Update: Wordpress likes to mess up double quotes so when you copy the HTML snippet in this post, make sure you delete the double quotes and re-add them using your keyboard.

What is Disqus?

Disqus is a free commenting platform which can be integrated into BigCommerce to make your product reviews truly social. Unlike a typical commenting or review system, Disqus is smart enough to pick up conversations happening about the products you sell from around the web. It brings them together and displays a threaded commenting platform on product pages in your BigCommerce store.

As well as rounding up comments and reviews on your products from around the web, shoppers can post comments by logging into their Facebook or Twitter accounts, meaning they can also share their comments and reviews with their friends automatically – meaning more people who know about your online store.

People with Disqus accounts can use the same profile to comment across multiple sites and as a Disqus administrator you can get excellent statistics regarding number of comments, frequency and more. You can see the entire feature list on the Disqus website.

If Disqus sounds good then keep reading – it’s very easy to integrate thanks to BigCommerce’s Design Mode feature.

How to integrate Disqus into your product reviews

Follow the simple steps below to switch out BigCommerce’s default product reviews/commenting system to Disqus. We’re going to be using Design Mode to make some small HTML changes but don’t worry, it’s easy to do and BigCommerce’s QuickEdit HTML editor has a built-in revert button if you mess things up.

1. Login to your store and click the “Store Design” link at the top right of the page
2. Click the “Design Mode” tab then click the “Open My Store in Design Mode” button
3. You should now see your store with the Design Mode toolbar at the top. Click on the “Toggle” button on the blue Design Mode bar to disable design mode then click on any product in the “Featured Products” or “Top Sellers” section on your home page
4. You should now be on one of your product pages – it doesn’t matter which one. Click the “Toggle” button on the blue Design Mode bar to re-enable design mode. The button should change to orange to show it’s enabled
5. Scroll down the page where you see the “Product Reviews” section where customer reviews would typically appear. Right click over the top of the “Product Reviews” heading and choose the “Edit Panel” option from the popup menu
6. The QuickEdit HTML editor window will open with the ProductReviews.html panel code loaded in the right pane
7. Select all of the HTML code in the QuickEdit editor and delete it. Paste the following HTML in its place (but don’t click the “Save” button yet):
   -
   <div id=”ProductReviews”>
   <h3 id=”reviews”>%%LNG_ProductReviews%%</h3>
   </div>
8. Now it’s time to sign up for Disqus. On the step where you’re asked which options you want to enable, you can just skip that for now – you can go back and enable logins from Twitter and Facebook as well as nifty features like video comments later. On the final step make sure you choose the “Universal Code” option which should show you a page with two lots of JavaScript code, like so:
   -
   
9. Copy the HTML from the top box (the “embed code” box) and go back to your BigCommerce QuickEdit window. Paste the code after the <h3>…</h3> tag, like so:
   -
   <div id=”ProductReviews”>
   <h3 id=”reviews”>%%LNG_ProductReviews%%</h3>
   — Paste the code here —
   </div>
10. We’re now done editing the ProductReviews.html panel so click the “Save” button in the blue toolbar at the top of the QuickEdit window but don’t close the window – we’re now going to edit another file
11. On the left side of the QuickEdit window you’ll see a list of files. Scroll down until you find the “product.html” file and click on it to load its contents into the editor
12. Just above the </body> tag near the very end of the product.html file, add the JavaScript from the second Disqus text box (the “comment count code” box in the screenshot above) like so:
    -

    — Paste the code here —
    </body>

13. Click the “Save” button in the blue toolbar at the top of the QuickEdit window and close the window – we’re finished editing our HTML (I told you it would be easy!)

So just to recap, we’ve pasted the JavaScript from the first textbox on Disqus into our ProductReviews.html panel after the <h3> tag and we’ve pasted the JavaScript from the second textbox on Disqus into our product.html layout file, just before the </body> tag.

To see the Disqus comments in action, just click the “View Store” link in your control panel and go to a product page. Here’s a screenshot of my integration which you can see in my test store here (feel free to leave a comment too!):

If you integrate Disqus then instead of moderating comments through your BigCommerce control panel, you’d instead login to Disqus.com and moderate them there. Don’t forget to log back into Disqus so you can enable all of the extra features you saw in step two when signing up.

Well, that’s all there is to it! Disqus is a fantastic commenting system and if you do integrate it with your store feel free to leave a comment below with a link so other BigCommerce merchants can take a look!

Winner:

“BigCommerce offered EVERYTHING that I wanted for my online store. It’s so easy to track purchases, offer coupon codes and create sales. And there’s even a rating system for products!”

Introduction

A few weeks back we sent an email to existing BigCommerce merchants asking why they decided to switched to BigCommerce (if they weren’t launching a new store). The email campaign generated close to 500 testimonials and was a HUGE success. We’ve posted a lot of the testimonials on our switch buzz page and so many came in that we couldn’t keep up, so a big thanks to everyone who took the time to complete our survey!

As part of the survey we announced we would be selecting one random participant to win an Apple iPad when they’re available for sale in April. Well, we’ve randomly selected a winner – Carrie Michael from Seventh Door which is a beautiful BigCommerce store where Carrie sells female apparel including tops, shoes, handbags and more.

Carrie switched to BigCommerce from a custom PayPal shopping cart and noted she’s had a significant improvement in customer satisfaction, day-to-day stress levels and store design/functionality since she made the switch. Her previous solution lacked features and was hard to customize. You can see below that Carrie obviously hasn’t had a problem customizing BigCommerce to meet her needs.

Carrie has customized one of BigCommerce’s built in ecommerce templates and her store looks fantastic:

Carrie, congratulations and if you’re reading please check your email for details on how to claim your Apple iPad!

A piece of software that runs in your web browser and which stores your data (such as emails or photos) on the Internet is commonly referred to as Software As A Service (SaaS) or cloud-based computing – two buzz words which companies like SalesForce.com and Google use as much as they can to communicate the idea that there’s a paradigm shift taking place in the way software is built and used.

The basic idea is that a few years ago most of the software programs you used (such as Microsoft Office, Outlook, Photoshop and MSN/Yahoo/AOL Messenger) were Windows (or Mac) based applications that you had to install and upgrade. They took up space on your hard drive and couldn’t be used when you were on another computer unless you installed them again.

Today, you can get access to pretty much any type of software using just a web browser – and a lot of the times the software won’t even cost you anything. There’s nothing to install and if your computer crashes you can easily restore an automatically saved draft/backup copy in just a few clicks. This is the basic premise of the SaaS/cloud computing model.

When you think about it, the first real mainstream consumer SaaS application was Hotmail, which Microsoft acquired (nope, they didn’t build it) in 1997 for $400 million. It required just a web browser and you could login from any computer in the world with an Internet connection.

In the last 10 or so years, the shift to the cloud has changed the way companies (including us) build software and the way users consume it. While FaceBook or Gmail are probably the most-used consumer SaaS applications, there are quite a few gems that let you accomplish practically anything online, and I want to share some with you in this post.

BigCommerce, our ecommerce software, is of course delivered in the cloud – your orders, customers, products and preferences are all saved as part of our secure database cluster which you can access through your login from any computer with an Internet connection 24/7. You don’t need to install anything on your computer to use the software and upgrades are made available automatically.

As a software company we’re also big believers in cloud computing ourselves – we run Google Apps for staff in our 3 offices (Sydney, Austin and London). We also run our CRM/email marketing/analytics/SEM/HR/calendars/chat in the cloud. For new team members this can sometimes take quite a bit of getting used to – when you come from using clunky desktop software like Outlook and outdated CRM software like Siebel it’s actually a big shift (albeit a productive one) that can take a few weeks.

To speed up the transition from desktop to SaaS, we’re also doing our part via integrations with other SaaS platforms for email marketing, accounting, analytics, affiliate tracking, shipping, payments and more. A great example is our upcoming integration with Outright.com, Mailchimp and Picnik.com in version 6, and we’ll continue to build out at least a handful of integrations with every major release going forward.

Anyway, I digress. Here are 10 innovative software applications which are making the move from desktop to cloud easier and faster for consumers and businesses:

1. Aviary (think Photoshop, but free and online) -If you don’t want to spend $1,000 on Photoshop and barely use more than the basic features like most people then you’ll love Aviary. Very similar to Photoshop in terms of design, it gives you advanced photo and image editing right from your browser – and it’s free.

2. Grooveshark (think iTunes, but for radio and free) – An amazing streaming music service that’s completely free. You can create and share your own playlists or even enable radio mode which recommends and adds songs to your playlist for you automatically.

3. Google Website Optimizer – The best way to test changes to your website and how they impact your conversion rate, such as different checkout buttons or product photos. Google Website Optimizer is integrated with BigCommerce and can easily increase the conversion rate of an established ecommerce store by at least 10%.

4. Picnik (think Aviary but not as advanced) – Another excellent online photo editor. While not as advanced as Aviary, it’s a lot more popular and has an excellent API, which we’ve used to build photo editing right into the upcoming release of BigCommerce 6.

5. GetSatisfaction – A customer-centric community support platform for businesses. Customers can ask and answer each other’s questions, post ideas and leave testimonials. Used by global brands like Microsoft, Zappos and of course us.

6. SalesForce -The CRM pioneer which is slowly but surely changing how sales team manage their pipelines, opportunities and deals. Often looked at as the business version of Amazon.com in terms of innovation and adoption.

7. CoTweet (think Gmail for Twitter) – Makes Twitter as easy to manage as email. Create multiple logins so your staff can reply to customers on Twitter through one company account. You can also assign follow ups to team members and track previous conversations in a threaded format. We use CoTweet to manage our Twitter account with great success. Oh, and it’s free too.

8. SurveyMonkey – Dead simple surveys with built-in skip logic. We recently used SurveyMonkey to send out a survey asking customers why so many switched to BigCommerce (over 25%). There’s a free plan but it’s only $20 a month for practically unlimited surveys and responses.

9. Box – Pioneering file and document sharing in the cloud. Box makes it easy for both consumers and businesses to upload, share and update all sorts of files. They also have excellent mobile clients for iPhone, Blackberry and Android phones.

10. BigCommerce – And last but not least, our ecommerce platform, BigCommerce. A true cloud-based offering which gives businesses of all sizes everything they need to sell online and attract more customers to their online store. Features like built-in CRM, a suite of marketing tools and easy-to-use content management system turn your website into a platform which can sell, support and attract new customers, as well as evolve with your business needs as they continue to change in response to your own customer’s needs and habits.

What are your favorite SaaS applications? Feel free to share them by posting a comment below!

Click the image above to watch the BigCommerce 5.6 sneak peek video

Hi everyone. As we wrap up our testing for BigCommerce 5.6 I wanted to share a video with you in which I demonstrate the new features. You will have the option to upgrade to BigCommerce 5.6 some time next week, depending on how long our final stage of testing takes.

While this is technically a minor update, there are still some big features which were all, of course, requested by you. Ever since we started we’ve always asked for what you want us to build in our software and we’ll continue to do so. We know you can choose from a myriad of ecommerce offerings and we appreciate the opportunity to incorporate your feedback into our software.

In parallel to working on version 5.6 we’ve also made excellent progress on BigCommerce 6 which doesn’t have a release date yet but is looking great so far.

New features:

• Take your store down for maintenance – You as an admin still have full access to your store so you can make and preview design changes, add/remove products, etc all without your customers seeing. You can specify your own custom message which will be shown to store visitors.
  .
• Set the starting order number – Let’s face it, no one wants to receive an email saying “Your order ID is 1″. In BigCommerce 5.6 the default starting order number is 100 but you can change it to whatever you like from Settings -> Miscellaneous.
  .
• Block the shipping dimensions message – When you add/edit a product with no shipping dimensons you see an alert message telling you that you didn’t enter them. You can now tick “Don’t show this message again” and it will be gone forever. This is a per-user setting.
  .
• Tracking numbers and links in emails – This is the most popular feature request on our community page and it’s coming next week in 5.6! If an order has a tracking number and you change its status to shipped or completed, your customer will get an email automatically with their tracking number and a link to track their order on the shipping provider’s website.
  .
• Import and export formats are now synched – We’ve created a new “Bulk Edit” template which you can use to export and then re-import products. No more missing out on editing certain fields or mapping fields manually – everything is included and automatic.
  .
• 301 redirects – If you’ve switched to BigCommerce (which over 25% of you have) and want to maintain your search engine rankings then you can easily create your own 301 redirects from your store’s control panel – no more emailing us a spreadsheet manually. You can also bulk import in a variety of formats too, including CSV and Google sitemap.
  .
• Update your own DNS settings – Right from the Tools menu you can add, edit and delete your own DNS records.
  .
• Surprise feature – I wont tell you what it is, but it’s related to marketing and will drive a boat load of new traffic to your store for free.

A big “well done” to our engineering team for getting this release completed in record time. We’re just finishing up our testing and are hoping to give you the option to upgrade some time next week. If you have any questions please feel free to leave them below!

P.S. We regularly post design wireframes and screenshots from features we’re working on for BigCommerce 6 on our Facebook fan page so feel free to become a fan and share your feedback with us!

If you’ve never heard of the Codie awards before, here’s a little blurb about them:

The CODiE awards is a yearly award issued by the Software and Information Industry Association for excellence in software development the software industry. Since its inauguration, the CODiE Awards program has attempted to showcase the software and information industry’s products and services and to honor excellence for corporate achievement and philanthropic efforts. It is the only peer-recognition awards program of the software industry, providing the opportunity for companies to earn the praise of their competitors.

Being nominated as one of five finalists in the software as a service category alongside companies like Eloqua and YouSendIt really shows not only how well BigCommerce is doing in the market but also how software has evolved over the last 10 or so years. Previous winners in this category include SalesForce.com and Google, so we’re in good company.

The nomination process is quite lengthy and involves multiple rounds of judging and product demonstrations over a period of 6 or so months, so we’re glad the judges were able to see what an important contribution BigCommerce has made to SaaS as a product category.

The winner will be announced shortly, so stay tuned – we’ve got our fingers crossed!

You can read the press release here.

Hi everyone. Over the last few weeks we’ve been working closely with Google to put together a special offer for all new and existing BigCommerce merchants. Starting today, anyone who signs up for a BigCommerce paid plan will receive up to $100 in Google AdWords credit.

Google AdWords ads promote your business alongside relevant search results on Google, right where potential customers are searching for the products you sell. There are literally millions of ecommerce stores which use Google AdWords as their online form of marketing with great success.

All existing customers will also receive an email later today containing instructions on how to redeem their Google AdWords credit as well.

So, how much Google AdWords credit will you receive?

• Bronze merchants receive $50 Google AdWords credit
• Silver merchants receive $50 Google AdWords credit
• Gold merchants receive $75 Google AdWords credit
• Platinum merchants receive $100 Google AdWords credit
• Diamond merchants receive $100 Google AdWords credit

To learn more about Google AdWords please see this page on our web site. We’ve also updated our pricing and plans page to include details on the Google AdWords credit as well.

This is just one of the many partnerships we’ve got lined up over the coming months to help you get the most out of BigCommerce. We’ll be making some further announcement in the coming weeks. If you have any questions feel free to leave them below and I’ll be happy to help.

As we continue to add features in version 6 of our ecommerce software BigCommerce, we’re also reworking our tax system from the ground up to deal with more complex tax issues such as international, stacking, etc.

In this post I’d like to share our design mockups and ask for your feedback. We’ve decided to redesign tax settings in an almost identical way to shipping – in that there are now tax zones. Each zone has multiple tax rates and each product has a tax category which has tax rates applied to it.

We’ve played with various use cases for everything from simple local tax settings to complex international settings and each scenario was able to be implemented using our new tax zones system.

Please take a careful look at the mockups and if you see something we’ve missed please reply to this thread. Also if you have general suggestions or feedback we’d love to hear that too. Again, please reply to this thread.

Our Tax Zone Wireframes

Configuring general tax settings

Creating tax product classes

Creating a tax zone (step 1 of 2)

Creating a tax zone (step 2 of 2)

Creating a rate for a tax zone

Editing a tax zone

Listing all tax zones

Feedback? Suggestions? Please reply to this thread.

Well one of the best ways is to hear from existing business owners who are already doing what you want to do. They’ve researched the market, have made the switch from one e-commerce vendor to another  and if everything went well, they’re enjoying the success of their revamped online store.

To help decide if BigCommerce is right for you, we asked some of our existing customers who switched to BigCommerce about their experience. We asked what they were using before BigCommerce, what they like about BigCommerce, why they’re calling it the best ecommerce software and why they switched. We then asked for their photos and links to their BigCommerce stores and put them on our new The Switch Is On page for everyone to see.

Our customers have switched to BigCommerce from a variety of offerings including hosted shopping carts, open source offerings and even messy websites built in Microsoft Frontpage! What matters though is that BigCommerce has made the process of selling their products online and attracting new customers easier and more affordable.

You can read their stories yourself, but here are a few of our favorite extracts from their quotes:

• “I am now a proud BigCommerce customer. Once I made the switch sales increased remarkably.”
• “Along with ease of use, I am also seeing more sales!!”
• “My sales increased 50% in the first 15 days”
• “… [my] site has generated more money in 2 months that I did in 8 months using my old software.”

The one thing these business owners have in common? BigCommerce has significantly increased their sales. Now I’m not saying you’ll have an increase in sales if you switch to BigCommerce, but it’s happening time and time again for our customers so it’s definitely something to consider during your research…

Introduction

I want you to think back to the early 1990s. Before the Internet, before email marketing and way before Google AdWords. Back then print magazines were flying off the shelves, businesses manually followed up with customers using the phone and direct response mail was a big part of the marketing budget for most successful companies large and small.

Fast forward to today and it seems like most businesses have forgotten about sending something physical in the mail (not email) to their prospects or customers. Think about the companies you’ve done business with in the last year – probably dozens. Now think about how many of them have sent you something in the mail after you’ve handed over your hard earned cash – none? One? Probably no more than a handful for more people.

If an online store such as Amazon.com or Zappos.com sent you a 20% off coupon for your next order at their website would you use redeem it? I bet you would. The fact is we can use all sorts of fancy copywriting and marketing ideas but when it comes down to it, people still love a discount.

The Cost of Doing Business: An Example

If we look at CAC (or Customer Acquisition Cost) for a sample company selling to consumers (such as an e-commerce company selling t-shirt) then we can do some basic calculations:

• Let’s assume we only advertise using Google AdWords
• Let’s assume we have a 7% conversion rate
• Let’s assume our average CPC (Cost Per Click) is $1
• Let’s assume our average order value is $47 (excluding shipping)
• Let’s assume our profit margin is 35%

So, if we invest $1,000 over a week in Google AdWords marketing we can work out the numbers as follows:

• $1,000 invested in Google AdWords at $1 per click gets us 1,000 visitors
• At a 7% conversion rate we get 70 customers
• At a $47 average order value we generate $$3,290 revenue
• At a profit margin of 35% we generate $1,151.50 in profit
• Nett result is a profit if $151.50

Now investing $1,000 and getting back $1,151.50 is a 15% return which isn’t too bad, but what if we could get 25% or more of these customers to come back to our online store and place one, two, three or more orders with us? Yes you can use email marketing to send out a follow up promotion, but everyone is trying to get into your customer’s inboxes and it’s crowded. Very crowded.

Consider these points in favor of postcard marketing to existing customers:

• They already know who you are and are familiar with your brand
• You have their correct address, otherwise how would you ship their order to them?
• They’ll be receptive to your message because they already trust you
• The average consumer receives 16 emails for every 1 direct mail piece

Now consider these points about prospects and customers:

• It’s cheaper to keep an existing customer than to find a new one
• If you “wow” an existing customer they’ll tell (a lot of) their friends
• You have to earn the trust of new prospects but existing customers already trust you
• If you value your existing customers you won’t have any problems getting new customers (word of mouth will do the work for you)

Step-By-Step: Postcard Marketing to Existing Customers

I want to propose a dead simple strategy to increase the LTV (Life Time Value) and RPC (Revenue Per Customer) from your online store, and I want to give you the exact blueprint to get the job done. Just follow these steps:

1. Work out how much of a discount you can afford to offer existing customers on their next order. If your profit margin is low it might only be 10%, but if you sell intangible items which cost nothing to produce such as eBooks or reports then it might be as high as 50%.
   .
2. Login to your BigCommerce store and create a coupon code from under the Marketing menu. Set it to expire in 14 days and make sure the unlimited use option is selected. Don’t use the auto-generated coupon code. Use a human-readable word such as SAVE20BUCKS or 35%_Off_March_2010.
   .
   Optionally enter a minimum order value before the coupon code will trigger a discount. If you do this your postcard’s message will look something like this: Spend over $100 on your next order and receive 25% off your purchase.
   .
3. Go to http://www.infousa.com and sign up. InfoUSA is a direct mail company which lets you design a postcard, upload a list of addresses and send your postcard out for under $1 per postcard.
   .
4. After signing up, click the “Postcard Marketing” menu option to create a postcard from one of the available stock designs. Make sure the side without the address includes a strong call to action such as “Thanks for your order from [Store Name]. Here’s a coupon for $30 off your next order, good thru [Date Coupon Expires].”
   .
5. On the back next to where the address goes, include a personal message such as “Please accept this $30 discount off your next order as a thanks from the team here at [Store Name]. We sincerely appreciate your business and just wanted to send you a small token to say thank you.”. Remember to include something about the coupon’s expiry date if you set one.
   .
6. After you’ve designed your postcard, login to your BigCommerce store and from the Orders menu, choose the Export Orders option. Search for order which were created in the last 30 days then hit the search button. This will give you a list of all orders (and customers) placed in the last month. The idea with our postcard strategy is that you create and send a postcard to new customers every 30 days if you can make the initial test profitable.
   .
7. When you see the list of orders, click the bulk actions dropdown menu (next to the Go button) and choose the Export These Orders option. Follow the wizard and export to Microsoft Excel. Save the export file to your hard drive.
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8. On the InfoUSA website you’ll be able to upload your order/customers list and schedule your postcard to be sent. Depending on whether you choose first class mail the price will vary but generally it wont be more than $1 per postcard.

That’s all there is to it. Once the postcard is sent out start checking your orders after a few days. Use the Search Orders option under the Orders tab in your BigCommerce store to find orders which were placed using the coupon code you sent out on your postcard. This will give you the exact revenue returned from your postcard marketing test.

As I mentioned above, it’s a good idea to set an expiry date on the coupon code. This creates a sense of urgency for customers and gives you a predictable period of time over which you can track the response to your promotion.

If you can get your initial test to bring in a positive ROI (Return On Investment) then congratulations, you’ve found a new follow up marketing strategy which you can use to indefinitely scale your business and increase your per-customer life time value.

If not, don’t give up. Play around with your offer: change the discount amount, extend/contract the expiry date for the coupon, try a different postcard design and/or try a different call to action. A lot of times with something as fickle as postcard marketing it takes just one small change to generate the ROI you need to turn a profit.

Conclusion

So there’s a dead simple way to increase your per-customer life timevalue using postcard marketing. Of course instead of postcards you can also try a sales letter, but postcards tend to grab attention because they’re typically sent by relatives or friends on overseas trips and not businesses so they bypass the junk mailer filter, giving your customers time to read your message and/or identify your brand instead of throwing your postcard in the trash.

Introduction

When we’re surfing the ‘net most of us are testament to the fact that attention spans get a little smaller. In contrast to print publications, much less attention is given to each word as we skim through web pages, so it’s important for us to understand that writing for the web can be significantly different than writing for print.

The web has inadvertently made authors out of us all. As we post on forums, send emails, share information, write white papers, guides and various web content – most of us are not authors by profession and so consequently the quality of writing on the web varies greatly.

In this post I’ll share some important points to consider when writing for the web and trying to harness the obvious reach that the web holds over traditional print media.

 
When we strip away all of the graphics, logos, designs and images from a site, we are left with pure web content. Most business websites can be quite similar in the sense that we all advertise our services, products, contact details, etc. However, each company has a variety of specialized information that can be used to create a unique website and it’s important that we recognize and feature the points that make our individual business (and associated content) different from our competitors.

 
As a general rule, if the first paragraph of a publication can attract and keep the readers attention, then they are highly likely to read on. Optimizing your first paragraph to be as articulate and concise as possible will greatly increase the chances that a reader will stay with you for more information. Outline your biggest benefits here and engage the customers to read on and get involved with your products and/or services.

 
Being a slave to search engines is inevitable, and it is because of this that we find many sites bombarded with keywords. Don’t allow your quest for rankings to interrupt the effectiveness of your grammar or your ability to be informative.

Your website may have a large amount of information – readers will most definitely not get through all of it – so make sure you outline the most important benefits and present them to users in a conversational style.

Having a friendly conversation will present the information more clearly and will be more engaging, for example:

“If you’re short on time, then you should try one of our widgets. Time is a precious commodity, and we’re here to help you make the most of yours…”

Don’t present your information in large blocks. Cut it down into short bite-sized paragraphs that are easier to digest and use bullet lists when comparing or describing features.

Use the least amount of words so that readers have less to skim through – you’ll find that the amount of scanning is reduced and readers will actually absorb more information.

 
It’s also important to understand that people come to your website with different levels of knowledge on any one topic or product. You can’t expect everyone visiting your website to know about or understand your offerings in their entirety.

For example, sites that list products by their model numbers and reference codes are narrowing the appeal of their site to only those users that would know these numbers. It’s important to have enough foresight to realize that while you’re fully aware and knowledgeable about your products and services, your website’s visitors may not bw.

For example, instead of providing just model numbers and reference codes, why not include a picture, short description and some user reviews on your product pages?

 
Visitors will often venture to your website with one single goal in mind. Given that, if they’re then presented with a website that forces them to figure out the product/service that suits them, but they are not helped because there is no meaningful information, then your website has failed.

This extends to the way your information is presented. If your fact sheets and other information are, for example, simply uploaded in a series of PDFs for the user to download, then thy have to work harder because you didn’t take the time to convert the product information into easily navigated web pages.

Readers Don’t Like:

• Pages that require a lot of scrolling – Text is easier to read if it is clear, concise and scanable. The text needs to be in short paragraphs or bullet lists and needs to get straight to the point.
• Over doing the sales and marketing pitch with no real information but too much “fluff”, claiming “world’s best”, “number one”, “top of the range” – these bear no value if the simple features and benefits of your products are left out.
• Grammar and spelling mistakes – It seems obvious but they’re still very apparent on many websites. If someone sees spelling and grammar mistakes, then it seems obvious that the author was not willing to spend some extra time to run a spell check or read over their own work. If the author places such little value on the time they invest in their work, then readers will place similarly low values on their products/services and will most probably disregard the information.

 
Many visitors will take a look at the information on your website, however it’s important to understand that each person reads individually, so effective web content should make the reader feel that it’s focusing on them.

Try and get your point across quickly and avoid bombarding people with information – your published web content should be the result of various levels of refinement considering style, emphasis and conciseness.

The above points give a few important factors to consider when writing for the web, but if you are still lost for content then start at the very basic level of interviewing/researching your customers and finding out what it is that they want or need. From there, you can start investigating the foundations that lead customers to your website and make them want to stay with you.