How attractive is your website design?

Judging website designs is, for most people merely a matter of opinions in most cases, so we thought we'd share this nice tool that can give a bit more objective feedback onyour designs. Enter Feng Gui, an eyetracking simulator.

Eyetracking is a technique for seeing where a user's eyes glance, and fix on different places during the first few seconds of looking at the page. Ithas been used widely in laying out retails stores in the past, now moved to website design and enough studies have now been done that the results are largely predictable.

We ran an image of our new homepage through the tool to see what it could tell us about users first impressions of the site.

Overall we're pretty pleased with it. Our aim was to let the content of each page really stand out, using a much darker overall template than our old site, and bringing in the colour and highlights of our clients site photography as the main focus.

We've managed to get the balance about right with a fair amount of skimming over each of the menus and our own strapline to see what we're all about. Other pages have a much stronger single focus like a headline or a contact form.

The tool is free for one use per day, give it a go on your site and let us know how you get on.

Buy Beauty Brands to relaunch on Magento.

BuyBeautyBrands.com, an upmarket retailer of skincare and beauty products has agreed to redevelop their website with Shine Marketing on the Magento ecommerce platform.

Felicity Hamilton-Jones, eCommerce Manager for Buy Beauty Brands said of the move,

"Our first site built by Shine gave us a very quick payback from a minimal investment as well as plenty of guidance in where to make our marketing investments. We are now reinvesting in the ecommerce platform to give us better SEO, closer integration with our email marketing, an in-house affiliate programme and a whole new content management area to provide our customers with beauty and skincare advice.

The platform also gives us the opportunity to create brand-specific sites for a number of new skincare brands for whom we will be providing fulfilment and online marketing services for a much lower investment than it would take to build their own stores."

The new site is planned to launch in January 2010.

ShineEmail introduces A/B split testing

Shine Marketing's email marketing solution - ShineEmail - is now offering A/B Split testing as standard on all accounts.

What is A/B Split testing?

Split testing will be familiar to anyone with long-standing direct marketing experience. It is the practice of trying out two different versions of a mailing on  a portion of your list, then taking the best performing version and 'rolling out' to the rest of the list.

ShineEmail automates the process of both the test and roll out allowing you to judge your best test email campaign by open rates, clickthroughs, then automatically send the best version out to the rest of your list after a chosen time.

Test can be as simple as two versions of a subject line, or an entire email creative.

For example, we sent our last newsletter out on Tuesday with two subject lines. 25% of our list was mailed with each version. On Wednesday, the system chose the winning version with the highest open rate, and sent it to the other 50% of the list.

Testing costs nothing but a little extra imagination and will teach you an enormous amount about what works and what doesn't in your email campiagns.

7 Ways to get more from your eCommmerce strategy

'Build it and they will come', was once the mantra of eCommerce site owners and at the turn of the last decade this was largely true, with any half decent site able to attract a little PR, rankings in Google and a good stream of visitors.

Back then the biggest challenge was managing to get a working eCommerce site built in the first place, but today it is possible to have a basic site up and running in just a few days - and at little cost. The resulting millions of new eCommerce sites launched each year mean that your biggest challenge is getting anyone to visit your website in the first place.

This means that marketing your site needs to be considered as an essential part of the planning process. Different marketing tactics will have an impact on your website so it's worth considering these well before you launch, to avoid missing opportunities in the early days of your online trading. Here, I work through some of the most common online marketing tactics and the impact they can have on your website. I also suggest a plan of action that will allow work done for one set of marketing tactics to be used across several areas.

1. Do you have a clear proposition for your online business?

Taglines, elevator pitches, call it what you like, a succinct description of what your site has to offer and who it is likely to appeal to, is an essential first step before you even start trying to drive visitors to your website. Only Amazon and eBay can say with real confidence that they have 'something for everyone' so focus on the area where you can really excel. Here are a few good examples:

• Coast-Stores.com: 'Women's Evening Wear'
• BritishHampers.com 'Gifts of Food To Lift The Mood'
• MyLivingSpace.co.uk 'Designer home-wares and design led accessories'
• These are very much 'does what it says on the tin' statements about what you'll find on each site. Whatever you decide on, make sure it is written down somewhere you can refer back to it, often.

2. Are people looking for what you are offering?

Online, there are essentially two ways to encourage people to visit your site and see your products. Either tell people about them, or find people who are already looking. Unless you have a large marketing budget, let's assume that the latter is a more reliable recipe for success. This leads us to the best place to find people who are already looking for your products; the search engines. Google provides a handy keyword tool to show you the demand for various phrases. 

Try plugging in various combinations of words from your proposition to see how well it matches whether anyone is already looking for your products: for example, the tool show that there are around 7,000 people looking for 'food hampers' in the UK alone even in the height of summer so British Hampers looks like it's on to a reasonable business model.

The tool also gives other similar phrases which might help you refine the wording of your proposition to something with more demand. My best example of this to date was convincing Blockbuster that they should be focussing on 'DVD rental', not 'Movie rental', exposing them to 500 per cent more customers for a campaign they were running.

3. Have you set your search engine objectives?

The phrases you have identified above are your target phrases for search engine optimisation. This article is too short to explain all the nuances of SEO but for a phrase you want to rank number one for your business you should start to include it in your website pages and every possible mention of your business online. One caveat though; if you type your phrase into Google and find the first page full of global brands, you might want to pick an easier fight. 'Evening wear' will be far less competitive than 'Women’s Fashion', and people looking for more specific phrases are also more likely to turn into a customer.

This is the first instance of marketing impacting on your website plan. To rank number one for 'Food Hampers' you need to have at least one page, if not many, talking about food hampers. Food hamper products, food hamper buyers guides, ideas for what to include in your food hampers. The list goes on and on. To achieve this, your site will probably need more than just a product catalogue so think about what content management system you might need to include to add this information for the search engines to read.

4) Do your landing pages match what people are looking for?

You've set your big SEO target, but what about the more specific pages in your site? Christmas food hampers, Mother's day hampers, corporate gift hampers and so on. Do your shop category pages match what people are looking for? If you are paying for clicks to these pages using Google's Adwords, until your SEO kicks in you want to drive visitors to the most specific pages possible.

5) Are you gathering email addresses yet?

Email is likely to be the most effective way to gain repeat business, or turn prospects into buyers so have you started gathering email addresses yet? Even before your site launches you should have a page up to gather emails ready for your launch. For example, Give.co.uk, George Davies' new brand had a holding page up to collect emails ahead of its first mention in the press and had already buildt a sizeable list before its launch day in October 2009.

6) Are you working closely enough with your offline media campaigns?

Imagine two scenarios, you run a reader offer in a magazine and the link you give to find the offer in question is
'Yourwebsite.com/index.php?cat-12345&prodid=54321&src=rdr0709vge'

This links to a page on your website. Alternatively you give a link to 'Yourwebsite.com/voguejuly' which links to the same selection of products on a page with a Vogue reader offer banner. Which one is most likely to create the best shift of print readers to online, the most trust in the relationship and the most sales?

7. Is social media even considered?

Blogs and Twitter accounts where you can show just how expert your business is in its field aren't just a gimmick -- they are now a serious part of marketing your business and getting feedback from your customers. Your site should have some sort of blog, news or other area where you can keep customers up–to-date with new products and offers, and ideally it should feed into a Twitter account which you can also add other information to. Dell outlet's Twitter feed has added 3 million dollars to their bottom line this year, it's serious business.

The above are a handful of issues which many eCommerce businesses dont realise they need to address until it is too late and opportunities are lost. Hopefully they come together to say one thing: launching an eCommerce website isn't the end goal of your business, it’s just the beginning. For a successful online business you need to think about where your customers will be coming from and give them the best reception possible.

A Last Minute Checklist for Online Retailers

With only one more pay-day before Christmas, many stores will already be in full swing for the festive shopping season. For those still wondering if they are ready for this crucial retail period, the following are a few changes that it's not too late to make...

Update PPC your campaigns

Are your advert texts targetting gift buyers and have your christmas messages such as guaranteed shipping dates and gift wrap services been incorporated?

Update your homepage offers for gift buyers

Is your homepage still all about your regular customers, or is it aimed at new shoppers, buying for their friends & family? Make sure you have links to your gift selections in place and that critical gift-buying messages such as delivery details are highlighted. If you offer gift vouchers, push them at every turn.

Get emails ready for cyber Monday

The biggest online shopping days for Christmas are likely to fall on the 8th and 15th December. Make sure you have emails with strong offers ready to go out early in the day.

Is your gift wrap up to date?

Have you changed your gift wrap for christmas? Update the picture in your checkout or wherever this service is promoted.

Special delivery for last minute orders

Do you have a last-minute buyer option after your regular shipping dates have cut off? With Royal Mail strikes happening more and more often, a guaranteed and express service are more and more important.

Publish your last posting dates

Make sure these are clear, and convincing. No "we will endeavour to", no buts, make a promise and stick to it.

Is your sale ready?

Shopping patterns over the last few years have consistently shown the 26th December to be a huge day for online shoppers who have either hung on for a bargain or have gift vouchersto spend. Make sure you have a plan in place to cope with the changes. Waiting until everyone is back in work a few days into January is far too late. While you're at it, let as many of the shopping offers sites know about it well in advance. Many money-saving websites now carry lists of sales and discount codes. Search in Google for "january sales", you'll find plenty of people to tell the world about yours.

Christmas can be a make or break season for many retailers, good luck with yours!