A passion for interior decorating established Blind Designs in 1975 in South Africa. Blind Designs was born in 1975 in South Africa by an entrepreneur Rob Harvey. They initially started with 3 types of blinds which were Roman, Roller and Vertical Blinds but within 4 years they had added another product to their catalogue. In 1994 home owners started to decorate their houses like never before. Due to the fact that the home owners started to do interior of their houses themselves, Blind Designs catalogue had grown to 9 products by 1989.

The Next Step: Online Marketing

Blind Designs realised in 2009 that launching an online marketing strategy could have a magnificent impact on their business. They approached SAbest and we launched their Google Adwords (Pay per Click) Campaign in February 2009. Just 7 days after launching their campaigns, they had 192 visits and 20% of the visits were from Google Adwords and 6.67% from non-paid adverts. 72% were new clients visiting their website through Google.

We initially started only with Pay per Click advertising, but after a successful year of Pay per Click campaigns and remarkable return on investment, Blind Designs launched search engine optimisation on their website in conjunction with their Adwords campaign.

We started their search engine optimisation in February 2009. Within 8 months of optimisation, we managed to get them to the top listing on the first page of organic searches when searching their most competitive keyword: Blinds.
SEO especially, builds complete brand trust and awareness, as people perceive companies that rank on the first page of searches as the market leaders and the most trusted in the industry.
This meant optimum visibility online in all searches.

The Proof Is In The Pudding:

You will notice in the block below the difference in visits from 2009 when they started with Pay per Click right through to 2011 when they also added search engine optimisation to their online marketing plan. This also shows the impact the two products combined have on each other, and on customer trust and brand association.

Visits
Campaigns

PPC:Feb 2009 – Feb 2010: +20%
SEO:Feb 2009 – Feb 2010: +6.67%

PPC: Feb 2010 – Feb 2011: +20.58%
SEO: Feb 2010 – Feb 2011: +21.88%

PPC: Feb 2011 – Aug 2011: 24.37%
SEO: Feb 2011 – Aug 2011: 24.73%

This clearly states the value of doing Pay per Click and Search engine optimisation together. The performance of various keywords, and their conversion rates are closely monitored and adjusted according to the results achieved.
Focused landing pages were created for the Pay per Click campaigns, ensuring higher conversion rates as the captive audience got the information they were looking for immediately, with substantial call to action areas. Their average conversion rates from Feb 2011 – Aug 2011 was 12.07%. Other advertising campaigns expect an average of 1% conversion – and the trackability is minimal.

The Future Of Blind Designs:

Due to their online visibility, Blind Designs maintained a steady growth of 5% annually, even through the recession period.
The brand has become trusted as word of mouth is backed up by online presence – and will always be viewed as one of the market leaders for blinds in South Africa.
One last word from Paul O’ Brien is that Google Adwords should form part of every company’s strategy to some agree.

“I know that only 50% of all advertising works.  I wish I knew which 50%” – David Ogilvy

Isn’t that a scary thought?

Today, statistics show that only 20% of marketing and advertising still works in its traditional format.
The market is becoming saturated with similar products, services and solutions.  Our challenge today is no longer just being the most innovative producer, but the most innovative marketer in getting our products to the fingertips of the consumer seeking it, and almost more so, making the person who is yet unaware of it, feel that they need it.  You have to be able to get into your customers’ heads before you can get into their pockets.

How, you ask?
Well, the first few things to be cognizant of, is that people are drowning in the sheer volume of messaging out there, as well as the amount of media formats and choices of media formats in which they receive the messaging. Even products previously perceived as luxuries, today, have become commodities.  Most marketing messages will not stick out above others…
So how do you establish your product as trusted and known, a brand that stands out from the rest , a brand people want to associate with?

We say “It’s simple”:  You can achieve these goals by speaking to your captive audience, in their language, and at their time…  Your message will now not only be well received, but also processed well, and you are able to create the initiation of a trusted relationship between your customer and your brand.

You say “Problem”  With all the different ways to communicate at this time, how do I do that?
We have looked at, and found, one large common denominator in when this perfect time is to interact – and that is online, and specifically while people are searching for products or services like yours.

In South Africa alone, online sales broke the R2bn mark in 2010, with a predicted increase of 40% in 2011.  And this does not include the amount of sales done physically or telephonically relating to or following an online interaction.

And what is more, is that it is all tracked and measured – from the moment someone clicks on your advert, right through to them becoming your customer.  The flexibility of online also means that you can fine-tune your campaigns real-time, ensuring optimum results.

The key, thus, is to get people to know about you before learning about your competitors, and this can be successfully obtained by changing your marketing and advertising strategy to include Online Marketing and Search Engine Marketing – and getting more traffic to and interaction on your website.

Make more than 50% of your advertising work…

In this technological age, we interact with objects daily and it is important that our interactions elicit positive user experiences. These interactions can be with any object or product, from a hair dryer to a washing machine.  Because of this, Usability has become extremely important.

Usability refers to the ease of use and learnability with which a human interacts with an object. Usability in the context of Information Technology generally falls within the academic field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI).. In the field of web design, usability and interaction design is just as important as the visual design itself. Your website can be aesthetically beautiful, but if users find it difficult to interact with, you have a big problem.

There are a number of components that tie in with usability and I shall briefly discuss a few of them here. Interaction with any device should be a designed process. The interface for interaction should be easy to use and user friendly. An interface should also be designed to be intuitive. Users should be able to know what to do automatically, without having to think about it. The user should therefore not feel frustrated.

If new actions have to be learnt, these should be easy to remember. This brings us to another point, learnability. A highly learnable interface is one in which users automatically know what to do after they have performed the required actions a few times.

Ultimately, the user should be considered during every single phase of design and implementation. The target audience, user cognition, and affective aspects play an extremely important role. The affective aspects involved when a user interacts with any type of interface includes the user’s emotional reactions, biases and other psychological traits.

A couple of ways in which to improve the usability of your site (or device, software or anything else you can think of that humans will interact with) are the following:

- Follow standards and conventions. These conventions are in some cases quite obvious (don’t put light text on a light background or make sure buttons look like buttons), however there are certain conventions that have just sort of evolved over time. They are “tried and tested” ways of doing this and are there for a reason. The point is that these standards are known by users and users will look for them.  It might be tempting to explore radically new ideas, but if you are not sure your idea will work, it might be better not to implement it.

- Conduct Usability tests. If you want your website to be usable, learnable and user friendly it is crucial that you conduct usability tests. These tests can be done with a small amount of people and with limited equipment. The important thing is that you do this continuously at various stages of development ( and pre development). Get a couple of people to use your website and monitor them, record their screen actions and listen to their feedback. You will most certainly pick up errors. And because you are conducting usability tests early on in the process, you will have time for improvement.

- Analyse the data. Analyse and interpret the data obtained from the usability test. See where improvement is necessary and share the results with your staff.

The field of HCI is quite large and it would benefit any individual who is involved with the design, implementation and planning of any interface to read a book or two on the subject. I can recommend Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction, this is an excellent book which covers almost everything you need to know. If you want to save a bit of time though, pick up the book ‘Don’t make me think’ by Steve Krug.

 
Usability of a website

Usability is the number one element you need to consider when developing a website. To obtain usability there a number of factors you need to consider.

A standard website layout (which your visitor is usually familiar with) is the best course of action to take. Users feel comfortable with familiarity this allows them to understand the functionality of your website without a learning curve.

Breadcrumb links are always a good idea. This enables the user to know exactly where they are on your website at all times. Breadcrumb links also allows them to navigate back to a page that they have already visited.

Content needs to be easily readable and easy to understand. The last thing you need is for a user to try and figure out what you are actually saying. One way to do this is to highlight keywords within the content and to break it up in paragraphs.

Cater for everyone – making sure your website is accessible for all visitors. The website should be accessible from any browser (including mobile browsers).

Make links visible – the links on your website should be easy to spot. One way to do this is by making all the links on the website one specific color and by giving already visited links a different color to that.

Improve your conversion rate

Conversion rate is commonly defined as the percentage of visitor that perform actions on your website that are important to your business. For this reason it is extremely important to make sure you optimize your website to have the highest conversion rate.

Improving your conversion rate starts with your landing pages. This is the first page a visitor arrives at when entering your website. Usually in online marketing the landing page has a specific message based on the product/service – but a landing page can be any page indexed by large search engines such as Google especially when the website has been optimized correctly.

Here are a few factors to improve your conversion rate:

• Relevance to them
  The context of your landing page should be relevant to what the user is looking for. If a visitor finds that the page is not relevant, the person might click back immediately or might become an “irrelevant lead” because they simply didn’t find what they were looking for
• Be clear
  Often visitors to a website do not know what to do as the page is unfamiliar to them. You have to be clear in what you want the user to do. Give them simple instructions what to do next whether it is to submit a contact form or to click on the order button to order.
• Urgent action
  Do not push your visitor to do something. If they are interested in your product/service it will convert in to a lead. This will also improve your quality of leads and thus increase your sales.