1. What they are looking for
2. How they make decisions
3. How #1 and #2 can be aligned with your business objectives to create results for your organization

One of the most effective tools to help understand if your website messaging, copy, functionality, layout and design is helping your visitors to make decisions is the Decision Making Quadrant, a tool for understanding how visitors make decisions online.

This tool, adapted from the Eisenbergs various books (such as Always Be Testing), is a quick way to look at any site and think about how you are addressing these decision making styles.  The core principle for this tool is to understand that people make decisions in two main ways: fast vs. slow, and emotional vs. logical.  These two axes combine into a quadrant for looking at four different decision making types online.

The 4 Types of Online Decision Makers

Another helpful way to look at each of the types is in the kind of language that they are looking for:

I hope this tool is helpful to you in your marketing efforts as you look to maximize the number of visitors that engage with you.

1. Not having a mobile website (which is to say, not having your website optimized for mobile devices).

If you do not have a mobile-optimized website, you are failing to connect with at least some portion of the 80 million users that regularly access the mobile web from their Smartphone devices.

2. Not having a real mobile site

Be wary of any site or business that suggests that a website can be mobilized simply by resizing objects and rearranging the web view. It takes a more in-depth web design process to create a nicely functioning mobile web page.

3. Not having goals

Deciding what you actually want users to do with your mobile site—and thus, the criteria for determining whether or not the site is effective at driving users to perform this action—is critical to any mobile marketing strategy.

4.  Producing a rocky mobile experience

Brands can engage mobile users much more successfully by providing a fluid mobile experience that makes it easy for mobile users to navigate the site and access information or data that they may be searching for.  Sites that only have one page (the home page for example) optimized for mobile access can be frustrating to mobile users and often drive them away from the site.  At least a few (2-3) pages of a site should be mobilized, allowing users to explore content and learn more about the services that business provides.

5. Overwhelming mobile users

A mobile website shouldn’t have all of the same copy and content as a desktop site. By trying to jam-pack everything into just a few pages of your mobile site, you‘re putting too much information into too tiny a space. As with so many other forms of media, when it comes to the mobile web, your best bet is always to keep it simple, clean and presentable.

We hope that these tips are helpful whether you’re just starting out on the small screen, or working to perfect your mobile marketing strategy and set your brand apart from the rest.  If you have any additional tips for avoiding mobile pitfalls, please let us know in the comments below!

About the author: Erin Kelley | Erin maintains the DevelopmentNow company blog. Her insightful reports on mobile marketing trends serve to inform brands, businesses and individuals of how to take advantage of the growing new media industry.DevelopmentNow is a new media consulting company that specializes in building integrated mobile web solutions and native apps.

The plans are in this R2 unit...Well, they were. We put them in a podcast for you, just click! Turn your website into your own secret weapon!

Below are blueprints of sorts, the beginning of how exactly to turn your website into your secret weapon. Now you probably think, hey, they will give us a little snippet of something good and then make us pay to get to the good stuff. No way, you’re getting everything. Below is a little bit from Synotac’s podcast done for E-Myth Worldwide, but it’s just the beginning!

Check out the 5 steps to turning your website from zero to hero and then click to the podcast for the details, in-depth information, free tools to help you accomplish these things, and practical advice from an industry expert.

1. Define Success: What does it mean for your website to be successful? What is it that you want people to do once they get to your site? Is it signing up for a newsletter? Selling a product? Filling out a contact form? Whatever it is, define it clearly and be ready to measure it.
2. Know your visitors: Do whatever it takes to get in the mind of your visitors. Think how they think, use the site as they do. Talk to your frequent visitors and find out how you can make their experience better. A website built around your visitors is a huge key to better conversions! You don’t want people leaving because they can’t find what they want or had an issue navigating it.
3. Give them something of value: If you provide something useful to your potential clients even when they aren’t actively searching for your services, you are still building your reputation, potential for word of mouth and referrals, and keeping your site on the minds of potential customers that look to you for things they need online. What can you provide, exactly?
4. Use many roads to get traffic: Building a site, even an awesome one isn’t enough to get people to come to it anymore. The sheer number of sites is astounding and your potential clients are bombarded with all kinds of links, offers, and ads constantly. To get to them effectively, you’ll have to explore multiple ways of capturing their attention.
5. Track: What is working? What isn’t? Where are people coming from? Where should you focus your efforts? What kind of people are you succeeding with? Who is ignoring you? This one is all about analytics; numbers, numbers, numbers.

Remember, this is just from the first 5 minutes! Listen to the podcast for all the juicy details, it’s free right here! Included are 3 Basic Tools To Improve Website Performance, the 4 Most Common Website Mistakes and much, much more.

1. Domain Name: this is a label that identifies a web site. For example, ‘synotac.com’ is the domain name of Synotac’s web page. There are usually many pages on a web site under a single domain.
2. HTML: stands for HyperText Markup language. HTML is the language that is considered the building blocks of the web. HTML describes web pages through tags and a browser reads those in to display what you see as the web page.
3. Java: One of the most popular programming languages today.
4. SQL: or Search Query Language, is a language used by programmers, developers and others to retrieve and manipulate the content in a database.
5. Web Crawler: this is a robot program that crawls through content on pages for any number of indexing reasons. For example, Google uses a crawler to index and sort pages for search.

We all want to be stylish, confident, knowledgeable, and savvy. We sometimes forget that maintaining a professional yet attractive image goes beyond the right tailored suits and fitted pencil skirts. In the web based world, we have to make sure our sites are keeping up with Kardashian’s too.

An outdated website design is as bad, if not worse that an outfit worn a decade too late. If your site isn’t at least a little bit fashionable and very usable, you’re going to learn a lot about bounce. A bounce is when people visit your site and leave without even clicking past the page they landed on, not great for conversion of any kind.

In the web world, website design firms are the fashion consultants. They can make an outfit fashionable and functional. Not everyone has a knack for it, but an experienced team can build a site that really fits your ‘fashion’ needs.

A good looking site is more than just glamour, it is necessary for success. With the millions of options that people have, they are going to gravitate toward sites that make them feel comfortable and offer them a good experience.

If they’re taking one look and turning away horrified, it might be time to look in the mirror. At Synotac, we want to help everyone look their best and we’ve been doing it for a long time. We would love to be your consultant, we’ll get you runway ready right away!

1. Does your page load fast? If your page takes forever to load no one is ever going to see it, much less visit it often. Slow loading pages can be a symptom of design and some other things. If your page is loading slowly on a good connection, it’s something to check into.

2. Is navigation clear? Does the way your site is laid out make sense to most people? It should be clear how to get from place to place on your site and the page links should be prominent.

3. How does your site look in different resolutions? There are all kinds of screens out there these days, your site should be designed to look the best on as many of those as possible. Consider laptops, desktops, people using their TV’s, tablets, and even mobile phones. The more screens your site looks good on, the better.

4. Is your site compatible with all kinds of browsers? Have you experienced your own site in IE, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, Flock, or all the rest? A well designed web site will look nice in all of the browsers your potential customers may be using.

5. Is your text readable? Cool fonts are nice and sometimes hard to resist, but they can be distracting. It is generally a good idea to go with a very readable and professional font. You and your design team can find one that fits your personality and is also easy on the eyes.

6. Is there any white space? Filling all of the page might be the urge, but in most cases it should be fought. Using a background that leaves the eyes a place to rest and let the design elements pop in contrast will prevent people from getting color shock or being visually overwhelmed by the page and leaving.

7. Are there broken links? Obviously broken links are going to frustrate the people on your site. Don’t you hate it when it happens to you? Not only is it annoying, but it also looks unprofessional.

If you’re looking for help with your website or online strategy, give us a call and we can tell you the story of unintended search keywords, such as chocolate.

A good website redesign being compared to a box of chocolates? It might seem like a strange concept. However, a box of chocolates serves two purposes. First, it is pleasurable in and of itself. But it also tends to say something about what the giver of the box wants from the receiver. It might be a thank you, but a lot of the times, it’s a romance.

A website is part of how a company ‘romances’ their customers. If it isn’t a pleasant experience, they will move on. If all the chocolates are a flavor somebody doesn’t like…or worse, are allergic to, then the romance is going to fall flat right there. In most cases, it helps if they’re a new and different flavor.

Is your website the wrong flavor? If you’re using a standard template, then likely it is. Standard templates are like off the rack suits. They don’t really fit anyone quite right. A template designed for you and your company’s needs, however, is like choosing chocolate flavors you know the person likes. Certain color schemes work well for certain products. For example, if your website sells romantic gifts, you’re likely to want reds and pinks.

Are your customers going to be allergic to your website? More and more, these days, people access the web from mobile devices and low powered, cheap netbooks. Neither of these handle over-complicated sites well. Excessive and unnecessary use of Flash is particularly likely to result in an ‘allergic reaction’ that causes your potential customers to move right along. Mobile devices do not play well with Flash and Google doesn’t pick it up properly. A better website design is to keep things simple, and consider a separate layout just for smartphones.

Do you have a new and different flavor? Or is your site exactly the same as Bob’s down the road. Standard templates not only do not fit well, they carry a massive risk of being the same as the competition. A custom redesign, however, is like finding an entire new series of truffles in the chocolate boutique. It’s new, it’s different, and it stands out.

Just like a box of chocolates, your website should entice, lure, and also be a pleasant experience in its own right. A company whose website is not enticing and pleasant needs to think about a redesign. The effort is well spent when customers and their cash come your way. Also, a good designer will optimize a site for SEO purposes, bringing more traffic and hits.

1. Do you have examples you can show me of projects you have done that had similar goals and needs to my own? A firm that has experience in your field or with meeting the types of demands you have is probably more likely to succeed with your site than a firm charting new territory with your site as guinea pig.
2. How dedicated are you to the usability of the site? They should have something to say about keeping the focus on the visitor at all times. The visitor is the most important thing to your success and as your website design team, it should be their focus as well.
3. Can I meet everyone? If they say yes, the work isn’t all outsourced and they are more likely to have experience working together on projects. Keep probing to find out how they work together and if they bring in outsiders or not. You want a tight knit and experienced team working for you.
4. How do I make changes later? Most likely, it isn’t going to be perfect the first time. This is why it is important to see what the relationship is going to be like after the product is delivered. It should be a continuing one with a team that is willing to keep adjusting and serving your needs during the life of the site.
5. How will we know if it’s working? It is important to decide on success factors and critical numbers on your own first and then see if their answer lines up. The answer might be technical, but they should have some things to say about traffic, bounce, usability, and conversion at the very least.

If you happen to be looking for a web design team of your own, start by checking out our portfolio and please feel free to give us a call or drop us an email to schedule a meeting with our team, you can ask us all the questions you can think of.

1. You have a template website. You probably picked up this beauty when the internetbegan because everyone had to have one. Things have happened since the 90′s though, like Facebook and all of Web 2.0. A newer website will play nice with all the latest social media and marketing tools out there these days.
2. Lots of visitors but no conversions. Maybe you want people to sign up for your newsletter or fill in a form for more information. Maybe you sell directly from your site. Whatever a conversion means to you, a low percentage is bad. If you are getting the visitors, but not the cash, it’s time to find out why and redesign.
3. Your SEO sucks. A site should be optimized for search engines from the ground up. Lot’s of things contribute to good SEO, but a solid foundation is key.
4. Your entire site is flash-based. Flash may or may not be going by the wayside, but even worse, Google doesn’t see any of that pretty stuff. To Google, your site is just one big abyss and that’s not good for SEO. On top of that, most mobile devices don’t play nice with flash.
5. Your site isn’t optimized for mobile browsers. More and more people are using their mobile devices to go online. If your site is frustrating or doesn’t work at all for them, they are going to leave.

In fact, their new website is so great, the International Davey Awards have taken notice, earning Synotac a Davey in the automotive category. Davey’s are awarded to companies that display exceptional creativity in design across a variety of mediums, one of which is websites.

The new inventory system and separately branded Audi and Porsche sections have resulted in a site that is easier for people, meaning potential car buyers and clients for Sunset, to browse, research, and find specials and other valuable information.

We have talked about Stanford’s Web Credibility Guidelines before and web credibility couldn’t be more important to a site like Sunset Import’s, whose information and performance need to be near perfect. People aren’t going to buy a $100,000 car from a place whose website has bad information, an inventory system with mistakes in it, or that just doesn’t seem credible.

The 7th Guideline from Stanford stresses that the site be easy to use and useful. This doesn’t necessarily mean using all the latest and greatest technology or packing everything you can imagine into a site. It means that it be simple and intuitive and there shouldn’t be a learning curve with a website–the way it works should be clear and easy to execute. Sites that are easy to use are perceived as more credible and people are less likely to leave frustrated. You only get one chance to make a good first impression and build trust, if your site is doing both, you’re sure to have happy customers and lots of them.