Marketing & Site Recommendations

Transcription

1 Marketing & Site Recommendations GoReaderGo LLC Site Optimisation & Marketing Strategies Reference: xxxxxx Date: December 2014 Version: 1.0 Page 1

2 Table of Contents Table of Contents Purpose Business Particulars Key Observations Above the Fold Call to Action About GRG Product Page Empty Sidebar Affiliate Site Risks Marketing Recommendations Add an Additional Category Community Activities Book Drive Read athon Instagram Structured Marketing Campaigns Content Ideas Page 2

3 Purpose The purpose of this document is to provide clear concise recommendations to GoReaderGo LLC in relation to: 1. Enhancement & optimisation of the organisation s current website. 2. Online and offline marketing strategies to be used in conjunction with the website. The desired outcomes being: 1. Greater brand awareness through enhanced promotion of the business products and services 2. A higher conversion rate of site visitors in terms of both lead generation and sales. Page 3

4 Business Particulars Provides key information relating to the business and its operations. Name Purpose GoReaderGo Provides parents with age appropriate information on reading to and with their children. It provides book reviews on a range of children s books, and affiliate links through to amazon.com Web Address Principal A Phone Principal B Phone Page 4

5 Key Observations What is the primary purpose / motivation of the site, i.e. is it designed as an informational site, say to promote the importance of reading, with the online commercial aspects, such as the affiliate links a secondary consideration? Or does the site intend to be a online commercial venture with a view of selling significant amounts of products? Depending on the answer, some slightly different approaches to optimisation and marketing may be taken. That said the primary goal of any business related website should be list building. That is building a large and comprehensive list of customers (or leads) to which you can market, in a targeted manner, on a long term ongoing basis. The site therefore should be structured with this simple goal in mind, and in way that facilitates the least amount of resistance in soliciting some form of personal information from your visitors. Above the Fold Above the fold refers to the visible screen real-estate or part of the page that is immediately visible after a page has loaded, and is the content the user can see without having to scroll down. Page 5

6 It is considered the most valuable portion of the page, since it perhaps the only part of a website someone will see before hitting the back button. Therefore key pieces of content should be placed above the fold, particularly headlines and hooks designed to keep people engaged on your site. Whilst the current picture is important in setting the atmosphere and tone of the site, it consumes a significant proportion of the above fold screen real-estate. You might want to consider increasing the amount of image space text can be overlayed on, and adding more text, preferably linked to important and key engagement content on the site. Remember this is only part of your site many people may ever see, and therefore it is important to capitalize on its potential to keep visitors engaged (long enough to give up an address). Also consider decreasing the height of the image and increasing the font size for the text below. There has been a shift recently to using much larger fonts, to increase readability, particularly considering the number of impression which will now occur on mobile devices. Call to Action The most critical component of your list building is the call to action, which is currently included on the site in form of Subscribe To Our Blog, as below This being the cornerstone of the business list building efforts, it could be improved in the following ways: 1. Consider changing from subscribing to a blog to Join Our Book Club giving people a sense of belonging and interaction that comes with a club, rather than a more clinical and one-way communication of a blog. 2. Offer two types of incentives for them to give up their name and address: a. Give something away when the sign up, e.g. Join our book club today and receive your free e-book with 25 tips on getting the most out of reading with your child. If you can provide the content, a freelancer can be engaged to format it into an e-book very cheaply. b. Offer the promise of exclusive discounts, regular book reviews, promotions and Page 6

7 giveaways as part of being a club member. 3. Ensure the call to action appears on the screen above the fold, and on every single page. 4. Incorporate the fill-in fields within the call action, don t take the visitor to a separate page in order to fill out their details. A number of marketing platforms offer the ability to build the forms through their software and ebbed them on your site, examples worth looking at are: a. MailChimp b. Aweber 5. Example of the form: 6. When people sign up on the thank-you page incentivise them to stay on your site, currently the page simple states, thank-you. How about a link to some blog articles, or book reviews, the longer they stay on the site, the more chance they ll share something or purchase a product 7. After people have signed up, do they receive a welcome , testing indicated this wasn't the case, again platforms like MailChimp and Aweber can assist here. In relation to the current form visitors fill in to become part of your blog (screen grab below), if there is no functional purpose for having the month consider dropping it, the less someone has to fill, the more likely they to complete your form. As your list building efforts increase, the marketing platforms allow you to segment your list into different markets. Knowing the child's year of birth should be enough to segment your s and create specific content targeted towards parents with children in the various age grouping you have defined for the site. Page 7

8 About GRG Consider moving the contact section of the About GRG page (see below) off to its own dedicated page. You want to keep people focused when on the site and guide them in a way that is consistent with the site s goals. Perhaps replace the contact component with either some book suggestions or links to some key blog articles. Generally people look at the about page, when they re not quite sold on you or your site and are looking for some reassurances from your qualifications / experiences / networking circles etc. They will find that with your site, you then need to quickly incentivise them to continue browsing. Page 8

9 Consider dropping the subject drop down too, unless the s are routed to different mailboxes based on subject line. It s another field someone has to fill in, and many people find the predefined subject dropdowns frustrating if the topic or subject of their specific isn t listed. Product Page Consider the example product page shown below, there are couple of changes possible here to increase click throughs: Page 9

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11 1. Move the Buy This Book above the fold 2. Include pricing a shipping information above the fold 3. Include a star rating system based on user reviews / comments or pipe in those from Amazon 4. Perhaps name and photo of the person reviewing the book to help personal the opinion / recommendation on the book s merit. (Include the date of the review too). 5. If the site is built using WordPress, then check out some of the great plugins that can increase the product page s features and offers: a. People who bought this product also bought b. Allowing people to set up a wish list, you can regularly scan their wish list and if a product on their list is on sale or you have a special offering, contact them via . Below is the Amazon page for the same book, which should provide some further ideas around customising the product / review pages Page 11

12 Another small note on the product listings, for the links on the homepage off to various books, it would good to have the top text also linked, as well as the image of the book s cover. It s also another area where you may wish to increase the size of the fonts, include pricing information and make the BUY button more prominent. Page 12

13 Empty Sidebar A number of pages have an empty sidebar (if you re using WordPress, consider using some of the widgets which are available to populate the sidebar). It should definitely include your call to action form. Other suggestions: List of links to key blog articles Calendar of related events around San Fran / California / US Mosaic of book covers to encourage click throughs Wordcloud Page 13

14 Affiliate Site Risks A little while ago, a lot of people made a lot of money with sites, very thin on content, and very heavy on links through the likes of Amazon. They then had the sites rank highly in Google and consequently received many clicks throughs and a lot of commissions. Google is now wary of this practise and penalises sites that it believe are just thinly veiled affiliate sites. Ensure you have lots of content and that you keep it fresh and turn over the links and book reviews regularly to avoid any penalties. Google Webmaster Tools Following on from the point above, when GoReaderGo is Googled, the site itself does not show up in the results, your Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest etc does, but not the site. Hopefully this is not a sign you re being penalised as a affiliate site, and it just that perhaps you haven t set Google Webmaster Tools up correctly such that Google can index to your site. Page 14

15 Marketing Recommendations The following sections provide recommendations of strategies to increase both lead and sales opportunities for GoReaderGo. Add an Additional Category Have you considered a category of books to assist parents in reading to their children, one that comes to mind is Mem Fox s Reading Magic :-) The related searches in Amazon would provide a host of other candidate books for this category. Community Activities The following two suggestions would involve partnering with either the local library or some local schools. The outcome being the ability to raise awareness of GoReaderGo, its site and service offerings, as well as tangible benefits either to the local community or local school(s) 1. Book Drive Children quickly grow out of books, you could suggest, in partnership, with the local library a way of having parents donate books they no longer need or use to the library. Another variation would be gather the books and distribute, via local charities, to underprivileged children. Again this is where the power of your list building is beneficial as the event can be promoted via to your book club members. 2. Read athon As we ve done here for a long time in Australia to raise money for MS, a read athon in conjunction with a local school (or set of schools ) where children are sponsored to read books, with the money raised either used to purchase books for the school s library or distributed to a local charity organisation. Publishers could be approach to provide prizes to children for a number of different outcomes associated with competition. Page 15

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17 Instagram Much in the same way you ve leveraged Pinterest, Instagram offers another visual/image based social media platform, through which book, via their covers, can be promoted. Partnering with Bespoke Authors Given the ease by which people can write, illustrate and publish books today, there should be means via the Internet to source bespoke, small print run books from freelance authors. This may allow you to sell books directly from your site, bypassing the big publisher and making larger margins on these sales. It would also provide a platform for up and coming authors to sell and market their children s books. A variation of this would be actually write and publish your own books. Really all that is required is a good story. Very competent freelance illustrators can be source readily on a number on Internet based freelance portals, for relatively low cost. Print runs can be done from China, again at a very low cost, and can even include drop shipping, where the order is placed through your site, but is procured and delivered directly from the printer. Structured Marketing Campaigns Two approaches here: 1. When someone signs up to the book club / blog, use an autoresponder to send a set of follow up s, say once a week, with a particular reading subject or tip covered of each week, targeted based on their child s (children s) age(s). Included in the would be links back to certain books / reviews, with the view of increasing affiliate click throughs. 2. As your list grows, monthly or bi-monthly mail outs to all members, with exclusive offers / new book reviews etc. Content Ideas An idea for content would be to provide parents an insight in the science and psychology of how children learn to read. There would be a plethora of subjects which could be covered, and the articles could be re-spun into video presentations, slideshows, podcasts etc. and syndicated to multiple online portals and platforms in an effort to: 1. Increase the number of people who are exposed to your content and who subsequently visit your site 2. Increase the number of people you have web pages that link back to your content, one of the primary means of advancing your search engine rankings. Page 17

18 Workshops Consider running reading workshops, perhaps in conjunction with local schools, kindergartens, churches or community groups. They can be for parents only or parents and children, with a view of fostering good reading habits. They should in no way be a commercial or sales activity, and the benefit to GoReaderGo would be to simply raise awareness of the business and its website. Depending on how you approach it you may find significant support (including funding) from local, state and federal governments. Page 18