What is Friction?

With the holiday season in full swing I find myself in situations that are more trouble than they are worth. Traveling through certain intersections, finding people driving cars that just aren't following the road signs causing congestion. More programs and competitions for my daughter - that sometimes occur on the same day causing me to become Wonder Woman to get her to both...

I'm sure you've had your share of frustrations trying to accomplish even the simplest of tasks. In the web world we call that friction and it happens more often than not.

Examples of friction:

• Websites that ask for more info than I am willing to give in exchange for a simple newsletter sign up or white paper download.
• Being required to "create an account" just to browse a shopping site.
• Clicking a link from search engine expecting to see something specific only to discover that actually finding the item on the website is impossible.
• Trying to "check out" and being required to use PayPal when I prefer to use my credit card.

Those are just a few of my recent encounters - what examples of friction have you encountered lately? Take the friction poll on our Facebook page.

The point is that the more friction there is in any process the less likely a person will be to complete the process. If you want someone to complete a form, don't make them click 3 or 4 times to get to it. If you want to offer a newsletter, keep it simple - all you really need is an email address. And if you advertise something, for goodness sake make the link go straight to the subject, not the home page where I'm left wandering around.

Business owners: take a look at your website and ask yourself, "where can I reduce or remove the obstacles to the goal?" If you can follow that thought process I'm sure you'll find where you can make things easier, more clear for your web visitors and that will lead to an increase in conversions.

Comments? Questions? Please feel free to comment!

What's Better For Business, a Facebook Profile or Page?

Browsing through Facebook the other day, I came across many businesses and organizations that have personal profile instead of a page. If you're saying to yourself, “There's a difference?”, then I'm going rock your world now!

Facebook started with only personal profiles, so if your business was ahead of the curve, then you may have started out with setting up a personal profile for your business. Since then, “Fan Pages” were launched, and are now just called “Pages”. The differences between personal profiles and pages may not be obvious to many people, but here are a few that are pretty important.

On a personal profile you have a very limited space for your company name, where as with a page your company's name can be longer and you can even include keywords, making it show up more in searches. Have personal profiles have a limit on how many friends you can have, but with a page you can have unlimited fans. With a page you have the ability to promote your page with Facebook ads, drawing more traffic to your page and website. A huge advantage with having a page for your business, instead of a personal profile is that you can create custom “tabs” for your page, essentially a small web-page inside your Facebook page, with links, news feeds, email signup forms, and more. With a page you can even setup other people at your business as administrators, so the work can be spread to others.

I hope this helped you understand the importance to having a Facebook page instead of a personal page. If you still have a personal profile instead of page and are ready to change, it's pretty simple, Facebook migration tool (Click here to migrate), just be sure to take advantage of the download tool to save all the information from your profile since it only moves over your pictures and turn your friends into fans. If you need help making your Facebook page work for you, give us a call and we can evaluate your needs and get you up and going!

P.S. Besides being more appropriate for businesses, having a personal profile for a business is a violation of Facebook's Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, which makes it vulnerable to removal by Facebook, leaving you without any Facebook presence.

Dan on Google+