According to Helen Leggatt of BizReport, “a trial is currently underway of ads on Facebook that include the name of a friend who has reviewed the advertiser along with their review….. If an ad for, say, a liquor store is annotated with a review from a friend saying it is the cheapest and rated 4 stars, that will surely be a far more powerful message than one from an anonymous advertiser“: New Facebook ads may display friend reviews, ratings.

It’s one of those beautiful “why didn’t I think of that” ideas.

Yet less than a week earlier the same writer pointed out “…despite only 2% of consumers saying they would put trust in strangers the vast majority would double-check a friend or relative’s product or service recommendation against the online opinions of, ironically, strangers.” in Family and friend recommendations no longer enough.

Recommendations from friends are obviously more interesting than those of strangers, yet this doesn’t mean that we necessarily have unshakable faith in their advice.

So can you use this idea on your own website?

If you have sections of your website with content geared towards specific user groups, then testimonials from like-minded users will carry far more weight. It’s common sense, yet often overlooked.

Speak in the language of your visitors and they’re more likely to listen.

I’m not. But I thought it would make a good example.

Let’s imagine I was twenty years younger, and looking to buy a diamond. Being a twenty year old male means that I wouldn’t know the first thing about diamonds, so my first port of call to expand my mind would be to Google: “advice on buying a diamond”.

Let’s compare four of the results I see.

buyadiamond.net- little text, no information. Makes the classic mistake of describing what they’re going to explain without actually saying anything. Also quite an unattractive website – not the sort of place I would want to part with my money.

aboutbuyingdiamonds.com – appears to have a fair amount of information but leaves the novice a little unsure as to what to click on next or where to begin.

gillets.com – significantly better than the above examples. They start answering my question right from the outset, and the headline reassures me that I’m in the right place.

bluenile.co.uk – a cut above the rest. The most dominant aspect of the page is the information I need. The introductory paragraphs reassure me that I’m in the right place. Then there’s a short explanation of each characteristic, nicely illustrated, with a clear link to more information should I require it.

How you to choose to present your products or services on your website is critical to how well you sell them.

Next Wednesday I’ll be holding a 30 minute webinar that will show you 17 different ways to stop losing your website visitors.

17 different ways to increase your sales.

Register for the free webinar today.

Getting visitors to your website is easy. Twitter, Facebook, your blog, forums, newsgroups, press releases, AdWords, AdCenter, Yahoo Search Marketing, link services and more… there’s no shortage of options.

Getting targeted visitors to your website is a little more difficult.

Getting targeted visitors to your website at an affordable cost – that takes knowledge, skill and time.

Yet no matter what you’re doing to bring in visitors, no matter how targeted they are and how little you’re paying for each one, there’s a good chance that the majority of them are going to leave your website within a few seconds.

All that work – the posts, comments, articles, insightful advice, keywords, beautifully crafted ads, well-written thought-provoking content – go out of the window if the visitors to your website don’t realise the five magic words within seconds:

You have what they need.

On Wednesday August 11th I’ll be hosting a free 30 minute webinar on the different things you can do to retain your visitors and reduce your bounce rates.

We’ll be looking at 17 ways to turn more visitors into customers. 17 ways to increase your sales. 17 ways to improve your ROI.

30 minutes of your time: 17 ways to sell more. Guaranteed results.

Wednesday August 11th at 5:00 PM (BST), 9:00 AM (PDT), 11.00 AM (CDT).

REGISTER FOR THE FREE WEBINAR TODAY.

You are losing website visitors. Right now, even as you read this, people are coming to your website, not finding what they need and leaving. Most will never return.

Terrifyingly, many were looking for the very solution that you provide. Yet they didn’t stay on your website long enough to realise it.

On Wednesday August 11th, I’ll be holding a 30 minute free webinar on practical steps that you can take to retain more visitors and convert them to customers. Subjects will include 17 different ways to optimize your website for conversions, and 10 of the most common optimization mistakes to avoid.

Join me if you can on Wednesday August 11th at 5:00 PM (BST), 9:00 AM (PDT), 11.00 AM (CDT).

Stop wasting money. Stop wasting customers.

Register for the free webinar today.

As a very regular user of the BBC news website, and someone who works with website optimisation and usability, I was geekishly excited when I heard that the BBC were in the process of a major redesign. Yet what a disappointment!

The preview certainly sounded good:

• a fresh, updated design, with more space for the main stories of the day
• better use of video and images
• clearer and more prominent labelling and signposting of key stories, whether you are on the front page or a story page
• a better indication of which are the most recent headlines
• easier ways to share stories with others, for those who wish to, on social media networks

The reality, however, is a major disappointment.

Take a look at how the top navigation appears in Chrome – note that the size has not been reduced; it really is that unclear:

Then there’s the bewildering mix of fonts, sizes and styles:

I understand that when a regularly used website is updated, users tend to initially dislike the redesign. But this is a major hop, skip and a jump backwards.

The old design allowed me to see all the major stories of the day; barely having to move my mouse.

The new design forces me to click the sidebar four times to get to the bottom of the page – and that’s at my resolution of 1680 x 1050.

The old design had a clear separation of actual news and items of interest.

The new design shows me main news stories, also in the news, sport, uk/world news, more from BBC news, democracy live, BBC world service, multimedia content, features and analysis, most popular, market data, programs and more.

Far, far too much in too little space.

Bad design. Bad usability. Bad.

We recently started working with a client who sells SharePoint solutions. I personally am not handling the account, but after looking at their website, realised that although I have heard about SharePoint, I don’t know exactly what it is.

So I went to Microsoft for the answer:

“What Is SharePoint?

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is an integrated suite of server capabilities that can help improve organizational effectiveness by providing comprehensive content management and enterprise search, accelerating shared business processes, and facilitating information-sharing across boundaries for better business insight. Additionally, this collaboration and content management server provides IT professionals and developers with the platform and tools they need for server administration, application extensibility, and interoperability.”

I could be looking for the precise solution offered by SharePoint and I wouldn’t even know it.

Those who like to argue could say that Microsoft can get away with it. That anyone looking for SharePoint already knows what it is.

But there are definitely people out there who are looking for this type of solution who don’t know what SharePoint is. And Microsoft’s website certainly won’t help them.

Most visitors to your website will find their way there through a search engine. If your main page doesn’t instantly communicate what you sell and why they should buy it, they’ll be gone faster than you can say floccinaucinihilipilification.

Remember when 468 x 80 banners were the big thing?

I do. In fact I used to sell advertising on some of our websites using the format, as did most websites at that time.

Then we hit ICO - Inevitable Cycle of Overuse.

Stage 1 – the format takes off; now “everybody” is using it.

Stage 2 – we see so many banners that our brains start to automatically filter them out and ignore them.

Stage 3 – the “clever” people realise they need to make their banners stand out. They start using bright, garish colours to irritate your senses.

Stage 4 - the “clever” people realise they need to make their banners stand out from the other bright, garish banners. They start using irritating animations that distract you from what you’re doing.

Stage 5 – the “clever” people realise they need to make their banners really stand out from the other bright garish animated banners. They start using horrible sounds that hurt your head.

Stage 6 – our brains have to work too hard to filter out and ignore the audio-visual debris that bombards them. The “fed up” people buy software that blocks banners.

Stage 7 – free add-ons for web browsers that stop the ads working.

Incredibly, the 468 x 80 banner is still in use. To me this is like using waterboarding for brainstorming. But thanks to phenomenal over-use of the 468 x 80 format, it’s nowhere near as effective (or expensive) as it used to be.

Today I see a new breed of 468 x 80: the slider ads, such as AnythingSlider.

These are just as annoying a format as 468 x 80 ever was. Yet this format has a twist. People are using it as a substitute for poor web design.

Instead of using a well-designed navigation structure, some web designers have decided that it’s more effective to throw their products and services at visitors (at speed) the moment they arrive.

We’re approaching Stage 2 of the ICO syndrome, but it won’t be long before we start ignoring them, and you know what happens next.

Advertising in 2010 shouldn’t be about interrupting, annoying or distracting your potential customers. And if your irritating ads take up large amounts of your web pages, what do you think the initial impression of your website will be?

Break the cycle. Inform your visitors; don’t interrupt, bombard or torture them.

According to a post on the Google Analytics blog, Google are developing a “global browser based plug-in to allow users to opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics“.

The writer explains that this is in the interests of “protecting use data privacy“.

Sorry?

This has the potential to cripple the accuracy of Google Analytics data, and will effectively be a major step backwards. Companies will once again be forced to choose between highly inaccurate Analytics data (where inaccurate may be synonymous with useless) and other analytics solutions.

The problem for many will be finding other solutions. Finding a server analytics package you can work with and trust is far from simple.

Our company eventually settled with Urchin, but we had to tweak and adjust the settings to get anywhere near accurate – see Urchin Madness? Over-reporting is the norm.

For now, the cynic may be forgiven for thinking that this pushes users of the ‘free’ Google Analytics platform to commercial options, such as Urchin.

The more astute cynic may wonder why Google are prepared to protect a user’s privacy from website owners, but not from themselves. I can’t see Google developing a plug-in to opt out from Google tracking their search history.

Don’t confuse ‘Don’t be evil’ with ‘Don’t be hypocritical’.

More choice for users: browser-based opt-out for Google Analytics on the way

Question: How much time are your visitors spending on your website before leaving?

Answer: Probably a lot less than you realise.

The graphic below shows a typical trend for a product-based website, where the majority of the visitors leave within 10 seconds.

Even accounting for some random and off-target traffic, that should leave you less than happy.

In fact the graph clearly demonstrates what marketing people have been preaching for years. You have very little time to grab the attention of your website visitors.

Take a quick look at the following website home pages.

The key point is that a quick look is all that is required to instantly know what’s on offer.

mediaflex media solutions:

Clearleft:

SoftwarePromotions:

I know. It’s not to easy to communicate what you do in 3-4 seconds.

Those example sites are just lucky.

How does your website match up?

We recently made the switch from ClickTracks to Urchin, mainly because Lyris have bafflingly chosen to leave ClickTracks to gather dust and slowly decay.

As our company has been using ClickTracks since 2003, making the move from the familiar to the unknown has been understandably painful but necessary.

However in our initial tests, we were surprised to see Urchin significantly over-reporting the figures in their reports.

After some digging, we found the reason why. By default, Urchin reports visitors and bots together.

In other words if the home page of your website was visited by 1000 human visitors and 500 different bots on a given day, Urchin would report this as 1,500 hits to the page.

Bear in mind that some bots might hit pages on your website regularly throughout the day. We’ve seen data sets where there are more bot hits than visitors.

As a user of Urchin, why on earth would you want to merge these two data groups together?

I can see this being useful when considering server load, but for regular reporting, I can’t see any valid reason for this.

Excluding the bots is fairly straightforward, but if you’re using the default settings, you should make sure you’re sitting down when you first view your ‘real’ data.

You’re going to discover that you’re not getting anywhere near as many visitors as you thought.

The question is why would Urchin choose to set this up by default? Why distort the data?