That is a jump of 25.6 percentage points in three months. So a great many firms are about to have a difficult conversation with customers who liked the old price.

A Price Increase Is a Marketing Event

Most manufacturers treat a price rise as an operations decision announced by email. The number changes, a note goes out, and everyone hopes it lands quietly.

Yet from the customer side it is the most consequential message you will send all year. It reopens a decision they had already made, and it invites them to look at what else is available.

Because of that, the letter announcing it deserves more thought than most campaigns get. A poorly worded increase costs accounts that took years to win, whereas a well reasoned one often costs nothing at all.

Explain the Cause, Not the Percentage

The weakest version of this letter states a number and calls it market conditions. Customers read that as a decision you made rather than a pressure you absorbed.

Name the actual driver instead. If it is a specific alloy, a freight lane, or an energy input, say so. NAM found trade uncertainty cited by 71.8% of manufacturers, so your customers are living through the same pressures and will recognise an honest account.

Then say what you did before raising the price. Absorbing part of it, resequencing production, holding the old price through a quarter. Those details turn an announcement into evidence of how you operate.

Industrial Marketing Has to Carry Proof Now

When price rises, buyers reweigh everything. Reliability, lead time and support move up the list, and they need somewhere to check those claims.

Most manufacturer websites do not serve that reading. They list capabilities and certifications, which answer what you can do rather than what happens when something goes wrong.

• On-time delivery, as a real number over a stated period.
• What happens when a shipment slips, and who calls whom.
• Lead times by product family, kept current.
• A named contact for existing accounts, not a general form.
• One customer example with figures rather than adjectives.

That is the material a buyer needs to defend keeping you at a higher price. Without it, they are left arguing from loyalty, which rarely survives a procurement review.

Talk to Existing Accounts First

Under cost pressure the instinct is to chase new business to cover the gap. That is usually backwards.

Your existing accounts are the ones about to receive a price increase, and they are the cheapest revenue you have. Losing one to a competitor costs far more than the increase recovers.

So spend the quarter on retention communication rather than acquisition. Call the top accounts before the letter lands, and let them hear the reasoning from a person rather than a PDF.

Optimism Is Steady, Which Matters

One figure in the NAM survey cuts against the gloom. Manufacturer optimism sat at 74.2%, down slightly from 75.3% the previous quarter but almost exactly on the historical average of 74.3%.

So this is a cost shock rather than a demand collapse. Customers still want the product, which means the conversation is about price rather than about whether to buy at all.

That distinction should shape the tone of everything you send. Apologetic messaging suggests a business in trouble, whereas a straightforward account of costs suggests one that is being run carefully.

What to Do Before the Next Increase

Write the explanation before you need it. Under deadline pressure the letter turns vague, and vague wording damages accounts.

Then audit your own site for the proof listed above. Most manufacturers find they have the data internally and have never published any of it, which is a short project with a long payoff.

Finally, decide who makes the calls to the top ten accounts. That list is short enough to handle personally and important enough to justify it.

Your Sales Team Needs the Same Words

A price letter goes out and the calls start. If each rep explains the increase in a different way, buyers hear improvisation rather than policy.

Write one page of shared language before the letter lands. What drove the cost, what you did first, what stays the same, and what you will do if a customer pushes back.

Then let people say it in their own voice. A script read word for word sounds worse than the truth told plainly, and buyers can hear the difference.

Good industrial marketing does this work in advance. The message reaches the customer the same way from the site, the letter and the phone.

Give Buyers a Reason That Is Not Price

Once you cost more, the buyer needs a second reason to stay. Most firms have one and have never written it down.

Look at why your longest accounts stay. It is rarely the price. Usually it is a lead time you hit, a person who answers, or a problem you fixed without a fight.

Put that on the site in plain terms with real numbers. Industrial marketing earns its keep here, because a buyer defending your invoice needs something to point at.

Do Not Wait for the Quarter to Close

Cost pressure builds faster than most reporting cycles. By the time a quarterly review confirms the problem, customers have already had two invoices at the old price and one difficult surprise.

Tell accounts early, even when the final number is not settled. A heads up that a change is coming buys goodwill that the change itself will spend.

Buyers plan too. Warning them lets them budget, and a buyer who budgeted for your increase rarely puts the contract out to tender.

If your site is not carrying its share of that argument, we run a free website analysis, and our marketing strategy work starts with how buyers actually decide.

The post Your Input Costs Jumped and Your Sales Page Did Not Change appeared first on CueCamp.

Manufacturing Lead Generation Runs on ROI, Not Conversion Rate

This is exactly why conversion rate alone is a poor way to judge a channel. A trade show can convert only a small share of the room and still deliver strong ROI, because so many attendees are genuine buyers. The return does not collapse because the channel is weak; it collapses because the follow-up never happens. So before you cut a channel, ask whether you are actually working it.

Search rewards a different kind of discipline. Content and SEO compound over time, and manufacturers who commit to them tend to see it pay off. The Content Marketing Institute surveys manufacturers directly each year. It consistently finds that those with a documented content strategy report stronger results. Unlike a paid campaign, that content keeps working long after the spend stops.

A simple audit puts this into practice. For each channel, track its true cost per lead, the revenue it drives, and how many leads actually get a timely follow-up. Rank channels by return, not by conversion rate, and close the follow-up gaps before you move any budget. Then revisit the numbers every quarter.

Content That Respects a Technical Buyer

Rankings reward content that respects a technical buyer’s time. Publish detailed spec sheets and honest performance benchmarks. Add case studies with real numbers a procurement team can take upstairs. Then build comparison guides that help an engineer choose with confidence. Generic capability pages, by contrast, do almost nothing.

Specific, useful content earns links and trust at the same time, and it keeps working long after a trade show booth is packed away. Treat content as an asset that compounds, not a one-time cost, and keep each page focused on a single clear question. Buyers want proof rather than promises. So let a detailed case study carry the argument, naming the problem you solved and the outcome you delivered.

Strong manufacturing lead generation depends on this kind of depth. Write for the engineer and the buyer, not a faceless crowd, and answer the questions people ask before they request a demo. Add a clear next step to every page so a ready buyer can act at once. Your pages will then quietly do the early selling for you.

Turn Expertise Into a System

Most manufacturers already own the expertise; they just never publish it. Capture what your engineers explain on every sales call. Turn each answer into a page, a post, or a short video. Then keep a simple content calendar so the effort never stalls. Over time, a small library becomes a serious advantage.

A system beats a burst of activity every time. Set a realistic cadence, even one strong piece a month. Repurpose each piece across your site, email, and social, so your best thinking reaches buyers again and again. Your sales team is a goldmine here, so write down the questions they answer every week and turn the ten most common into clear pages.

Do not let perfect stop you from publishing. A useful, honest page beats a polished one that never ships. Start rough, improve over time, and keep the flow going. Momentum is its own advantage.

Pick the Right Channels

Channel mix matters as much as content quality. The Content Marketing Institute finds that 93 percent of manufacturing marketers use LinkedIn to distribute their content. It is also the platform they say produces their best results. Repurpose your content into LinkedIn posts and short videos, show machine walkthroughs and quick training clips, and answer comments quickly, because that is where trust begins.

A focused channel plan for manufacturers looks like this:

• Search: rank the pages that answer buying questions.
• LinkedIn: share expertise and engage engineers directly.
• Email: nurture leads with useful, specific content.
• Video: show your process and build confidence.
• Reviews and case studies: prove results with real numbers.

Not every channel deserves equal effort, though. Double down on the two that bring real leads, keep a light presence on the rest, and revisit the mix each quarter as results change. That focus is what keeps a small team effective.

Measure What Matters

Marketing only improves when you measure it honestly, so track a few numbers that tie to revenue rather than vanity metrics. Cost per lead, close rate, and time to close tell you far more than follower counts. Reviewing them monthly also beats a single look once a year. This is how you learn which content and channels actually pay off.

Good measurement also protects your budget. When a channel underperforms, you can move money with confidence and reinvest in what works, again and again. The metrics worth watching are cost per qualified lead by channel and which pages influence a request for a quote. Track close rate and average deal size by source, plus the time from first visit to a signed order.

Share the numbers with your whole team. When everyone sees what drives leads, priorities get clearer. Marketing stops being a mystery and starts being a system. That clarity keeps a small team pulling in one direction.

A Practical Starting Point

Strong manufacturing lead generation does not need a full marketing department. Start with the questions your buyers ask most. Map the top ten your sales team hears, then publish a clear page for each, one at a time. A realistic first quarter might look like this:

• Month 1: audit channels and publish three buyer-question pages.
• Month 2: launch a weekly LinkedIn cadence from that content.
• Month 3: add case studies and measure cost per lead.

By the end of a quarter, your best channel will finally be your best-funded one. CueCamp turns technical expertise into a pipeline that keeps producing, so your engineers’ knowledge finally works as marketing. See our work and case studies, and if your best channel is underfunded today, request a free website analysis.

The post The Marketing Channel With the Best ROI for Manufacturers in 2026 May Surprise You appeared first on CueCamp.

That finding comes from the 2026 Report on Employer Firms, drawn from the 2025 Small Business Credit Survey. So this is what owners across all fifty states said when asked plainly.

The Problem Owners Name Is Not the One They Fund

Ask most owners where the money goes and marketing sits near the bottom. It is the line cut first when things tighten, and the line added last when they loosen.

Yet the same owners, asked what actually holds the business back, name the thing that budget was cut from. That contradiction is worth sitting with, because it explains a lot of stalled years.

The reason is timing. A supply problem hurts this week, so it gets attention. Being hard to find hurts slowly and invisibly, since you never meet the customer who did not call. Consequently the urgent problem always wins the budget.

Costs Are Squeezing the Same Firms

The Fed also found that rising costs were the most common financial challenge. More than four in ten firms said tariff-related costs hurt, and 77% reported one or both of those pressures.

So the squeeze runs from both ends at once. Inputs cost more, and customers are harder to reach. Either alone is manageable, whereas together they force a choice.

Most owners respond by cutting. That is a reasonable instinct with costs, though it backfires on the visibility side, since the cut compounds quietly for months before anyone notices the pipeline thinning.

Small Business Marketing Is a Findability Problem First

When owners say they need marketing, they often picture campaigns. Yet the gap is usually more basic than that.

Someone in your area already wants what you sell, and today they will not find you, or they will find you and leave unsure. Fixing that is cheaper than any campaign, and it works permanently rather than while the spend lasts.

• A site that says what you do and where, in the first screen.
• A Google Business Profile that is complete and current.
• Real reviews, answered, including the unflattering ones.
• A phone number that a person answers during stated hours.
• One page per thing you sell, named the way customers say it.

None of that is exciting. All of it is the difference between existing and being found, and it has to be right before any campaign is worth funding.

Pick One Channel and Finish It

The common failure is spreading thin. A neglected profile on six platforms reads worse than a strong presence on one.

So pick the single place your customers already look. For most local businesses that is search plus a Google Business Profile, and for a few it is one social platform. Then finish it properly before adding another.

Finished means something specific. Every field filled, every question answered, every page current. Half-finished work on five channels costs more attention than finished work on one, and it returns less.

Measure the Thing That Pays

Owners often track what is easy rather than what matters. Followers, impressions and sessions all move without the business moving.

Ask new customers how they found you, and write the answers down for a quarter. That one habit beats most analytics setups, because it captures the referral and the word of mouth that no tool sees.

Then spend where the answers cluster. After three months you will have a real map of what works for your business, rather than a general claim about what works for businesses.

What to Do This Month

Start by searching for your own business the way a stranger would, from a phone, not signed in. Note what you see and what is missing.

Then fix the first thing that would stop a customer. Usually it is unclear hours, a missing service page, or a form nobody answers. Those take an afternoon, and they move more revenue than a month of posting.

Word of Mouth Still Needs a Landing Place

Most small businesses grow on recommendation. Owners often read that as proof that small business marketing does not apply to them.

It works the other way. A recommendation sends someone to look you up, and what they find decides whether the referral converts. A stale profile can waste a warm introduction.

So treat your site and profile as the place referrals land rather than as an advertising channel. That reframing usually changes what gets fixed first.

Check it yourself the way a referred customer would. Search the business name, open the first result on a phone, and see whether the next step is obvious within a few seconds.

What the Fed Data Says About Timing

The survey ran from September to November 2025, and expectations for revenue growth had fallen to their lowest point since 2020 while actual performance held steady.

That combination matters. Owners are more pessimistic than their own numbers justify, and pessimism is what cuts marketing budgets.

If your results are steady, treat the mood as noise. Small business marketing compounds slowly, so the firms that keep spending through a nervous year tend to arrive at the recovery already visible.

One Owner Cannot Be Everywhere

Small business marketing fails most often for a boring reason. The owner is the only person who can do it, and the owner is busy running the business.

So build the plan around that constraint rather than around best practice. Two hours a month you actually spend will beat ten you intend to.

When the honest answer is that those two hours do not exist, hire the smallest slice of help that unblocks you. That is usually one specific job rather than a retainer.

If you want a second pair of eyes on it, we offer a free website analysis, and our marketing strategy work starts from how customers actually decide.

The post The Hardest Part of Running a Small Business Is Being Found appeared first on CueCamp.

1. Find Your Best-Selling Products

First, conduct a bit of research on your business to find out what sells the best. You may already know this intuitively, but research into actual sales figures and profit margins will be of use. In certain cases, great-selling products or services may not generate income for your business due to slim profit margins. Alternatively, you may wish to prioritize other products / services with less traffic, but higher margins.

Additionally, consult your website and social media analytics to see what actually interests your audience. Particular landing pages or social media posts may receive more traffic than you realize, which is worth noting. You might start by examining a subset of products or services, focusing efforts to generate powerful landing pages that convert. Certain businesses (such as an e-commerce clothing store) may have hundreds of products with a different type of sales cycle. Understanding how and why your customers buy from you will help in the design of good landing pages. For example, an online clothing store with $20 items will have a shorter sales cycle than stores selling $1000+ items.

Finally, to help refine your list, a business SWOT analysis can highlight both successful and problematic areas to change. A SWOT analysis looks at Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats: serving as a lens to examine your business. A brief analysis of these four categories reveals products or services that need attention and a marketing redesign. In addition, opportunities for growth are typically revealed that can help improve your digital marketing efforts.

2. Design Attention-Grabbing Landing Pages

Following the analysis done in step 1, you can focus on designing landing pages that grab the attention of your customers. The SWOT analysis (from step 1) will clarify the unique value proposition of your business. Leveraging what sets you apart from your competitors will dramatically improve your marketing. Drawing the attention of your clients to these unique properties will show why they should buy your product or service. Focusing on what it can do for clients (from their perspective) supplies a compelling reason to make a purchase. Be sure to present a powerful, unique value proposition.

For example, when Apple, Inc. releases a new product, they market it clearly with their users in mind. Rather than listing out technical specs first, Apple makes use of vibrant imagery from actual product usage, showing us what the product can do. For instance, iPhone marketing will headline how it is capable of low-light photography, and show crisp images taken in low-light. These may include someone blowing out birthday candles in the dark or sitting around a campfire at night. These contextual examples help people imagine what owning the new product might be like. Concrete examples show users what they can do themselves with the product.

Other phone manufacturers may try to tout superior hardware in their product (such as the camera’s F-stop or shutter speed; or more powerful hardware specifications). However, Apple creates a compelling reason to buy through examples of use, using storytelling and vibrant imagery. Finally, a clear call-to-action is presented: a button to ‘buy’ the product. This enables users to enjoy the described benefits of ownership, as conveyed by their marketing and storytelling.

3. Create a Powerful Call-to-Action for Lead Generation

A good strategy for designing landing pages is to place yourself in the shoes of a typical customer. Make sure that marketing content speaks to your customer’s goals and desires. Do not communicate from your own perspective. Tell a story or show an example of a client using the product or service to communicate from their perspective. Rather than starting with what you offer, addresses how you meet their wants and needs first. This helps prospective clients imagine themselves using your product or service while raising social capital.

Once you’ve created compelling landing pages for your top products or services, what can you do to raise conversion rates? Analyzing your marketing for clear calls to action will shed light on whether you are compelling your audience to take further action. Frequently, we want customers to make a purchase. However, most business models and sales cycles are not this straightforward. Often, businesses want their prospects to ‘take the next step’ and reach out. This may be requesting users to send a message or call the business. If this is the case, the call-to-action should be as straightforward and simple as possible.

What is the End Goal for Lead Generation?

For each landing page, decide on the best ‘next step’ for your sales cycle and for lead generation. Then, focus on making that process as simple as possible. In other words, analyze the landing page at a macro and micro level to be sure the process is easy. Want users to reach out? If so, a short form at the bottom of the page may be best for lead generation. Asking users to fill out a long form will probably cause many of them to fall off the bandwagon. Too many form fields can cause users to question why so much of their personal information is needed. Or it may simply annoy them by having to spend too much time filling out the form.

To conclude, this step should focus on compelling your prospects to act and making that action as easy as possible. Analyzing the user experience (UX) of the landing page is an excellent way to see what needs improvement. Streamlining your landing page UX and fixing issues will result in better lead generation. Business processes might be considered as well, including how transactions are managed. If users fill out a form, who gets it? Integrating forms with a CRM tool (software for customer-relationship management) could be a smart decision. A good place to start might be with a free UX audit from CueCamp.

4. Analyze & Create Resources of Interest

Take a multi-pronged approach to your digital marketing and create interest by offering resources to potential customers. Using the list generated in step 1, think about any resources that might help your customers engage with your business. For instance, a marketing company might realize that their audience often wants to learn about email marketing basics. In this example, creating a short guide as a downloadable PDF will capture prospects. Asking users to fill out a short form (name, company, email address) will capture leads for future prospecting.

Downloadable guides, e-books, blog posts, interactive workshops, and how-to videos are a handful of resources that you can use to generate interest. These efforts support a digital marketing strategy that makes an effective use of your website as a lead generation machine.

5. Newsletters and Social Media Posts

A monthly newsletter with valuable information or discounts may be a way to stay connected with customers, without overwhelming them with too many messages. A proper balance of touchpoints, with high quality information, is key. Email newsletters can offer resources of interest, upcoming sales, or industry news. In cases, segmenting your email marketing list will allow more personalized, customized email marketing to your audience. For instance, if you own an online clothing store, emails might be personalized based on gender, shopping habits, or other interests. As shown above, emails can be sent to customers that did not complete their purchase with an incentive to do so. An analysis of your marketing strategy and business objectives will clarify the type of resources you can offer for the highest impact.

Similarly, social media can be an effective way to draw people to engage with your brand. Like newsletters, a suitable amount of content for your business will help generate quality conversions. Posting low-quality content daily can overwhelm those following your brand, causing users to unfollow you on social media. Alternatively, posting too infrequently can cause a loss of interest. Analyzing your business objectives and designing a social media strategy to create a buzz for your business will draw prospective clients to your website. Additionally, hashtag research can separate your audience by interest, demographics, and location: enabling you to deliver personalized content to their social media feed.

6. Use Paid Ads & SEO for Lead Generation

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is concerned with optimizing landing pages (and websites) to rank highly on Google search. According to Google, the first five organic search results capture over 67% of all clicks. If your website ranks below the first page or search results, SEO can help improve your search rank to capture more traffic, which leads to more sales. Further, SEO drives 1000%+ more traffic than organic social media, according to BrightEdge. Optimizing your website for keywords of high relevancy has a drastic impact on the traffic driven to your business website from search engines like Google.

The steps outlined above support an overall content marketing strategy, which aims to drive quality traffic to your website and drive business growth. Besides organic search rank, you can place ads on Google to get to the top of search results. Likewise, social media ads on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn will generate prospects and drive traffic to your website. Enabling retargeting / remarketing on your paid ads will push ads to users that previously interacted with your brand. Retargeting users is based on their analytics data. These users are more likely to convert based on their earlier interest in your brand.

Summary

Digital marketing efforts are driven by both quantity and quality. Focusing on both the quality (your website / landing page user-experience) and quantity of leads (your inbound marketing efforts) will generate success. To make your website a lead generation machine, the six steps described in this article will help you reach that goal.

Incorporating a multi-pronged marketing approach across social media, search engines, and paid ads will drive new prospects to your website. What happens once they reach your landing page is up to you, and the user experience provided on your website. For a user experience analysis of your website, you can request a free audit from CueCamp.

Depending on your business, a range of marketing touch points are needed before a prospect becomes a qualified sales lead. When possible, personalized content of high relevancy is more likely to convert a prospect. High-quality content, delivered on a regular cadence, results in a website that will engage your prospects. Crafting a content marketing strategy to achieve this goal will turn your website into a lead generation machine.

Written by: Matt Sharritt, Ph.D., Founder, CueCamp

The post 6 Easy Steps That Will Make Your Website a Lead Generation Machine appeared first on CueCamp.

User-friendly Experience + Simplified Buying Journey = More Sales

For the business owner, a well-designed e-commerce platform allows them to run their business easily, and can help streamline daily operations and customer service calls. Following are some tips and best practices to follow to help grow both organic traffic and sales conversions.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and UX

User Experience and SEO are critical components of any e-commerce site, especially as industry verticals are becoming more competitive. Digital advertising prices continue to rise and generating organic traffic is essential. In addition, cross-functional expertise is required to build a website that has good UX and SEO, as these fields continue to overlap. Google algorithms are becoming better at reading page content, placing priority on well-designed content that is not artificial. Prior black-hat tactics to raise search rank, like loading page footers with keyword-dense text, are now causing page ranks in search engines (like Google or Bing) to drop. Driving organic traffic can feel daunting and will take time, but will pay-off in the end with good SEO practices.

Website Sitemap

Part of good UX and SEO involves a well-designed sitemap. A sitemap reflects the website page and navigation structure, and hierarchically organizes website content. Adding a sitemap to Google Search Console is important for any e-commerce site, so that search engines crawl and understand product information. Google will be notified to any changes that you make to your site, which should happen on a frequent basis so content does not become stale. A sitemap not only makes the new content you post discovered quickly by search engines, but is reflected in the website navigation to users (helping tell them about the content on your website).

Simplify Page Content (and Clutter)

Clear, simple to understand content can raise engagement with your audience. In many instances, “less is more” – as said by Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe, a German-American architect that pioneered the minimalist movement. Your website visitors appreciate you communicating your message in a simple, yet efficient manner.

Similar to a cluttered advertisement, websites with distracting content, too much text, or an unclear message will lose their effectiveness. Over time, more and more things fight for our attention, and the average user has a shorter attention span. Users are willing to spend less time figuring out what you’re trying to get across, so get the job done with simple, clear messaging on your website. Design each page using proper keyword research and ensure landing pages have a clear engagement goal in mind so that your content has a purpose.

Optimizing Website Structure and User Journey

Supporting the intentions of website visitors is critical to raising conversion rates. Whether the goal is to sell a product or communicate an important piece of information, users should be able to fulfill their needs as efficiently as possible when using your website. If a product is difficult to find or a message becomes muddled, conversion rates will fall.

Part of optimizing the user experience (UX) of a website is to ensure that different types of users (personas) are able to achieve their goals efficiently: whether it be completing an action or finding information. A well-designed navigation structure will help the user journey, so that users can find what they want in the least amount of clicks (and with less confusion along the way).

Make Sure Your Site is Responsive

More people are becoming accustomed to purchasing groceries, clothing, home décor, and vehicles in the comfort of their homes. According to Forbes, Cyber Week had 62% of traffic coming from mobile in 2018, and fifteen percent of orders of were placed on mobile phones over the Thanksgiving holiday. Other sources place over 60% of website visitors (and climbing) using a mobile device like a phone or tablet. With this in mind, websites need to use a responsive design to be sure that content is optimized for mobile devices. The lack of an intuitive UX can result in user frustration, causing visitors to leave before completing a purchase on a website.

Website speed

Website performance contributes heavily to page rank and SEO, as well as usability. Research by Google describes how sites appearing on page one of Google display content in 1.19 seconds on average, while those on page two display primary content in 1.29 seconds. Some tools that can help you gauge and improve your website speed are Website Grader by HubSpot, Google PageSpeed Insights, and Pingdom Website Speed Test.

SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificate

An SSL certificate authenticates your website to encrypt data that is being transferred from a website to users. SSL certificates ensure that a website is secure when visitors make purchases, which is important is the growing age of e-commerce. An SSL certificate encrypts sensitive user data, such as personal bank information, phone numbers and addresses.

Google Chrome, the most-used browser, has begun notifying users when a website is not fully secured with an SSL certificate. Fully encrypting data using SSL will provide users the best, most secure experience: ensuring that sensitive data is transmitted securely between the browser and web server. In a world where data breaches and security are becoming commonplace, users will trust and show loyalty to brands that value their privacy and sensitive information: highlighting the need for SSL certificates on websites.

Conclusion

Optimizing your website has a powerful effect on your marketing effectiveness, as well as your bottom line. Increasing conversions on your website, whether serving a goal of purchasing products or communicating information about your business (in a clear, efficient manner) will attract new customers and build loyalty. By optimizing the user journey for your website, different types of users can be served in a more effective manner.

The skill sets involved in designing a website continue to broaden and overlap. Experts in development, graphic design, SEO, UX, marketing and content writing need to know how their design decisions impact other areas of design. For example, designing a page around a keyword (SEO) impacts the website structure (UX), written content, and image content on the page (which can also impact website speed). A working knowledge of these fields is required to balance design decision trade-offs to make websites more effective, and this expertise can yield powerful improvements. In many instances, a simple analysis of a website by an expert can present some low-hanging fruit, which can have a huge impact on results.

To gauge how your website currently measures up, and identify some low-hanging fruit that can improve your website, request a free website marketing analysis from CueCamp. This report is in video form, generated by CueCamp’s team of experts to show the user-friendliness and marketing effectiveness of your website. Start out on the right foot, and reach out today.

Authors: Shannon Olear & Matt Sharritt, Ph.D. (CueCamp)

The post Boost Store Profits: E-commerce Experience Optimization appeared first on CueCamp.

Inbound Marketing begins with establishing social media profiles on various platforms that will work for your type of business – in order to start engagement with potential customers.

What happens after you make contact with a new potential customer? Typically your social media initiatives will help drive new traffic to your website. All of the traffic that you drum up from your social media platforms will hopefully drive people to learn more about your company, offerings, and services.

Once you have established traffic to your site you can then start making direct contact with your potential customers and then create a sale.

A useful way to use the sales funnel concept is to figure out which social media platform sites will work best for your type of business. As a general guideline for our clients, we start out with a Facebook company fan page. Facebook is a powerful tool to increase visibility in your target market and engage in a relationship with your customers. With over 1.23 billion active users, Facebook is a great place to begin.

There are many different ways to start engaging potential customers by using Facebook. Our team at CueCamp helps businesses to figure out what to post, and when to post, in order to help attract new customers. Every business is different, which is why we tailor every marketing plan to fit clients’ specific needs. A solid Facebook company fan page is an excellent way to begin.

CueCamp is now offering free custom Facebook fan pages. Our marketing team will help generate more potential customers talking about your business with a custom designed and professionally marketed Facebook page. Our social media experts do it all for you by creating a page that best represents your business and its offerings, and then builds your fan base to get the conversation going.

If you don’t have a Facebook fan page or are not happy with what you have now, our team will build a page that gets you a following. Next, we will professionally market your new Facebook page to get you likes, targeting people who will be interested in your business. Finally, we will keep these new fans interested and talking about your business by frequently updating your content and creating new marketing campaigns.

If you are interested in a free custom Facebook fan page, contact us.

How can you retain traffic and turn those visitors into paying customers? Check back next week to learn about the next step in the sales funnel: your website.

Written / posted by: CueCamp

The post Inbound Marketing with Social Media appeared first on CueCamp.

According to research firm Score, Inc., the 2011 holiday season saw a 15% increase in web sales over 2010, for a total of $35.5 billion in online sales (while overall holiday spending was up just 3.8% from 2010).

The holiday season is not just about selling products to your customers. It also involves keeping those that come for the first time, and keeping them there. As said by Jakob Nielsen, “It’s an old lesson: It’s much easier to close additional sales with existing customers than to acquire new customers. People who’ve proven willing to give you money will often give you more. This is true for all sales channels, but it’s particularly crucial for e-commerce because the first order proves your credibility if you effectively handle follow-up and delivery.”

The following statistics about shopping carts highlight how website usability problems can impact sales:

21% of buyers said they “decided not to shop at any given site because of security concerns.” (Jan Riley)

1 second delay in page response = 7% reduction in conversion (Sean Work)

54% of U.S. consumers believe companies are more interested in selling products and services (Michael Fisher)

According to Aaron Marcus, Staples.com® in applying usability in their website found:

• 67% more repeat customers
• 31-45% reduced drop-off rates
• 10% better shopping experience
• 80% increased traffic

½ of your potential sales are GONE if customers can’t find merchandise on your e-commerce site

“At HomePortfolio.com we monitored site traffic, observed consumers in usability studies and worked with internal business groups. This helped us make changes that made the site’s purpose clearer and increased transaction rates measurably. The change increased the traffic up 129% the week we put it up.” (Interaction Design, Inc., 2001)

Some issues to consider that cause shopping cart abandonment:
(Charles Nicholls) & (Roger McGershen)

• Customers abandon their shopping carts when the ratio of the shipping cost to the value of the cart approaches 100 percent. Would you buy a $19.99 item if it costs an additional $14.95 to ship?
• Customers are sensitive to perceived price points. $9.99 seems cheaper than a $10.00 item. The same idea goes for shipping costs and how many items are in a cart. One study found that a $99 minimum order to get free shipping encouraged people to add more items to their carts.
• Not able to find contact information (22% abandonment rate): trust is lost if a person has no way, or difficulty in finding, how to contact you.

Nine ways to improve shopping cart retention and visitor experience:

1. Disclose shipping costs in advance.
2. Show security icons.
3. Create trust: Communicate your online store’s trustworthiness by having clear guarantees and contact information. Display company phone numbers on every page, along with hours of business, and place your guarantee and return policies prominently.
4. Easy shopping cart return: make it easy for customers to return to the shopping cart without having to go back through the purchase process.
5. Offer comparison shopping directly from your site.
6. Offer coupons and discounts.
7. Encourage user reviews and reward those customers who give them.
8. Do not have a graphic heavy page.
9. Make contact information prominent throughout your site.

When going over the final numbers of your holiday sales, consider the facts presented in this article. Consider how your potential customers view and interact with your e-commerce website. Review your weblogs and customer comments. Work with your hosting company and see how many shopping carts were abandoned. Most importantly, review the usability of your website.

As Jakob Nielsen said, “Usability rules the Web. Simply stated, if the customer can’t find a product, then he or she will not buy it.”

If you would like some assistance with reviewing your website’s usability, please contact CueCamp.

Written and Posted by: CueCamp

The post Did Your Shopping Cart Survive the Holiday Season? appeared first on CueCamp.

1. Analyze your content
2. Update your sitemap
3. Review your URLs
4. Analyze your internal link structure
5. Ensure consistent design features
6. Check for usability problems

1. Analyze Your Content

Your site has been growing since it first went live. Do you really know what is on your site as of today? Did you create a content inventory system when first developing the site? If you did not it is time to do an inventory of your content.

When developing a content inventory, utilize either a spreadsheet or database to categorize and describe the information on every page of your website. Some things to include in the inventory are:

• Central topic or area on website; i.e. ‘Staff’ page is under ‘About’ area
• Page title and URL
• Short description of the page
• When the page was created, and revision dates if any
• Who wrote the page and who is responsible for maintaining the page and their contact information
• If there is a page expiration date
• Other pages linked to this page
• Images on the page
• Page status – keep, delete, revise, in revision process, etc.

Once you have this inventory, you will not only have a great tool for maintaining your website, but one that can assist with the future development of your website.

Finally, remember to assign someone (or team) to keep this inventory up-to-date.

2. Update Your Sitemap

Does your website have a functional sitemap? Is it easily accessible to your website users?

Having a functional sitemap will benefit your organization in several ways. Visitors go to sitemaps if they are having any issues finding the information on your website. Helping users find what they came for will enhance their opinion of their visit. If they cannot find information or are challenged in finding information, what will they tell others about the website or your organization?

Sitemaps do not need to be overly stylized; a basic HTML sitemap will work. Search engines also utilize sitemaps as a part of how they rank you.

Have Sitemap → Have improved usability & visitor experience Have Sitemap → Have SEO improvement / higher search rankings

3. Review Your URLs

Do you have a http:// and a http://www. version of your site? Or, did you move a page ( i.e. www.website.com/about/ to www.wesite.com/aboutus/)? If this is the case, then you need a 301 redirect. This will ensure your web pages retain their optimized rankings after the move among search engines like Google.

When creating your URL’s are you paying attention to how they read? Are they SEO (Search Engine Optimization) friendly? Making URLs with keywords in the URL will help raise your rank in search engines.

Both your visitor and search engines prefer a URL that is clean and concise. A friendly URL is like: www.website.com/about.html, while an unfriendly URL might read like: www.website.com/cgi-bin/gen.pl?id=4view=about.

4. Analyze Your Internal Link Structure

Your website internal link structure is important for a number of reasons. SEO is a theme throughout this post, and internal links are another part to your SEO. For example, if you click on a link titled “Doing a Year-End Business Review”, the page that you are directed to should be optimized for the keyword phrase “Year-End Business Review”.

5. Ensure Consistent Design Features

Are there areas of your site that are still displaying old template designs? Are your graphics up to date and consistent across your website?. While doing your audit keep in mind your overall design, including your page layouts and company graphics. Making some quick changes not only will improve the appearance of your website, but enhance your brand image and level of trust among customers.

6. Check For Usability Problems

How difficult is it to read and understand content and navigate your site? Do users get lost, or can they find what they are looking for easily?

Usability is essential for good websites. When people visit a website, they typically  are on a mission. Once on your website, users want to fulfill their goals: whether it is for entertainment value, searching for information, or for socializing with others. If your website’s visitors experience difficulty, it does not take much for them to become discouraged and go elsewhere.

Usability is a whole article of its own. However, if you do a full website review you will be well on your way to improving your website’s usability. If usability for your website is of interest, you can request a Free Usability Report from CueCamp. This report grades your website on 20 different areas of usability, and is free with no obligation.

If you so choose, you can take your audit a step further by conducting online surveys, doing reviews of materials like your PDFs, white papers, and other material your visitors might download.  You may also review comments that were posted on your blog, or on social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook.  Also, don’t forget to review  customer emails and phone calls that were handled by your customer service department.

A website review should be done on a regular basis, but if you perform it at least once a year you will be well ahead of your competition. More importantly, you will be enhancing your visitors’ time spent on your website.  This will increase the website’s marketing effectiveness, which is why you created it in the first place. If you would like some assistance in doing your website audit feel free to contact CueCamp.

Written and Posted by: CueCamp

The post Improving Users’ Visits with a Website Audit appeared first on CueCamp.