Kogan Technologies launched a cheeky PR campaign this week aiming to win their share of the Australian Government’s $40 billion economic stimulus package.

The Kevin37 campaign is named after the Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd and Kogan’s 37” LCD TV.

Let’s just say that the PR campaign was clever and effective! It has given this relatively unknown company a lot of publicity. The campaign has had coverage on TV, radio and in print.

Here is just a tiny snapshot of the types of articles that have appeared online:

• IT Wire
• Daily Telegraph
• Good Gear Guide
• PC Authority

However, you can’t walk into a Harvey Norman or JB Hi-Fi to buy a Kogan TV. Kogan is an entirely online seller, so how is Kogan planning to capitalise on this brilliant PR campaign?

While there is always room for improvement in ecommerce, we really like what Kogan have done. To make sure that PR turns into sales, Kogan have ensured that this campaign is easily referenced from their website. Here are just some of the conversion rate initiatives that they have taken:

1. The Kevin37 campaign gets a spot on the home page amongst the 4 screen rotating banner at the top.
2. Kevin37 is also featured in the news section of the home page. Unfortunately it is below the fold on 1024×768 screens, so a number of people miss it. But hey, it is there, and that is a good start.
3. Kevin37 is at the top of their products list (click the shop link on the top menu).
4. The Kevin37 campaign also gets a blog entry.

Importantly, Kogan has launched a Google Adwords campaign targeting searches related to Kevin37. It’s amazing how many people run marketing campaigns without ensuring that their website shows up in Google results for the key phrases that they use in their ads.

Kogan have a simple clean website with lots of good content. At the very least, they have generated lots of exposure for their brand and products. We’re sure that Kogan’s website has enough of the right elements to ensure that they will sell lots of Kevin37’s from this campaign.

Faced with the case that was building against the move at the Australian competition watchdog (ACCC), eBay pre-empted a negative response by withdrawing its proposal to eliminate all competition in payment systems.

It was unlikely to go well for eBay at the ACCC as objections flooded in from consumers and bodies like the Australian Federal Reserve Bank, Electronic Frontiers Foundation and others.

Of course, eBay is still forcing everyone to offer PayPal, and I wonder if eBay’s strategy was to distract you from that fact by creating a fuss around the threat to eliminate the competition. eBay can’t seriously have ever believed that they could pull a stunt like that.

Rather than doing their a PayPal business any favours eBay has galvanised dissatisfied users to educate the public on the perils of dealing with the monopoly. It has undoubtedly tarnished the eBay and PayPal brands as well as given competition the best opportunity it has ever had to gain a foothold.

eBay claimed that they should be able to offer PayPal exclusively since they say it is more secure than other payment methods. However, contrary to what eBay’s publicity machine have been pumping out, according to the ACCC (from this artcile by Alex Zaharov-Reutt on ITWire):

5.173 The evidence available does not support the view that PayPal is the most secure method of payment, or offers the best service for all transactions.

Simon Tsang of the Sydney Morning Herald compared eBay’s method of consumer “protection” to organised crime.

We can take this out of the whole eBay + PayPal debacle so far: If you’re operating on the Internet and you’re prepared to walk all over your customers, it will come back to bite you.

Was this whole episode simply smoke and mirrors from eBay to distract you from the fact that they are now forcing you to offer PayPal?

According to iTWire eBay has asked the ACCC to excuse it from the trade practices act over the move.

eBay excuses its actions by arguing that users of PayPal are 4 times less likely to open a dispute about an item. It is understandable that eBay would want advise its customers of those statistics and make recommendations about the best ways to trade.

However, forcing you to risk your money with PayPal is another question altogether.

Remember that PayPal is not a bank.

Unlike the money that you deposit at a real bank, the money in your PayPal account is at far more risk. Moreover PayPal doesn’t behave anything like a bank, and according to many reports intelligible communication with PayPal is practically impossible.

We hope that the ACCC acts to force eBay to abandon this move that is sure to disrupt the bulk of Australia’s retail eCommerce activity.

Jeff used the website www.netdisaster.com to suck out all of the text from amazon.com. Well we did a little experimenting of our own, and you can see the results here.

Take the simple high conversion online shopping and lead generation website apcups.com.au. Here’s a screenshot of it without the words:

It’s not very useful. If you look at the site with the words, you get the picture (pun intended).

It’s strange that words are so often overlooked in a website project. We often see that copywriting is kept in house or left out of a website project altogether. Others tell us that people don’t read websites, but a demonstration like this reveals that people depend on what’s written!

When we are selling a new website in a competitive situation, we usually find that our competitors are only offering a web design and a content management system. Most don’t take any interest in actually creating the content and the copy for the website. Strange really, because it’s the words that actually make the website work.

$ Per Visit = Number of Website Visits / $ Total Website Sales

If the number is high, then just concentrate on getting more traffic. If it’s low, then start asking questions about things like:

• Order process conversion rates
• The average number of items sold on orders
• Your pricing
• The pages where most people abandon the order process.

There are many places to look for ways to improve you $ per visit.

You should also look at this metric across the different sources of traffic. For example, look at the $ per visitor from Google organic searches as opposed to Google Adwords.

Dollars Per Visit is also extremely useful for setting bid limits in Google Adwords and Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising campaigns. For instance, if you know that you margin is 50% and your $ per visit is $1.50, then bidding over 70c a click will lose you money. Be sure to monitor this specifically for your Adwords and PPC traffic as it is sure to vary with different traffic sources.

So start with the basics. The touchstone metrics of your eCommerce website are the number of:

1. Visits to your eCommerce website
2. Shopping carts created
3. Orders placed, paid, sealed and delivered.

From these figures you work out your conversion rates.

Visit to Cart Conversion Rate
Visits / Carts created = %

Cart to Order Conversion Rate
Carts / Orders = %
(or subtract this figure from 100 to determine your cart abandonment rate).

IMPORTANT: The conversion rates tell you where to look for the answers. 

For instance, if you have 1000 visits to your site and yet only 5 people created a shopping cart (0.5% visit to cart conversion rate), then you will want to look carefully at the process that people have to go through to create shopping cart on your website.

If you were finding on the other hand that out of the 1000 visits to your website 500 shopping carts were created (50% visit to cart conversion rate), but only 5 placed an order (10% cart to order conversion, a.k.a. 90% cart abandonment rate), then you would need to carefully analyse your ordering process.

From these stats you might launch into your Google Analytics stats to find out what’s going on. From the clues that you find you could formulate a Google Website Optimiser test to prove your assumptions.

The rewards in this sort of work are high. While traffic may be getting harder to generate with increased competition, your conversion rates are likely to be an easy to reach and untapped gold mine.

In our experience, the majority of time in web design projects is spent sweating over every pixel of the home page. Often it’s based on the belief that the home page will make or break the deal. If you consider the time it takes for visitors to leave your website, it could be true.

Because of the scarce space, many home pages end up looking like they have ADHD. They’re blinking, flashing, distracting and competing for your attention.

So here are some guidelines for designing a great home page for your website:

1. Prioritise the elements that are most important to your business
2. Don’t let your home page compete against itself for attention
3. Make sure that everything is clear and readable at all costs
4. Don’t expect your home page to deliver every single important message that you have
5. Use your home page as a signpost to your website content (useful information).

The reality is, every pixel is important. One of the best ways to make every pixel count in your web design is to use the battleship grid described by Robert Gorell at Future Now: Revenge of the Pixels: The Battle for Screen Real Estate

Note that it’s actually not a battle of form vs function. It’s the two working together.

In order to reach the pinnacle with a web design, you must base your designs on:

1. Knowing the purpose of the website and what it needs to accomplish (e.g. generate leads, make sales, educate, entertain)
2. Thorough understanding of the intended audience, which includes things like their:
   • Needs, wants, desires (as they relate to the web design)
   • Intentions
   • Age, sex, occupation, personality type, demographics
   • Experience with websites
   • Likely viewing environment (Is it at home? At work?)
3. The intention to deliver what the audience needs and wants
4. Deep study of user interface principles for web design
5. Experience, knowledge and flair for web design (or design in general).

Now to achieve all of these points, you’re going to need more than just a web designer.

Firstly, you need to bring to the table what you know about your customers and what they want from your website.

Secondly, you need to engage someone who can plan your web design around the needs of your customers. This person has expertise in typical user behavior on the web. This is often not a web designer.

Lastly, you need a web designer.

Get Web 1.0 right before thinking about Web 2.0.

Web 2.0 is a popular term that refers to things that encourage sharing and community between users. Think Youtube, FaceBook, MySpace, Linked In et al. Think user ratings, reviews, blogs, polls and opinions.

The hype of it all can be overwhelming, and there are some awesome things about the whole Web 2.0 thing… but… if you think you need Web 2.0 features for your site, ask yourself first:

Will Web 2.0 bring me a return on your investment?

In reference to this question, Jakob says, ”If you’re a mainstream business site (including government and non-profit sites), your user experience needs are very different than those of the few hot sites that attract all the attention.”

The hot sites that attract attention are of course Facebook, MySpace, Amazon, etc. Unless that’s your business and you’re well down the path of raising $60 million in capital, your website is not like any of those.

What should you do instead? Jakob continues, “Instead of adding Facebook-like features that let users “bite” other users and turn them into zombies, the B2B site would get more sales by offering clear prices, good product photos, detailed specs, convincing whitepapers, an easily navigable information architecture, and an email newsletter.”

All of these things fall under the banner of good content, aka. Useful Information. Sustainable web marketing is about delivering useful information to the customer. That’s the first place to start improving your website’s return on investment.

You can read the full Alert Box article here: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/web-2.html

The question is, what differentiates you in a price sensitive market? Is the way you treat your customers on the phone, in store or online? Is it your enthusiasm for the product? Is it your follow up? Is it the useful information that you share with them? If it’s not, then your customers have only 2 options:

1. They shop around for the cheapest price
2. They shop around and stumble upon a company that treats them better, and they pay a reasonable, but not necessarily the best price.

People shop on price when they have no other option. Unless you give your customers more than a price you will never know whether your they really are price sensitive.