Back to the Fundamentals of a Successful Website

by Justin Palmer - March 6th, 2010

Any at given moment, we’re bombarded with internet marketing and website optimization advice. We’re told to simultaneously be marketing on Facebook, Twitter, email and more. We know we need to be testing and optimizing our sites to the max.

These are all worthy endeavors. But I’m going to suggest that they aren’t always the most fruitful pursuits. I think we often bypass more obvious quick-wins in favor of sexier projects that we get excited about.

I was recently reminded of this at C28. For years, customers have been telling us to show the pictures of clothing on real people, rather than mannequins. For years we ignored the advice due to the impractical task of always having models on standby when new products arrived. So instead we optimized the heck out of everything we knew how. We overhauled the design of the site. We built a new and improved shopping cart. We ran incessant split tests on our marketing emails. But we started hitting a point of diminishing returns. All those a/b tests weren’t as effective as they used to be.

Then we decided to do the obvious. We actually listened to our customers and starting photographing all products on models. And the results? Let’s just say it was the single most effective optimization project we have ever done to the website. It wasn’t technical. It didn’t take an online marketing specialist, just a bit of old-fashioned listening to the customer.

You and me are online marketing junkies. We eat, sleep, and breathe conversion rates, CTRs, SEO, and SMO. Yet are we missing the obvious? What are the roadblocks preventing you from growing your business? You can have a flawless checkout process and fastest loading pages in the world, but if your basic product information is lacking, what’s the point?

Before you begin that next optimization project, take some time and revsit the fundamentals of your business.

Source: Palmer Web Marketing