And that pretty much sums up the session by Rob Snell and a few others. Optimizing your website so the most visitors can purchase with ease is a must-do in today’s world. In fact, if you aren’t already on an ecommerce model, what are you waiting for? Your competitors? (Hint: They may already be working on it)

Sure, there are plenty of businesses out there that can’t sell online, such as service-oriented businesses, but that’s no excuse for having a crappy call to action on your website! Even service businesses can grab money from their website with a smart contact form.

Maybe They’re Having Trouble Finding You

You can’t make it easy for people to give you money if they can’t find you.  Plain and simple.  So what are you doing about your SEO efforts?  Nothing?  Oh- you’re dabbling in social media like twitter? Bad idea.  Social media isn’t bad, but it’s a bad strategy if your SEO isn’t even solid.  Start with an SEO audit and get those simple things fixed.  Then set your eyes on better rankings, particularly in those long tail keywords that no one is going after, and watch the customers start to come.

Maybe They’re Having Trouble Buying

The average person expects to find the product they’re looking for in three clicks or less. no matter what page on your website that they land on (it’s not always your home page), they need to be able to find any product in three clicks or less.

Try this test yourself. How does your website stack up?

Need another test? Ok – for just $39 bucks you can hire a user over at UserTesting.com to run through purchasing a product from you.  They’ll not only videotape what they do, but they’ll narrate the entire process, too.  So you’ll get to hear their thoughts, concerns and trouble zones along the way.  This may just be the best $39 bucks you’ll spend this week.

Maybe They’re Having Trouble Navigating

If your site is running on Flash, JavaScript or some other fancy platform, dump it.  Not everyone has the most up-to-date computer, and they’ll end up hitting the Back button if your site is too busy trying to be cute.  Make your navigation easy to use and friendly across multiple browsers.

If It’s Difficult, They’ll Abandon You

Making your customers’ online experience as easy as possible is imperative nowadays.  If you’re using an old, archaic shopping cart or website without pricing, you’ve just watch the ship sail off.  Don’t let it get too far ahead of you because it’s not coming back for you.

You’ve got some cool stuff.  So cool, in fact, that many people around the country have businesses that sell your items through their store.  You’ve got stuff that’s in demand. It’s hip. It’s high quality. You’re proud of what you build.

You’ve got something that people want; good for you. Yet there’s a problem.  You’re so far behind the times that sales are zipping right on past you. Why?

I’m glad you asked.

You see, those people out there that are selling your product – they’re your lifeblood.  They are on the front lines, trudging through thousands of marketing channels to market your product.  They are squeezing pennies out of nickels to get more customers through their door so they can sell your stuff.

Yet you leave them out in the cold.

Sure, there’s those old school business owners that go the traditional ways of marketing.  Every once in a while they may ask you for a logo that they can send to their printing company, or maybe a one-time discount so they can run a special ad in the upcoming wedding section of their local paper – but there are others out there who are using this new-fangled thing called the Internet to get sales.  Those are the real movers and shakers that will propel your business forward.  Open your eyes and see what they are doing.

But first…

A Quick SEO Lesson

Search Engine Optimization (aka SEO) is the process by which retailers (or anyone for that matter) optimizes their website so that more and more visitors come to their website.  They do this through various means, such as building links to their website, providing fresh content, creating eye-pleasing design, etc.  They pay good money to get this done, and the results are tremendously good for their ROI.

And this doesn’t take into account those using social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to push even more sales (ultimately) to you.

But there’s a problem (and it’s name is YOU)

These retailers need information.  They need data.  They need things from you so that they can sell more product.  They want to establish themselves as the leaders in your industry, and they require knowledge that you’ve got but won’t share.

You need to give them what they want, and more.  Sure, it’ll cost you a new job position or two, but the sales related to it far exceeds the cost.

For example, let’s say you manufacture shoes.  Joe, a retailer who is aggressive online, has already built a nice website. He’s optimized the website so that he gets about 100 visitors a day.  These visitors are already warm leads, because they came to him through searches on Google such as ‘cool shoes’ and ‘warm boots’.  But Joe doesn’t show your cool shoes and warm boots because you won’t let him put pricing on his website. Or you won’t give him quality pictures of your boots. Or you won’t give him anything more than a stinkin’ paper catalog to search through for information.

Joe needs digital.

• Hi-resolution photos
• An excel spreadsheet with pricing, sizes and colors
• Two or three paragraph descriptions of EACH shoe
• Your logo, company history and other info about you
• Company and product datasheets and certifications

Joe needs better customer support.

• Someone he can instantly send a message to for answers to a quick question
• Someone that keeps him up-to-date with the latest changes and sales
• A way to dropship your products

The salesman (or “account representative”) that you assigned doesn’t give a damn about Joe. He cares about commissions.  That’s unfortunate, because he’s missing out on lots of them by blowing off Joe’s repeated requests for information.

Oh, and that last one is a doozy. I’m blown away by the amount of manufacturers who still rely on old school methods when it comes to leads.

Joe isn’t selling shoes only in Podunk Arkansas any more. Thanks to his website, he’s now selling them nationally. Or globally. But you don’t offer him a drop ship option. Instead you tell him that all the leads that are out of his geographical area should be referred to you, so you can send that customer to a local store. WHAT?!

You’re taking a warm (or hot) lead and telling them to wait. Hold on, we’ll tell you where you can drive to get what you want.  Instead you should enable Joe to sell that pair of shoes immediately and drop ship them for him. He deserves that sale, not some other local company that didn’t work for it.

Joe needs a lot of things in order to stay competitive today.  But most of all, Joe needs you to get with it.

Want one of my kids to find something online? Most often, their first stop is YouTube.  That’s right.  Need info on a person? Forget Yahoo!’s people search, there’s Facebook.

And these kids aren’t really any different than most other teens.  Comscore’s May numbers show that YouTube searches are up 4 percent, while Google’s searches dropped 2 percent.  Yahoo is down 4 percent, and Microsoft’s sites are down as well.

What’s up? Well, YouTube as I said, as well as Facebook and Craigslist.

Still Growing, Already Dividing

SEO (that is, Search Engine Optimization) is still a pretty new industry.  There’s not a week that goes by that I have to explain what it is I do and (very generically) how I do it.  People (usually clueless business owners) are fascinated that there exists an entire world based around increasing website traffic and climbing the rankings of Google and such.  They had no idea the system could be gamed. (Yeah, I know, gamed isn’t really the right word to use here, but hopefully it gets the right idea across).

But now that there’s an increasingly younger audience to our SEO efforts, we’re starting to see more and more blog posts on things like Optimizing your Twitter profile, or How to turn your Facebook fans into sales leads.

Wait a minute: I thought my job was to optimize your website for certain terms, build links and make the user experience so that it increases conversions (ie ROI).

Now there are  Social Media consultants (or “experts”).  They help you build up your Facebook profile, tweet for you, and help you create community around your brand.  It’s a terrific idea, and one that ultimately supports a business owner’s SEO efforts, but my gosh it’s time consuming. No wonder these people are creating their own industry.

And this isn’t really the first time SEO has divided.  We’ve seem people go the way of Linkbait expert in the past, along with many other spin-offs.

Get to the Point, Will

Which brings me to the point of this rant:  Choose your battles. Gee, you haven’t heard that one before.  But really, how much money can the average small business owner throw at an SEO project? And then on top of that, social media, PPC, viral campaigns, linkbait and video? Forget it.

I’ll be honest with you.  There is no one person that can do all of that effectively. No way, no how. It takes a team.  Sure, that team may be all quarantined inside a single office, each doing their own little piece of the work, but there’s no way one person can promise a small business owner all of these things his/herself.

If your “marketing guy” tells you that he can do your email blasts, create videos, handle your SEO and run your PPC campaign, you’d better find out if he’s got a team behind him.

Many of you know that I do some web work on an Army contract several days a week in the Federal Center in downtown St. Louis.  Well, I make it a point to watch for the new phone books, which showed up around March 8th this year.  Because of the large amount of worker bees here (about 250), they wheel the phone books in on pallets and put them in the hallway.  Then the worker bees can just come by and grab a new book (and put their old one in a recycle bin).

This year, I kept tabs on the amount of phone books.  Over the period of 38 days, about 16 phone books were taken from the pallet of 200.

Sixteen books.

Just for giggles, I visited a few of the other floors in the building to see how many phone books were still sitting around.  Every floor (except for the IRS area) had about the same amount of books remaining on their pallets.

They finally wheeled them out yesterday. I hope they went to a recycling center somewhere.

Mr. Small Business owner, what does this tell you about the future of Yellow Page advertising?  Are you still spending thousands or tens of thousands of dollars on YP ads?  Your audience is shrinking, and your money is being wasted.

I have a few clients who are ahead of the curve when it comes to Internet Marketing.  They recognized the poor use of their marketing budgets with YP and have since scaled back their spending on these sources, and have put that money into building their online presence through blogging and link building.  They are reaping huge harvests on their well-placed seeds.

I’m not saying to drop your YP ad.  In fact, I think it’s still a viable source of traffic, particularly if your target audience is over the age of 50.  But I am saying don’t put so much money into it any more.  A simple ad with your company name, phone number and URL is all you need.

Shameless Plug: Quit wasting money on dying forms of marketing/advertising. Put that money into hiring someone (like me) that will help your business continue to grow and thrive. Create a presence and a following online, provide outstanding customer service, and the customers will come.

You see, I’m part of a growing group of folks who carry the Internet everywhere they go. Between the iPhone, PDAs and other Internet-enabled devices, getting online is no longer something you need to visit the library to do.

For instance: Every night my wife asks me to take her up to the tanning salon, and I do.  While she goes in, gets naked and scorches her skin, I sit in the truck and read interesting RSS feeds with my Treo via Google Reader.  It’s a nice 20 or so minutes alone where I can catch up on some of my favorite SEO bloggers.

You’ve Got to Make It Easy to Get to Your Content

My cellphone’s  interface isn’t the best, and those buttons are mighty tiny to push, so I prefer not to push more than I have to.  So I’d prefer to click and get straight to the full text, not read a small portion and then have to click 1 for the original post.  Three clicks just to read what you’re blabbering about?

What’s even worse is feeds like Sphinn‘s Top Ten.  At first I thought – wow, cool – all the good stuff on one page.  Then I started to read them on the Treo, and what a headache.  First I get the summary feed, which upon clicking takes me to the sphinn Top-Ten page (full of summaries) where I have to click it again.  Then it takes me to the Sphinn page where (once again) there’s the description, some comments, and oh – a link to the actual post.

Your feed should not be this difficult to get to.  People subscribed to read your content, get it to them immediately.

Offer Multiple Feeds

Since you already know how important a blog is to your business, you must also understand that providing a convenient way for people to read your blog is just as important.  What’s the point of posting if no one can read it?

I suggest to my clients that they offer multiple feeds on their website – a summary feed, and a full text feed.

A summary feed is a RSS feed that contains the first 30 or so words of your blog post.  It’s quick to download, and people can decide quickly whether or not they want to read the rest of your post.  The biggest con is that it requires the person to click and download the full post.  When you’ve got limited time, a slow connection, or a small phone, this may not be the best choice.

A full text feed contains the entire text of every post.  This is a great option for those (like me) who prefer to download once and not have to click (and wait) to read the rest.

SEO Impact on Multiple Feeds

There are no real SEO impacts by offering more than one feed.  The entire point is to make it convenient to all of your readers.

Setting Up Multiple Feeds

There are numerous ways to do this, I’m not going into all of them.  Personally, I use FeedBurner‘s services.  I set up multiple accounts for each blog, one with full feeds and one with summaries.  Then I link to both of those feeds in my blog, therefore offering my first time readers the option of how they’d like to consume my content.

Make it Easy

As I said before, the point is to make it easy for people to read the content of your website/blog.  Sites or links that require several clicks will send your visitors away to other, more convenient sites (your competitors).  Don’t let that happen.

MySpace is for thirteen year olds.  If that’s not your target market, get a grown up website.  Seriously, do you have any idea how stupid it sounds to hear your commercial on the radio pointing us (the ones with the money you want) to your myspace page? Give me a break.

Getting a simple ‘brochure’ website, while still not the best and most practical way to go, is probably going to cost you less than $1000 including your own domain name and hosting.

Then when you realize that you need a real website, call me.  I’ll get you more traffic and exposure than you’ll know what to do with.