A great presentation by First Rate (a New Zealand Internet Marketing agency), highlighted the following important success factors for moving your website visitor through the funnel and how to ensure your site performs optimally:

Acquiring Customers could include the following elements:

• Affiliate marketing
• Search Engine Optimisation
• Search Engine Marketing
• Email marketing
• Directories
• PPC advertising (Pay Per Click)
• Directories
• Portals and Publisher sites
• Banner ads
• Traditional marketing elements such as TV, Radio, Print and Direct Mail
• Branding and offline campaigns

Here’s how you could get visitors to interact with your site:

• Additional search features
• Breadcrumb navigation
• Auto login
• Usable navigation that makes logical sense
• Depth of content
• Branding and design features
• Promotions on your home page

Get others to recommend your site:

• Competitions
• Gifts
• Refer a Friend
• Tell a Friend
• Content worth sharing

Many happy returns - make your site sticky:

• Welcome email
• Product and event notifications
• Competitions
• Coupons
• Loyalty program
• New product launches
• Newsletters (sent to a targeted, segmented base)
• Personalised site (with personalised content)
• Promotional offers
• Exclusive content

Persuade visitors to take action:

• Provide deep content
• Show best sellers
• Customer reviews
• Fast payment
• FAQs and support
• One click buying
• Live chat assistance
• Offer a variety of payment methods
• Contact details and physical address
• Recently viewed items
• Recommended products
• Returns policy
• Shipping costs
• Supporting product information
• Targeted promotional offers
• Customer testimonials

Fulfill the order with the following elements:

• Gift cards
• Gift wrapping
• Inserts
• Order status and tracking
• Order history
• Order follow up
• Great packaging
• Feedback via survey
• Reserve a product

• Surveys and polls

Examples of sites that do this really well include:

Amazon.com

Ebay.com

Overstock.com

BlueFly.com

Next.co.uk

VictoriasSecret.com

I read a really good case study today done by First Rate, a New Zealand Internet Marketing service company, that really highlighted the important aspects of running a successful online business. The case study compared the online presence in New Zealand of Hell Pizza, a new entrant to the pizza market, to established brands like Pizza Hut.

Here are the highlights of the study:

Hell’s website is:
- Fun and interactive
- Branded around a cult theme: “hell” - in strong contrast to safe and mundane branding done by other pizza outlets
- Excellent online ordering system - 25% of all orders come from online
- Flexible ordering: customers can create their own pizzas from myriads of toppings and view a summary of their order at any time
- Estimated pick up or delivery times are updated every 30 seconds on the site, so you can follow the progress of your pizza
- Customer details can be viewed and edited at any time
- Customers can pay by check, credit card, cash and account

Pizza Hut on the other hand have been around for years and are an established brand. They have an online ordering system, but it has some draw backs:
- Customers are shown large pop ups of gourmet pizzas, but cannot click on them to order - instead, a telephonic order number is displayed
- Online ordering seems to be a secondary feature on the site
- The site gives no list of Pizza Hut stores
- Visitors have to sign in to view the online ordering system - a tedious process involving a phone number and street address check as well as a verification email

Conclusions:
Hell Pizza takes the lead with imaginative branding, innovative marketing and a quality product. Flexibility and usability on its website have contributed to its online dominance over Pizza Hut. Pizza Hut’s ordering system is hard to use and it hasn’t focused on providing its large customer base with a truly fun and efficient online experience.

For more information on this and other case studies, contact First Rate at www.first-rate.co.nz, email reports@first-rate.co.nz or call +64 9 920 1350.

So Spiderman is on eTV tonight, and it got me thinking. Anyone else remember the Xhosa version of Spiderman from the 80’s? Living in Johannesburg, walking home from school and sitting down to watch TV until the folks got home, I was exposed to the following exciting theme song once a week, along with millions of others around South Africa.

Weird the stuff that sticks around for ever in your memory:

Rabobi Rabobi yanga sizwe Rabobi
Mzeweki bo yangangana
Amanzi seko sebo tshabana
Ingozi yanga iRabobi

Rabobi, Rabobi, Rabobi, Rabobi

Slugs of War performing a cover of Rabobi in the 2000s:

YouTube has come under legal scrutiny lately as a result of legal action by Viacom with regard to copy-right infringement. As a result, it has been ordered to hand over the records of viewers of its site.

Naturally, this has created massive outcry about privacy, so YouTube have made it plain that records will not contain any identifiers such as User IDs or IP addresses - these will be substituted before being handed over.

YouTube has often been the source to view copyrighted material, although only snippets at a time can be seen due to length constraints. Viacom are specifically sueing due to appearances on YouTube of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Nickelodeon’s SpongeBob SquarePants.

Viacom have agreed on the measures to protect YouTube user privacy.

Cafepress.com has always circled around the edge of my mind like a pack of wolves, and I finally decided to take a look at what they’re all about.

Their About Us section gave the run down as follows:

“CafePress.com is an online marketplace that offers sellers complete e-commerce services to independently create and sell a wide variety of products, and offers buyers unique merchandise across virtually every topic. CafePress.com is a growing network of over 6.5 million members who have unleashed their creativity to transform their artwork and ideas into unique gifts and new revenue streams.”

So what exactly do people make and then sell through CafePress? The list includes t-shirts, books, cards, stationary, posters, framed prints, magnets, buttons, stickers and much more.

The website interface allows you to start a project, save it and come back to it later. There are literally millions of projects on the go at all time, and more than 45 million products available at this time.

The community section allows you to connect and learn with your fellow merchants about the best way of getting your stuff sold.

Beginners can start by going to the learning center for quick start tips.

I may tinker with some t-shirt designs and if you see this blog hasn’t updated in a while, you’ll know I’ve made a ton of cash and moved to Borra Borra.

Deezer is a French website that provides you with a great choice in streaming music. Flags across the top of the page allows you to pick a language (16 languages are supported). Free registration allows you to “Discover the world’s biggest jukebox for free!” - which I was keen to do. I was a bit miff about the fact that they spelled “South africa” with a small “a” on the Africa part in the country drop down list, but the user-interface was rather clever and scrolled down nicely in java script goodness. I also liked the fact that the registration procedure was a double opt in via email (so many organisations are afraid of the double opt in because of fears of “breakage” - but I believe a confirmed email address is a good reason to implement it).

Also great about the email system was that the email was directly delivered to my Inbox almost immediately - a sign of good email reputation (no spam) and of good technical systems.

Once you have completed the registration process you are also able to invite your friends - word of mouth is still the strongest marketing tool.

The music is great with loads to choose from in many genres, and the quality of the audio stream is excellent, even if you have a slower connection.

Of course the community aspect comes into it as well, similar to Last.fm, and you can recommend music to your friends and read music reviews - everything you would expect.

One drawback is the large advertisement area on the right hand side, but I suppose initially bills need to be paid somehow.

A great feature is the code snippet that appears next to each song that allows you to embed the Deezer player into your own blog or site, as well as the play list management system.

Great site, good usability, and an all round pleasant experience.