This comprehensive guide walks you through every step of the initial market research you need to do if you want to ensure the success of your business BEFORE you invest a lot of time and effort in building it.
Your initial market research is the most important step of building your business. If you learn how to accurately identify a profitable business opportunity then 90% of the battle has been won! Compared to this stage, acquiring a product to sell and building your website is child's play.
The #1 Reason People Fail
So many people think they can just skip this step. They think they already have a great idea for a product to sell online, or they figure they can just sell any old product and they will eventually be successful.
But when you DON'T know how to properly do your initial market research, your chances of growing a profitable online business are about as good as winning the lottery. In other words, pretty darned slim.
If you're just starting out, we urge you not to let your success be based on random luck.
Discover the proven step-by-step system that will enable you to recognize great money-making opportunities when you come across them. It really is the only way to guarantee your success right out of the gate.
The Internet Marketing Center Team
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Site Review: Make Sure Your Site is All About THEM
This week's we're giving a free site review to the last of our recent contest winners.
And Susan Mitchell of tinyterriers.com sells a product we just couldn't resist: PUPPIES!
Susan and her husband Don breed champion pedigree Yorkshire terriers. They have a website that offers some great information -- but we think they could dramatically increase their ability to profit from their website by implementing some key Internet marketing strategies.
In this review, we're going to touch on three main areas:
Their site headline
Their site salescopy
Their site opt-in offer
... and then we'll end with a few suggestions on how Susan can grow her site into an online content hub her target audience will love.
Before we get started, take a quick look at Susan's site: www.tinyterriers.com. That way, you can check out exactly what we're talking about.
Susan, we want to share first about all the things we liked about your site!
Your homepage copy reinforces the value of your product and adds credibility to your business. You write in a friendly, knowledgeable way that helps people feel like they know you and puts them at ease. And the pictures of your adorable puppies definitely encourage people to stay on your site and explore deeper. We couldn't get enough!
However, we also spotted a few key spots where a small tweak could make a big difference toward the success of your site!
Let's get to those now...
1. Your Headline
Simply put, your headline is the text at the top of your site, beneath your logo and navigation bar. It is THE most important element of your website because it's the first thing your visitors look at when they arrive -- and it's what makes them decide whether to stay or leave.
If you want to convince them to stick around, your headline should immediately communicate the biggest benefit of your product or service, and attract enough interest to draw readers in further.
Here's what your headline looks like right now:
While it's definitely a good thing to be welcoming to your potential customers, you do them a bigger favor by giving them more information about where they've arrived -- and why they should stick around to find out more.
A really good headline should accomplish some or all of the following:
Emphasize the key benefit of your product or service
Emphasize the biggest solution that it provides
Generate curiosity and pull visitors into your web page
Capture the essence of the main attractions or power of your product or service
For example, a more effective headline for your site might be:
As you can see, we use the headline and subhead to communicate several benefits to your visitors:
You will get an adorable new family member
Showing a champion dog is a source of joy
You won't have to deal with health problems
Your dog will be with you for many years!
All of these benefits do the work of attracting your visitors' attention and letting them know exactly how they will benefit if they remain on your site -- and learn more about your business.
Now let's take a look at the rest of your copy...
2. Your Salescopy
The copy below your headline needs to accomplish three very important things:
Identify with your visitors
Convince them of the benefits of your product
Compel them to take action
Most importantly, your salescopy should always be about THEM: your visitors.
You want to talk about their lives and their needs as you explain how your product will benefit them.
Susan, let's take a look at some of your copy as you have it posted right now:
You include some great information here, but right now it's a bit too focused on you as the business owner. You talk about what you believe, and what you have, and who you want to thank.
By reworking that copy so it speaks more about your visitors than it does about you, you shift the focus onto them. For example, instead of saying...
"We believe quality is our number one priority and we always strive for the very best, healthy, long lived dogs and puppies whether they're destined for the show ring or will be a much loved pet. Most of our adult dogs are from champion lines, and all of them are a big part of our family. If you're searching for your new best friend, click on the Available page to see what we have! Thanks for visiting our furry family!"
... Say:
"If you're a Yorkie lover who's looking for a new best friend, you've come to the right place. At Tiny Terriers you will always find champion-pedigree Yorkshire terriers that are bred to be as long-lived and healthy as they are top show-dog quality.
These dogs have been raised from birth like family members and will make the perfect addition to your household. If you're looking for a new best friend, please click here now to see our available puppies."
The tweaks we made to the copy are actually pretty minimal... but they make your potential customer the star of the show!
This definitely doesn't mean we think you should scrap all the great information you provide about the principals and practices of your business, however.
Instead, we recommend you create an "About Me" page and include that information there, then feature the "About Me" link prominently on your navigation bar.
3. Your Call to Action
The next thing we'd like to talk about is your call to action. Right after your headline, your call to action is probably the second most important element on your site. The call to action asks your visitors to do something on your site... and tells them exactly how to do it.
If you're trying to sell something directly off your website, the call to action is the moment when you say something like, "Click here to order your copy today." Or if you're trying to get someone to sign up for something and give you their email information, you might say something like, "Sign up now to receive your free report."
Right now, Susan, your only call to action is this sentence, which appears in the first paragraph of your main copy: "If you're searching for your new best friend, click on the AVAILABLE page to see what we have!"
And people might not take action for two reasons:
The call is a little buried in that paragraph, which makes it difficult to see at a glance. You want it to jump off the page so your visitors can easily see it.
The only action you ask your visitors to take is to look at the puppies on your "Available" page. But if all the puppies have been sold, or the ones that aren't available don't suit the needs of your visitors at that time, that action might leave them at a dead end.
Your visitors might look at the puppies and think, "Aww... cute! But I was looking for a girl puppy..." and then leave your site to go somewhere else. And the chances that they will remember your site and return to it at a later date can be very slim.
For that reason we think your business would benefit from offering a more direct call to action, like this one:
By including a simple opt-in script on your site, you can collect the email addresses of your visitors with the purpose of letting them know when you have new puppies available for sale. This will create a huge demand for your puppies before they're even born!
Also, once you have your visitors' email addresses you can send them friendly relationship-building emails offering useful information about how to care for their Yorkshire Terriers. They will welcome your seasoned advice... and soon come to see you as a foremost authority on the breed.
Make your site THE hangout for Yorkie Lovers
Finally, Susan, we strongly recommend you consider adding a blog to your site. If you are thinking about revamping your site any time soon, we think you should look into setting it up on a WordPress platform.
There are many themes -- ready-made WordPress design templates -- available for under $100 you could use to build a site that is incredibly easy for you to update yourself... without having to rely on a designer every time you want to add a new photo or piece of information.
(Such as this one, for example.)
Why is easy updating important? Because your product inventory is always changing. Every time a puppy gets sold or a new litter is born, you want to be able to update the information on your site to reflect what you have to offer your potential customers.
By using a blog platform such as WordPress, you can easily add new content, images, even videos to your site without having to know any computer coding at all!
And by regularly adding fresh pictures and information about each puppy and posting blog entries that describe your breeding philosophy -- as well as a few tidbits about the life the puppies enjoy in your home before they meet their new families -- you'll turn your site into a visitor magnet for Yorkshire lovers.
They'll come back to your site again and again to see what's new with your puppies!
And when the time comes to sell the litter, all the puppies will be spoken for faster then you can say, "Who's a cute wittle doggy? Who? Who?"
(Check out the story of the Shiba Inu 6 to see how crazy people can get about sites that feature live updates about puppies.)
Well, Susan, we hope you found our advice helpful. Please keep in touch with us and let us know how it goes with your website!
And to the rest of our readers: if you already have a website, take five minutes to take a close look at your headline and copy.
Do they do a good job of speaking directly to your visitors and communicating the benefits of your product or service? Does your call to action tell them exactly what you want them to do on your site, and why?
If your answer is "no," or "maybe," set aside some time this week to work on strengthening your site copy. Your bank account will thank you for it down the road!
**We do not have a partnership with WordPress or iThemes or benefit from recommending them in any way. We just think they're great products you should know about.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Talk to Us!
As always, we welcome your input on all our content.
Is there a particular topic you'd like us to address in an upcoming issue of the newsletter? Do you have a question about how to start an online business or make money on the Internet? You can tell us at:bizz@amiwired.com
Thursday, 18 February 2010
Gasta Tech News: Seesaw
SeeSaw launches, UK’s answer to Hulu or another Joost?
Posted: 17 Feb 2010 04:52 AM PST
[UK] While we Brits wait, and wait, for any sign of a Hulu UK launch, a rival offering has stepped in to try and fill the void.
SeeSaw, the Arqiva-owned Online TV service based on assets bought from Kangaroo, the defunct joint venture between broadcasters BBC, ITV and Channel 4, has today opened its doors to the public.
And although the UI is pleasing to the eye, it faces the oh so familiar challenge of being a third-party aggregator: a dearth of exclusive content.
The service claims 3,000 hours of ad-supported content at launch garnered from the archives of BBC World Wide and the existing catch-up offerings of Channel 4 and Five. In other words, it’s mostly content that you can easily find elsewhere, meaning that SeeSaw has to compete largely on brand recognition and the convenience of having content, which is normally spread across the destination sites of multiple broadcasters, all in one place. That latter requires the majority of content to be licensed from every major player – and that won’t happen over night, if ever.
Anyone remember Joost?
The press release also boasts the lack of display advertising, adding to the ‘televisual’ user experience. I counted two full length pre-roll ads on the content that I sampled. TV-style ads lasting up to 30 seconds each, not those designed for the web, which felt a little heavy handed but presumably will please traditional advertisers. There’s mid-roll ads too.
Moving forward, SeeSaw aims to add a further 2,000 hours of programming on the service for its pay-per-view launch, scheduled for Q2. So it seems that despite their heavy-handiness, the ads won’t cut it alone.
OpenERP gets €3 million for US expansion
Posted: 17 Feb 2010 03:36 AM PST
[Belgium] Belgium’s OpenERP has just received a €3 million investment from Sofinnova Partners, as well as Iliad co-founder and manager Xavier Niel and board member Olivier Rosenfeld. The funding will be used primarily to reinforce the managerial team and open the company’s first US office in San Francisco.
30-year-old founder and CEO, Fabien Pinckaers, first started the company in 2005 and believes that the investment from Sofinnova Parnters and Xavier Niel mark a new era for the company. OpenERP’s integrated open source ERP software manages various administrative tasks – including purchasing and human resources – and currently has over 500 modules. Pinckaers says he weathered the storm of the financial crisis particularly well as restructuring tends to be very good for enterprise resource planning.
Thanks to the company’s community of over 300 members and integrators, the software is downloaded by more than 1,000 users per day. OpenERP’s client list includes the French postal service and elite French university, l’Ecole Nationale d’Administration in Strasbourg – remember former French President, Jacques Chirac? He went there.
The company’s headquarters are in Grand-Rosière, a rural part of Belgium that happens to be near the Université Catholique de Louvain – which has a large computer science department. OpenERP presently has 75 employees and an additional office in India.
Posted: 17 Feb 2010 04:52 AM PST
[UK] While we Brits wait, and wait, for any sign of a Hulu UK launch, a rival offering has stepped in to try and fill the void.
SeeSaw, the Arqiva-owned Online TV service based on assets bought from Kangaroo, the defunct joint venture between broadcasters BBC, ITV and Channel 4, has today opened its doors to the public.
And although the UI is pleasing to the eye, it faces the oh so familiar challenge of being a third-party aggregator: a dearth of exclusive content.
The service claims 3,000 hours of ad-supported content at launch garnered from the archives of BBC World Wide and the existing catch-up offerings of Channel 4 and Five. In other words, it’s mostly content that you can easily find elsewhere, meaning that SeeSaw has to compete largely on brand recognition and the convenience of having content, which is normally spread across the destination sites of multiple broadcasters, all in one place. That latter requires the majority of content to be licensed from every major player – and that won’t happen over night, if ever.
Anyone remember Joost?
The press release also boasts the lack of display advertising, adding to the ‘televisual’ user experience. I counted two full length pre-roll ads on the content that I sampled. TV-style ads lasting up to 30 seconds each, not those designed for the web, which felt a little heavy handed but presumably will please traditional advertisers. There’s mid-roll ads too.
Moving forward, SeeSaw aims to add a further 2,000 hours of programming on the service for its pay-per-view launch, scheduled for Q2. So it seems that despite their heavy-handiness, the ads won’t cut it alone.
OpenERP gets €3 million for US expansion
Posted: 17 Feb 2010 03:36 AM PST
[Belgium] Belgium’s OpenERP has just received a €3 million investment from Sofinnova Partners, as well as Iliad co-founder and manager Xavier Niel and board member Olivier Rosenfeld. The funding will be used primarily to reinforce the managerial team and open the company’s first US office in San Francisco.
30-year-old founder and CEO, Fabien Pinckaers, first started the company in 2005 and believes that the investment from Sofinnova Parnters and Xavier Niel mark a new era for the company. OpenERP’s integrated open source ERP software manages various administrative tasks – including purchasing and human resources – and currently has over 500 modules. Pinckaers says he weathered the storm of the financial crisis particularly well as restructuring tends to be very good for enterprise resource planning.
Thanks to the company’s community of over 300 members and integrators, the software is downloaded by more than 1,000 users per day. OpenERP’s client list includes the French postal service and elite French university, l’Ecole Nationale d’Administration in Strasbourg – remember former French President, Jacques Chirac? He went there.
The company’s headquarters are in Grand-Rosière, a rural part of Belgium that happens to be near the Université Catholique de Louvain – which has a large computer science department. OpenERP presently has 75 employees and an additional office in India.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
