What I thought I would do is take the time to comment on how their blackouts are not really blackouts. And all because of Search Engine Optimisation.

I’m going to take WordPress.org and Wikipedia as an example for my post (as they are, to me, the main websites staging this blackout). If you load any page on their sites today you will be confronted by the following pages:

However, on further inspection, these blackout ‘faces’ to these websites are simply masking the content sitting behind them. These websites will load all of the normal content that they should show and then force a full screen display over the top.

With a few bits of in-browser Javascript* you are able to view the full content behind the page as it should be.

So why haven’t they replaced their entire websites to actually ‘black out’?

Being some of the biggest websites on the internet they achieve results through strong search engine rankings. Their sites are rich in content and Google (and others) will check them regularly for any updates in content and update their records of that website accordingly. When a Search Engine wants to look at a website it requests a copy of the ‘source’ of a page just like your browser does. Your browser would then convert this ‘source’ or ‘code’ into a nicely styled version for you to view with pleasure. Search Engines don’t have this same wish for aesthetics and will happily read through the code they’re given to understand what that website is about.

What this is in effect doing is keeping all of the content there to keep their search engines happy but then masking each page using those styles I was talking about to hide the useful content from the user audience. This is instead of supplying user and search engine with just the content and styles for these black out messages.

Now if these websites just supplied the content for the  black out messages then when Google does its check today it will decide that every page on their site now reads on the lines of “WordPress.org protests the protect IP act”. Suddenly you will see every page drop out of its place in the rankings. I guess this is a risk that both websites could not take.

Admittedly for these large websites it wouldn’t take them long to be re-ranked once their normal website content comes back online. And with the number of users that will surf directly to wikipedia.org or wordpress.org without going through a search engine they should still see their traffic rise once again. However this is all theoretical and should happen but will not necessarily happen.

Does this make their stand of less value?

Some could say it does and some could say it doesn’t. Unless you work with websites for a living none of this may be at all obvious to you at all and it will be as though the websites are inaccessible to their normal content. However for me it does show that they’re not willing to take the search engine ranking hit to have a real black out. And taking that hit would potentially be great headlines in the fight against the SOPA and PIPA legislation. But their websites will be left at a huge disadvantage online.

So what do you think?

*Javascript is functionality code that runs within the user’s browser once it has loaded the content of a website. It is most commonly used for powering website slide shows and other pretty things.

**If you would like me to clarify anything in this post please leave a comment and I will do my best to help.

Say hello to ebuyer.com

Ebuyer.com are an online company that sell discounted computer hardware and little gadgets on a b2c and a b2b level. They’re good value and reliable (*note here for personal experience – other opinions may vary). I’ve used them time and time again for building computers and servers (some of our machines in the office are in fact made using components bought from them) and we’ve found that they have a very hard working marketing department. At least twice a week without fail I will receive promotional offers from them by e-mail.

The idea

So a few weeks ago they decided they would hold a £1 sale today (Monday 28th November 2011). Lots of clearance stock that they wish to shift – some good and some worthless – all going on sale at different intervals throughout the day. Brilliant idea. Bring in the potential customers and convert them into customers that will now be receiving the e-mail updates several times a week. Sell off some stock that they are finding difficult to sell at full price and in return gain some new faces.

So their marketing department have been hard at work over the last few weeks. They’ve sent out e-mails about this promotion. They created a Facebook campaign that allowed users who have ‘liked’ their Facebook page to access the offers half an hour before everybody else. It’s all looking to be a really brilliant campaign. However 10:30am comes and their site becomes inaccessible. Too many people are trying to access their website to pick up these great deals and their current set up cannot cope with the volume of traffic.

The fallout

The frustrated users that after pressing the F5/Reload key over and over again find that once they’ve finally managed to add an item to their basket and checkout (and even in some cases they’ve paid for their items) that the product that they wanted is now out of stock. Suddenly their incredible viral marketing is about to backfire on them. And it does.

All of the users that they’ve managed to get to ‘like’ their Facebook page are now constantly updating it with bad reviews and poor comments about the company. Rival firms are managing to get in and link back to their websites for users having difficulties. Prospective and current customers lost (though who knows for how long).

We’ve all seen these problems before. Many people had trouble accessing the Olympic Games booking site and if you’ve ever tried booking tickets for popular concerts then you’ll also know the frustration at seeing “This page cannot be displayed” in your browser.

So what should they do better next time?

Well I could personally go into a lot of technical waffle about balanced loads, failovers etc. and I could also talk about how they should have separated their deals website from their main website (there have been a lot of comments on the Facebook page about customers not even wishing to get a £1 deal becoming frustrated at their inability to buy normal-priced products so have gone elsewhere).

However the essence of what they needed to do was make certain that all parts of the campaign were doing their role. The marketing department obviously managed to do their job brilliantly. But the technical and service departments are now not keeping to their end of the bargain. The technical department cannot keep their website online and the customer service department aren’t responding to (we’d all assume inundated with) customer queries and complaints.

Have you had experience of these situations either as a customer or a business owner? How have the issues been resolved? Or do you have best practices that you adhere to to avoid such problems? Let us know below.

We as consumers often see January sales as a way of retailers clearing stock. If you run a business that doesn’t hold stock – be it a craft business where you make everything to order or a service based business where you sell your time, then it’s easy to dismiss sales as not being for you. But is it worth looking at them from a different angle?

Sales are just as much about stimulating demand as they are clearing stock.

And when you think about it like that, it sounds a whole lot more attractive doesn’t it! If your business is quiet in January, rather than sitting about moping about it, should you be doing something about it? A sale could be just the thing, with one caveat, it needs to be planned and executed well.

Discounting can look desperate and damage your brand. It can also affect your pricing strategy in the long term, so I would only ever do it with caution. But it really can work.

A poorly planned sale also looks weak. 10% off everything isn’t a sale – it just looks desperate. You need to give people a compelling reason to buy, and a blanket discount just won’t cut it. If you sell product, consider slicing between 25% and 70% off various groups of products rather than applying a global discount to everything. Again, this gives people a more compelling reason to buy.

Last year Clare Yarwood-White ran a sale that started on Christmas eve – her sales increased by 600% compared to the previous year, and it didn’t cannibalise her figures for the rest of the month. printing.com have run a January sale since around 2003 and it works wonders for stimulating demand (although it certainly affects margin for the month). I’ve yet to see a serviced based business pull this off, but I wonder – can it be done? Should it be done? What do you think?

Amazon are often hailed as the trailblazers for related products, at least, the customers who come in and brief us on their ecommerce websites always ask for ‘the “Customers who bought this also liked…” like Amazon have’ widget! And below you’ll see it in all it’s glory…

I have to be honest. I’d always seen this as a very neat upselling tool that was much more useful to the etailer than it was to the customer. I would generally always encourage my ecommerce clients to include this sort of upsell tool unless completely inappropriate, but it wasn’t until I was shopping online this week that I realised that related product functions can actually be really useful to the customer.

When related product functions are useful: the flooring case study

If you’ve been following me on twitter or reading the blog for a while, you’ll know that I’m in the middle of a complete house renovation that is consuming most of my time and energy. I’m delighted to say that light is nearing the end of the tunnel, the builders should be out next week and normal blog service will very soon resume… But I digress. Throughout the process of the build I have ordered all manner of things online that I’m just not used to buying, and it’s been a real eye opener. The flooring was a really good example of this that I’d like to share with you.

My husband is amazing at DIY – he fits kitchens, tiles bathrooms, plumbs stuff in and is generally brilliant around the house. I am not so practical, but for whatever reason I was the one to source and order the flooring (it’s probably down to my impatience). We ordered our oak flooring from a website which shall nameless (for reasons which will become apparent) that unfortunately appeared to be set up with a real disregard for the customer in mind. To say the site was frustrating to use was an understatement.

However, I persevered and ordered the flooring. Not being an expert at fitting floors (and not having an expert to hand that could tell me what to do) I felt like a fish out of water.

I wanted someone to tell me what extras I needed. Did I need underlay? I don’t know! I don’t know how to fit a floor. Do I need adhesive? Again, I’m not sure!

There was a real opportunity for this company to think carefully about the experience they wanted to give the customer, to provide a really high level of service online and win significant business because of it. It would have also meant that they wouldn’t have needed to compete quite so heavily on price.

Taking the customer on a journey

Think about it. I suspect that most people that order flooring through that site are in my shoes. They’re probably (and forgive me because I’m generalising here) ordering on behalf of their installer, and therefore need some guidance around what they need. Imagine how powerful it would have been if the website took you on a bit of a journey once you’ve added the wood to your basket.

Imagine something like Welcome Fiona, we see you’ve added 50sq m of oak flooring to your basket. How will you be fitting your floor (2 options to tick then move on to next screen)

If you’re floating your floor we recommend buying 50sqm of 2mm underlay and 3x pots of adhesive. Would you like to add these to your basket?

This could have all been done through the checkout journey for a seamless, fun and recommendable experience. The actual experience was anything but seamless, although to the company’s immense credit, they were interested in feedback. It’ll be interesting to see how much of it they take on board!

How can you use related products to improve your customer journey?

There seems to be a school of thought amongst many online retailers that price and search engine optimisation are king, and everything else is unimportant. Now whilst I’m not going to argue with the fact that price and being found for what you sell are crucial, many ecommerce businesses fail to place customer experience at the heart of their websites and ordering processes, I believe, to their detriment.

There is no doubt that things have got tougher this year. Discretionary spending has decreased by an average of 30% and retailers need to be much, much smarter about how they attract and retain customers. Ecommerce isn’t just about making a fast buck out of customers once. A truly successful ecommerce business, like any successful business, needs to gain repeat business. 

New customers are the most expensive, and difficult type of customer to acquire. But if repeat businesses is king, why do so many online retailers fail to plan effectively to get their hard earned customers to buy again? Over the next few posts I’m going to give you some examples of situations that could have easily been avoided.

Generating goodwill matters

The sad truth is that if you have the best product, at the best price, then you will of course sell product – whether you have a wonderful customer experience or not. I suspect you won’t be maximising the opportunity as much as you might, I suspect that you could make a lot more profit with a wonderful customer experience, and I know for a fact that you’ll generate more repeat business and more recommendations.

Retail is all about making customers feel good about what they’re buying, and that matters just as much online as it does offline. I just wish that online retailers would remember that!

A few members of the Flourish team were recently given the fantastic opportunity to attend the SheerB2B Social Media Conference in London and over the next week or so Dani and I will be sharing some insights from the day. The day was incredibly inspiring and insightful, but the presentation made by Steve Shroud – Head of Customer Services for Joules really got me thinking.

Outstanding Customer Service is at the heart of Joules. The customer is their most important person, they never want a customer to be disappointed, and they always want them to come back. It all sounds incredibly simple and it’s something we all strive for, but how much emphasis do we put on this as businesses?

What do you do to put your customers first?

Joules is steeped in heritage, and although they have grown from a humble stall to 54 UK stores, their brand attributes have stayed the same.

Joules say that they are ‘blessed’ with their people. People who genuinely care and have empathy with their customers. Key to their success though is their emphasis on the brand, nurturing their Brand Ambassadors (some who have been on the journey with Tom Joules from the beginning) and always recruiting with this in mind.

Obviously the look and feel of the Joules brand has developed over the years, but the brand attributes have stayed consistent. Joules focus is on outdoor living, heritage and quality. The brand is classic, dependable and aspirational which is why they continue to be a market leader.

Since launching Flourish nearly 2 years ago, our brand image has evolved (hopefully you like our new blog!), but our message and ethics have stayed the same. I think outstanding customer service comes from understanding your customer, believing in your brand attributes and communicating this successfully through all of the channels available to you, and by all members of the team.

How do you incorporate your understanding of your customer needs into your brand? What do you do to communicate your brand with passion? And how can you get your team to do the same? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

In my next posts I’ll do a bit of a tutorial on how to achieve some of these effects using photoshop. In the meantime, hold on tight for a bit of creative eye candy!

1. Polaroid Style

I love this. It’s simple and effective although it can get a little wearing if you use it too often.

2. Numbered Scrapbook/ Editorial Style

One of my favourite treatments of inspirational editorial images. I love the style of the numbers and the clean lines. I love how she’s pulled this together with a cohesive colour palette. Something I have on the Full Bloom development list.

3. Add some text

Easily done in Photoshop and looks gorgeous. I’ll be showing you how to do this very, very soon.

4. Watermark a caption

How gorgeous is this? It works because the font works with the image, the colours have been thought through and the subtle transparent band really makes a difference. I’ll show you how to do this very soon… (Image credit: the very talented Simple as That)

5. Montage by colour

Am I allowed to tell you I love this again? Or is it getting a little boring?! The fact is that I love the way all of these treatments work (just don’t use them all at the same time…). This works because of the fact that the images are pulled together by a very clear colour palette. And of course, because they just look gorgeous. (Image credit: Snippet and Ink)

6. Subtle black border

A favourite with photographers this always looks fab. Just a word of caution from my detail attentive friend and award-winning photographer Matt Pereira – make sure the spacing between your images is even. I don’t always do this on my blog and he’s right, it doesn’t look right unless the spacing is pixel perfect. My wrist is publicly and officially slapped Matt!

7. Montage with white spacing

A bit of white spacing always makes a selection of images look amazing – but do see my note above for caution! (Image credit: All Things Lovely)

8. Scrapbook Polaroids

A variation on a theme is never a bad thing is it? This keeps things fresh with the fun and quirky font and the coloured background. (Image credit: Decor8)

Now there have to be about forty other treatments that you could do with your blog images. Please do post your favourite methods below and I’ll pick a few to run some tutorials on and show you how to do them using Photoshop. Enjoy!

Blogging isn’t easy is it? You work all day (and sometimes into the night) with the day job and then somehow you’re expected to find the time to blog. And for goodness sake, does it even work? Is it even worth it? You hear horror stores of people putting in dozens of hours a week with nothing to show for it and it becomes scary.

Having blogged for my own business for the last four years I can categorically say that it does work. Blogging has helped me develop relationships with my current and prospective clients, showcase our work and gain recommendations. I’ve also gained countless speaking gigs from the back of it and forged some online friendships along the way. And on top of that, we gain a good chunk of enquiries and clients through the blog. It has certainly become a core part of my marketing mix and something I’d be loathe to do without.

That said, it takes time (that I don’t have) and energy (which as a mum is often in short supply) and determination. There are times when I just don’t think I’ll be able to find the time to blog, and times when I’m so busy that I just need to let it go for a week or two. But you know what? The world doesn’t stop turning just because I don’t blog for a day or two.

After four years I hope I have a healthy attitude to my blog and social media. I know that I’ll get out what I put in. And I love to put in a lot, but not at the expense of my wellbeing. And I think it’s that attitude that really makes a difference.

In preparation for my Blogging Workshop on 22nd September (do join us if you can, there are only a couple of spaces left and it’s always fun) I got thinking about the difference that makes the difference. Here’s my thinking…

The difference that makes a difference

Focus. A great blog with a strong and loyal readership is focused. The author is clear about what they write about, what their focus in and how that feeds through to their business. And if the blog is your business, this still matters (see my case study on Flowerona for more info on how she has turned her blog into a business).

Consistency. Of design, of the frequency of posts, of the tone of voice. I guess it’s about being authentic. Think about your favourite magazine – you buy it because it has reliably consistent content around a theme or a genre. It speaks to you and it inspires and motivates you. It’s the same with a blog.

Design. Blogs that have consistently high readerships are well designed. It’s easy for readers to find their way around, pleasurable to look at and the branding complements the tone of voice.

Generous. With information, with positive energy, with knowledge. We read blogs because we love to learn, we love insights into someone elses’ business of life. Positivity is key and a feeling of “not holding back” information also really matters here.

Passion. Passion is contagious. It keeps people coming back for more, it enthuses them to tell their friends and it helps them engage with you. Passion is one of the key words people use to describe my blog and I think if you look at most successful bloggers you’ll see passion right up there as a key attribute.

Those are my thoughts. How about you? What do you think is the difference that makes the difference in the blogs that you read?

When was the last time you reviewed your website? I mean properly and objectively reviewed it, rather than just looked the other way when you opened the site by mistake? I always recommend my clients review their sites at least every six months, at the very least. It’s amazing how much your business will change, the market will move on and your customers needs will change over six months, and it’s important that your website is always business ready.

By business ready I mean that it needs to be ready to attract the right sorts of clients; position you in the best possible light and provide conviction that you are the best company for the job. Often small tweaks, changes to images or adjustments to your copy can be all it takes to get your website business ready again. Sometimes it’s about adding in a couple of extra pages or taking out irrelevant information. And sometimes (and only sometimes) you need to throw everything out and start again.

Here’s how to get your website business ready

Ask yourself: what do we want to be known for, what are we best at, what work do we want to win through the website? Now be honest – are your words, images and design communicating that?

What is the goal of the website? I was talking to a potential new client yesterday who was frustrated that her website didn’t get her more members joining. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that the fact there was nothing on the homepage asking you to become a member, no pages to outline the benefits of membership and no imagery to lead your eye to the membership section. I suspect that if we had delved a little deeper there would have been more that we could have found to help her achieve her goals, but often an objective glance is invaluable.

What’s working, what’s not? Use your gut feel, client feedback and anecdotal evidence as well as information that you can glean from Google Analityics. We find the exit pages, site overlay and general information invaluable when gaining feedback on how well a website is performing. Come up with a plan of what needs to change.

What information is out of date? Team members perhaps, products that are out of stock or no longer in use. Is everything that you provide or sell on there? I realise that I am highly innovative and will often change things at the drop of a hat (much to the delight of my staff as you can imagine) but almost all businesses will develop and change over time – make sure you keep your website up to date to reflect this.

If you have a website with a content management system, then much of what you learn throughout this process you’ll be able to implement yourself. Most of it is likely to involve changes to your website copy, perhaps to some of the images or perhaps small tweaks to the structure. So go on, give yourself just half an hour to get your website ready – I promise you’ll thank me!

ps. I really do practice what I preach. Having tweaked, nipped and tucked the Flourish website over the last 18 months we are now in the process of a bit of a redesign… But that’s another story for another day

It has never been cheaper to start an ecommerce business. Gone are the days where you need to spend hours learning HTML to build your own website – businesses like Shopify and Create mean that you can create an online shop from around £30 per month. Which is great news for cash-strapped startups – or is it?

Getting your ecommerce website online only tells half the story. What’s much more important is getting people to buy. And that means having the right product, at the right price, in the right place, with the right promotion. Hang on? That sounds like old school marketing! And yes, it still has a place in running an ecommerce business today.

Just because getting your ecommerce business online is can be cheap, that doesn’t mean that you can ignore the basic rules of business. In fact, these rules apply more than ever. I firmly believe that if you want to succeed with an ecommerce business that you need to invest properly in branding, a decent website and in promoting the business properly to get it off the ground. But there is one question that you can ask yourself that will cost you nothing and gain you everything.

Why should people buy from my shop over my competitors?

There it is. It’s not rocket science. It’s not earth shatteringly off the wall. Just a basic business question.

Let’s say, for example, that you have ambitions to pull together a shop that takes the best local designer makers in your area and showcases them to your customers. You want to create a gift shop. The bad news is that whilst you can certainly do this cheaply, doing this well, in a way that means you won’t compete on price, is going to be a lot harder.

You need to think seriously about your competitors. Not On The High Street (NOTHS) and Gift Wrapped and Gorgeous do this sort of thing really well. What do you bring to the table? What are you doing differently? What are you doing better? Why should I spend my £30 on a gift in your online shop rather than, say, NOTHS? If you really want to get volumes of people buying from you then you need to be able to answer this question. And you also need to take steps to ensure you can compete.

And that means having a logo that looks enticing, an ecommerce website design that looks engaging, compelling and reassuring, a process that gets people to the checkout page and beyond and a meaningful brand that keeps your customers coming back for more. There are a host of other things to consider too: how do people find your online shop (both via SEO and Pay Per Click advertising and with offline PR and promotions), what does your packaging look like, how do you set the business up, control your stock and manage deliveries?

But you have to answer the most basic of questions first: Why should people buy from my shop over my competitors? After all, if you can’t answer this question, how are your customers going to be able to?

Image Credits: Nice Package via Paisley St Claire