Local Internet Marketing is about two things.

1. Driving Traffic
2. Conversion

When referencing conversion and Local Internet Marketing, a local business is referring to their website. Website Usability discusses achieving the desirable call to action.

Website Usability

Web usability means designing an online website for your users and visitors instead of for yourself or your client. A website that addresses user expectations will increase the number of visitors who take the intended call to action, or otherwise accomplish the goals set out for the website. Good usability is critical to your site’s success.

As discussed while identifying target audiences for a local internet marketing agency, those businesses that provide high value services or those who provide products or services to businesses will yield the highest revenue opportunity and can allocate the appropriate funding towards marketing online to achieve a desirable return on investment. Therefore, for this reason we are mostly focusing on business to business websites for local businesses.

Business-to-business websites face usability challenges far beyond those of regular B2C sites. The products are more complex, in fact, they are often services, the customers and audience are more diverse, and the buying process has many more steps and complications.

User testing shows that b2b websites have significantly lower usability than mainstream consumer sites. If they want to convert more prospects into leads, B2B sites should follow more guidelines and make it easier for prospects to research their offerings.

Many B2B sites are stuck in 1995. Most B2B websites highlight internally focused design, fail to answer the customers’ questions and simply are a digital version of their brochure. These sites fail to achieve a call to action and in most cases the user leaves and never comes back without leaving any lead information.

These sites haven’t realized that the Web has reversed the company-customer relationship. Most online interactions are demand-driven: you either give people what they want or watch as they abandon your site for the competitions.

Considering that there’s immensely more money at stake for B2B than for business-to-consumer (B2C), it’s astounding that B2B sites offer a much worse user experience

B2B vs. B2C

B2B site goals are substantially more complex than those on the typical B2C site. the more complex the scenario, the higher the need for interfaces that support the user. Therefore, B2B sites need to strengthen usability more, not less, because they must help users answer all of their questions and provide an opportunity for buyers to buy, but not be sold.

B2B purchases are often big-ticket items or service contracts. The sites’ products and services are often extremely specialized. Decisions made on B2B sites can have long-term implications: customers aren’t just making a one-time purchase. These customers often are buying into a long-term vendor relationship that includes support, follow-up, future enhancements and add-ons.

For all these reasons, research and multi-criteria decision-making dominate the B2B user experience. A B2B site has to offer simple facts that are easily and quickly understood by an early prospect that’s just looking around to see what’s available. It might also offer in-depth white papers and information to help prospects understand concepts like total cost of ownership or return on investment. A local business such as an attorney requires many questions answered that focuses on their specific niche.

As discussed in the sales and marketing section of the course, a local business website site must address many different types of audience member with quite different needs. Understanding the various audiences, creating user profiles and addressing these profiles is critical in achieving the call to action. Missing this piece will vastly degrade all of your usability efforts and I spend significant time in outlining this. Please refer to the webinar titled the SEO sales trail.

Push button purchase versus the local business buying process

One of the biggest differences between ecommerce stores, or online retailers and local business might be that most local retailers don’t seem to see themselves engaged in e-commerce. Perhaps this is because most B2B sites don’t have shopping carts. The typical B2B product can’t be purchased through a simple Add to cart button.

The lack of an Add to cart button doesn’t mean that B2B businesses should ignore their websites or make them digital brochures. The site should still support the many other stages of the buying process — including the post-sales, which are crucial to customers’ long-term brand loyalty.

Local business sites can be great lead generators. Prospects use websites during their initial research and stick with the helpful sites during subsequent research.

The website represents the company to prospects. People don’t save brochures because they assume they can find equivalent information on the Web. Most people say that when they were thinking of doing business with a company, their first actions was to check out its website. a site that improperly communicates the credibility of a vendor and its products can seriously hurt incoming website leads

One reason so many local business websites have poor usability might be because the website is much less accountable for sales. This couldn’t be more wrong. With proper tools in place to measure activity, the numbers are simply astounding and how subtle improvements drastically improve conversion, those website visitors who beg to give you their email and contact information.

User impeding Design

Local business web sites often prevent users from getting the information they need to research solutions. Sometimes this is deliberate, as when sites hide the good stuff behind registration barriers. Like when confusing navigation prevents users from finding information, or when the information they do find is written in such a marketing language that purchasers and influencers simply get confused.

Many sites use website segmentation, in which users must click through to the appropriate site segment. Unfortunately, these segments often don’t match the way customers think of themselves, and thus require them to peek through multiple site areas to find the right one.

Another common local business tactic is to require users to register or complete lead-generation forms. We typically call this an opt-in. Users are sometimes reluctant to do this. I like this approach and has worked well. In most cases, thought I recommend moving more information outside the opt-in barrier so it’s available to users during their initial research. You must establish a certain level of credibility before people are willing to give out their contact information.

Offering an instant download of a video or report is an easy was to capture their email address, and people are much more likely to provide just their email address rather than their contact information. Business people are too busy these days to have time for sales calls. This is education sales.

The product or service information that you provide without registration must be complete enough for users to judge whether your solution applies to their circumstances. if you sell highly technical products to a highly specialized audience, you can’t assume that all users understand industry jargon or the key considerations that distinguish the product or service from the competition. We learn that selling is solving problems. If you can properly capture how people think about their problem, you’re half way to selling them.

The most user-impeding element of most local business web sites is a complete lack of pricing information. From a study done by Nielsen, when they asked users to prioritize which of 28 types of B2B site information mattered most to them, prices scored the highest by far. This was 29% higher than product availability, which ranked second.

Sites have many excuses for not wanting to display prices, but they are just that: excuses. Users expect to get a basic understanding of products and services during their initial research, and they can’t do that without some idea of what it’s going to cost. Even if your company can’t list exact prices, there are several ways to indicate price level, which is really all people need initially.

The average local business website user experience is not very supportive of customers. As a result, the websites fail to provide business value because they ultimately turn prospects away rather than turning them into leads.

Guidelines

Here are some very basic, high level guidelines that you should follow for any local business website. It’s best to have fresh eyes on a site to ensure each of these guidelines are met. They are pretty simple, let’s take a look.

• Clear and Simple Navigation. This is obvious. Don’t reinvent the wheel. We know that navigation should be easy, with clear navigation in the top or the left side of the side. It’s like you driving my car, you know where the steering wheel it and the brakes, but you might fumble with the less important controls like the radio. Your navigation is like the steering wheel. I cover this next.
• Clear and Simple Content. Consider the education level of your audience. Consider culture. Consider objectives and motivations. Use your audience profile extensively here. Write for you audience, not your client.
• Brand Support. This is obvious and is accomplished through imagery and repetition. Find a unique way to mention the business in content. Have a memorable, solid logo prominently displayed in appropriate places on the site. Get the logo out there.
• Visitor Feedback and Support. Using Web 2.0 channels, forms, contact information of whatever other tools you chose, the site is a doorway to the business. Make sure visitors can easily communicate through various methods, not just one form.
• Measuring and Testing Conversion. Google Analytics and Website Optimizer. Refer to the website video in the ‘setting up your agency’ module under Online Properties.
• Testing Design Usability. Get feedback from users. Do they recongnize the major CTA on the site? The fallback CTA? Are they just confused? List perhaps 10 questions for new users to accomplish, such as ‘find this’ or ‘if you are in the market for a widget, does this website help answer your questions?’.

Website Navigation

Website navigation is the function of providing the user with the easiest and most logical information on how to get around the website and what can they do.

A good navigation system should answer three questions:

1. Where am I?
2. Where have I been?
3. Where can I go?

There are a variety of ways to answer these questions and there are several methodologies on the thought process for this. There really isn’t a cookie cutter process for this, but following these key points will unequivocally help you implement the desired navigation system.

• Consistency. The navigation system should be in the same place on every page and have the same format. Visitors will get confused and frustrated if links appear and disappear unpredictably. As discussed in the Website section of ‘Setting Up your Agency’ of this course, using a CSS based page and creating a 3 template system works best for most local businesses. Don’t veer too much from top or left navigation.
• Use appropriate text inside links. This is a critical component in search engine optimization. Don’t make the website visitors guess where a link is going to take them. Visitors should be able to anticipate a link’s destination by reading the text in the link or on the navigation button. Make it plain and simple. Don’t get fancy and use words that depict the best page for the user. This is covered in Driving Traffic section, search engine optimization for a local business.
• Blue Underline links. Some designers don’t like underlined text links inside page content – although visitors expect to be able to click on underlined text. If you’re using CSS as recommended, this can be controlled globally on the website.
• Always include text links. You can create some great looking menus using JavaScript or other scripting language, but never rely completely on a dynamic menu system. I personally recommend staying away from these good looking JavaScript menu systems all around. Every page should have basic text links that link to all major sections of the site.
• Add a text-based site map. All sites should have a text based sitemap in addition to text links. Every page should contain a text link to the site map. Lost visitors will use it to find their way, while search engines spiders will have reliable access to all your pages. This is a great time to remind you this video doesn’t cover a majority of the factors for search engines, but this is an important factor. This video is about the user experience.
• Include a home page link inside your main navigation system. Visitors may have entered your site through an internal page. Having a homepage link on your top or left navigation in the same spot on all pages will help those find their way and possibly they’ll want to head for the home page.
• Site logo links to home page. Your website should include the logo somewhere at the top of every page – generally in the top, left-hand corner. Visitors expect this logo to be a link to your site’s home page. They’ll often go there before looking for the home link in the navigation system.
• Include a site search box. A robust site search feature helps visitors quickly locate the information they want. Make the search box prominent and be sure that it searches all of your site – and only your site. Google has a great tool for this and be sure to include your company blog in the search.
• Breadcrumb trail at the top of the page is nice to help users navigate back up the website hierarchy (e.g., Home > Solutions > Customer Relationship Management).

You may attract visitors with an eye-catching design, but content is what keeps them at the site and encourages them to return. Content is also the best way to boost your site in search engine rankings.

I believe every business should have a blog, period. There is no better way to have an informal voice to your audience members and this is an easy way to publish content weekly without having an ounce of programming knowledge. I recommend only the WordPress blog script. The blog software is free, relatively easy to install and can be customized easily. Visit wordpress.org to download the software and install on your favorite hosting company.

Always keep search engines in mind when you write content, but remember that your ultimate audience is human visitors. Keyword research is important step in website creation and is covered in the research section, under Driving Traffic. Remember that evidence has shown that sites that conduct user performed keyword research above using tools like Google’s keyword tool will give you your best list of keywords. Present your content with humans in mind with your well rounded keyword research beside you.

User Tips

Here are some tips on content from a user’s perspective.

• Don’t save the best for last. Place your most important content high on the page; we call this above the fold.
• Think of a newspaper: the top story is always prominently displayed above the fold. Just like press releases, use the inverse pyramid approach. I discuss the reverse pyramid writing style when I’m discussing writing press releases. At the time of creating this video, the most popular resolution is 768 x 1024 for a website. Make sure you accomplish this goal in that resolution.
• Make page content easy to scan. Format your content so that it’s easy to scan. Emphasize important points with italics or bold, headers and title tags. This is explained and emphasized as some of the on the page factors for search engine optimization.
• Avoid using text inside images whenever possible. Text in images is invisible to search engine spiders and to visitors who may have images turned off in their browsers. Use h1 or h2 tags instead.
• Add ALT and TITLE attributes to all images. Each image should have a ALT tag and TITLE tag associated with it especially if images that are also links to other pages. That way, they can quickly jump to the page they’re interested in and when their mouse rolls over the image, the ALT and TITLE attributes are displayed on screen. There are search engine optimization qualities to this as well.
• Website contrast Be careful with background images and colors because they can obscure the text content on the page. Make sure you have a good reason to deviate from the successful dark text on a light background model. Visitors can’t buy your products if they can’t read the content.

Company and brand support

A great brand creates and reinforces a user’s impression of the site. When the site is strongly branded, it means that visitors will think of you first when they go shopping for your product or service.

Branding on a Web site takes time, effort, and detailed attention to page design and layout.

• Consistent colors, images and fonts. . You should c and fonts cautiously and use them constantly throughout the site. Visitors should never click on an internal link in your site and wonder if they’ve left your Web site because they landed on a page that looks different. If you have a link that goes to an outside source, which all websites should have throughout the site, should open in a new browser window.
• Keep page layout consistent. Again, this is discussed in website design using the 3 template system, one template for the homepage, one for product or service pages and one for information pages. Visitors should be able to predict the location of important page elements after visiting just one page in your site.
• KISS colors and logo. You’re not reinventing what works and after nearly 20 years of the internet, users have become accustom to certain elements. The KISS theory, keep it simple stupid, should always be followed with templates. Think Google. Think craigslist. Think Facebook. They all have white backgrounds, with simple fonts and most links use a blue underline. Their logos are always in the same spot and it just feels clean. They are internet marketers too, they just happen to be very good and test everything. Follow their lead.
• Taglines and usage. You value proposition, something that shows why you are the best choice, is your tagline. A good tagline clearly and concisely explains your “value proposition. This is what makes your site stand out from competing sites. It should be memorable and reinforce your brand in one quick phrase. Your tagline should be on every page in the same spot.

Visitor Feedback

Visitor feedback and support is a very important way to enhance user interaction and here are some ways to do this:

Provide for visitor feedback. Forms are significant to the success of ecommerce sites. Without forms, you can’t have a shopping cart. But any local business website needs at least one form to allow for user feedback. A form helps you control how user feedback is formatted and sent.

If you’re going to have one form, it should be on the contact us page of the site. I usually include the email address as well, but in an image form to avoid those scammers that scrape websites for emails.

I suggest a small form in some capacity on every page, built into the template.

• Short forms. Keep feedback forms short and clearly note which information is required to successfully submit the form.
• Phone number. Many users, prospect or customers, navigate to the website to obtain a phone number and call. It is very common place to have a phone number on every page, located in the top right hand side of the site. I like to keep the phone number large and prominent.
• Instant chat. This is becoming common place on ecommerce sites and I’ve seen local businesses begin adopting this feature. Albeit won’t be a large source of traffic, offering another means to communicate with prospects and customers will only help in conversion. Chatting online removes all emotion and studies show prospects feel less intimidated and have greater control when chatting rather than speaking to a person.
• Complete contact information. A street address is preferred. During the Driving Traffic section for Local Search Engines, I discuss the implications of a real address. Try and follow the directions in that video when disclosing address information. Visitors will probably prefer to contact you using email, chatting or a form, but they’ll feel more comfortable with a site that allows other contact methods. This can be found on the contact us page. If you’re a walk in business, including driving instruction, parking information or bus information is very valuable. Linking to navigation software such as Google maps is also very easy. Embedding a map is even better.

Measure and Test

I discuss measuring and testing in many areas of the course, because it’s so important for so many online assets, in fact, it’s one the biggest benefits of online marketing over offline. For now I’m taking 5 minutes to cover some basic information to complete the overview.

Since this video is on usability, I’ll be spending some time to create usability tests and give you resources to accomplish this.

On another note, website testing requires measurement. As previously mentioned, I cover Google analytics as a measurement tool and identify with screen shots and animation exactly what to measure in Google analytics and how to customize Google analytics to fit a local business website in another section of the course, the ‘Setting up your agency’ module in the Online Properties section.

For now, let’s talk about testing usability.

Test the site on real users. Remember that you’re the marketer so of course you can easily use the navigation system, love the content, and understand the value proposition. Before the site goes live, conduct some real user tests.

Usability testing helps you imitate the experience of the average Website user and fix problems before visitors find them. It also gives you valuable answers to other questions like

• Do visitors enjoy using the site? If so, don’t you think they’ll stay longer and read more content.
• Do they understand the purpose of the site? If not, there’s no compelling reason to return.
• Is there any incentive to return after the first visit? Your client’s website should be the ultimate authority on the Internet for their topic in their local area. In our case the website should dominate all competing local businesses. I promise this is still very easy thing to accomplish. A site with depth encourages visitors to bookmark it and refer friends interested in the same topic.
• Can they recover from errors? Usability testing is the best way to test how well your site search, site map and forms pages function. They should all work together to guide a visitor through the site and help them get where they’re going. Frustrated visitors aren’t likely to return – ever.

Usability testing components

Your visitors have little patience to read through your crafted marketing message. They want to get to the content they need with a minimum amount of effort.

Visitors immediately want to validate that:

1. They are in the right place.
2. They understand what they can do on your website
3. They can get the information they need or take the desired action.

Like we already talked about, some of the most common questions visitors have include:

• What does this company offer?
• What can I do on this site?
• Where can I go next?

Providing answers to these basic questions will immediately give your prospects a sense of place and encourage them to explore further. Here are some more components to think about when blueprinting the website and during the usability testing.

Key Pieces of Info – Think about your site. What key pieces of information will people need to find on your client’s site? Consider writing a task/question for each of your key pieces of information.

Top Ten – Have too many key pieces of information, then test for the “Top Ten” things people need to get from your client’s web site.

Audience Versions – Don’t hesitate to write a slightly different version for each of your target audiences. Different target audiences have different needs on your site. Most local businesses will have one core group and several sub groups that are intended to land on different pages. The homepage should be focused on one core group and links to inner pages for other audience members.

For example, take a courier business. Their core group is their prospects, other companies who have a need for repetitive same day, typically inner city deliveries of products in varying sizes. This courier company also recruits independent contractors or drivers and should cater to them. They deal with delivery agents. They have prospects who want to use them once. They have customers who place orders.

Non-leading Questions - When writing the text of the question for the audience you’re testing with, do NOT lead your test subject to the answer. Use common vocabulary and specifically avoid the jargon that you are using with your links.

For example, if I was testing the same courier business and I wanted to test the ease of finding information relating to retail same day delivery, and the link text was RETAIL SAME DAY DELIVERY, I might word the question like this,

“You are the VP of purchasing for best buy and you are wondering if this company provides solutions to get your store products to your customers on a national basis in less than 3 hours.”

Realistic Scenarios – The questions should be accurate scenarios that your target audience would really experience.

Simplicity – The questions should be a real simple scenario of a typical audience member, clearly identifying who the audience is.

As you can see, a local business website is not about paying someone a couple of grand and you have something that looks nice. I remember my first website and I was happy to have one. Now my companies are responsible for hundreds of websites, my students and readers bring that number well into the thousands. I know that a local business website isn’t like a digital brochure. Building a quality website requires many roles.

Think of it like building a house. You require a carpenter, plumber, electrician and project manager. Neither of these roles sell the house, that’s the responsibility of the realtor. You are the realtor, the marketer.

By taking the time to properly understand the objectives of the site and the intended goals, the audience and the business, you can build a website that will greatly surpass any of your competitors, in any region, in any market for a few years to come.

Remembering that measuring the conversion is very important. You will need to learn some items like

Google analytics; which is used to measure.

Items to measure, and how to customize Google analytics

Website components to test, such as using this color or that form versus this form. This is done through a product called Google website optimizer. This is a free tool, however complex and very powerful.

I also cover a little on multivariate testing and its framework.

Remember, success on the internet is a simple equation

Local Internet Marketing equals Qualified Traffic plus Conversion.