Post by Eric Brantner
If you shop online, you know the importance of being a skeptical consumer. Let’s face it: the Internet is overflowing with scams. More times than not, if something looks too good to be true, it is. That’s why you have to keep your guard up at all times when shopping online.
Of course, from a business’ perspective, this now innate sense of skepticism that consumers have is making it harder and harder to convert website visitors into customers. Thankfully, there are some steps you can take to eliminate skepticism when people view your website.
1. Facts are your friend — Consumers love hearing statistics about a product’s performance. It’s the reason Clorox “kills 99.9% of bacteria.” When your website visitors see actual statistics in your copy, it gives them a sense of comfort as they know exactly what to expect from your products or services. Always include any case studies you have on your website.
2. Offer live support — One reason consumers online are skeptical is because they don’t know you. Websites aren’t like bricks and mortar businesses where you can interact with the employees face to face. That’s why it’s your job to bridge that gap by connecting with website visitors on a personal level. Live chat support on your website adds a human element to your site as visitors can interact with you and ask any questions they might have. It also lets them know you’ll be there for them should they decide to buy your product and not like it.
3. Eliminate risk with guarantees — Skepticism boils down to the fear of losing something: money. Customers don’t want to feel like they are taking a gamble when they buy your products. That’s why you should offer a 100% money back guarantee. Keep your guarantee easy to understand and free of excessive restrictions. This way, your customer will always feel like they have an out should they not be satisfied with your product.
4. Compare your product to the competition — Another way to reduce skepticism is to show your website visitors that there are no other options better than what you have to offer. Compare your product’s performance and features to those of your competition. Make it clear to your readers exactly why your product will benefit them more than any other similar product. Again, case studies and statistics can come in handy here.
5. Take advantage of the “About Us” section — Okay, so most “About Us” pages suck. That doesn’t mean you should ditch the page altogether though. Remember earlier when I said one reason online consumers are so skeptical is because they don’t know who you are? That’s where the “About Us” page can help. Fill this page with information about your company and its employees. Include pictures of your headquarters and workers. This adds a personal touch to your site, helping consumers feel they know you a little better.
6. Include testimonials on your website — If a website visitor doesn’t want to take your word for it, let them hear what your satisfied customers have to say. Testimonials offer a seemingly non-biased perspective on your products and services. Numerous marketing studies have found that including testimonials on your website can increase the conversion rate many times over.
7. Answer frequently asked questions — When someone views your website, you want to make sure they have no question that’s left unanswered. See, if your visitor can’t find the information they’re looking for, they’ll automatically assume you’re hiding it for some shady reason. Include a FAQ section on your website where you answer any and every question anyone could possibly have about your products.
8. Incorporate video on your website — You know how they say “Seeing is believing?” You can sit there and tell your readers over and over how much your product will benefit them, but they’ll never fully believe it until they see it for themselves. Adding a video demonstration to your website builds that trust with your visitors, and it adds a personal touch as well.
9. Have a professional site design — Everyone knows you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but we all do it anyway. Look, if your site looks like it’s a Geocities page from the late 90s, no one will feel confident handing over their money to you. A clean, professional design goes a long way to adding legitimacy to your business online.
10. View your site through a skeptic’s eyes—Before you set your website live, look at it from the eyes of the consumer. Ask yourself “Is there anything that seems hard to believe? If I landed on this website, would I feel comfortable doing business with them” Don’t be biased; let your inner-skeptic run wild on your site.
What do you do to combat skepticism?
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Posted by Thomson Chemmanoor
There are several ways to improve the performance of your website. There are several areas like server performance, scripting optimization and the front end design of the site. The front end design is the most commonly accessible part of your website by a visitor so keep it tuned to perform better. A common problem among most website owners is they incorporate so many things into a website that it doesn’t deliver the response they hoped for.
However, not all hope is lost. If you make some simple changes to the front end design, you can increase the visitors perception of your website.
Here are the 10 simple steps to increase your website performance.
1. Optimize your web page components.
Identify the components, such as images, css files, html pages and JS files, that take a long time to load. To identify the problematic components, use tools like firebug for a quick and easy method. Make sure you have a fast loading website and limit the page to 19-25kb.
2 Avoid inline styling and inline JavaScript code.
Don’t use inline CSS and javascript in your HTML document instead use external css and javascript files, because your HTML code will weigh more, i.e. a web page riddled with similar code will have a KB size that is a lot larger than necessary.
3. Avoid CSS Expressions
One way to reduce the number of times your CSS expression is evaluated is to use one-time expressions, where the first time the expression is evaluated it sets the style property to an explicit value, which replaces the CSS expression.
4. Simplify tables and avoid nested tables (tables within tables).
In general, the best way to design tables for visual and non visual users is to simplify the layout as much as possible. Avoid placing one or more tables inside on another – hence, “nesting.” …for those who don’t know 
… The more tables that are nested, the longer it will take for the Web browser to render the Web page.
5. Specify image WIDTH and HEIGHT attributes for faster loading in the browser.
If you want to increase the size of the images in your web pages don’t use the Width and Height attribute instead use a image editor to shrink it.
6. Reduce DNS Look ups
The Domain Name System (DNS) maps hostnames to IP addresses just like phonebook maps people’s name and their address. When you type in your domain name into your browser, a DNS resolver contacts the browser to return with the servers IP. Usually the browser takes some time to complete this process. Reducing the number of unique hostnames has the potential to reduce the amount of parallel downloading that takes place in the page. Avoiding DNS lookups cuts response times.
7. Reduce 301 and other kinds of redirects
Redirects of a web page can be done in server ways like 301 and 302. Meta refresh tag and JavaScript are other ways to direct users to a different URL. The whole purpose of a Redirect is to connect the old web page to a new URL. But reducing this to a minimum is the best practise to increase the performance of a web page.
Redirects slow down the users experience because inserting a redirect between the user and the HTML document delays everything in the page since nothing in the page can be rendered and no components can start being downloaded until the HTML document has arrived.
8. Remove Duplicate scripts
It is not a good practise to include multiple versions of the same JavaScript in a single page. Duplicate scripts increase unnecessary HTTP requests during page loading. Even if the script is cacheable, extra HTTP request will occur when the user reload the page.
9. Minimize the Number of iframes
Inline Frames (IFrames) are windows that cut into your web page that allow your visitor to view another page on your site or off your site.
10. Reduce Cookie Size
HTTP cookies are used for several reasons – information about cookies is exchanged in http headers between a web sever and browser. Making the cookie size as small as possible to reduce the impact on the users response time.
As I said, there are several ways to improve the performance of your website. If you’ve got more additional inputs and thoughts which you’d like to disucss, please share that with us in the comments.
Usability and Legacy Systems … Yuck!
Just the thought of the words “legacy system” conjures images of big companies using old, antiquated hardware running DOS-like interfaces to perform simple tasks inefficiently. The problem for these companies is the technology changes so fast, by the time the systems they have planned, designed, and developed for launch, they become old, slow and outdated within 6 months. It was a large investment to implement and time consuming to integrate into business wide systems and procedures. Outdated can often mean poor usability, which allows room for the competition to beat you out. How on earth will they ever catch up without blowing their bottom line? Enter innovation.
So, we found a company who takes an innovative approach to theses big companies; many of which, if not all, are stuck on legacy systems. Companies like Circle K, UPS and Costco. At the center of it all…customer experience.
Jeremy: Can you tell me a little about what Fuel Quest does?
Todd: Sure, we offer downstream fuel supply chain management software. (laughs) I can tell from the look on your face that didn’t help much. Okay, our software manages fuel supply from the supply terminal to the gas station and from the gas station to the car.
Jeremy: So what is it you do exactly at Fuel Quest?
Todd: I handle business partner integration into our solutions, which might mean creating user interfaces or reports that help bridge our systems together in a way that is usable and optimized.
Jeremy: So how important is usability in what you do or for your industry, for that matter?
Todd: We are continuously dealing with older legacy systems designed at a time when usability wasn’t what it is today. The companies we deal with have used these systems for so long that they are ingrained into the heads of the employees that use them. I’ve noticed resistance or hesitation to integrate with Fuel Quest from some of these employees; not because it isn’t useful or a better approach, but because they are afraid of having to learn a new system all over again.
Jeremy: How do you overcome that?
Todd: You have to be a problem solver for these people. These ARE the users. It is their experience that I am trying to improve. Usually, all I need to do is find out what their problems are and show them how our solution will make their lives easier. Although, sometimes the feedback I get from them isn’t solvable by our current solution and a new custom one is necessary.
Jeremy: At the end of the day, that kind of feedback is extremely valuable in crafting better and better solutions.
Todd: Right. It’s complexity versus simplicity. That’s at the heart of the designs I come up with.
Jeremy: Could you give some examples?
Todd: Sure. I try to make the system work flows reflect the day-to-day operations of the users. I identify what elements are most commonly used in their day-to-day operations and I design the solutions to make those elements accessible with the fewest number of clicks. Using AJAX to give visual cues help decrease confusion, error messaging on validation and permissions based UI’s help me make sure that, what each user sees, is highly relevant to them and their work flow.
Jeremy: What kind of response or feedback have you been receiving with these designs?
Todd: We recently had our Fuel Quest Users Convention, which we call Grail. We invited out a bunch of our clients and others in the industry to see what we were working on. I had the pleasure of presenting at our technology showcase and seeing first hand the response. People were getting gitty over some of this stuff. It was amazing to work so hard on something that seemed like such a no-brainer and get that kind of validation.
Jeremy: So what’s in your toolbox when you are banging out designs and user experience concepts?
Todd: I have found some really great open source tools that get the job done. I use Gliffy to quickly mock up layout. Faststonecapture.org is a great tool for screen captures that you can quickly edit and make notes on. Notepad Plus is my go to editor. HTML Kit is a nice editor I use from time to time. Obviously, Excel for data and report management. Altova XML Spy is a must for me, we use XML heavily. The only other thing I use is Gimp which is an image editor.
Jeremy: Lastly, what do you think the future holds for usability and UX?
Todd: I think there will be much less physical interaction with these systems to do day-to-day processes.
Jeremy: In what ways?
Todd: I think that the speech to text solutions our there are reaching a level of sophistication that make them viable for manipulating UI’s. Permissions could be set based off of recognizing the voice of the user. I read somewhere of a company that is going to start selling a device that allows you to manipulate systems with thought alone. Emotiv was the name. Supposed to sell for $300 dollar range. That puts it in the ballpark for small businesses to afford and innovate with.
Jeremy: Maybe Fuel Quest will be one of those innovators.
Todd: No one would be more excited about it than me!
There are so many elements to marketing on the internet that I often find myself struggling to come up with a quick, easy to understand explanation of what it is I do. I fumble over what I think needs to be said and end up spending way to much time talking about SEO or SMM and, before you know it, I start getting technical – Doh! This can leave a bad impression, I’m sure. Shame, shame, shame.
I decided to jot down some examples of pitches – each with a different emphasis – to help prevent me from committing the same sin over and over. Interestingly enough, I noticed that as I wrote this post, I WAS STILL DOING IT! Delete, start over, delete, start over. Damn you brain!
Feel free to leave examples of the pitches you use in the comments.
Person A: “Good Morning. What floor?”
Person B: “5 please. Thank you. Another wonderful day of work.”
(Elevator doors close)
Person A: (sarcastically)”Yeah, tell me about it.”
Person B: “No seriously, I love what I do.”
Person A: (shocked)”Well what the hell do you do!”
Person B: (insert pitch)
Pitch 1 – SEO Emphasis Pitch:
I build search engine friendly websites for businesses and get them to rank well in search engines by creating quality content, optimizing the site for highly searched keyword phrases and increasing the amount of inbound links to the site.
Pitch 2 – Various Methods Pitch:
I help businesses and organizations use their website to get more leads, prospects or clients by making their website
more visible on the web through search engine optmization, pay per click advertising and social media marketing.
Pitch 3 – Usability Pitch:
I help websites generate more traffic and, once they have that traffic, I improve the design of the site to help turn those visitors into clients, prospects or leads.
Pitch 4 – Brand Building Pitch:
I help businesses and organizations develop and grow an online brand by leveraging the internet to establish that brand in their niche and help them become more visible to their ideal customers, clients or prospects.
Pitch 5 – All-In-One Pitch:
(takes a deep breath)
I build search engine friendly websites for businesses and organizations that will build their brand and increase their visibility across the web through search engine optimization, pay per click advertising and social media marketing; which in turn, increase the traffic to their site. I then improve the design of the website to turn as many visitors as possible into clients, prospects and leads.
(Elevator arrives at 5th floor and doors open)
Person A: (Beaming with delight) That’s amazing! I’ll take 3 of everything you offer!
I’ve been researching this topic quiet a bit and I thought I would share what I have found. This list is meant to be fairly comprehensive of what the current discussion points are. This is not a “Live by these rules” list. If you wish to leave comments to debate these points, real world examples of your experiences would be great. Enjoy!
1. Hosting on a shared I.P. versus unique I.P.
On shared hosting plans, there could be hundreds of other sites getting their hosting on the same I.P. Let’s say one of these sites gets flagged as a spammer in Google system – after all, you never know when you are sharing I.P.’s with gambling, porn or pharmaceutical sites. Guess what? The I.P. now throws up a flag in Google’s system and your website is on the same one! This can have an adverse effect on your search engine rankings.
2. Hosting locally versus hosting anywhere in the world.
This one has two schools of thought. Some marketers believe that it doesn’t matter where you are hosted. There will be no adverse effect on search engine rankings. On the other hand there are those that believe, as Google focuses more and more on personalisation, where a website is hosted will be one of the factors it uses to determine relavancy to each individual searcher.
If you are optimizing a site to a local version of Google; such as UK, it is in some people’s opinions better to register the same country TLD, host the site with a company whose servers are based in the same country and get some quality backlinks from the same TLD sites.
3. Host using Linux Apache MySQL PHP versus windows hosting.
Linux hosting offers availability of free software, usage of htaccess and mod-rewrite and ease of community support. There is a general consensus on the web that windows hosting is much more restrictive and difficult for webmasters, especially bloggers, who are trying to get the most out of their websites on the search engines.
4. Buying Year-In-Advance Hosting or more versus auto renewal every few months.
From a search engine’s perspective, buying hosting for a 1 year commitment tells them that you are probably not a fly-by-night spammer. If you plan on trying to achieve authority status in your niche, you might as well pony up 5 years worth of hosting. That will surely send the message that you are here to stay and most sites are still kicking and screaming 5 years later anyways.
5. Get Mod-Rewrite / htaccess
Google is funny about duplicate content caused by accessing a domain by www. and the non-www. version of your site. Google Webmaster Account addresses this issue by selecting a preference of either www. or the non-www.
Or
6. Have your web host provide basic HTACCESS and MOD_REWRITE and write the following:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}!^www\.yourdomain\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [R=301]
7. Make sure your site is hosted on a server with maximum uptime.
This one is a no-brainer. You don’t want search engine failing to crawl your site because it is down. They won’t be able to index your newly optimized pages that will cause you to rank higher in search results if your site is down.
Hope this was insightful.
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