5 Ways to See Your Site Like A Customer

Administrator — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 00:22:54 +0000

It’s obvious that consumers see things differently than an educated online marketer, web developer or novice computer user see things. There’s no secrecy there. But, sometimes when you’re at wits end, or need a refresher – something to change up the usual, try looking at your pages from the customer view.

If you’ve been executing some form of online marketing for as long as I have, you know that’s not easy… But I have a few strategies that could help you in that regard…

#1. Buying Industry Magazines.

The other nite, I was at Safeway (A local grocery store) and picked up a copy of a novice computer magazine… It was relatively expensive, thick and loaded with newbie tips that I didn’t need to read, but what I saw sparked some SEO ideas, so I figured it was worth the investment. I think I see that completely differently than some. I can say that spending $16.99 on a brand new idea that could get me an avalanche of new website visitors is well worth the spend!

But, besides the SEO sparks and flames the magazine had other benefits. It gave me an insight to how the novice computer consumer sees the online marketing industry, the writing and blogging industry and a much more simplistic view. Such a refresher and really makes it easy to start writing to those folks on your sites.

FACT: The average person who will visit your site will have a grade 8 reading level.

#2. Your Internal View Of Others…

Huh? Yeah I know, it’s a weird thing to say, but stay with me here for a minute. One time I was super bored on the Vancouver SkyTrain (commuter train), on the way home. I was reviewing the salescopy for one of my ebooks and I thought to myself, what would my mother-in-law think of this copy?

Background: (She’s a senior who has no computer knowledge, and probably wouldn’t buy things online) but I know her well enough that I could just see what she would say in the back of my head, in fact nearly every answer she would give picking it apart.

I wrote down every objection she would have like wildfire, probably lighting my pen on fire right there! She gave me tons of ideas, and I didn’t even ACTUALLY ask her!!

#3. Cruel Comments From Your Friends

Hopefully, your friends like you! If they do, they won’t say anything mean or nasty about your website… They won’t be honest to your face, and if they’re not, they’re really no help to an honest feedback campaign, now are they?! BUT… print a copy of your website (or show them your screen) one day and ask them… “Get a load of this guy’s site…” OR ”I’m thinking of investing in these guys..” and see what kind of feedback they provide then!

#4. Reading Reviews Of Similar Sites

There’s tools like Zing (some tool from the miracle whip manufacturers) and xmarks and a ton of other social tools like mcafee’s site advisor that let you see real world reviews of what other people think of related sites, they can be of use… as well as “domain.com forum” in Google to see what others are saying about that domain…

#5. If Your Having An Off Day..

Ironically the way I started writing this post.. I saw myself looking at a landing page I just developed for a partnership deal I just signed, and I could see what a customer was thinking. It was a de-cafinated moment… A litteral mind-haze, but still! It was facinating and I realized I could easily figure out all these neat ways of getting back there.. But if you don’t feel yourself one day, go look at your website – see if you can jump out of your skin. Would you buy your own stuff? Would you subscribe? Why not!!