New York-based filmmaker Kirby Ferguson proposed in a TED talk last August that the common definition of “original” may not even exist.  He thinks our true source of creativity is born from three elements:

1. Copy
2. Transform
3. Combine

This is called a remix. Full-on, Danger Mouse mashup style remix.

“Everything is a remix,” says Ferguson. In our individual innovations, we are building on the groundwork of knowledge we learned from in the first place. Copying is how we learn, because “we can’t learn anything new until we’re fluent in the language of our domain.”

Copying breeds interpretation and re-imagining. Even on a subconscious level, we formulate ideas through an extraction process. We take what we know, and make it our own.  Isn’t that a bit more rational than banging our heads against a wall?

You can write totally innovative blog content without the menacing pressure to produce something born from thin air; just embrace the remix.

Here are 5 ways to kick-start the remix for killer blog content:

Repeat history

Take readers along for a throwback to an earlier time in your industry’s evolution.

Copy: take an event, person, or era that made an impact.

Transform: research your chosen topic and pick out the details that surprise or inspire you.

Combine: take those details and present them to readers in a way that will convince them of how remarkable the event/person/era truly was. You might use a visual timeline, cross-compare analysis, or storybook narrative; all fresh ways to breath new life into an old bite of information.

Make strange connections

What do bacon and e-commerce have in common? Mad Men and web usability? Your readers don’t know yet, but with a blog title that uses combined relevance to explain something, you’ll have them hooked to find out.

Copy: take two concepts that don’t necessarily have anything to do with each other.

Transform: find the connections between the two concepts. This is where your creative prowess kicks in.

Combine: explain the details that connect your two unthinkably disconnected concepts. Make your discovery clever and useful in a how-to (“How to Choose Insurance Like The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”), or lesson-style format (“What Orange Juice Taught Me About Angel Investors”).

Amplify a conversation

The questions, comments, and complaints you field day-to-day with customers through social media, email requests, phone calls, and in-person are excellent blog fodder. Like your conversion testing data, customer interactions across channels are worth saving for future reference. Keep a file for the conversations that stand out.

Copy: take a real-life customer or prospect query about your business, from anywhere on the web or in-person. It could be as simple as a tweet such as, “Hey, can I print my instant quote from my inbox?”

Transform: formulate a response to the question or comment.

Combine: showcase your response in a blog post. You could start a regular user response column, describe the customers’ experience, relate the question to something else (another opportunity for combined relevance), or something completely different. Imagine the question played out in a best case/worst case scenario, an illustrated comic or a fantasy-novel spoof.

Redefine the headline

The Internet connects us to a dizzying amount of news content. Make some sense of the stories that affect your readers.

Copy: take a current news story that is relevant to your industry. Refine your process for finding the juicy stuff with Google Alerts, Google Trends, and publication content aggregators like Alltop and Huffington Post.

Transform: as you read the story, make notes about what surprises or alarms you about the content. Jot down questions and comments to help form a critical examination of the piece.

Combine: summarize the main points that are most important to your audience, and add a fresh interpretation: your point of view, key takeaway, dissection, evaluation, or critique.

Repurpose existing content

I can already hear you moan that you’re a young company and the backlogs of blog posts and white papers perfect for repurposing don’t exist yet.  Don’t worry. We have other ideas.

Copy: take your earliest business plan summary, the first mass email you sent, your old  “Coming Soon” landing page, or a piece of your marketing content (even a blog post from last year will work).

Transform: ask interrogating questions about the piece you’ve chosen, such as:

• “What is this?” (Hard one, I know).
• “Why did we make it?”
• “What did it do for us?”
• “What could have been done better?”
• “How else can this information be communicated?”

List responses as they come to you.  Let the memories of developing the content flood back. Ah, nostalgia!

Combine: Slice up the piece into new content formats, deliver a cross-comparison analysis, or open up to readers about your company’s experience. Heck, this could become a full-on case study or “Through the Eyes Of” narrative. For old blog posts or white papers, try offering a revised edition with new information, a rebuttal to an argument made, or an adventurous re-imagining.

Conclusion

You might operate with the belief that as you twist and tease your brain muscles to sprout radically new blog content ideas, you’re open to anything.

If that were actually true, blog content development would be a breeze, because you’d be open to letting all the brilliant stuff going on around you be absorbed and recollected in your process.

As it is, some people have a hard time accepting this. But as our blog content remixes suggest, there are limitless pathways of creativity available to us. We build our innovations on a foundation laid before us.

Open your mind to the possibility that we are not self-made, but are dependent on one another for creative impetus.  As Ferguson says:

“Admitting this to ourselves isn’t an embrace of mediocrity; it’s a liberation from our misconceptions and it’s an incentive to not expect so much from ourselves and to simply begin.”

What do you think? Is everything a remix?

You want to make it easy for users to convert, so easy that they don’t even need to think about the steps in the process.  You do this with the classic web conventions users have seen and used a zillion times.

Like Bruce Springsteen and good manners, classic web conventions never go out of style.  Take Smashing Magazinecontributor Dmitry Fadeyev’s word for it:

“While giving your website a unique design is great, when it comes to usability, doing what everyone else is doing is best.”

So what’s everyone up to? We’ll tell you. Here’s how to use classic web conventions to boost conversions:

1. Use standard navigation

It’s important to show how your company stands out from the rest, but be warned:

Unique and surprising website navigation is not the way to do it.

As Kissmetricscontributor Andy Crestodina says:

“Your goal is to help people find your content, not show them a new way around a website.”

Do your conversion rate a whopping favor and stick to standard navigation; the kind of stuff your users are well acquainted with. Use timeless navigation elements that help users find your content. This includes:

• Horizontal navigation across the top or vertical navigation down the left side.
• Hierarchical lists of categories on the navigation menu that show the most important links at the beginning, and the least important in the middle. Crestodina says the “Contact” link should be the last item on the list, which puts it at the far right in a top-level horizontal navigation.
• Clickable company logo on every page, which links back to the homepage.
• Consistent page layout, branding, and navigation scheme across the entire website. This assures users that they haven’t deviated from your site, and keeps them on track to get what they want.

2. Make your content easy to scan

Most web users scan content to find what they need.  The faster they find it, the more satisfied they feel, and the more likely they are to return again or complete a sale.  So before you copy and paste your brochure content onto your homepage in one gargantuan slab of text, consider how to make it scan-able:

• Break up content into short, concise paragraphs. Include the most pertinent information in the first few paragraphs on the page.
• Use titles, subtitles, and lists to summarize the main points on a page, and give users a direct pathway to the specific information they seek.
• Put keywords at the beginning of titles, subtitles, and lists to help users identify the material’s relevancy even faster.
• Use bold font for keywords throughout the text.
• Illustrate key points with engaging images when possible, to add visual details and provide users with a strong cue of the page’s relevancy to their needs.

3. Respect the back button

Users oftentimes wield their browser’s back button to navigate a website, because it aids their control of the experience. They have a pretty clear idea of what awaits them with every click, and when they don’t get what they expect, frustration and/or mistrust ensues. Boost user confidence in your website by delivering on their expectations. If you’re going to use fancy AJAX or other Javascript trickery, don’t break the back button!

In fact, UX Booth contributor Rachel Nabors insists you skip the fancy stuff altogether. “Don’t rely on mouse-over effects or clever icons,” she says. “Just remember that your navigation is there to serve your visitors first and foremost, not just to look pretty.”

4. Provide an “About” page

You need to establish trust before you can convert customers.  The conventional way to do this is with an “About” page. When users consider making a purchase on a website, they seek out elements that confirm the company’s legitimacy. The “About” page does the trick. It provides a foundation of credibility that can be complimented by social proof and content marketing.  Classically effective “About” pages include:

• A brief company description; the people involved, the history, the mission and objectives.
• Any professional accreditations and certifications earned which distinguish your company.
• Visual evidence of living, breathing human life. Photographs go a long way in building trust, and can help establish a familial connection with customers.

Want more ways to show your company is the real deal? Check out our blog post: “Trust Me, I’m An Entrepreneur: Tips For Building Trust Online.”

5. Color links in blue and underline ‘em

Inbound links on your website are crucial to getting customers to the finish line (the check-out, the instant quote form, etc). Differentiating all links from the rest of the text helps users achieve their objectives more quickly and easily, which amplifies a positive experience with your site. These are the kind of experiences that bring customers back again and again.

Trust the simple 2-step convention here:

1. Shade link text in blue.
2. Underline it.

6. Embrace the scroll function

If you have a long piece of content on your hands, be conventional: scroll it vertically down a single page.  Resist the urge to break it up with jazzy pagination, because users are more comfortable with scrolling. Seriously!

As usability expert Jakob Nielsen says “scrolling beats paging because it’s easier for users to simply keep going down the page than it is to decide whether or not to click through for the next page of a fragmented article.”

It’s just one more way to ensure customers find the information they need to make a decision on your website as easily as possible.

7. Include all the information

There is a time and place to be mysterious on the web – during a teaser campaign for a new product or service, perhaps. But on your standard company website? No way. Ample, plain-faced information about your product or service helps users make a purchasing decision.

Reveal it all in a scan-able layout: tech specs, engaging images, descriptive details.  Definitely include pricing, or an option for users to have a customized instant quote sent to their inbox.

Stuck on your pricing strategy? There’s a blog post for that. Check it out here.

Conclusion

By improving your website’s ease of use with classic conventions, you ultimately show your users how much you value their visit. Strong usability prioritizes their goals over yours, which is about the classiest move you can make online.

What are your thoughts on classic web conventions? Should all websites use them? Have you seen any exceptional, unconventional sites lately?

References

Crestodina, Andy. “Are You Making These Common Website Navigation Mistakes?”14 January 2013. Kissmetrics.com

Nabors, Rachel. “Better User Orientation through Navigation.” 5 May 2009. UXBooth.com

Nielsen, Jakob. “Scrolling and Attention.” 22 March 2010. NMGroup.com

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Your company was designed for rapid growth.  Every step you’ve taken in developing, championing, and promoting your business idea has been a leap, where big changes happen seemingly overnight. But are your targeted customers taking the next leap with you?

If there’s ever a reason for startup managers to stop and look around, it’s for conversion optimization.

Conversion optimization is the process of improving the user experience on your website with the goal of converting more visitors into customers. Through an ongoing process of testing website variables and applying conversion techniques, you help customers make the next step with your company.  You show them that they’ve come to the right place.

Take a pause to analyze how your startup website encourages customers to take action. Here are 9 powerful tips for conversion optimization:

1. Ask customers on-page for insights

Gather customer feedback on-page with Olark, an affordable live chat application. The embedded message box lets you interact with customers during visits to your website in real time, answering their questions and gaining intelligence about their browsing experience. You can use their queries and comments to improve specific sore spots on your website.

We recently integrated Olark live chat over at Deversus, the Socket mother ship, and have already received a significant boost in inquiries and loads of positive feedback from customers. As an instant communication channel, Olark definitely delivers on user convenience.  And we all know how important that is.

2. Convert with a concise tagline

There’s some powerful real estate underneath your logo, meant for explaining exactly what your company does for its customers.  Impatient users need a quick rundown to assess whether or not you have what they’re looking for, and it’s up to the tagline to deliver. Aim for 1-2 concise, compelling sentences that summarize the unique experience you offer to the user.

These guys get it right:

Mint.com: “The best free way to save your money.”

GiftRocket: “GiftRocket combines the thoughtfulness of a gift certificate with the flexibility of cash. Send an online gift to anyone, instantly.”

Clock: “Timesheets are boring. Clock makes tracking your time easy.”

Shall I Buy? ”Get instant shopping advice from your friends.”

Bondsy: “The best way to sell used goods before going to Craigslist or Ebay.”

3. Explain it again, in a video

Besides boosting credibility and appealing to broader user learning preferences, explainer videos help startups engage users from the moment they hit the homepage.

Since it could be the first thing users experience with your brand, it’s important to make it memorable, but you don’t need a Hollywood-sized budget to get started. Kissmetrics contributor Andrew Follet has compiled the nitty-gritty for creating engaging, high-impact explainer videos. Check it out here.

4. Use big photography for big experiences

Bring the experience of using your product or service to life with a big, rich, high quality photographic layout on your homepage.  This is a trend that Web Design Ledger contributor Jake Rocheleau says “has not been slowing down,” because of the emotional potential in a compelling photograph.  You can use photography to show your product or service in action, and help the user create an experiential connection to it.

Have you seen big photography in action? Check out these brilliant examples:

Confirmed Stock: http://confirmedstock.com/

Square: https://squareup.com

Encandle: http://encandle.com

Blind Barber: http://blindbarber.com/

Asics-Stop At Never: http://www.stopatnever.com

5. Test page elements for usability. Test again

Use affordable and user-friendly conversion optimization software like Optimizely to run A/B tests for page elements such as Call-to-Action’s and registration pages. Test placement, color, size, and font style for these elements to develop the best variables for user conversions.

A/B testing is a crucial practice for companies in a constant state of growth. As you add navigation elements and customer conveniences to your website, the user experience changes. Testing variables prepares you to launch new elements successfully.

For instance, when you integrate Socket quoting software to automate online sales and manage lead data, a round of A/B testing could help gauge where to place the CTA for the instant quote form on your homepage.  Programs like Optimizely quickly and reliably ensure that you make the choices that reflect your user’s preferences.

6. Cut the cute.

If you don’t believe me, give it a go on an Optimizely test. Seriously.

The “cute” here refers to those ambiguous and cuddly category titles you sometimes see on startup website navigation bars.  “Busy Critters” instead of “Our Team” or “Into the rabbit hole” instead of “Learn More”. Huh?

Oftentimes, “cute” ends up confusing users and discouraging them to continue browsing the site.

Lead the user to the answer to their question, the solution to their problem. Provide straightforward, clear access with familiar headings and phrases.

And if you’ve got something so cute that you can’t resist, run some tests to see if users find it quite as charming.

7. Strategize for smarter page navigation

With free and handy Google Analytics software at your side, you can determine which pages are most visited on your website, and adjust your navigation bar to accommodate these preferences. The category structure should feature the “most clicked” in the top left, and ascend in accordance with popularity.

8. Save your test results

Every A/B test result, Google Analytics report, and customer survey response should be filed as part of an ongoing conversion optimization strategy — the “bigger picture” of your combined efforts.  It’s like a history of your website, which can be referred to down the road when new changes to content or site performance need to be made. Your records will help you make better guesses, and perform more directed testing.

Olark, Optimizely, and Socket all have robust project management functionality for saving, tracking, and viewing results.  Whether you’re chatting with prospects on-page or gathering valuable service insights from instant quote queries, the interactions are yours to learn from, when you need it.

9. Never stop learning

As Kissmetrics contributor Chris Goward says, “an ongoing, structured process of continuous learning and improvement delivers the best results over time.”  Conversion optimization is not a one-time deal, because our users’ web preferences are constantly changing.

Take it from web marketers who have picked up on agile project management; building and adapting campaigns based on immediate customer feedback. Always testing. Always learning. Our rapidly evolving technological landscape demands it.

You see, startups? We’re never going to stop learning. Even when this pause ends and we rip back into the whirlwind challenges of growing a startup, Ferris Bueller’s words will live on.  We need to stop and take a look around sometimes, to see what we can learn.

What will you learn today?

*Ferris Bueller, played by Matthew Broderick in the best late eighties teen comedy of all time, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

References

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off  (film). Directed by John Hughes. 1986.
Goward, Chris. “Why Conversion Optimization Strategy Trumps Tactics Every Time.” 28 January 2013. Kissmetrics.com
Rocheleau, Jake. “Web Design Trends in 2013.” 30 January 2013. Webdesignledger.com

Bargain-bin pricing is old school. These days, entrepreneurs boost their bottom line by providing customers with context.

Consider the price of a unicorn

That’s hard to do because you’ve never seen a unicorn at the shop. You don’t know its value.

But wait! You’ve got mail:

An email newsletter showcases horses, donkeys, and unicorns. The donkeys are $400.00 and have limited mobility. The horses are $549.00 and are advertised as strong and easy to care for.

And then those unicorns: $780.00. The ad boasts horse-like health and mobility, with the added features of fantastical beauty and endangered species status. These unicorns make doves cry.

Okay, so now you’ve got some context. Unicorns are basically luxury horses. If you were looking for an animal for transportation, the horse is probably your best bet. It’s just $149.00 more than the donkey. Compared to the unicorn, the horse is a great deal.

“Price and value is insanely contextually determined”

Context allows you to make comparisons. “What you compare something to completely changes the human perception of value,” says marketing guru Rory Sutherland. We don’t have an innate gauge of value. It needs to be created for us.

Sutherland talked about how perception and context impact our decision making process at the European Zeitgeist last year. You can check out the video here.

He highlights the importance of context with a critique of United Kingdom-based music streaming service, Spotify. Currently, users can access an infinite number of songs for 9.99 (GBP) per month. Sutherland sees a flaw here, because “nobody knows what an ‘infinite’ number of songs is worth.”

He suggests that Spotify marketers create an artificial limit to help customers gauge the price value. One hundred and fifty tracks at the same price is a recognizably great deal, when you compare it to how much you’d pay per track on iTunes.

Startups and small businesses have an edge on context

A study done by the Journal of Marketing Research shows evidence that “in deciding whether or not to select a particular option, people commonly compare it with other alternatives that are currently available as well as with relevant alternatives that have been encountered in the past.”

Here’s where startups have an edge. If you’re marketing a product or service that consumers have never encountered before, then you have complete control of its price value.  Take this opportunity to define the standard for your industry, and gain higher revenue for your business.

Here’s how it works

Put context into action. Make your new product or service accessible by providing choices. It’s like the donkey-horse-unicorn example. Here’s how you do it:

1. Start with the product or service that you think your customer needs. This is your standard.
2. Flank the standard with a lower price option and a higher price option.
3. The lower priced option should offer less than the standard package or product. It’s cheaper, not as awesome, but still beneficial to customers who want to be thrifty.

   The price difference between the lower price option and the standard should not be extreme. It should be close enough to tempt customers to throw in the extra cash for the standard.

4. The higher priced option is pricey because it has premium benefits. Perhaps the product materials are higher quality than the standard, or the service includes luxury perks- V.I.P. treatment.

Customers gauge the standard price in comparison to the ‘premium’ and the ‘cheap route’ and are more likely to take the middle road.

The proof is in the (bread) pudding

This pricing strategy works. The Journal of Marketing Research report cites an example from high-end American consumer retail company, Williams-Sonoma. They used to offer one bread-baking appliance for $275.00. Then they added a second, larger model for $429.00. Sales for the cheaper option almost doubled. This is a result of the “tradeoff contrast”: the customer’s tendency to prefer the lower option is enhanced by the tradeoff within the set of considerations. Next to a $429.00 appliance, the $275.00 option looks pretty good.

Conclusion

Pricing for context is more productive than “forever driving down costs or engaging in a tedious, irrational battle to improve everything,” says Sutherland. This way, you maintain higher profits while providing an accessible shopping experience for your customers. Indeed, with more pricing options, you open up your business market to a wider audience. You empower customers to decide what works for them.

The next time you’re making a marketing decision for your business or startup, consider the human psychology side. It could be the crucial factor in the sell.

How will you create context for your customers?

References

Simonson, Itamar and Amos Tversky. “Choice in Context: Tradeoff Contrast and Extremeness Aversion.” Journal of Marketing Research 29.3 ( August 1992): 281-295.
Sutherland, Rory. “Rediscovering a Lost Science.” Presentation. 16 May 2011. Youtube. 30 October 2012.
Image credit: themoderndaypirates.com

If you can envision it, you can have it. Even a single mention on a popular blog or news site “can result in a tremendous amount of new users and investor interest” (McCann). In today’s competitive startup environment, media recognition is available to those who actively pursue it. Mashable journalists won’t come to you. So let’s get the good press for ourselves. Here are 5 easy PR tips to help you get started.

1. Prepare a concise summary of your business concept

Both journalists and readers crave bite-sized information. With a one-or-two sentence summary of your concept (free from tech jargon), you can quickly communicate a relevant news pitch to any audience. “Journalists get tons of pitches every day,” says Mashable contributor Erica Swallow, “it’s very likely that the journalist you’re pitching will only read the first few sentences of your email.” Make it count.

2. Target industry-related journalists

Go for journalists who cover the news that appeals to your product demographic. So this might take some research: a Google search or two. Twitter is also an easy-to-use and free tool to help you uncover journalists who know what’s up in your industry. So even if you’re pursuing across-the-board tech fame, do your homework and initiate conversations with journalists who share an interest in topics relevant to your product or service. Prepare a shortlist to make the process more manageable.

3. Climb the social ladder

Start at the bottom rung of interaction with these journalists, and work your way up. Read their recently published articles online, and add thoughtful input to the comment sections. After establishing a presence through their articles, start following them on Twitter. Maintain a friendly, casual dialogue here until you’re ready to make the next step: LinkedIn. With a LinkedIn connection, you can email them pitches for news ideas and be welcomed as a social connection. Your approach should be friendly and personal. Establish trust by climbing the social ladder, and you’ll better your chances of having your pitch heard.

4. Make your own news

So your business concept is fresh and unique? Journalists see hundreds of them every week. Bolster your startup launch with more to offer, like a whitepaper or infographic with intriguing information about your demographic or industry.

If you can compile data numerically (“67% of users agree…”), do it. “News sites love numbers,” offers McCann, “they know that their readers are drawn to news articles featuring lists of items, statistics or other quantified information-which means they’re ultimately going to be more receptive to story pitches based around some demonstrable number.”

Offer insight into your business development process, and share what you’ve learned in an engaging, “newsy” story. Provide headline and sub-headline suggestions so the journo can imagine what it would look like on the page.

5. Play it cool

“Don’t be ‘that guy’,” says McCann, “media writers are busy people, so if you’re constantly emailing stories, requesting updates, or otherwise badgering them, you can forget about your chances of being covered!”

Save your news pitches for truly valuable events, instead of CC’ing your journalist target list every time you fix a bug or alter your design layout. As a general mantra for content marketing online, stick to quality over quantity.

Conclusion

It’s a scramble to the finish line during those last few weeks before a startup launch. Getting media coverage from journalists in your industry need not add to the stress. Remember, “climbing the social ladder” on the Internet happens much faster than it would in a person-to-person networking scenario. We work and live in a rapid-fire communication era, and connections build quickly.

With these tips, you can save time stressing and spend more time actively engaging the news outlets that could make a positive impact on your startup launch.

Save even more time with Socket. With our automated instant quoting service on your website, you save time quoting, and spend more time making money. Sign up for a free 30-day trial here!

References

McCann, T.A. “How to Get Press Coverage for Your Startup.” 22 May 2012. Gist.com: http://blog.gist.com/2012/05/22/how-to-get-press-coverage-for-your-startup/

Swallow, Erica. “10 Essential PR Tips for Startups.” 10 October 2011. Mashable.com: http://mashable.com/2011/10/10/pr-startups/

It’s an exciting time to grow your brilliant business idea online, but the competition is high. You need more than a differentiation strategy to make your start-up stand out from the rest. You need to convey trust.

Without a physical place to affirm its existence, web-based businesses face a unique challenge in proving trustworthiness. As Usability.gov contributor Susanne Furman says, “lack of trust has been identified as one of the biggest barriers to people engaging in e-commerce.”

Break down the trust barrier first, before offering flashy sign-up incentives or investing in logo-branded water bottles and mini footballs for your company. Trust is fundamental to a user’s first impression of your business; make it as much a priority as the user does when scanning sites online. Here’s how:

1. Keep your site looking up-to-date

“Frankly, a cheap website will make you look cheap,” says Guardian contributor Katy Cowna. Fair enough. But we don’t think you need a stupendous budget to convey polished professionalism and trustworthiness to your users. Our blog post, “Keep This, Save That For Later” has tips for finding cheap or free professional web layout and branding solutions online. Today, you can crowd source fresh logo designs for under $200.00, and manage a responsive, easy-to-navigate website for free with WordPress.

To look outdated or “cheap” is to admit to being non-committal and undependable. Explore the options that suit your budget, with the understanding that the design of your site will probably be your user’s first interaction with your business. Convey trustworthiness from the get-go with fresh web design and content delivery.

2. Blog

Your company blog is like a living historical document. It’s the online proof that you launch new services, write whitepapers on industry-specific topics, and connect with prospective customers. Blogs often showcase real-life company culture, and provide a voice for customers to relate to. A blog can also be a platform for showcasing company transparency. As Mashable.com contributor Sharlyn Louby says, “transparency is about being honest, open, and accountable.” In your blog posts, be upfront about the work that you do, and take pride in what goes on behind-the-scenes. This kind of confidence shows users that you have nothing to hide, and cultivates trust.

3. Offer proof of awesomeness

Publishing customer testimonials is the obvious method of proving that your company has made people happy, but it’s not feasible for a start-up that is, well, just starting. Get creative. Give your prospective customers the opportunity to experience your business’ excellence for themselves before requiring that they make a commitment or purchase on your site. Build your own online quote forms with Socket, and let users test-drive your pricing options with instant results. With Socket on your site, users get an interactive experience with your company that is efficient and memorable. Socket provides website owners with proof of awesomeness, and bolsters the trustworthiness of the site.

4. Do what you say

Follow through with your company claims. Users know that they have options online, and are not likely to stick around after you fool them once. We all want to stand out from the rest; do so in a way that truly puts you on the cutting edge, by actually delivering on your marketing promises. An “Instant Online Quote” sounds impressive and is completely actionable with Socket.

Instead of boasting about “instant” pricing delivery, and having a salesperson contact inquiring users, subscribe to Socket and make good on your promise. Instant quotes, delivered to your users’ email inbox. Service they can trust.

5. Be there

Offer multiple streams of communication for your prospective customers, and be prepared to man all posts for quick response to queries and comments. Display email, social media accounts, and telephone contact information above the fold on your website homepage. “Remember,” says Cowna, “if someone has contacted you after browsing through your website, it means you’re doing everything right.” Be there to help your user take the next step!

Conclusion

Offer multiple streams of communication for your prospective customers, and be prepared to man all posts for quick response to queries and comments. Display email, social media accounts, and telephone contact information above the fold on your website homepage. “Remember,” says Cowna, “if someone has contacted you after browsing through your website, it means you’re doing everything right.” Be there to help your user take the next step!

Socket instant quoting software helps build businesses based on trust. Ready to take the first step?

References

Cowna, Katy. “Building trust is the key to promoting your organization online.” 24 November 2011. Guardian.co.uk: http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture-professionals-network/culture-professionals-blog/2011/nov/24/build-trust-online
Evans, Mark. “Is It Too Easy To Start a Startup?” 20 June 2012. Forbes.com: http://www.forbes.com/sites/markevans/2012/06/20/is-it-too-easy-to-start-a-startup/
Furman, Susanne. “Building Trust.” Usability.gov: http://www.usability.gov/articles/092009news.html
Louby, Sharlyn. “5 Ways to Make Your Business More Transparent.” 30 September 2005. Mashable.com: http://mashable.com/2009/09/30/business-transparency/

Integration with Xero

As detailed in a previous post, Socket now integrates with Xero Accounting Software. Invoices, payments, and customers are now automatically created in Xero whenever quotes or marked as PO Received, Ordered, or Fulfilled. This has been a popular request from our customers (as was the FreshBooks integration), so we’re excited to have it released.

DIY localization and customizable labels

As also mentioned in a previous post, our new DIY localization feature addresses common requests to translate Socket into other languages and/or customize the labels and messages visible to customers.

Add existing items to quotes (with drag-and-drop sorting)

We’ve made Socket’s quoting capability much more flexible for internal use with the addition of a revised Add Item feature. You can now add an existing item to your quote (whether creating a new quote or editing and existing one), even if it’s not associated with the quote form used.

As always, you can also add one-time-use items to your quotes for ad hoc line items such as custom install fees or others not in your item catalog.

You can also easily drag-and-drop the items in your quotes to sort them as you please

Customizable form field requirements

We’ve made the contact form field requirements configurable so you can customize which fields are required from your customers.

Export quotes and people to CSV

We’ve made it easy to export a summary of your quotes or customers to CSV. You can even apply filters to export a list that matches your search criteria.

We hope you enjoy these new features in Socket. We’ll continue to make our quoting software easier to use and more flexible over time. If you have any suggestions about how we could make Socket better, we’d love to hear them!

How Socket integrates with Xero

The integration is seamless and simple:

• When a Quote’s status is changed to PO Received, Ordered, or Fulfilled, a corresponding Customer, Invoice, and set of Inventory Items (optional) will be automatically created in Xero.
• When a Payment is accepted for a Quote via Socket, a Payment will be automatically applied to the corresponding Invoice in Xero.

Our quoting software also integrates with several other popular third-party apps. You can read more about our other supported integrations here.

To address these popular requests, we’ve built a simple but flexible system for customizing the language displayed throughout the customer-facing parts of Socket. Found under the Labels and Messages page under Settings in Socket, the new feature lets you easily customize each label and message visible to your customers.

We’ve provided default English and French translations for now, but plan on adding others in the future.

Don Draper, the whiskey-swigging, womanizing warlord of the advertising world on AMC’s hit drama Mad Men could have taught us a thing or two about web usability. In today’s article, we’ll dig through some memorable quotes from the master of marketing and see what we can learn about user experience and the usable web.

“You want some respect? Go out there and get it for yourself.” (S. 4 E. 9)

Usability is the ease at which users can accomplish particular goals online. Websites that are easy to use empower users, and speak volumes about the company behind the design. Gain the trust and respect of your target audience with a company or startup website that is built on optimal usability. It will involve user testing, navigation strategy, and a bit more creativity than a pretty layout requires, but it’s worth it.

“Nostalgia — it’s delicate, but potent. Teddy told me that in Greek, ‘nostalgia’ literally means ‘the pain from an old wound.’ It’s a twinge on your heart far more powerful than memory alone.” (S. 1 E. 13)

Saying that you want to improve a site’s user experience means something different than simply improving usability. The user experience is about influencing how a person interacts with a site, and what they take home from the journey.

Emotions like nostalgia can play a positive role in boosting the effectiveness of your startup or company website. When we strive to convey nostalgia, humour, empathy, or fun in a website design, we are considering the user experience. As Don Draper says, it’s powerful in marketing.

“In the end, no one wants to be one of a hundred in a box.” (S.1 E.8)

So how to employ emotion in design? Start with strong knowledge of your unique target audience. “Different audiences find different things meaningful, and improving conversions on our sites depends upon understanding that there is no uniform way that people think and act,” says UXBooth contributor Aaron Griffith.

Develop customer personas to guide your content and design decisions. A customer persona is a fully developed character that represents the generalized preferences of your target audience. You give your persona a name, occupation, age, gender, income bracket, life goals, and sources of information, and maybe even a stock photo to represent them physically. Then, as you craft your website, the persona acts as a guide for your content and design choices.

Learn all you can by interviewing a representative from your target market (ex: a customer from your brick-and-mortar establishment), or distribute user surveys online. Your persona can then be put together based on the specific characteristics of your unique target user.

Accommodate individual user needs and make the experience easy for them by considering your target audience as unlike the other ninety-nine in the box.

“You don’t cover for me, you manage expectations.” (S.2 E.3)

Delivering an easy-to-use Internet solution requires that we stick to some web browsing expectations, or risk scaring our users away. As Spotless Interactive contributor Tim Fidgeon says, “ A key principle within usability is that people carry around a ‘mental mode’ of how we expect the world to behave.” To break the mode is to make users pretty unhappy.

Manage expectations by adhering to web conventions. Place links where users expect them (e.g. the login/logout links are almost always at the top right of the page). Use flash sparingly and avoid custom javascript that modifies default browser behavior. Ensure your call-to-action buttons link to the correct page. Keep your layout colour scheme consistent, instead of ‘surprising’ your user with an About Us page that looks outrageously different from the rest of the site.

Web usability means much more than the ‘cover’-appearing functional. It’s about delivering solutions to problems and goals that make the process dependable for the user.

“Advertising is based on one thing, happiness. And you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car. It’s freedom from fear. It’s a billboard on the side of the road that screams reassurance that whatever you are doing is okay. You are okay.” (S.1 E.1)

Strong web usability often necessitates a user-centric approach to site copy. Draper narrows advertising down to “happiness”, a personal, emotional state that cannot be produced for users with purely promotional language. As a user scans a website, she wonders, “what’s in it for me?”

Turn the focus of your website content over to your user’s needs. Highlight user benefits instead of product features. Showcase the outcomes of using your service.

At the top of every page in the Socket website, we emphasize the time-saving benefits of our instant quoting service. We hone in on the emotional outcome of using Socket software, showing our users what’s in it for them.

It makes the site that much easier for users to discover that they’ve come to the right place to find what they need.

Conclusion

Mad Men takes place in the 1960’s, long before the Internet, e-commerce, and web marketing were even imaginable concepts. However, the philosophies that were established at the peak of the advertising age still ring true for business owners and entrepreneurs seeking success online.

We can’t vouch for drinking on the job or seducing secretaries, though. We’ll leave that up for Don Draper and his cronies.

References

Fidgeon, Tim. “Usability: User expectations are important”. 7 February 2011. Spotless Interactive: http://www.spotlessinteractive.com/articles/usability-research/usability-user-behaviours/user-expectations-are-important.php
Griffith, Aaron. “Improve Conversions by Connecting With Your Audience”. 2 February 2010. UXBooth: http://www.uxbooth.com/blog/improve-conversions-by-connecting-with-your-audience/
Nabors, Rachel. “Better User Orientation Through Navigation”. 5 May 2009. UX Booth: http://www.rachelnabors.com/2009/05/better-user-orientation-through-navigation-on-uxbooth/
Photo credit: AMC shows Jon Hamm as Don Draper in “Mad Men” (AP Photo/AMC Frank Ockenfels)