Optimizing The Payment Process - #SEOpodcast 253

This is the SEO Podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Chris Burris, owner of eWebStyle. I'm Charles Lewis, your internet marketing specialist. Welcome, welcome back, Malcolm Wack to another fun-filled edition of the SEO Podcast. This is podcast number 253. This is the best SEO podcast on iTunes, on the known planet, on your device, on my device, on the internet. Everywhere. We are broadcasting live from Houston, and as always, we have a tip from our previous podcast, and that tip is, observe the click patterns of your visitors to determine places for improvement. What does that even mean? Yeah. So what that means is when you say observe the click patterns, this requires some knowledge of analytics. Right. You log into Google Analytics, you can see how people landed on the site, what page they went to after that, how long it was there, what did they drop off at? And maybe they're just dropping off on the same page that you really need them to convert on. Right. Figure out why, right? What's wrong with that page? How could that page be improved? Maybe the CTA could be more prominent, maybe your form's too long, maybe the content's not relevant, maybe it just sucks. But either way, looking at those click patterns, you can figure out where your drop off is, and then make the improvement on that particular page. Yeah. Maybe it's dropping off even before it gets to the page where you need them taking a specific action, I don't know, because your web guy deleted the link. Legally. And sometimes that's you, no one to blame but yourself. And by the way, there is no one to blame but yourself if you're not looking at those patterns. Exactly. Please remember, we are your friendly local neighborhood top position snatchers, where our mantra is. Don't be a douche. If you have a device, do what Chuck's doing, tweet now. And what should they tweet? You should tweet this, that's right behind us, hashtag SEO podcast. This is number 253. Be sure to

tag us in it, at eWebStyle, at BestSEO Podcast, that way we can follow you back and do all of our social networking stuff. If this is the first podcast of ours that you've listened to, welcome. Thank you for checking us out. Appreciate you. We're going to get through the potatoes here pretty soon and get right to the meat. If this is more than the first podcast, if you've listened to us before, we're going to ask you to do one of three things. The first one has three steps. Go on to iTunes, create an account, and write a review. Hopefully, that review will be five stars. And if you do write a review, you can send us an email, podcast at e-webstyle.com. Let us know you wrote that review. We'll find it, track it down. If you're in a different country, it's hard to find. We'll get to it, and we'll read it on air. Next, you can go to our G Plus Local page. If you are an SEOer, then you know there is value in a G Plus Local review. So we've made it really easy to get to our G Plus Local page. All you have to do is go to e-webstyle.com slash Google Plus or slash Google Plus or slash G Plus or slash G Plus. All of those will take you to our G Plus Local page. We ask you to do three things on that page. Those three things are. Just do these real things for us, three of them. It won't take you long. First off, leave us a review. That's like by far the most important thing to do. Leave us that review. Hopefully, it's five stars. Five stars. After that, put us in a circle. Give us a plus one. We so appreciate it. Please. Thank you. Next, you can go to our Facebook page, facebook.com slash e-webstyle. And on that page, you'll find a place to write a review. Write us a review there. And if you've got something else, you've got a question, a burning

desire, you want to understand something, hit us up. Yeah, that's a great place to do it. Right there on Facebook. We'll get that answered on air. And finally, we've got stitcher.com slash SEO Internet Marketing Podcast, the best of everything. If you just type that in Google, somehow you'll get to our page, and there you will find... I want somebody to try this. Yeah. Try this. In the Google search bar, right, stitcher.com space. If you put stitcher.com space in your address bar, Google is going to automatically search stitcher.com for whatever your next statement is. So do this, stitcher.com space hashtag SEO Podcast, and see what you come up with. Yeah. I haven't even tried that. I just thought of that literally. It'll probably work. It'll probably end up on ours, then you can... If it's on a particular podcast, you may have to back out to get to write a review for the podcast in general, for the series, or you may just click a button, add review now. And you do do that from your web browser. You don't do that from within the app. Yeah, which is kind of weird. Yeah. There's a lot of ways you can haunt us, stalk us, follow us. We like to make it easy. Facebook.com slash... E-Web Style. Twitter.com slash... E-Web Style. YouTube.com slash... E-Web Style. And Instagram.com slash... E-Web Style. E-Web Style. Is that a surprise? No, it's not a surprise. It's actually exactly what you were expecting. If you are a PHP expert, a WordPress extraordinaire guy, what you should do, and you want to work with us, then... Yeah, WordPress, experts, like real talk, like PHP, WordPress, what's the lab view? We're looking for somebody special. If you're the bomb, give us a call. 713-510-7846. Submit an audio resume. If you have a customer who is an SEO customer, and you send them to us, and they're the good kind of customer that pays their bill, we will pay you. There is a referral program. You can find that at the bottom of our page.

Free Website Analysis, go to our website, you can get a free website analysis. That is all the advertising you have to do right now. Now it is time for our... Algorithm. Cataclysm. It's our favorite... Man, the graphic is getting better. You guys really should check out the video. Tune in and watch live, because, I mean, first off, you get to see us, right? And then you miss our special effects. So dig this. Algo cap. All right, so I've got a couple new things. Both of these are Google-related, so I'm putting them in a cataclysm because they do affect the way you search. Okay. All right? So this first one, they, Google actually rolled out an improvement, more of an upgrade to their conversational search. Okay. Right? And so if we, you know, we talked about this a few podcasts ago, and this hasn't been our first time discussing conversational search, especially with Google improving their voice apps and things like that. Right. You want to be optimizing your site the way people speak. Right. Because from a mobile device, if somebody grabs their phone, and they hit their Google app because this update is only works in the Google search app, and let's say they search, they say something like, what store is closest to my hotel? Right. What shoe store is closest to my hotel? Then upgrade will automatically index your Gmail, and if you have your hotel listed, it will know that and show you the results for your question. Wow. Based off your email. Wow. That's pretty cool. Same thing with bills. Okay. If you have a, if you got a Comcast statement. When does my next bill do? Google, when does my next bill do? It will pull that data from the last email that Comcast or TXU or whoever your vendor is, whatever they sent you is going to pull that information and display it on your screen. Yeah. Conversational search upgrade. So pretty cool. Now the key to this, the takeaway is if you're a local business, brick and

mortar, like a shoe store, restaurant, or anywhere else that people can actually come and search for, it's in your best interest to A, make sure your local place page is verified because that's the only way Google is going to even put you in the list. Yeah. The place page has to be verified. And two, on your website, make sure that you're using some structured data markup for your address. And so that way they can index it faster. They can find it faster. It's the same as on your G plus page. And you increase your likelihood of being listed when somebody asks their Google search app, what store is closest to my hotel? Or what store is closest to me where I'm at right now? Which in that case, your GPS will activate and it'll tell you. So conversational search, pretty cool. And the second one, the Google answer box. Okay. You've probably been seeing that a lot more lately. Right. What is the Google answer box? That's the look you just had on his face. Yeah. So the Google answer box is that box that pops up at the top of the search results when you search for something that they have an answer for, which is kind of good. It's a great user experience. So for example, if you was to go and search, what is the Google answer box? Right. Right. You would normally get a, probably the first link would be a Google explanation to some blog of theirs. Second one would probably be Wikipedia. Right. Instead, now there's a black box, well, a dark shaded box above the search results with an answer. Right. Definition, a time, a movie, an artist, whatever it is that you're searching for, that answer will likely now show up. There's a, matter of fact, the stat was there's a 44% chance that that answer will show up in a Google answer box. Wow. Cool. So from a user perspective, that's awesome. I only have to click a result. Here's my answer right here. You just

got to read it. Yeah. From an SEO perspective, it kind of sucks because now that click, it doesn't have to happen. Right. Right. And so they're not going to your site. Google answered it for them. Wow. Interesting. Yeah. That's our algorithm. We're going to have to keep an eye on that one. Yeah. All right. So I've got a little bit of, I've got a little bit of news. I thought this was, this was pretty cool. Google was hit with 144,000 right to be forgotten requests in Europe. That was you, right? Yeah. I just thought that was interesting. Facebook put a lot of people like, man, yeah. Don't want to be forgotten. Don't. It's ironic how many people don't want to be shown. Yeah. Yeah. Well, or at least that particular piece of information, right? Facebook Messenger. Remember when it split off and it was a separate download and you had to get it? There was actually a logic behind it. The messaging app is working a significant, it didn't have a specific stat. It's working a lot faster than it was working inside the Facebook app. Yeah, because it's separated. Well, and they're using a new technology. So that was pretty cool. They were already using that technology to kind of communicate between servers within Facebook. Now they started using that and it's called Thrift, is what they're calling it. I uninstalled it. Yeah. I was using it. It's extremely convenient. Makes it easy to navigate. Oh, I love the little circles. I love it and hate it. Yeah, they're annoying as hell and I love them, right? Because they're like, okay, I need to respond to that or I don't need to respond to that. But I just uninstalled it because I thought the privacy policy and the data that they gathered was way too vague. Right. On how they put it out there. Right. And it was new and felt like it was susceptible to hacks. Right. And I was like, uninstall. Uninstall. Note to everybody, if you need it, don't Facebook message

me if you want me to respond immediately. Quickly, yeah. Text me. Yep. Yeah, the Facebook messaging is good enough, right? You get to it later. That'll work. Marriott. This is interesting because I just went to a conference in Phoenix, Arizona. And Marriott Hotels was fined $600,000. Oh, for the jamming the signals? Because they were jamming Wi-Fi signals. So you show up and you've got a little hotspot. Mm-hmm. Marriott's jamming the hotspot. To force you to log onto theirs. So you've got to purchase their overpriced Wi-Fi. By the way, it was like $100 a day at the conference I was at. I mean, it's just ridiculous. Per device. Wow. It was just insane. Yeah. Especially when if you weren't at a conference and you were just checking in for a night, it would be like $9.95. Yeah. That's crazy. Let's see. No. Marriott's... It would be free. No, no, no. It would have been... Yeah. $9.95. It's crazy. You go to Motel 6, you get free Wi-Fi. You go to the Marriott, you've got to pay $10 a night. You go to the Marriott for a conference. You've got to pay $100 for the booth. It's crazy. I just jotted down 3D printing because I think 3D printing is doing a whole lot of cool stuff. I think, is it FedEx or UPS is going to start having 3D printers in their stores? And I read an article. I just saw a picture of a 3D printed part that NASA used in one of their jet engines. Man. They just printed a 3D part. And then I heard... And I was looking that up because I saw they're going to print an entire spaceship and send it up there. How big does the printer have to be to do that? Well, it's got to be as big as that platform. Or you can print pieces of it and then put it together. Yeah. Just think scaffolding. Lots of it. Yeah. Yeah. Very cool stuff, though. I think we're going to... And they're also talking about 3D

printing in zero gravity areas. So imagine you're in the space station. You're like, hmm, my coffee maker stopped working because the nozzle's broken. Print me a new nozzle. Print up a new nozzle. Pretty cool. Yeah, I could dig it. Kind of makes a change to Apollo 13. All right. We have one review. This is from Brian Hare. And it is... Five stars. It says, the eWebStyle podcast is hands down the best SEO podcast on the planet. These guys have consistently been giving top quality content since 2009. 253. He's probably pretty accurate. As a recent binge listener, it's been like looking at an SEO version of one of those cross-sections of Earth. It's amazing how SEO has evolved. And this podcast has consistently been on the leading edge of that evolution. Yeah. Yeah. I am relatively novice. The leading edge of evolution. Yeah. I'm relatively novice at SEO. That's tweet worthy. But with each listen, I pick up valuable nuggets to help me grow 3dayrespawn.com, which is a video gaming community website that I help admin. 3dayrespawn.com? Yep. 3dayrespawn.com. Keep up the good work, guys. And as one commenter a few months ago said, and I'll echo it, if you guys ever make it to Pittsburgh, I'll buy you a Primanti Brothers sandwich. Primanti Brothers sandwich. Primanti Brothers sandwich. I won't buy you an Iron City beer because it's actually river water. Yeah, I'm not sure. I like river water. I'm not sure our review is the appropriate place to be slamming Iron City beer. I like it, but I'm not sure it's the right place. But we've got lots of fine local craft beers that will treat you much better. That's from Brian Hare. And that quote was, what was the one that you're looking for? Leading edge of evolution. Leading edge of evolution has been consistently on the leading edge of that evolution. Man, Brian Hare, punch in the face. Punch in the face, you do appreciate it. Thank you for the five-star review. We really appreciate it. And we'll check out that 3dayrespawn.com,

some sort of gaming site. So, cool. And that is the potatoes of our podcast. Oh, I know we've got a couple of potatoes. All right. Yeah, so I wanted to give a punch in the face to HubSpot. Okay, HubSpot, yeah. Punch in the face to HubSpot. Man, they IPO'd this week, man. They came out at $125,000. They closed at $917 million. Evaluation. Wow. Dude. Like, I'll hit your boy. That's some dollars. For real, for real. So, punch in the face to you guys. You know that was because of the video you did for them. Yeah, I know. The inbound marketing video. Yeah. Yeah. I deserve something. By the way, Google SEO rapper inbound marketing. You'll know what we're talking about. So, got a couple punches in the face. This one goes to Mobile Cuisine. She's at Mobile Cuisine. Hit us up on Twitter. They said they love the at EWebStyle podcast, guys. Five stars. Woo. Keep up the great work. We'll be reaching out for a site audit soon. Hit us up. Yeah. We'll take care of you. This punch in the face goes to Jim Cutler. He's at What's Cooking Jim. He says, at EWebStyle, punch in the face, nice podcast, hashtag SEO podcast 249. So, he's catching up. So, yeah. That's what's up, man. We want to get into those questions. Yeah. Let's get to those questions. I don't know. Hopefully, your content's a little. Yeah. Yeah. We've got good content. All right. We've got two questions. We've got two questions. So, this one came from Lance. Lance emailed us at podcast at E-WebStyle.com. And he says, well, he sent me a chart from Moz, right? And basically, the chart is telling him that he realized he has four versions of his site. EVS7. What is the problem causing this? And how should we fix it? Four versions. He has. Well, so the problem is that you have four versions. Yes. You've got four versions and you didn't realize it because it's how Google attacks it. But go ahead and list those versions.

Yeah. So, he has HTTP www.evs7.com slash index.php. Right. Then he has HTTP www.evs7.com. Right. Then he has HTTP, no www, evs7.com slash index.php. Right. And then HTTP slash slash evs7.com. No www, no index. Lance, thank you for sending your question. We really appreciate it. This is actually a pretty easy one. Yeah, straightforward. You just really need to. So, based off of the page authority that Moz has shown you, the www.evs7.com has the most authority. Right. And that would frankly be the one I would recommend anyway. So, you take that domain name, make that your primary, make that your default. I don't know who your domain host is, if it's GoDaddy or whoever, but access your HT access file. Right. And do some 301 redirects for all these other ones. To the main one. Make sure they go to the main one. Make sure they go to the main one. Yep. And 301 redirect those. The reason you want to 301 those is so any links to those, because they do have some authority. Some of them have 41 links. Others have 54 links. You don't want to lose that link juice. And so, you want to redirect those to the main one. Yep. And so, that way, once you do that, then you resubmit. This report should look totally different. It should have one domain name listed. Yep. Done. Good luck with that. Let us know how that works. 301 redirect. Don't do redirect. All right. Next question is a little more challenging. This is from Peter, businessexpressaccounting.com. Hi, guys. I love listening to your podcast. I gave you a plus one and a review on G Plus over a month ago. Appreciate it. I haven't heard my name on air yet. Always looking for the same fame. We'll have to keep an eye on that one. So, to get your attention, here's a curly question. Two, really, I'd appreciate your feedback. I run an accounting business. I have a practice in New Zealand. And I'm starting one in Canada. And I do Xero, that's

X-E-R-O, online accounting software consulting for people all over the world. Right now, I'm planning on having three separate websites, .nz, New Zealand, .ca, Canada, and .com. Sites are not up yet, just the NZ, really. Is this the best approach, or should I look at a combined site? Further, some blog articles are only relevant to New Zealand, NZ, some only to Canada, and some are universal. I don't want the Canadian ones visible to the NZ blog view, and vice versa. If I run a separate blog on each of the sites, but duplicate the relevant content that will expose me to SEO issues, will that expose me to SEO issues with Google treating the content as duplicate? Many thanks for your podcast and for your response. This is a great question. Phenomenal question. So, let's clear up some addresses. First off, both of them are great questions. This one's a little more challenging. Yeah, a little bit more advanced question. Yeah. So, let's clear up some deep content issues first. Right. First off, there is a such thing as deep content, and you're right. Google may indeed see some sort of issue with two separate sites on two separate domain names having identical content. Right. Luckily, you're in two different areas. And so, while the Canada content may be a duplicate of what the New Zealand content, that content is still relevant to Canada. And so, any searches in Canada, your content, if it's optimized well and it's relevant and it's good content, then you should still rank even if it is duplicate content because it's on another domain in a whole other country. Remember, the premise about duplicate content is it's not a penalty. Yeah. It's just putting the main version, the original one, more prominently, and the other ones in the supplemental. Exactly. And that's really for a specific search result page. So, if this was for the .com site, like if you had the same articles on the .com, like some people do because their WordPress isn't configured correctly, then that's an issue. Right.

One of them won't show at all. It'll be supplemental. But in your case, you're using two totally different domain names, two totally different extensions, and two totally different countries. And so, I don't think your Duke content issue will be a problem. I don't think it's going to be a problem at all. Now, having said, we don't think it's going to be a problem. We don't know for sure, right? So, as always, make sure you test it. And the way that you want to test it is set your browser, do a Google search from the .ca, Google version, and then from the .nz, and look for things relevant to the articles that you have duplicated in both places. Exactly. And if you think, and in fact, if you've got three as an ideal situation, because what I'd really do is do one on Canada, one on New Zealand, and then one on both, and then make sure that they're placing well for the terms you're targeting. Make sure they're kind of reasonably, equally competitive. And then make sure, okay, the one that was only in Canada, when I search the relevant term, it shows up, you know, first page. The one that's only in New Zealand, same first page. And then when it's duplicated, they should be in a very similar position on both search engines. If they seem to be suffering some sort of penalty, then you really have your answer then that you might need to make... Well, and then luckily, if indeed they are suffering some sort of penalty, I mean, you will get a notification. Yeah, like Webmaster Tools will tell you, hey, this was blocked because of manual spam or dupe content or whatever it is. And so luckily, you will have access to that type of information. Yeah, and I think really what I was talking about is if the supplemental is causing some challenge as opposed to an actual penalty. So that's the right test to do. We think that's the right approach. Yeah, that's how we would do

it, frankly. That's what we would do with a client. If you came to us as a client, that's what we would do. We'd test it, make sure it doesn't suffer any sort of duplicate content penalty, and then move on. That is the potatoes of our podcast. Now it's time to get to the meat. Yeah, so today's meat, man, a pretty good article. I found this article on Search Engine Land. Search Engine Land. Good article here. This one was posted by Tim Ash. And so Tim Ash, actually, Ash, A-S-H. Tim Ash, yep. Tim Ash, he says, show me the money. Six steps to optimizing your payment process. Oh, nice. I thought this was cool because I got a personal e-commerce site I work on. We have some people come in recently talking about e-commerce sites. And, you know, we have a couple we manage here. And so, you know, anytime you can make it easier for people to check out, it's definitely worth getting into it. Absolutely. And so he goes on to say, you know, your payment stage, I like this quote here, your payment stage is where visitors become buyers. Yep. And so I totally agree with that. That's that demarcation, yeah. Yeah, this is where they, until they check out, they're only visitors. I don't care how many products they got in the cart. If they haven't whipped the cart out or used PayPal or whatever, they're not a buyer yet. But your payment page is where that happens at. And so in regards to his six steps, number one, he says, optimize for clarity and usability. He says, keep your payment form short, simple, and clear. Reduce clutter on your payment form by including only elements that are absolutely necessary for the transaction. And don't require special formats like for credit card numbers and things like that. All of those tips are really, really awesome. And I totally agree. What you don't want to do is make it difficult for people to check out. You don't want people to have to find

where the button is or realize what are all these forms for or be distracted by other CTAs and social stuff and sharing options and newsletter subscriptions and all kind of other stuff. Don't clutter your checkout page. Make it one thing you can do on this page. That's checkout. And so you make that easier by creating big buttons is what I'm adding to this. Big buttons that match your color scheme, of course, that stand out, that they're easy to use. And make it very clear what the next step is. Right? So somebody's added something to the cart and now they're at your checkout page. The next step is enter your details. Let that be known. This is what it is. Make it easy to do. Big fields, lots of spacing, especially if you get mobile commerce. You don't want people to fat finger stuff, which I think is just like tip number five. So, yeah, number one, optimize for clarity and usability. The second part of that he said was usability. I think that's key. A lot of times we focus on closing the actual deal and not really focusing on how to close that deal. This site has to be usable. It has to be functional. You know, if you're selling products, give people ways to expand the product and see multiple versions of it. The top, the side, the back, the bottom, you know, the inside, the outsides, whatever features it comes with. Make it extremely user friendly so they can see that information really, really quickly. Yeah. Because you need that in order to build that confidence so they can continue to check out. So, that was number one, optimize for clarity and usability. Oh, then number two. Oh, one thing I did, I'll add to that as well in regards to the usability, give people an option for previous orders. How many times have you logged on? Oh, yeah, man. If I knew my previous order, I would just place it again or buy the accessories for it. I'm almost of the

type where I might not even know the details of my previous order. But, yeah, just give me what I got last year. Yeah. Because I'm sure I need it. I'm pretty sure I need it. I ran out. Exactly. So, give people that option. Number two, he says address security concerns. Make sure your payment page looks consistent with your entire website and it's professionally designed. We can help you with that, by the way. Yeah. And he's totally right. If people don't feel secure, then they're really not going to pull out that credit card. They're not going to pay you at all. I don't care how much they like your site, how bad they really need your product, how cheap you have it, how great your free shipping is. If they're not comfortable because of some fear over security, especially with, you know, the Dairy Queen this week got hacked, you know, and 60,000 accounts and Home Depot before that and Target before that, people are becoming more and more cautious about where they use their billing information. You need to be secure. How do you be secure? Norton, VeriSign, like these badges should be on your site. They should be prominent. People recognize them. People identify with them. They know that that means secure. Yeah. If your site is e-commerce, you should be on a secure server. HTTPS should be there. People are learning now. We're more educated consumers. They know to look for that. And the browsers now have made a lock. They know that they made it really obvious. That this site is secure. And so if you're running e-commerce, you must do those things in order to get over that fear of security for your site visitors. I skipped one. Number three. Number three was offer multiple ways to pay. I really like this one. I mean, because sometimes I may not be comfortable putting my card in. Right. Right? Because I, and you've maybe addressed my security issues. But since maybe I have a few dollars in my PayPal account or in

my Google wallet set up with my checkout or maybe Apple Pay or Bitcoin or whatever it is, offer multiple ways to pay. And so that way, whoever is concerned, right, about using that credit card information, they can use one of these other methods. That afford an additional layer of protection. Exactly. Yeah. And so I'll say this. Consider, before you do that, consider the devices of the people who visit your site. You know, the analytics way. You go into analytics, you go under mobile, overview, and then you'll see like desktop, mobile, and tablet. And then look at your users. Right? If bulk of your users are mobile, then go a step further and look at what type of mobile. And if bulk of those are Android, then you definitely should be offering Google Wallet. Google Wallet. Right? Yep. If most of them are Apple, then make sure you have an Apple Pay icon. If you've got a mix of stuff, make sure you include PayPal and things like that. And so I think the key here is being aware of the type of visitors you have and so you can know what best to offer them in order for them to check out. Number four, fat finger challenges. I like this one. He said a few things under fat finger challenges. Minimize the customer's effort by using technology to pre-fill information. No doubt. Totally. Especially on a mobile device. Last thing you want to do on a mobile device is have to type in name, email, phone number, this, you know. Twice. Twice. Yeah. You don't want to have to do that. That's a turnoff. Yeah. That's a turnoff almost on a desktop. It's definitely a turnoff on a mobile device or a tablet. Visually reinforce the mobile shopper's sense of security with well-placed badges, icons. That's what we were just speaking about. I like this one. Domino's does this well. Show progress indicators. Yeah. Right? Add it to cart. Yeah, you know you're almost there. One more step away and I'm done. I got my

pizza up. Exactly. Or I got my new Amazon tablet case or whatever it is you're ordering. Right? So I thought that was pretty key. One of the things I added was, oh, well, so number five, understand the needs of international customers. This is key because we do international commerce here. We have a different business we work in and that's important when people are visiting your site, especially when you run into issues with like credit card processors and things like that. They just may not process that type or there may be some difficulty doing that. And so he says, if you currently don't process international orders, say so up front. Oh, yeah. And I totally agree. What he's doing is addressing a potential customer service issue ahead of time. Right. You tell people, look, I can't take your money. I'm sorry. You let them know that up front, then that way they won't spend that time going through your site and adding to it twice. Well, hopefully, speaking of, he said that twice, I'm going to say this, and that wasn't even on here, but give them a box. Use the same address as shipping or billing and that way you won't have to fill that out twice. Yeah. And so I said, I added this, lay out the rules of international purchasing, right? If you get a large traffic to your site, international traffic, and they purchase, it's worth you creating a page specifically for them. Yeah. That just outlines the process. Look, it's going to take this long. You're going to have to- We ship only slow. We only signature required. That kind of stuff. Yeah. Give them the rules up front, so at least that way they know. Yeah. And then, frankly, you should include a link to that same page on whatever conversion-related email that they get. That, hey, here are the rules to how the international shipping and stuff is going to work. Set the expectations. Definitely. Last one. Number six, speed up payment processing. Amazon is good at this. Oh,

they're great at it. Click a button, and you're like, oh, I'm done. I'm done. Wow. Yeah. He says, when customers finally click that place order button on your site, do they end up watching a spending circle for five, 10, or even 15 seconds before being taken to a confirmation page? Which, by the way, is the word I was looking for earlier. Confirmation page. The longer the spending circle goes on, the more anxious the customer gets. And that is so true. Yeah. It's spending, I'm like, oh, Lord. Especially after I just put my billing information in. Yeah, yeah. Now I'm like, oh. Now it's frozen up. Do I do it again? I don't know if it's frozen. Is it really frozen? Or is it your cart just really, really slow? And so that's what he's saying. Speed up your payment processing. What I like to do to kind of alleviate that is add some messaging to the payment page. Hey, we're processing your order right now. Give them something to do. Give me a moment. In the minute, you'll be presented with blah, blah, blah. And while you're at it, like us on Facebook. Exactly. And a separate link. And a separate link that takes them off to a whole other window because you really can't close that page, right? So yeah, give them some things to do while they're there to keep them distracted. Maybe you even put a video embedded on the payment page that just upsells them to related products or whatever so they can watch the video while it's loading and processing. So that was it. Cool. Punch in the face to Tim Ash, man. He says... Mr. Ash. Mr. Ash, show me the money. Six steps to optimizing your payment process. And you know, that was a... Whoa. That was a pretty good article. I'm pretty sure he could have put a lot more things in there like, you know, faster carts or making sure that you give people the option to guest log, guest check out or... Right. You know,

there's all sorts of things you could do to improve your whole e-commerce procedure. In fact, you should be revisiting it probably once a month. To kind of look at it. Go through the purchase process yourself again. Mm-hmm. See if there's a way to speed it up. Maybe have a couple people do it while you're watching them. Yeah. Let different types of people. Young person. Millennial. Baby boomer. Yeah. You know, because they're all going to have a different experience. Yep. Absolutely. Cool. So, I think we have some what news. Oh, yeah. We do have some what news. Yeah. So, this is what goes to Mr. Satya or Satya Nadella. He's the CEO of Microsoft. Really stuck his foot in his mouth. He was at the conference. They was at a marketing conference. Okay. He was being interviewed. And so, they asked him a question about, the question was, how do you feel about women asking for a raise? Okay. Yeah. He went on to say, it's not, and this is quote, quote, it's not really about asking for the raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will actually give you the right raise as you go along. So, not asking for a raise, he added, is good karma and would help a boss realize that the employee could be trusted and should have more responsibility. Man, that guy has an issue. He has like a totally other issue. So, dig this. Wow. So, after he did that, he immediately got attacked on social media. Everybody went at him like racist and feminist and this and that. And then he retracted it and he released some statements and put out a whole post about how he was all the way wrong and that's not how he meant it. And that women should ask for raises and equality and equal pay is deserved and this and that. I can see the first part of that sentence kind of meaning from the perspective of- I can understand where it came from. The system should be right. You

shouldn't be asking for a raise in general. The second one cosigns on that. You shouldn't be asking for a raise in general, which I totally disagree with. Yeah. If you feel like you need a raise and you've been working hard, then ask for it. The world is a negotiation. The world is a negotiation. So, ask and you are never going to get anything if you don't ask. And by the way, if they have a problem, if you ask, it's their problem. It's not yours. It's not your problem. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. And if they get offended because you asked for a raise when you know you know you're ... Now, it's different. If you're showing up late, you're half-assed performing, you're not doing your job, you have a bad attitude, your customer service sucks, don't come asking for no raise. Right. But ... And probably not month after month after month. If you get one, maybe wait a little while, whatever. But if you're performing, you're doing what you have to do, you're excelling, you're actually over-performing, and you know that, and you know they know that, man, look, if you want that raise, you better go ask for it. Yeah. Go ask for it. If it's not forthcoming. Yeah, so, like my boy Charlemagne would say, man, give him the biggest hee-haw. You probably don't listen to The Breakfast Club, but you know what I do. Yeah, so this is what news was to him. What? Crazy. Yeah. Oh, and then we got word of the week. Word of the week. So, this week's word is usability. All right, usability. All right. It's basically the ease of use and functionality of something man-made. In this case, it could be a website, maybe a landing page, or an app, or anything like that. An iPhone, an iPhone, a device, the usability of it. How easy is it to use? How functional is it? And so, take this with you. Whatever you're doing, whether it's marketing, whether it's your site, whether it's a new device you're creating,

whether it's your product, your service, think about the usability. And make it as high as possible. Yeah, especially for your site. You know, usability is an algorithm, is a part of the algorithm. How user-friendly is this site? Does it have the right elements? You know, is the form easy? Does it load fast? Is this content visible across different platforms? You know, that's important. All that's for usability. So, that's our word of the week, man. Cool. All right. Well, that is the meat of our podcast. This is podcast number 253. Thank you guys for tuning in. Thank you guys for making us the most popular internet marketing podcast on iTunes. We did broadcast live from 5999 West 34th Street, Suite 1 of Texas. Texas. It's going to be Texas. 7-7-0-9-2. Until the next podcast, my name's Chris Verres. Until next. Bye-bye for now. Bye-bye for now.