Information architecture

Information architecture principles

A new way of thinking about managing the growth of your website.

As your website evolves, three areas of influence will determine the calls for change:

Graphic design changes will be implemented to keep your website synchronised with your branding and style guides.
Content will be added to your website to help inform your customers about your latest products and services.
Customer interaction, such as ecommerce, personalisation and application style features, will be added to reflect the current demands and expectations of your customers.

Your content management system, with a good style guide or style-sheet, will give you a certain level of consistency when implementing these changes. But there will always be some inherent flaws in the structure of your website if you avoid the principles of Information Architecture.

Introducing Information Architecture for your website

No matter how well your website is organised, the following issues will present serious challenges to the development and structure of your website:

Ability to find information

Even if your content management system has a search facility, this may not be enough to find the right information. Confusing site structure and unhelpful search results will deter your customers from persevering with their search, give up and look elsewhere.

Navigation and scalability in content structure

With traditional brochure style websites, where the content is directly linked to static menus, the information is fixed by the heirarchy of the pre-defined menus. You can modify and redesign your menus, but fundamentally the problem still remains – your website has not been designed to handle content beyond the menu structure. When you add more content, you are constantly challenged by deciding where it belongs.

Keeping your content fresh and relevant

Every time you add an article to your website, is there an expiry date associated with it? How do you classify and cross reference past articles that cover similar subjects?

Access control

Are there parts of your website that you wish to protect your privileged information? How do you manage access to these areas? Is it clear what articles belong to these access levels?

Information architecture is the science of organising, ordering, categorising and labelling information. Its purpose is to make your website easier to use and easier to find the information your visitors are looking for. If you have high quality content, then incorporating information architecture will maximise its effectiveness.

The benefit of implementing information architecture brings you the ability to create collections of paths, or series of pages, which your customers can take. Navigation will then be based on guiding your visitors through these paths you have anticipated and planned for.

What Information Architecture Can Do for You.

Here are four things to investigate and improve on your website:

Improve your internal linking.

For the human visitor as well as the major search engines, having a good internal structure will improve your visibility and help to add context to your content by providing access to the bigger picture.

Better navigation.

By classifying your content, you can incorporate additional navigational tools, such as:

tag clouds - a collection of keywords that connect all pages that contain the same keyword,
related links - a way of controlling which articles you would like the visitor to read next.

Capture and hold interest.

Having the capability to manage the flow of information will give you the power to capture and hold the interest of your customers. This will improve your website ‘stickiness’, and help to build up a relationship through multiple visits not normally possible without direct communication.

It is this stickiness factor that will determine how successful your website becomes in terms of how well it can capture and convert prospects into customers.

By managing the flow of information, you will be able to provide something new for your customers each time they visit. What’s more, you will be able to use a language that they understand for each stage of your buying process.

Nurture and educate with auto-responders.

Auto-responders are newsletter-like emails that can be made to be very specific and hence higher in value. People who subscribe to your auto responders will receive highly tuned information according to their request. The auto responder emails will help to guide them down a specific path, with the appropriate links to your website, that gives them timely and valuable information in order to make an informed decision.

When combining newsletters with auto responders, you will have the ability to build credibility and trust with your customers and prospects. By giving them impartial information about the current thinking in your business area in your newsletters, you can provide opt-ins in your newsletters to subscribe to auto responders for people wanting more information.

Netflare has developed a comprehensive method of implementing ‘quality-issue’ focused information architecture for your website.

This is based on 3 processes as below:

1: Zone Path Analysis

Marketing Analysis Re-cap.

The first step in zone path analysis is performed by reviewing the relationships with your customers and determining the quality issues that need to be overcome to improve those relationships. By considering different scenarios where those quality issues are encountered, then you can empathise with the customer and present questions they might ask.

Question Zoning.

The principle of question zoning is to collect similarly themed customer questions and group them into a series of zones that reflects the level of commitment from the customer.

Each zone incrementally strengthens your relationship with the visitor by responding to their current quality issues and provides impartial advice and information appropriate to their current style of question.

The zones are based on a style of questioning listed below:

Zone 1) Can you solve my problem?
Zone 2) Will it work for me?
Zone 3) What’s in it for me?
Zone 4) Why should I choose you?
Zone 5) What’s next?

Determining Path Scenarios.

Now that you have a comprehensive list of customer questions grouped into the 5 zones, you can derive relevant responses and generate path scenarios that takes your visitor through a nurturing process.

Article Classification.

You can create a heirarchical classification of terms to classify your articles and associate articles that belong to the same zone. Impartially written articles will be specific to a particular zone, but persuasively written articles will be classified in multiple zones in order to guide the visitor to the lower zones.

2: Writing Styles

Two styles of writing content are used in order to effectively guide your visitor through the zones.

Writing in an impartial style will help to win the trust of your reader. You should use an impartial style when writing advice, methodology, empathy, or how-to type articles for a given customers point of view or quality issue.

Writing in a persuasive style will help to focus the reader on the benefits of your point of view. You should use a persuasive style when writing about the benefits of your products, your services and your business in general.

3: Building Trust

Create layers of trust to build a product and service portfolio to suit the situation and the relationship with your customers.

As your customers begin to trust you more, you can make more available to them in terms of delivering higher value products and services.

Instead of viewing your website as a collection of individual pages that attempt to persuade your customer to buy your products or adopt your services, consider it as a medium that communicates at multiple levels to your customers.

With information architecture, you will be able to build relationships with your customers automatically on your website by implementing methods of controlling the flow of information.

Try our marketing workshops for FREE

The first FREE introductory workshop will cover the Business Posture section of the Strategy Builder training programme.

This 45 minute call will cover the following areas:

Splitting your marketing activities into customer acquisition and customer nurturing marketing strategies
Add clarity to your objectives by asserting a well defined USP
Generate a business posture by presenting value and results combined with your passion to deliver

The complete workshop programme includes Marketing Analysis, Content Marketing, Information Architecture, Improving Communication and Measuring Success. These workshops can be arranged as 45 minute telephone / Zoom calls to be held once a week (a time and day that fits). Those companies who wish to take this further can arrange one-2-one training or join an existing workshop group held on Wednesdays or Thursdays.

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Privacy Policy

We are committed to safeguarding the privacy of our website visitors; in this policy we explain how we will treat your personal information. By using our website and agreeing to this policy, you consent to our use of cookies in accordance with the terms of this policy.

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Amendments

We may update this policy from time to time by publishing a new version on our website.
You should check this page occasionally to ensure you are happy with any changes to this policy.

Your rights

You may instruct us to provide you with any personal information we hold about you; provision of such information will be subject to the supply of appropriate evidence of your identity (for this purpose, we will usually accept a photocopy of your passport certified by a solicitor or bank plus an original copy of a utility bill showing your current address).
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Our details

This website is owned and operated by Electronic Overtures Limited.
We are registered in England and Wales under registration number 04804891, and our registered office is at Electronic Overtures Limited., 25 Giffords Way, Over, Cambridgeshire. CB24 5UB.
Our principal place of business is at Electronic Overtures Limited, 25 Giffords Way, Over, Cambridgeshire. CB24 5UB.
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Terms of Service

GENERAL

In these terms and conditions of trading “Netflare” means Electronic Overtures Limited. “The Customer” means the customer to whom Netflare agrees to supply goods. “Goods” mean any goods supplied by Netflare to the customer. These terms and conditions shall apply to all contracts entered into between Netflare and the customer unless agreed to the contrary in writing by an authorised officer of Netflare. Unless otherwise agreed in writing by Netflare (the supplier) these conditions which supersede any earlier sets of conditions appearing in the supplier’s catalogues or elsewhere shall override any terms or conditions stipulated incorporated or referred to by the buyer whether in the order or in any negotiations and all guarantees warranties or conditions (including any conditions as to quality or fitness for any particular purpose) whether express or implied by statute common law otherwise are excluded and hereby negatived.

ORDERS

All orders are subject to the availability of the goods and to written acceptance by Netflare. Any prior indications by Netflare by telephone E-mail or verbally shall be provisional only. Limited stocks means that certain goods may only be available on a first come first served basis. Netflare shall not be liable for the unavailability of any goods whether for delivery or for collection..

PRICES

Catalogue, prices lists and other advertising or promotional material are intended to provide an indication as to the price range of the goods offered by Netflare and no variations shall give rise to a claim against Netflare. Netflare reserves the right to pass on to the customer any increases or decreases in the cost of providing the goods that occur between the date of quotation and delivery. All prices quoted are exclusive of VAT at the standard rate.

MANUFACTURERS SPECIFICATION

The customer recognises that Netflare is only a distributor of the goods. Although Netflare will try to notify the customer of any variations in specification of which it is aware the customer accepts that Netflare cannot be accountable for the consequences of any such variations made by the manufacturer or any shortage of supplies.

DELIVERY

Dates and times quoted by Netflare for delivery run from the receipt by Netflare of a written order. All dates and times quoted are estimates and any delay in meeting delivery dates will not give rise to a right to cancel the order or a right to any form of compensation or damages.
Offers for good ex-stock are subject to the goods being unsold at the time of receipt of the customers order.
Unless specifically included in the quotation, prices quoted do not include delivery, any delivery charges incurred by Netflare will normally be passed on to the customer, subject to any scale charges employed by Netflare at the time.
Netflare reserves the right to make part deliveries. Any request by the customer for Netflare to delay or split delivery may result in a stockholding charge and any additional costs incurred by Netflare being debited to the customer.
The customer must check the goods before use or resale and in any event within the time limit specified in clause (11), no liability can be accepted for the consequential loss arising from a breach of this condition.

PAYMENT

Unless agreed to the contrary in writing all invoices are payable by cash or cheque before shipment of the goods or against a pro-forma invoice whichever is the earlier. If the customer is an approved account holder invoices are payable within 30 days of the invoice date. Any right or set-off in favour of the customer and against Netflare is hereby excluded.
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FORCE MAJEURE

Netflare shall not be liable for any loss whatsoever suffered by the customer in the event of cancellation of the agreement to supply the goods if the supply of such goods would be illegal, contrary to manufacturers conditions of sale or impossible for Netflare to perform.

INSOLVENCY

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Risk in the goods shall pass to the customer at the time of delivery to or collection by the customer or its agent whichever is the earlier.
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Before returning any goods to Netflare the customer shall notify Netflare by letter facsimile or E-mail of its desire to return the goods together with the reason for the return.

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By accessing this site, you agree to the following terms and conditions and other applicable law. If you do not agree to be bound by these terms and conditions, please do not use this site.

All the information and material provided on this web site is solely for illustrative purposes. It is not intended to, and does not create any business, contractual or employment relationship with Electronic Overtures Ltd. All the information, content, text, images, including but not limited to html code, photography and buttons are the property of Electronic Overtures Ltd, and may not be copied, reproduced, republished, posted, transmitted, or distributed in any way without our express, advance, written consent. All trademarks used or referred to in this site are the property of their respective owners.

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Front-end marketing

Front-end Marketing

How to Introduce a Successful Front-end Marketing Strategy.

Front-end marketing is all about customer acquisition. As the lifetime value of a customer will make the cost of acquisition relatively insignificant, you can focus on adventurous ways to attract your prospect to make that leap and give you a try. The experience they gain from your high quality products and services will mean they stay as long term customers.

The 3 key points to mastering successful front-end marketing are:

Make it irresistible so that your prospect cannot pass by without noticing you;
Make the next step simple, clear, easy and risk free;
Backup your marketing with information that substantiates your promise.

Create Irresistible offers

Consider what part or aspect of your offer you could make available for a substantially reduced price, or even free.

Be adventurous and imaginative in your ideas. Create a long list and fine-tune them to a few good candidate offers you are happy to run with.

Use direct response style copy to promote your offer ideas. The copy would be written specifically for a targeted customer type and provide enough information and proof to make the offer absolutely irresistible.

Test these offers to find which ones appeal to your prospects.

Create a compelling call to action

By identifying the customer type, you will know what reservations, what hesitations and what levels of resistance to buy that prospect will have.

By making the next step small and risk-free, the prospect is more likely to be encouraged to give it a try. Provide impartial advice together with clear exit paths so that your prospect knows they can walk away at any moment.

Examples of simple and risk-free next steps are subscribing to newsletters or email subscription services, or downloadable reports and fact-sheets.

Substantiate your promise

The offer must be backed by additional information that substantiates the promise and provides high levels of credibility.

Once a prospect subscribes to the newsletter or enters their email in order to download a free report, they will be added to auto-responder follow-up emails to provide further information. The purpose of this is to satisfy the questions “Why should I buy from you?” and “Will this really work for me?”.

You can then build up a strong portfolio of offers to make your investment in customer acquisition pay for itself many times over to produce an extremely successful and powerful front-end marketing strategy.

Lead Generation Strategies

Prepare your marketing strategies based on your passion, motive and differentiation.

Then you can confidently collect your own targeted list from your website or any advertising campaign.

The enquiries can be intelligently captured, categorised and followed-up using smart marketing strategies.

Improving your Conversion rate

Measuring the success of your lead generation activities will help you improve and better define your ideal prospect type.

By being as specific as you can when looking for prospects, your conversion rate can only improve. Most businesses do not measure their marketing and are doomed to repeat their failures until their enthusiasm withers.

This is where all your hard work in preparing your front-end marketing strategies will start to deliver the results you are looking for. With the right planning, your passion, motive and differentiation will enable you to demonstrate the credibility you need to start attracting the right visitors who have the problems you can help solve.

With direct response style marketing copy that contains as many benefits to your targeted prospects as you can think of, you’ll be able to provide compelling reasons for the right visitors to stay and encourage them to provide their contact details.

By offering regular impartial and valuable information through newsletters and auto-responder email, you’ll be able to comprehensively follow-up all enquiries. Only by freely giving and sharing your help and advice, you’ll be able to gain the trust of the visitor and continue to build the relationship and eventually turn them to great customers.

If you want to build your website on solid foundations and actually deliver results, then only by implementing these powerful marketing strategies will your website attract the strong leads for you to follow up with valuable information to win their trust.

Try our marketing workshops for FREE

The first FREE introductory workshop will cover the Business Posture section of the Strategy Builder training programme.

This 45 minute call will cover the following areas:

Splitting your marketing activities into customer acquisition and customer nurturing marketing strategies
Add clarity to your objectives by asserting a well defined USP
Generate a business posture by presenting value and results combined with your passion to deliver

Your name

Your email address

Differentiation

How to differentiate your business from your competitors

Using a unique selling proposition (USP) in your promotion and sales activities by highlighting your unique benefits will greatly improve its effectiveness. USPs help your customers to save time when considering buying a product or service by helping them to differentiate between you and your competition and focus on your key benefits.

But differentiation is not just about finding your USP, it is about aligning your business with your passion and ensuring your primary motive is geared to deliver value and results to your customers.

Once you have achieved this, you will be able to posture your business to reflect your passion and your motives. Your business will be the only one that will have these qualities because they are unique to you. With this uniqueness, you will now be able to present much more powerful marketing strategies that will differentiate your whole business and not just your products and services from all your competitors.

How to Posture Your Business to Reflect the Value and Results you give

In order to visibly reflect the value and results you give, your posture must start by defining the core of your company ethics.

This will be the foundations from how you build what want out of your business, how you want to be seen and how you want to behave.

By making your company ethics clear to your customers in everything you do and everything you say, you will be creating an environment that reflects the value and results you give.

For each product or service you currently provide, consider what you freely give to make that product or service valuable to your customers. What could you give more that would truly reflect your differentiation and deliver more value and results?

Consider what you currently share with your customers. How could you share more to reflect your differentiation and deliver more value and results?

Consider how you currently serve your customers. How could you serve your customers better to reflect your differentiation and deliver more value and results?

How to give, share and serve more

List the products or services you offer to your customers, starting with the product or service that you want to succeed and has the greatest potential.
List the main features that deliver value and results and describe what it does with reference to:
- Quality
- Service
- Delivery
- Price
- Functional characteristics
- Technical characteristics
Convert each feature into one or more benefits to target your customer. Ask yourself why these key features are important to the customer. List the problems each feature or key fact solves. How does the customer feel about the lack of this benefit?
Another way to convert features into benefits is to add the phrase “which means that…” to the feature and consider how the customer benefits.
Check if each benefit is standard and found in all competing products, or if different and unique to you (these are candidate USPs)
Take a new piece of paper and draw three columns titled: GIVE, SHARE and SERVE
For each benefit you see as something you give to your customer, put this in the GIVE column. For example, Cyan Cycles offers specially selected high quality e-bikes with a 2 year warranty. The feature is the quality e-bikes on offer. The benefit is that the retailer doesn't have to take the risks in dealing with returns. Warranty goes in the GIVE column.
For each benefit you see as something you share with your customer, put this in the SHARE column. For example, Cyan Cycles shares its experience in calculating cadence to help the customer understand and assist in the choice of gears.
For each benefit you see as something you serve your customer, put this in the SERVE column. For example, Cyan Cycles serves by providing online retailer support through its ticketing system.
Now review each column and consider any additional benefits you could add that significantly improves your offering and is aligned with your posture.
Review how you GIVE, SHARE and SERVE and consider how you score against your competition after these additional benefits. With the new found strength in your posture, highlight those areas where you score significantly higher. You can then use this differentiation in your headlines in all your marketing for any product and service. Note: USPs don’t last forever and you need to watch the competition regularly.

Try our marketing workshops for FREE

The first FREE introductory workshop will cover the Business Posture section of the Strategy Builder training programme.

This 45 minute call will cover the following areas:

Splitting your marketing activities into customer acquisition and customer nurturing marketing strategies
Add clarity to your objectives by asserting a well defined USP
Generate a business posture by presenting value and results combined with your passion to deliver

Your name

Your email address

Take Ownership

Why businesses get stuck in a loop of failure when it comes to changing and updating their websites

Knowing that the success of your website will affect the future of your business, it is no surprise when businesses ask “What works and how do I get it to work for me?”

The fact that businesses ask this question reveals an awakening awareness that the challenge to face this issue must be dealt with sooner rather than later. Let's explore what options are available, discover how to take the bull by the horns and make headway to solving this issue, and get a website you know is right for you.

Perhaps the reason businesses get stuck in a loop is because businesses are faced with a dilemma: either choose to invest in a website and risk intangible rewards, or offer 'lip service' and risk losing ground to competition.

The Internet is changing the relationship with customers

Modern thinking businesses are beginning to recognise that the Internet is changing the relationship with their customers.

Marketing using this new media is still very new, and maybe because the old rules are not working, finding new ways to communicate with their customers is testing their creativity. Most businesses are shaking their heads with frustration; the answer, for most, is yet to be found.

Old style 'hit-and-run' marketing, using customer centred strategies and CRM (customer relationship management) data to broadcast your product is failing because everyone is doing the same. This style of marketing is becoming background noise – a nuisance.

Using similar techniques for your website is no different. These fad strategies will attract businesses that are desperate for results, yet unprepared to discover the real reason why their marketing is not working. These are the ones that are stuck in a loop, and change their website according to the latest sales technique.

Try our marketing workshops for FREE

The first FREE introductory workshop will cover the Business Posture section of the Strategy Builder training programme.

This 45 minute call will cover the following areas:

Splitting your marketing activities into customer acquisition and customer nurturing marketing strategies
Add clarity to your objectives by asserting a well defined USP
Generate a business posture by presenting value and results combined with your passion to deliver

Your name

Your email address

Nurture your passion

Find out how to build your business around what you are really passionate about

There will be aspects of your business that seem difficult and other aspects that come naturally to you. By discovering what you really enjoy doing and building on this to nurture your passion, not only will you find business life easier, but you can use this to define your uniqueness.

The enjoyable aspects of your business will be the part of the business that gives you true satisfaction when it is done well. It will not be so surprising then, that this area of your business will be the most valued by your customers.

Take a step back and look at the big picture

It may seem a little unusual, but may I ask you to sit back, relax and step out of the hustle and bustle of your everyday business life for a moment.

Now take a look at the big picture of your business and think about the aspects of your business you do well.

Consider the questions below and use them to discover your passion. Once you know your passion, you can use this to differentiate your business from your competition.

What parts of your business do you enjoy and what comes naturally to you?
What gives you great satisfaction when it is done well?
How can you highlight this aspect of your business?
What is the process you have developed to make your product or service so special?
How does this process benefit the customer?
Does this generate true value for the customer?
How can you make this unique in your industry?

You may already have a successful business and offer great products and services, but not know why.

If you haven’t discovered your passion, you may be working very hard pushing your business in a direction away from the areas you enjoy most. Instead, by knowing your passion, you can build on what comes naturally to you.

Business life will get easier and your products and services will grow to become unique in your industry and highly valued by your customers.

Try our marketing workshops for FREE

The first FREE introductory workshop will cover the Business Posture section of the Strategy Builder training programme.

This 45 minute call will cover the following areas:

Splitting your marketing activities into customer acquisition and customer nurturing marketing strategies
Add clarity to your objectives by asserting a well defined USP
Generate a business posture by presenting value and results combined with your passion to deliver

Your name

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Primary motive

How to Develop Business Strategies that make your Products and Services Desirable to Your Customers

If you have discovered your passion for your business and know what you do best, you can build on this to add more value to your products and services. If you know your products and services will deliver results for your customers then highlight these benefits in your marketing to develop business growth and increase your market share in your business arena.

Planning business growth and setting sales targets

Increasing your profits is naturally orientated around improving one or more of the following goals:

Increase your lead generation efforts to get more enquiries
Increase your conversion rate from your enquiries to get more customers
Increase your number of transactions per customer to get more sales
Increase your average sale per transaction to get more revenue
Increase your gross margin to get more profit

Your marketing strategies will outline how you plan to implement these goals and include targets and milestones in order to measure the success of your strategies.

The prospects that see these value added benefits and appreciate your motives for implementing them will become great customers because they will embrace the passion within your business. Other prospects that fail to see this will only be interested in discounted deals anyway, and not help you in your marketing strategies.

If your motives to add value and results are clearly visible, your products and services will appeal to a wider market audience. This will include larger businesses and businesses outside of your normal demographics. With a larger audience, your products will be in demand and your plans to increase margins will become easier to implement.

Adding value and results will also bring substance behind your marketing. The reasons for any offer or campaign will now be based on your motives to add value and deliver results to your customers, not to increase profit. As a consequence, your customers will be attracted to your offers and your marketing strategies will stand a higher chance of success.

How to add value and results

Look at your current portfolio of products and services and assess each one by the following:

How valuable are they seen by your customers?
How effective are they in delivering the expected results?
How closely do they relate to your passion?
What could you give more to increase value and results?
What could you share more to increase value and results?
How could you serve more to increase value and results?
What investment to increase value and results would you consider?

If your motives behind how you plan to implement your business growth goals are unclear, you risk pushing away your customers with aggressive sales techniques and unattractive prices. If your motives are simply to increase profit, your customers will quickly see through this and walk away.

Whatever the price of your product or service, your customers will only want to buy it if they know it will add value and deliver results to their business.

Try our marketing workshops for FREE

The first FREE introductory workshop will cover the Business Posture section of the Strategy Builder training programme.

This 45 minute call will cover the following areas:

Splitting your marketing activities into customer acquisition and customer nurturing marketing strategies
Add clarity to your objectives by asserting a well defined USP
Generate a business posture by presenting value and results combined with your passion to deliver

Your name

Your email address

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