Whether a user is currently travelling, at work, in a meeting, at home, watching TV, or lying in bed will all affect their behaviour, expectation, and current personal objective for using the Internet at a particular time. As Internet users’ behaviour develops the offering to audiences must continue to reflect not only people’s expectations but their browsing environments. Internet connectivity speed, browser device capability and individual situational objectives need to be taken into account if you, the provider of content and utility, are going to achieve your own objective of effective communication and transaction.

Some of these tips are new, whilst some have been around for some time, however changes in technologies or user behaviour have made the latter important in the current climate.

1. Learn three new things about Analytics. Whether you use Google Analytics or another client side statistical analytics system, it’s imperative that either you personally, or whoever reports to you, are including more detail and consideration of new areas of statistical analysis. Mobile activity will probably be included in this but there are other more in depth areas to analyse.

Google Webmaster Tools - Site Perfomance

2. Load times. One of the factors Google uses to influence rank position is page load time. This fact attracts attention but probably a more important issue is to make sure your site is faster than a majority of other sites. After replacing an old site in 2010 and reducing total page content load times from 10+seconds to 2-3seconds, we noticed an immediate increase in direct sales of over 50%. Better navigation, design and usability obviously helped here, but the most obvious change was simply a consistently faster site. It can be difficult to achieve, particularly if a graphic designer without any more advanced digital knowledge gets to design a site without any technical advice or guidance. However, it’s seriously important. Make sure you get the right balance here!

3. Screen size and small screen navigation. Different phones, pads, laptops, notepads, desktops, and monitor sizes will display proportions of any website. Also remember about touch screen navigation which requires larger navigation buttons and clickable menus as opposed to hover-over menus. Borrow an iPad and iPhone as a bare minimum and ideally test at least 5 different screen sizes and aspect ratios.

4. Get your business listed on Google Maps, Google Places and Google Local, at least. The listing costs nothing, and if set up carefully you can really position your business to gain far greater levels of traffic and visitor numbers. Just like valeting a car, you can do this yourself, pay a vacuum cleaning equipped general handyman, or pay a specialist to maximise the results. Remember, the work is normally done only once but your appearance there will last for years. Our advice is to invest very little relative cost in getting this done perfectly.

5. Content is, and will always be, king. For every minute you spend thinking and considering the design and look of your site, spend at least the same on ensuring you have great content. So £1000 on graphic design means at least £1000 on content whether it’s copy or photography and if it’s video content then at least a factor of 3 should be applied.

6. Mobile. Apart from the technical layout and usability of designing a site or multiple sites for mobile devices, try and think what your audience will be looking for whilst using a mobile. If there is a predominant common content set then you may wish to consider a dedicated site with this content at the forefront. For example, a train company will get a lot of mobile visitors looking at live departure and arrival times.

7. Geo-location Social Media placements. This is really simple. If you have premises or a place of work, just register your location using 4Square and Facebook Places at least. There are numerous others available if you like, although the usual advice about quality over quantity prevails. This follows into making sure you monitor, engage, and follow all other advice any good Social Media specialist consultant will keep you informed of.

8.  Google Search Preview. Users now have the option to see a small page preview of your webpage along the side of search results. How enticing does your website look when a smaller screen view of the page appears? This creates another issue for the web designer and should be taken in to consideration.

9. Consider video content seriously. As mentioned quality content not only draws additional direct traffic but also holds people’s attention for longer. This can potentially benefit your natural search engine positioning.

10. Appropriate social media usage. Promoting a Twitter feed, a Facebook page or a content library with your content on will fail if you simply don’t have enough of the right type of content being posted through each of these. It’s very important to ensure you use Social Media feeds appropriately. Again, the highest quality specialist advice you can afford will pay off in the longer term.

We hope you find these useful for reflective purposes. There may be instances where they are not appropriate, but, we feel they should at least be considered for all projects in 2011.

In making this move there will be many website owners, particularly those with ecommerce websites, who may need to have changes made to their website to bring the new VAT rate into action.

This change should be simple in the case of many sites; however, there will be sites where this is not the case.

VAT has stood at the present rate of 17.5% since before the first ecommerce websites were built and as such it is very likely that some website developers may have coded the VAT rate in a way that makes it difficult to change.

In the case of non ecommerce sites it may be that you reference prices on your site with VAT included or shown. Like ecommerce sites, these prices may need to be changed and should you not be able to make these changes within your website content management system (CMS) you will need your developer to help.

Where you are unsure of what changes need to be made we can perform a full site assessment and report back on what needs to be changed. Should you know the changes required we can take the details and perform the changes required.

At UKNetWeb, we have a technically focused web design and development team who can perform all the necessary VAT changes to your site.

Please give us a call to see how we can help you ensure you are prepared for the Monday VAT change. Call and speak to Aren on 01872 555933 or email info@uknetweb.com for more information. Prices start from £75.

Sound familiar? Well if so, you need to get acquainted with goals and funnels within Google Analytics.

Google Analytics is a service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about the visitors to your website. Aimed towards marketers, rather than geeks and techies, it generates a host of useful reports on the behaviour of visitors to your site.

Most important to many businesses is the goal and funnel elements included within the package. These detailed reporting systems allow you to track which pages result in lost conversions and where your would-be customers go.

However good your site, you will find that a percentage of would-be customers disappear during the buying process. Understanding where they go, and why, can be fundamentally important in making your site more successful.

Referred to as ‘Web Cart Abandonment’ on ecommerce websites, the average percentage of customers lost during 2007 was 52.1%. These customers leave for a variety of reasons ranging from matters completely out of your hands such as wrong credit card details to those well within your control, such as technical glitches or difficult processes.

So what are goals and funnels?

The term goal is used to refer to an outcome that you see as a positive result from your customer’s visit. This may be a successful purchase, viewing a particular page of your website or using the contact form. Whatever the goal you are looking to achieve, you can use the Google Analytics system to set the goal and track its success.

Monitoring the results is made easier through the Funnel Visualisation provided within the options. This visualisation shows how your would-be customers proceed down a particular path, predefined by yourself, towards the desired outcome or goal.

A typical Funnel Visualisation

This allows you to accurately monitor where and why your customers are leaving your site, abandoning their purchase or potential interest in your services.

Armed with this information, you and your sales or marketing team (in smaller businesses you and the cat) can look for reasons within the data and make changes or tweaks as necessary to reduce the losses and increase business.

If you would like to find out more about setting up goals and funnels you can visit the Google help pages here or speak to a member of our team about our range of support packages on 01872 555933 or by emailing info@uknetweb.com.

The term ‘web cart abandonment’ refers to consumers ending their purchase somewhere between adding an item to their shopping cart and final payment being made. There can be a number of reasons for this occurring from complicated processes at the checkout, to consumers feeling unhappy with the information being requested.

What makes cart abandonment so frustrating for e-commerce owners is that all efforts to draw the customer in, offer the right product and get them to place the item in their basket have succeeded only to lose the all important sale at the last hurdle.

Not all reasons for abandonment are under your control, there will always be those people who dash to the phone, realise the credit card is maxed or just decide they didn’t really want that item after all but understanding the reasons under your control can help leverage additional value from your site.

Although things are improving year on year (web cart abandonment rates fell from 59.8% in 2006 to 52.1% in 2007 according to Marketing Sherpa Ecommerce Benchmark Guide 2007) e-commerce owners can still go along way to drive levels downwards and increase site profitability.

Ask yourself would you willingly accept any other source of such a loss of revenue to your business? Can you really afford to ignore losses exceeding 50%? What profits could you expect if you improved your checkout and cart processes?

If you are a typical e-commerce owner I expect you would like to ensure the highest levels of returns from your site. You may have worked really hard on SEO strategies, paid for sophisticated features and bespoke programming, brought in designers, copywriters and the works all to lose the sale only moments away from the money hitting your account.

So what causes potential customers to retreat from a sale?

Popular reasons for cart abandonment include; unexpected charges at checkout, products out of stock, requirements for the customer to register before purchase, limited payment options, postage or delivery costs too high, no clear delivery information, lack of contact details or complicated / time consuming processes.

Careful consideration and research is needed to fully understand issues. It may be that some areas can be addressed while at the same time causing an issue in another. It is important, as with most web developments, to test, evaluate and modify your systems on a regular basis to ensure that your site remains ahead.

Setting up tracking on your site to measure activity is vital to making the right decisions with regard to your shopping cart. You need to gather information relating to the following areas on an ongoing basis and especially before tinkering with any site processes;

• Abandoned Carts

Track the overall number of carts being abandoned.

• Abandoned Products

Track whether abandonment figures are the same for all products / product ranges?

• Abandoned Units

Establish how many units are being abandoned. Some research can be skewed by results from customers mistakenly placing multiples of a product into their cart.

• Where are they abandoning their purchase?

Set up tracking to establish the areas where the greatest numbers of potential customers abandon their purchases.

Once you are armed with this information you are ready to begin investigating the problems and making the necessary amendments.

Take the information gathered and use the site to make a number of your own purchases. Can you see any reasons to justify why customers are abandoning their items at these stages? Can you see how the process could be improved?

Take your research to recent or current users of the site and ask them why they stopped their purchase or how you could improve the usability of the site or shopping cart. Run usability tests on the products pages or the checkout areas to establish any known issues.

Once you feel you have all the information, try to summarise all your findings by category. i.e. Process too long or Postage charge too high. Use this list to plan a fix or series of fixes for each issue. It may be that some issues will cost too much at this stage to implement; however, delayed plans to deal with these areas should still be made with a schedule detailing when they will receive further attention.

Before carrying out any changes decide on a method of measuring the results of each fix and ensure that appropriate tracking is set up to catch the required information. Where your fix has not worked you may need to look at alternative plans to address the same issue.

This process shouldn’t be a one off. Customer habits change all the time and as such regular reviews, testing and implementation should be a part of any ongoing online strategy. Schedule times to regular monitor performance and tweak as necessary. It could be that minor changes in the sites usability reap huge rewards for your profitability.

Where you don’t have the time to monitor these areas yourself enlist consultants or your web development team to track details and suggest regular changes or upgrades. Many companies will offer retainers where they will identify issues or areas for development which could lead to increased profits for your business.

Below I have listed 10 more simple areas to watch with your website checkout process. These offer some basic guidance on how your site may be improved with a little bit of tweaking.

1. No Hidden Extras
Don’t try adding hidden costs at the checkout. Customers will feel you’re abusing their trust and will not only abandon carts but may never buy from you in the future.

2. Provide Information
Don’t surround your store in mystery. Make customers aware of the process involved in making a purchase, be sure to explain; total costs including postage, delivery details, availability, returns policy and telephone contact details should they have an issue at the beginning of their purchase.

3. Don’t ask for too much too soon.
Some websites still make the mistake of asking the customer to register when placing items in the basket. Allow your customer to feel ready to make a purchase and pay before asking for too much information.

4. Keep it simple.
Limit the number of choices that potential customers have to make when checking out. Higher drop out rates have bee found on those sites with the highest number of choices.

5. Offer payment options
There’s nothing more annoying than getting to the checkout in a store and finding out that they don’t accept the card your holding. Try and offer as many payment options as you can.

6. Ask for the minimum
Don’t be too greedy for information. Minimise the information taken to that required to process a transaction. Additional info requests increase your chances that your buyer will not complete the purchase.

7. Be contactable
Display clear contact details throughout the checkout process, such as phone number and email, plus provide a live online chat where possible. Customers like to know that they can contact someone should something go wrong with their order.

8. Show you’re site’s Secure
Ensure potential customers know that transactions processed through your site are secure and encrypted. Explain any company policies on protection of consumer information and privacy as well as displaying any safeguard logos.

9. Get their email first
Ask for emails near the beginning of the checkout process, preferably on page one. Sample customers who have abandoned shopping carts and email them to find out why they decided to abandon their purchase when they did.

10. Own your own checkout
Ensure that your checkout process is part of your system rather than forwarding checkout processes to third party sites.

This piece was originally written for catalog | e-business magazine – [published April 2008: Issue 151].

If you would like to see the finished piece you can view it on the ‘Press Coverage’ page of our news feed site by clicking here

Never one to miss an opportunity to test a new web application, I created a group for members of the network and referral organisation, the BNI, and joined a local business network created by friend, Alan Jones, for business people in the South West (UK).

So will sites such as Ning lead to the creation of ‘nethoods’, a trend prediction from Trend Watchers extraordinaire – Trendwatching.com, where smaller networks are likely to focus on small real life suburbs, villages or even streets as people search to merge life on and offline?

If you have your own social network why not include it in a comment on this blog? I have.
Visit BNI

My role within the company is to research emerging technologies, liaise with clients and potential clients, and manage some of the projects coming in.

I have started this blog to share some of our work with the world and help businesses locally or further afield tap into the many new tools emerging on the web. I will post as often as I can with links to great sites, information or tools for those interested in the internet, other emerging technologies or growing their business.I want to start by adding the following slideshow (available for download) which was a presentation we prepared for our local Chamber of Commerce featuring hundreds of embedded links to more info.

I am keen to hear any thoughts you have and welcome anyone to get in touch. You can find me on Skype, Facebook or Plaxo. (Click here for links through ‘About Aren’)

Aren