Websalad’s recipe for conversion
Wednesday, 7 May 2008
Last Updated: Wednesday, 7 May 2008
By Amanda Gome
Traffic, number of clicks, and search rankings are not enough anymore. Jason West’s company Websalad specialises in two hot areas in online marketing – conversion and reputation management.
As online marketing becomes more complicated, small companies are starting up to specialise in a few key disciplines. Two hot new areas in online marketing? Conversion, and online reputation management. Start-up Websalad specialises in both.
Founder Jason West, 40, tells Amanda Gome what’s new and how he is adjusting to life as an entrepreneur. Jason is willing to answer your questions. Simply email feedback@smartcompany.com.au before the end of business Friday 9 May.
Amanda Gome: Why did you start your own business?
Jason West: I was working at Qantas as a pilot and was looking for a new challenge. I had been a captain for six years and achieved everything I wanted. So I took a year off without leave to trial the business, and it worked. So I went in and told them I’m not coming back. I started from home and then moved into a shared office. We now have 10 staff.
It was a big leap from being a pilot to running a web business.
The internet and SEO was always something I was interested in. I started a website in French tourism with a travel company and once it was built they turned around and said so how do we get people to the site? We didn’t have money for traditional advertising, and I had read about Google and search.
Your biggest challenge?
Be able to do what we are paid to do while getting new sales. Also finding employees. The demand is there – people are screaming for people to do online marketing. I have to take people on and train them.
I am sourcing people from different areas, people with an IT background; but it is more of a marketing field. It is actually marketing on an IT platform. And it takes six months before they are trained up. Next year we are looking to formalise the training in internships to enable the company to grow faster.
What’s changed in the last year?
Two years ago people thought a web presence was enough. But now they have realised that people are not going to the Yellow Pages; they are going straight to Google, and this gives them a big opportunity to get found. So rather than paying a bomb for a new website, they now know they can get a return.
The US is ahead of Australia. In Australia the focus is still on traffic and rankings and throwing money at Google AdWords. But in the US it is all about conversion. How do you get people to do what you want them to do when they come to your site? While that’s been ignored in Australia, it is a trend that will develop once local search really takes off.
So how will that change things?
Small business will look locally. At the moment small businesses that rely on traditional marketing think they don’t need to do SEO – why chase someone in Perth when you just want to sell to local businesses? But small businesses will by next year use the web to find other local businesses. And that will happen when telephone mobile search takes off.
So when the business gets found…
They need to convert it into a sale or a lead or whatever it is they want. One of the ways to do that is to test. People fall in love with their websites and are hesitant to start testing headings or an image… But the web is not like printing a brochure. Building it is just step one. Then you need to work out what works. You can use Google analytics, but we use some more sophisticated tools and have found we can get up to a 69% lift in conversion.
Are there simple things you can do to get a better conversion?
Sure. I still see a lot of websites that don’t put a phone number on every page.
People have to realise that people are on their site with their finger on the mouse. There is a split second before they return to Google if they don’t find what they are looking for.
I think it is quicker than print. People scan websites. They don’t read in detail, and there is very little loyalty. Don’t find what you want? Go to number two on Google.
That’s why Flash and sites that looked like brochures didn’t work. People just want to know – will it answer my question?
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