a viewer to click on your ad, not to sell the product with the ad. Let your landing page sell the product once they click on your website link.

Most importantly, keep a careful eye on your PPC marketing campaign and regularly look at the reports to evaluate how your ads are performing. Track the conversion rate and cost per conversion of each advertisement to make sure you’re getting your money’s worth.

Using CSS 2 there are ways you can mimic the look and feel of some of the new functionalities in CSS 3, so that even older browsers can see your content presented in similar ways. This particular article will discuss one of the new CSS 3 functions and how to fake it using CSS 2.

Multi-Column Layouts

There are two ways to create a multi-column layout using CSS 2. However, each of them has advantages and disadvantages. Depending on the content to display, you may find that one technique will do what you need better than the other.

Using Multiple DIVs for Column Layout

This can be an elegant solution, providing the ability to display columns of fixed width and height containing freely entered text. From a content management point of view,  it does require a little bit of knowledge of HTML.  This method can result in a lot of content-editor tweaking to ensure that the content required does display neatly within the given columnar DIV.

I would use this technique in places where it is essential to present content in separate paragraphs, or where images might be part of the column contents.

The example CSS code might be something as simple as this:

.column {width: 250px; height: 400px; padding: 10px; float: left; margin: 10px;}

And in the content editor:

<div class=”column”>Content</div><div class=”column”>Content column 2</div>

Using Lists for Column Layout

This solution works well for people uploading content who aren’t as familiar with HTML. If I were working on a project with a keen client who wishes to update and maintain their own website, this might be the choice I’d use for a columnar layout – because it can be done without having to edit HTML at all, as long as the default list style is set to display in columns.  Of course, this would involve knowing the client’s content and whether they are likely to need bulleted / numbered lists in their content as well.

The code I might use to display a list as a series of columns is as follows:

ol { list-style : none;  width: 410px;  height: 400px;  padding: 0px; margin: 10px; }

This creates an ordered list of a fixed width and height, with no “bullet”  number at the start of it.

ol li{ margin-left: 10px; padding-left:  0px;  padding-bottom :  10px;  width :  150px;  float :  left; }

This creates fixed-width ordered list lines, and hitting “enter” will create a new column.  Of course, this might require the use of <br /><br /> (shift-enter in most content editors) to imitate a paragraph break within a single column.

Both of these methods are not without their drawbacks,  particularly in terms of  the height of each section  - it can be difficult to break in the middle of a line and present columns of equal height – but until browsers catch up with CSS 3, this may be an acceptable work-around.  If you have alternative methods to creating columns in CSS 2 please do feel free to share in the comments below.