Dennis O'Neil - Speaker & Author on Internet Sales, Marketing, and Social Media » Website Functionality

Testimonials are Dead

dennisoneil — Mon, 10 May 2010 04:21:57 +0000

Testimonials rely on the concept of “social proof”; the idea that we look to others to help determine how we should behave. For this reason, testimonials are a powerful component of advertising. As with most things, overuse and abuse has diminished the effectiveness of the typical testimonial. Something more authentic is the only way to make a impact.

The idea that a generic, faceless, edited quote about how great you are will make me want to buy your product is absurd. Please stop using them.

I know you’ve handpicked those statements.

If you don’t give me something authentic, I’ll find it elsewhere. I have lots of options for real opinions on a business – Google Local, Yelp, Facebook, Foursquare, among others.

I want to hear from the people that don’t like you, not just you’re biggest fans. I want a real view of you, not the filtered version.

I want the testimonial to come directly from the person. I want to see a photo of the author and see the comment linked back to an online profile (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc) somewhere so I know its a real person. I want to see what the user typed themselves, not what you edited.

The generic testimonails (i.e. “This is the best thing ever. Everyone should have 3 of your product”) are a waste of space at best, and at worst, an insult to me and the rest of your prospective buyers.

There are better options:

Unedited video interviews
Unedited audio interviews

And even better options:

If you don’t know how to use one of these above, find out how you can. The old method is a waste of time.

Photo credit: Adrian Clark

2010 is Going to Make You Cry

dennisoneil — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 18:40:14 +0000

If new media marketing was an onion, 2009 peeled away just the surface layer of potential. However, in 2010, we’re heading deep into that onion – get ready to cry… in a good way. Last year’s new media tools are maturing, and their business purpose is quickly coming into focus for more and more users. To that end, I’m excited about the deeper integration of these tools that I expect to see in 2010.

The opportunities that I recommend paying attention to in 2010 have not changed much from what I recommended in 2009. They have, however, become much more targeted. I think 2010 will be less of the “year of new“, and more of the “year of better.”

In February of 2009, I presented “Internet Marketing: Five Things You Must Know in 2009″ to the Home Builders Association of Maryland. In that presentation, the key items I outlined for builders to focus on were:

Website analytics
Search – SEO & Paid Search
Video
Mobile Internet
Social Media

Below you can see the slides I presented then:

Five Things to Know in 2009

View more documents from Dennis O’Neil.

Can’t see the slides? Click here

As I’ve prepared and reviewed marketing plans for 2010, many of the topics are generally the same, but in most of the categories, the specifics have gotten a lot more specific – AND the synergies [sorry for the buzzword] between them have all gotten stronger. Here are some examples of the convergences I’m talking about.

Search Engine Optimization – What shows up on page one of a Google search, now more than ever, is impacted by real-time social media conversations. Additionally, the opportunity to have video results appear on that page have increased. Clearly, any 2010 SEO strategy is fully integrated with the social media and video strategy.
Video - Moving beyond last year’s basics of high-quality and YouTube, in 2010, video will need to be a driver of traffic via search engines. It will need to be produced faster, and it will need to be available in more places – company website, YouTube, blog, Facebook, mobile friendly options, among others.
Mobile - The continued proliferation of mobile phones offering a rich internet experience has made mobile a more realistic and justifiable investment. The cost of developing iPhone “apps” are steadily decreasing, as is the cost of developing a mobile website. In 2010, the focus will go beyond just being mobile. The prizes will be found by making the mobile experience fast, relevant, and rich – This means including prices, photos, easy contact options (integrated with the phone), social media integration, and mobile friendly video.
Social Media – This year will bring out big evolutions in social media – Companies will focus on better integrating social activity into their own website, and everything else they do online, and many tools will simply mature to a level making it easier to recognize their business value.

So what will you be working on in 2010? Anything you think I missed?

Your Home Page is your Elevator Pitch

dennisoneil — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:14:26 +0000

I expect you would agree that the sales process is different for customers already familiar with your brand, than it is for those who are not. If your website is performing like it should, it is exposing you to lots of visitors previously unfamiliar with your company. For this reason, most businesses need their website to act as an ‘opener’ and a ‘closer.’ So how should this affect your website design?

If you have a recognizable brand name like Sony, then your homepage can be whatever you want. People already know the ‘who’ and ‘what’ of Sony. If you’re not Sony, your homepage needs to be as clear, impactful, and intriguing as a top-notch elevator pitch.

If your homepage cannot describe what you offer without the use of a run-on sentence, the consumer can’t either. With a growing percentage of the Internet world communicating in 140 characters or less, I’m not sure anything longer is effective. Make it easy for people to see your unique value.

So here is where I see most businesses going wrong.

I’ll be meeting with a company to map out their overall web strategy, message, and website architecture. I’ll attempt to get agreement on the core product or service and the conversation goes something like this:

Company rep one: “Well we mostly do ABC, but if someone asks we’ll also do XYZ.”
Company rep two: “Oh, and don’t forget about our commercial division of LMO services.”
Company rep one: “Yes, and once we did DEF for a customer, so we want to talk about that, too.”

STOP.

In an effort to capture this outlying business, companies are making their pitch clumsy. Don’t clutter your homepage, or even the rest of your website for that matter, by trying to be everything to everyone. This type of ambiguity will typically lead to heavy brand confusion, and we all know that the confused mind says “no.”

If you have multiple divisions that would potentially confuse a client when they’re seen together, then they shouldn’t be seen together. This is why Honda has separate websites for its cars division and its lawn equipment division. “Relevance” is key to keeping a visitor’s attention. Lawn tractors are not relevant to a car shopper, so Honda separates them. Their presence would detract from the car shopping experience. If a topic wouldn’t fit right in an elevator pitch, it doesn’t belong on the homepage. Dump it.

Chose your core business, or related group of core businesses, and focus the message on the expected decision maker. Retail and commercial customers rarely have the same needs, so its rare that the message would be same. If you want to promote multiple unrelated core products, or promote to multiple unrelated buyer profiles, consider multiple websites. Yes, it adds expense, but they each will perform better than one confusing website.

Beware the Browser Wars

dennisoneil — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 00:54:17 +0000

Your “browser” is the software program you use to view web sites. The vast majority of Internet users employ Microsoft’s Internet Explorer for this. However, new players have been shaking things up a bit, and here’s why business owners need to be aware.

Some of you may remember the Internet “browser wars” of the late 1990’s. It was partly what caused the anti-trust case against Microsoft at the time. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer was direct competition for Netscape Navigator. If you’ve never heard of Netscape Navigator, it’s probably because Internet Explorer crushed it.

While websites are all created on the same platform, each browser looks at them through slightly different glasses. This means your visitors may not see the website you want them to see. This was less of an issue in the past 6 or 7 years because almost everyone used Internet Explorer. However, a few things have changed:

Firefox – This is a free Internet browser available for download on Windows or Apple computers. It’s well supported by developers of ‘add-on’ functionality and is growing in market share. Originally only an uber-geek choice, Firefox has entered the mainstream.
Safari – While previously too small to matter much, the growing penetration of Apple computers into the market must be considered. Apples come pre-installed with the Safari browser. Apple has also made Safari available for Windows computers. This means that the die-hard Apple home users may increase Safari’s market share by installing it on their office Windows PC.
Google Chrome – In the long standing tradition of shaking things up, Google recently released its own free Internet browser called Chrome. The jury is still out on whether or not it will have much of an impact on the market share splits, but we need to pay attention to anything Google is doing.

All of these new browser choices, along with new releases of Internet Explorer mean that you need to be ever more aware of what tools your visitors may be using to view your website.

Overall, all browsers support the same basic features. However, there are some minor differences between them all that can cause images not to appear, menus not to function properly, or text to be pushed off the screen. I suggest that someone in or out of your organization be given the responsibility to view all the pages of your website through each browser to ensure your message is being conveyed as you intend. This test run needs to done with each update to your website and with each new release of the four browsers.