1. Avoiding the Spam Filters

The majority of large Internet service providers now use rigerous spam protection mechanisms to trap unsolicited email before it gets into their customer’s inboxes. Spam filters generally “rank” each email by a number of different criteria, and, if that email rates above a certain level (such as 10 spam points), then it is flagged as spam and deleted.

To make sure your emails don’t get flagged as spam - and deleted before they even get to your subscribers - avoid using words such as ‘Free’, ‘£££’, ‘Save’, ‘Discount’, etc., in both the subject line and the content of your email.

2. Maximising Click-Thru Rates

Both web pages and emails can contain a lot of text and graphics, and this sometimes makes it harder to get your subscribers to perform a certain task, such as clicking on a link to see your special offers.

Numerous research papers tell us that the majority of Internet users respond better to a plain, bold, blue text link - such as this - as opposed to a banner or button. So, if you’re going to include links in your emails, make sure they are bold, blue and underlined. This will mean that more subscribers click through, meaning more conversions/sales for you.

3. The Power of Personalisation

If you were standing in a crowded street, which of these would get your attention: “Hi, YOU!” or “Hi JOHN” (assuming your name is John). The power of personalisation can and should be used in your emails. In fact, by simply starting your email with “Hi [subscriber_name]” instead of the boring “Hi there”, you can increase both your reading and click-thru rates by up to 650%. Why? Put simply, it’s because your subscribers feel like they already have a relationship with you as you’ve addressed them by their first name.

4. One-Click Unsubscription

If you want to grow your mailing list, then there’s 2 things that you absolutely must have: a double opt-in process, and a quick way to unsubscribe. In some countries, it’s actually mandatory by law that every email has an unsubscribe link in it. The unsubscribe link should take the recipient directly to a page where they are then removed - courteously - from your mailing list.

5. Signup Confirmation

Don’t get accused of spamming - always, and I mean always use a double opt-in confirmation process. Double opt-in means that after your visitor initially enters their email address to subscribe to your list, you should then send them a “confirmation” email. This email should contain a special link back to your email marketing program, which will then verify that this visitor did indeed sign up to your mailing list.

6. Tuesday / Wednesday = Increased Response

Studies conducted by online research analysts have shown that the best days to perform a mail-out to your list are Tuesday and Wednesday, as this is when people are more receptive to communication. This means that they are more likely to read your content and click on links, meaning more sales.

On Mondays, everyone is still recovering from a hectic weekend. On Thursday and Friday, people are already too busy looking forward to the weekend. We’ve actually experimented with this, and received the best results by sending out emails at around 2-3pm (GMT) on a Wednesday.

7. Repeat Email Communication

An autoresponder is an email that is scheduled to be sent at a certain time interval after someone subscribes to your mailing list. Autoresponders are a great way to automatically follow up with your subscribers or provide them with more information on your products/services.

For example, if you provide a free newsletter, you could setup 3 autoresponders for new subscribers: the first is sent 1 hour after they subscribe. It contains a thank you message and a link to get 10% off your newly released eBook.

The second is sent 24 hours after they subscribe, telling them about your community message boards, and the third is sent 72 hours after they subscribe, in which you can offer them a special deal on becomming a paid member of your site.

Autoresponders help your subscribers build trust in both your company and your brand, and this can help make it easier when trying to close sales in the future.

8. Consistency is the Key

If you’re running a newsletter or frequent email publication, make sure you keep the look and feel consistent from issue to issue. By keeping the look and feel consistent, you help to maintain and strengthen your brand and your image to your subscribers, which again will make it easier to close sales when you need to.

vCreate a template for your newsletter and whenever you need to create a new issue, use that template as the basis for each issue.

9. On Time, Every Time

When sending an email to your subscribers, always make sure that it’s sent on the same day, at the same time. For example, every Wednesday at 3pm. Your subscribers will come to “expect” your email to arrive in their inbox on the same day at the same time every week, meaning that they want to read your content and are generally more receptive to any special offers or promotions you may include.

10. The Half-a-Second Subject Line

When your email arrives in your subscribers inbox, you generally have about half a second to catch their attention with the subject line of your email. After this, they will either delete your email or ignore it. In your subject line, try and specify a benefit that the subscriber can expect by reading your email. For example, instead of using ‘OurSite Newsletter Issue #1′, use ‘OurSite Newsletter: 10 Tips for Financial Freedom’.

11. The Free Bonus Hook-In

Free is overused these days, especially on the Internet. However, if you’re looking to grow your subscriber list, then create or source a product of value to your visitors (such as an eBook or discount coupon) and offer it to them for free when they signup to receive your newsletter.

To make sure they don’t simply type any email address into your subscription form, setup an autoresponder to send them the free bonus 1 hour after they subscribe.

12. The Preview Pane

Popular email clients such as MS Outlook show a preview of an email when it’s selected in your inbox. Always have some interesting content at the very top of your email, as this is the part that will show in the preview window of your subscribers email program. If it’s interesting enough, then your subscriber will open your email and continue on reading.

13. Link-Click Testing

When creating marketing emails, try using different text for both content and links. Also try re-positioning images such as logos and buttons. After sending about 3 different emails, compare the click-thru stats and see which one worked best. Now, when you need to send marketing emails in the future, you know that you will be sending the right mix of content and images that will attract the most click-thrus, and ultimately the most sales.

14. Email-Based Learning

Add value to your website, build trust in your visitors, establish your credibility and collect more subscriptions to your mailing list by setting up an email-based learning course. To do this, simply create a series of autoresponders (for example, 5) containing unique content. Then, schedule the first one to be sent after 24 hours, the second after 48 hours, etc.

15. Always Sign on the Dotted Line

Always include a signature at the bottom of your emails, as it’s one of the easiest ways to attract more traffic to your website. This signature should include your personal details, your company details, and an unsubscribe link. You can use your signature to link back to your website, and even to other products.

I recently had the pleasure of collaborating with one of the World’s leading search marketing agencies. Our role was to re-design and develop one of our existing clients websites (a printing company selling business cards, leaflets, stationery etc.) and the agency’s role to was provide the SEO (search engine optimisation). I have chosen not to reveal the identity of the SEO company (for professional reasons) but shall refer to them throughout the rest of this post simply as “the SEO experts”.

I must admit, I was quite exited with the prospect of working with the SEO experts; they’re at the top of their game, have a very impressive client list and we would gain great insight into their SEO strategy and implementation process, both on-site and off-site.

Some Background Info

We first designed and built our client’s website over two years ago and, at the time, we didn’t place too much emphasis on SEO - back then we knew a lot less about SEO and it wasn’t such a hot topic! Having said that, since the site launched in July 2006, our client’s company went from strength to strength; winning multiple awards and increasing their turnover four-fold, to around four million (GBP) per year.

I believe that a large part of the old site’s success was due to the ease of use; simple navigation, clearly defined products and a straightforward, no-fuss, checkout process. However, in order to constantly entice large volumes of traffic to the site, our client was spending a jaw-dropping amount on their Google AdWord campaigns. As competition increased, so did their “pay per click” (PPC) charges and now our client is seeking to reduce some of their AdWord budget and boost site traffic with a good organic ranking. It makes perfect sense. And I’m sure that many businesses will be able to relate to this problem.

The New Website Structure

So after all of the above, obviously one of the main objectives for the new website was to be search engine friendly. The other main objective was not to dramatically move away from the current site’s ordering process, but rather make subtle improvements. From a usability standpoint, the site had been tried and tested and had a proven track record - not only from the multitude of orders the site had received, but we had accumulated just under 10,000 individual feedback responses from the site and were given some great ideas on how to improve the site, from a customer’s perspective.

After conducting their keyword and competitor analysis the SEO experts drew up their site-plan, which was sent to us for implementation. The main structure consisted of:

1. a new site navigation structure, including hierarchal product organisation (e.g. Home > Business Cards > Matt Laminated Business Cards);
2. segmentation of the existing, non product related, navigation (e.g. about us, terms and conditions, FAQs);
3. a new naming convention consisting of new URLs, page names and navigation anchor text; and
4. new product blurb (keyword-rich), including an HTML tagging structure (e.g. <h1>Product Title</h1><p>product <strong>keywords</strong> go here</p>)

All in all, very concise.

However, something troubled me with the new site structure. On closer inspection, the new product page titles were very keyword-rich, to the point where it wasn’t representative of the product they were describing. Furthermore, there were now more products available to choose from, within the product menu. For example, the old website had 1 type of printed Leaflet, accessible directly from the product menu:

• Leaflets
• Folders
• Banners

The new site had expanded the Leaflet menu to 3 types, underneath the Leaflet’s landing page:

• Leaflets
  • Folded Leaflets
  • Double sided Leaflets
  • Single Sided Leaflets
• Folders
• Banners

I can see why the SEO experts have done this; Increasing page volume and copy, including high-traffic key words/phrases within the anchor text etc. etc. However, on the old website the user could compare the Leaflet prices at a glance:

The old website's Leaflet page - prices change dynamically (using Ajax) when an option is selected.

To view the same information on the new site the user would choose “Leaflets”, from the menu, and then select “single-sided leaflets”. To then view “double-sided leaflets” the user would need to navigate away from that page and onto the double sided leaflet’s page. From my experience, this decreases usability and increases complexity - not something an ecommerce site, or any other website should appear.

What raised my concerns even higher, were each Leaflet’s new page title:

• Leaflet Printers
• Leaflet Design
• Cheap Leaflet Printing

Once again, I understood the rationale behind this, but will the product description affect the user’s confidence when choosing to buy a product? Say you were looking to buy “1,000 folded leaflets”, if the product is being described as “Leaflet Design” wouldn’t this cause confusion? What about when the product is described as “Cheap Leaflet Printing” when the leaflets are actually high quality? In fact our client wouldn’t want to describe their products as anything less.

My point is that the old site worked. So would it be necessary to increase the site’s traffic to change the way in which the user selects, views and buys products? I believed there was a compromise to be found. In my view, an understanding of our client’s product range and how customers like to choose those products didn’t appear to have been considered by the SEO experts.

Another point that raised my concern was the SEO expert’s decision to split part of the old site menu and place it further down the page, quite out of view from the user. We were told that these links were to receive the “no follow” attribute, in order the divert PageRank and increase the quality of the page. Some of these menu items were:

• FAQs
• Terms & Conditions
• Delivery Information

From our own user-interaction analysis, taken from a number of ecommerce websites, we have found that to increase conversion rates, the potential customer must be able to easily find key information in order assure themselves of any uncertainties prior to the sale. Browsing FAQs, T&Cs, returns policy and delivery information are absolutely essential to bolster confidence about both the product and the merchant’s service.

We were overruled! After all, they are the SEO experts! I guess the proof will be in the eating of the pudding!

1. Know the law
If you are selling online there’s an abundance of legislation that you should be familiar with to ensure that personal data is kept secure, goods and services meet quality and suitability standards, and online contracts are legally binding. See www.businesslink.gov.uk for some basic advice. If you need any advice with e-commerce legislation, please feel free to contact us or take a peek at our forums for question and answers.

2. Let people browse and BUY without having to register
Don’t force people into registering their details on your site prior to buying products; you will collect their details naturally at checkout. Collecting this information is beneficial as it enables you to be proactive with your customers. You can also give your customers friendly recognition without being too forward.

3. List your prices clearly
Be up-front about any charges, as unhappy surprises at checkout can be off putting. Clearly state whether prices are inclusive or exclusive of VAT and whether the price includes delivery.

4. Use good clear images and concise product descriptions
A clear image of the product encourages buyers - everyone likes to see what they’re buying! Your site is probably not the only one a potential customer has looked at before making their final decision, so a concise description may swing the sale.

5. Have a ‘best selling’ or ‘most popular’ listing
This often boosts sales and is similar to putting products near a checkout area of a shop. It also provides you with an opportunity to tell your customers about other products you offer.

6. Keep it simple
Make sure adding items to a basket and checking out is obvious and simple, if not people will just drop the basket and run!

7. Keep your site up to date
If a product is out of stock, mark it as ‘temporarily out of stock’ and give customers the option to receive notification when it is back in stock.

8. Search Marketing
If your not promoting your website and it can’t be found within search engines, customers will not be able to find you, let alone buy from you! Contact Silkstream for search marketing advice.

9. Confirm and Thank
After-sale service is what can make a good service into an excellent one. A simple call or email a short period after the sale will enlighten the customer experience. Furthermore customers are entitled to written confirmation under the Distance Selling Regulations 2000 (www.businesslink.gov.uk). You can combine SEL (our off-the-shelf e-commerce package) with SEND (our email marketing product) allowing you to create auto-responders, newsletters or monthly promotions to loyal customers.

10. Communication is key
A common pitfall when trading online is miscommunication or lack of communication. Be clear about your policies (e.g. delivery and return promises) and always maintain good contact with your customers. As in point 9 SEND can be a simple and effective tool for communicating with both new and existing customers.