Hey Everyone,
In my last post, I talked about the need to have a well designed website to increase website traffic and boost sales.
Now, I want to touch another aspect of your website that can boost customer confidence and sales.
Go over the information below and see how you can apply it to your own website.
Many thanks to Colette Mason for this valuable info. Enjoy:
The definition of a landing page is simply "the first page
that visitors hit on your site," so it is not strictly a
certain page but any page that a user "lands" on. All
websites have landing pages, whether they like it or not,
even if it was not specifically designed as such.
Landing pages can have a substantial impact on your e-
commerce website. A poorly-developed one can hasten its
breakdown just as an effective landing page can drive
traffic to your site, respond to calls to action and make
your business website a success.
One vital measure of the effectiveness of your website is
the "bounce rate," or the percentage of visitors who
immediately leave your site without making any other click.
The bounce rate is inversely proportional to the
effectiveness of the landing page. Basically, this means
that a high bounce rate indicates that your landing page
isn't compelling enough for the visitor to pursue his
interest or take some other action.
Normally, the home page is the primary landing page of most
typical websites. But more and more, site owners are
designing landing pages outside of the home page, and for
good reason.
Most users prefer to skip information which is irrelevant to
their needs. They want to get directly to their search,
hence the need for a landing page that delivers just that.
They can avoid the delays caused by having to click through
pages and pages of information when they already have
something in mind.
Landing pages serve their purpose when the site owner knows
the kind of visitor they are targeting. This is determined
by knowing what the visitor clicked on to arrive at your
site. A visitor who clicks on an ad for your product would
not want to go through other pages to get the information
about the product. Webinars, other event registrations and
special offers make use of this same principle.
Not all visitors are looking for the same information. One
may click on your link after reading an article you
submitted to a consumer review site while another may arrive
at your site after viewing your infomercial ad.
For each specific visitor, you can design a landing page
that will cater to his needs and contain the information he
is looking for. For example, infomercial viewers can be
directed to www.yoursite.com/infomercial, while visitors who
clicked on your banner ads for this month's special will be
directed to www.yoursite.com/specials.
These landing pages should be evaluated for their
effectiveness. The bounce rate is a key measurement for
determining the effectiveness of landing pages.
Another measure for landing pages is the success of a "next
action." It might be purchasing the product, requesting more
information, signing up for a free trial, etc.
Determine your conversion rate by dividing the number of
action takers into the number of visitors. A typical
conversion rate is 3 to 5 percent for lead generation pages
and 1 to 2 percent for e-commerce sites. If your site is
successful, you should be getting twice those numbers.
A concept that is intrinsic in creating effective landing
pages is "alignment." This is the connection between your
source (where the visitor came from) and your landing page.
The more connected they are, the higher the success of
conversion.
A good example is a banner ad for a specific product from a
beauty products company. Clicking on the banner ad and being
directed to a landing page showing the exact same product
yields a higher conversion rate. If the alignment is not
present, on the other hand, there will be a significant
reduction in conversion rates.
In general, a landing page must stir these positive emotions
in a visitor for it to be effective:
Credibility
Your page must be able to capture the visitor's trust by
presenting a credible appearance. Remove anything that can
cause a negative effect in the minds of your visitors, such
as a lack of contact information, grammatical errors and
typos, buzzwords, "marketese" and jargon, fuzzy or blocky
graphics and too much use of serif fonts, like Times New
Roman.
Recognition
Your page must provide your visitor a "This is what I'm
looking for!" moment upon landing.
Persuasiveness
Your page must be able to convince visitors that your
product or service can help them achieve their goal. Keep in
mind what attracted the visitor to your product in the first
place so you will understand what he is looking for.
Action
You must highlight an action for the visitor to take while
he is on your landing page.
Techniques to Use with Landing Pages
Here are some major principles to guide you in the process
of developing an effective landing page:
Make the Visitor Feel an Instant Affinity With Your Page.
The top half of the first screen should be effective in
making the visitor feel that he has come to the right place.
The use of the right taglines, images and a position
statement (usually about 12 to 15 words) can help to
establish your declaration and inform your visitor what the
site is about.
Use Specific Headlines and Sub-headings.
Throughout your page, include relevant headings and sub-
headings so that as the visitor skim reads the page they can
see what a particular paragraph or section is all about.
This helps him decide whether he will read the text or which
section he is interested in. The longer the page, the more
you should be using sub-headings. The headline should be
aligned as closely as possible with the banner ad or
whatever the visitor clicked on to arrive on your landing
page.
Focus on a Primary Goal.
A landing page can achieve only one primary goal. Examples
of these goals are a lead capture mechanism, such as a free
demo or product trial, or to lure the visitor to go further
and view your main site. The best results come about when
you focus on your goal. However, a secondary goal is possible
in a landing page. For example, if your primary goal is to
make the visitor purchase your product, your secondary goal
would be to entice them to sign up for newsletters or emails
to receive special offers.
Use Multiple Calls to Action.
Using multiple calls to the same action supports the one
primary goal principle. This holds true on a long landing
page. A page that doesn't go below the fold may need only
one call to action. Overall, one call to action above the
fold and another at the bottom of the page are good.
Pay Attention to Your Layout and Graphic Design.
To make them easy-to-read, keep text columns narrow - about
80 characters or so wide - and left-aligned, not centered.
Place an image of the product (commonly called the "hero
shot") and make sure the quality and clarity are good.
Images are attention-getting, so put your key text, such as
your offer, below the product image or other appealing
graphics.
If your offer requires the visitor to fill out a form, it
will be more effective if placed on the landing page rather
than needing a click-through to another page.
Layouts and graphic designs depend on the products and their
market and can be very diverse. In spite of the variety,
however, they can all use the same design principles to help
them be effective in achieving their goal.
Driving traffic to your site will require an investment on
your part, so it is only sensible to maximize the impact of
that traffic for a quicker ROI. Increasing website
conversions is also an important consideration.
Developing effective landing pages for your business website
only requires the simple implementation of changes, yet their
impact is significant to the success of your business and
the user experience of your website.
Monday, April 19, 2010
15 Important Web Design Tips
Hi All,
I want us to look into an aspect of our online business marketing campaign that we often overlook. What am I talking about you may ask? Our website!!! That's what I am talking about. We often forget that the look and feel of our website determines if we are going to be taken serious or not.
Our website in a way determine whether we are seen/perceived as professional. Hence, can inspire or turn off would be clients/customers to do business with us or not.
Take a look at the tips listed below, and see if you got everything locked down when it comes to our website design.
Many thanks to Sharon Housley for the wonderful tips.
1. Custom 404 Pages
Create a custom 404 web page, so that any time your website visitor mistypes or misspells a URL on your site, they will still be provided with navigation options for your site (instead of getting nothing but a "Page Not Found" error message, which is neither friendly or helpful).
2. Redirect Non-www. To www.
Website visitors will often leave out the "www." portion when they type a URL or link to your website. Set the website up so that it automatically redirects any non-www version of your domain urls (http://domain. com) to the www version (http://www.domain. com) of your website.
3. Properly Sized Graphics
Size and define all graphics and images on your web pages properly and correctly. Web pages will load quicker if the graphics contained on each page are properly defined so they don't require the web browser to re-size them. Properly sized and defined images can reduce the web browser workload and speed up the page loading time.
4. Favicon
Add a Favicon (favorite icon) to your website, so that your company or product logo appears in the URL box. This icon will also show up in a bookmark list, and gives the web site an added level of professionalism.
5. Include RSS Auto-Discovery
If you provide an RSS feed for any content on your website, be sure to include auto-discovery code in the header of your website. This will allow many browsers and RSS readers to automatically detect the presence of an RSS feed and alert the visitor that it is available.
6. Alternate Domains
Domain names are relatively inexpensive, so you should register multiple domain versions and extensions in order to protect your brand. The varied domains can be parked on the main website, simply to prevent others from obtaining them. Registering alternate domain versions will help protect your brand.
7. Consistent Navigation
Navigation should remain consistent on a website. As a website visitor moves through the website, the navigation bar should remain in the same place on each page. This will make it easier for visitors to navigate your website, and become more comfortable as they move through your site.
8. Home Goes Home
The main graphic, company logo, or "header" at the top of the site should be included on every page in the site, and should always return the visitor to the home page of the website. This has become a web standard, and most visitors now expect to return to the main page of the site simply by clicking on the main top graphic from any page within the site.
9. Copyright Notice
Include a copyright notice on the bottom of each page contained on the website, and keep it current! It may seem trivial, but an out-of-date copyright notice can send a message to your visitors that the website and its content may be out-of-date as well.
10. Meaningful File Names
Use meaningful file names for any files, graphics, or web pages. Many search engines look at file names as part of their search algorithm, and using keywords in file names may help to improve search engine rankings.
11. Hyphens vs Underscores
When naming files and webpages, use hyphens (i.e. web-page.html) rather than underscores (i.e. web_page.html) for the file names. It is much easier for search engines to separate and index the keywords when hyphens are used.
12. Alt Tags
Use ALT tags to describe what images represent on web pages. ALT tags not only assist visually-impaired visitors in knowing what the images are, but they also help with search engine ranking.
13. Spell Check
Use a spell-check feature on the text of all web pages in a website. A website that contains mistyped or misspelled words just shouts "unprofessional". Take the extra few minutes necessary to check the spelling of text on each page of your website.
14. Test
After making changes to a website, test it! Many times, a webmaster will upload changes, confident in their abilities, only to later discover that in their attempt to fix one thing, they have "broken" something somewhere else. Make testing a habit after making even the most minor changes!
15. Keep It Simple
Simple is good. Eliminate unnecessary clutter and distractions from a website and navigation menu.
I want us to look into an aspect of our online business marketing campaign that we often overlook. What am I talking about you may ask? Our website!!! That's what I am talking about. We often forget that the look and feel of our website determines if we are going to be taken serious or not.
Our website in a way determine whether we are seen/perceived as professional. Hence, can inspire or turn off would be clients/customers to do business with us or not.
Take a look at the tips listed below, and see if you got everything locked down when it comes to our website design.
Many thanks to Sharon Housley for the wonderful tips.
1. Custom 404 Pages
Create a custom 404 web page, so that any time your website visitor mistypes or misspells a URL on your site, they will still be provided with navigation options for your site (instead of getting nothing but a "Page Not Found" error message, which is neither friendly or helpful).
2. Redirect Non-www. To www.
Website visitors will often leave out the "www." portion when they type a URL or link to your website. Set the website up so that it automatically redirects any non-www version of your domain urls (http://domain. com) to the www version (http://www.domain. com) of your website.
3. Properly Sized Graphics
Size and define all graphics and images on your web pages properly and correctly. Web pages will load quicker if the graphics contained on each page are properly defined so they don't require the web browser to re-size them. Properly sized and defined images can reduce the web browser workload and speed up the page loading time.
4. Favicon
Add a Favicon (favorite icon) to your website, so that your company or product logo appears in the URL box. This icon will also show up in a bookmark list, and gives the web site an added level of professionalism.
5. Include RSS Auto-Discovery
If you provide an RSS feed for any content on your website, be sure to include auto-discovery code in the header of your website. This will allow many browsers and RSS readers to automatically detect the presence of an RSS feed and alert the visitor that it is available.
6. Alternate Domains
Domain names are relatively inexpensive, so you should register multiple domain versions and extensions in order to protect your brand. The varied domains can be parked on the main website, simply to prevent others from obtaining them. Registering alternate domain versions will help protect your brand.
7. Consistent Navigation
Navigation should remain consistent on a website. As a website visitor moves through the website, the navigation bar should remain in the same place on each page. This will make it easier for visitors to navigate your website, and become more comfortable as they move through your site.
8. Home Goes Home
The main graphic, company logo, or "header" at the top of the site should be included on every page in the site, and should always return the visitor to the home page of the website. This has become a web standard, and most visitors now expect to return to the main page of the site simply by clicking on the main top graphic from any page within the site.
9. Copyright Notice
Include a copyright notice on the bottom of each page contained on the website, and keep it current! It may seem trivial, but an out-of-date copyright notice can send a message to your visitors that the website and its content may be out-of-date as well.
10. Meaningful File Names
Use meaningful file names for any files, graphics, or web pages. Many search engines look at file names as part of their search algorithm, and using keywords in file names may help to improve search engine rankings.
11. Hyphens vs Underscores
When naming files and webpages, use hyphens (i.e. web-page.html) rather than underscores (i.e. web_page.html) for the file names. It is much easier for search engines to separate and index the keywords when hyphens are used.
12. Alt Tags
Use ALT tags to describe what images represent on web pages. ALT tags not only assist visually-impaired visitors in knowing what the images are, but they also help with search engine ranking.
13. Spell Check
Use a spell-check feature on the text of all web pages in a website. A website that contains mistyped or misspelled words just shouts "unprofessional". Take the extra few minutes necessary to check the spelling of text on each page of your website.
14. Test
After making changes to a website, test it! Many times, a webmaster will upload changes, confident in their abilities, only to later discover that in their attempt to fix one thing, they have "broken" something somewhere else. Make testing a habit after making even the most minor changes!
15. Keep It Simple
Simple is good. Eliminate unnecessary clutter and distractions from a website and navigation menu.
10 Important Inbound SEO Link Tips
Hi everyone,
Today, I found some simple tips for inbound links to your website. This will help generate more traffic to your website. many thanks to Donna Gunter for the info.
Hope you enjoy and implement it. Let me know how it works for you by dropping me a feedback comment here. Cheers all.
1. Directory Links
Directories are indexes of online sites, typically organized by category. Links back to your site from directories like Yahoo Directory and DMOZ.org are very valuable. DMOZ.org is edited by human editors, and while it's free, it may take awhile for your site to be added. Getting added to Yahoo's Directory costs $299/year.
2. Press Releases
If you're writing press releases, make sure they are optimized for keywords that someone would use to find a business like yours and include links back to your site, as well. Once written, you can have your press release distributed through a service like PRWeb.com, which will create links from high traffic news sites back to your site.
3. Article Directories
Writing and distributing articles through high traffic article directories, like EzineArticles. com, is a great way to get valuable inbound links from a high traffic site. By crafting an effective resource box at the close of your article, you can drive traffic back to your site!
4. Social Bookmarking
Similar to web browser bookmarks, social bookmarking sites store individual pages (bookmarks) online and allows users to tag (with keywords), organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources as well as share them with others. If you bookmark your content on these sites (like Digg.com, Reddit.com, Del.icio.us. com), you get a link from the service. By producing content that your readers love and then bookmark to their friends, the link increases in SEO value.
5. Blog Comments
To find blog posts on which to comment, you can use blog-specific search engines like Google Blog Search. Make sure these are blogs read by your target market, not your colleagues. Brand yourself by always using the same name and remember to link back to your site. Always leave a comment that adds to the conversation that's happening within the comments.
6. Social Media
Now, Google also indexes your Twitter updates and your social networking profiles. Add that to Web 2.0 hubsites like Scribd or HubPage and you've got the option of creating many, many inbound links in a very short period of time.
7. Blog/Podcast Syndication
Submitting the RSS feed of your blog and podcast to syndication services will give you a link back to your site. In some cases, each time you publish a new blog post, the post itself will also get a link.
8. Video Syndication
YouTube is one of the most visited sites online, and the number of sites that syndicate videos is growing each day. These sites often allow you to link to your site either in your video's description or on your profile page, or both.
9. .EDU and .GOV Links
Search engines place a great deal of credibility in government and education web sites, and the links carry a great deal of weight. Frankly, it isn't easy to get inbound links from these sites.
10. Internal Links
Remember, if you have more than one web site, or a web site and a blog, be sure and link one to the other. You can do this by linking one article to other related articles, or link to categories or archives of information.
Creating a sound inbound linking strategy is a key component of your search engine optimization efforts. Try a few of the strategies listed above and see how your traffic and rankings grow.
Today, I found some simple tips for inbound links to your website. This will help generate more traffic to your website. many thanks to Donna Gunter for the info.
Hope you enjoy and implement it. Let me know how it works for you by dropping me a feedback comment here. Cheers all.
1. Directory Links
Directories are indexes of online sites, typically organized by category. Links back to your site from directories like Yahoo Directory and DMOZ.org are very valuable. DMOZ.org is edited by human editors, and while it's free, it may take awhile for your site to be added. Getting added to Yahoo's Directory costs $299/year.
2. Press Releases
If you're writing press releases, make sure they are optimized for keywords that someone would use to find a business like yours and include links back to your site, as well. Once written, you can have your press release distributed through a service like PRWeb.com, which will create links from high traffic news sites back to your site.
3. Article Directories
Writing and distributing articles through high traffic article directories, like EzineArticles. com, is a great way to get valuable inbound links from a high traffic site. By crafting an effective resource box at the close of your article, you can drive traffic back to your site!
4. Social Bookmarking
Similar to web browser bookmarks, social bookmarking sites store individual pages (bookmarks) online and allows users to tag (with keywords), organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources as well as share them with others. If you bookmark your content on these sites (like Digg.com, Reddit.com, Del.icio.us. com), you get a link from the service. By producing content that your readers love and then bookmark to their friends, the link increases in SEO value.
5. Blog Comments
To find blog posts on which to comment, you can use blog-specific search engines like Google Blog Search. Make sure these are blogs read by your target market, not your colleagues. Brand yourself by always using the same name and remember to link back to your site. Always leave a comment that adds to the conversation that's happening within the comments.
6. Social Media
Now, Google also indexes your Twitter updates and your social networking profiles. Add that to Web 2.0 hubsites like Scribd or HubPage and you've got the option of creating many, many inbound links in a very short period of time.
7. Blog/Podcast Syndication
Submitting the RSS feed of your blog and podcast to syndication services will give you a link back to your site. In some cases, each time you publish a new blog post, the post itself will also get a link.
8. Video Syndication
YouTube is one of the most visited sites online, and the number of sites that syndicate videos is growing each day. These sites often allow you to link to your site either in your video's description or on your profile page, or both.
9. .EDU and .GOV Links
Search engines place a great deal of credibility in government and education web sites, and the links carry a great deal of weight. Frankly, it isn't easy to get inbound links from these sites.
10. Internal Links
Remember, if you have more than one web site, or a web site and a blog, be sure and link one to the other. You can do this by linking one article to other related articles, or link to categories or archives of information.
Creating a sound inbound linking strategy is a key component of your search engine optimization efforts. Try a few of the strategies listed above and see how your traffic and rankings grow.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Lets Talk
Hello everyone,
Top of the day you and yours. Hope you all had a splendid easter holidays.
I am always open to your suggestions, comments and even new ideas. I know a lot of people find it tasking dropping a comment on my spot after reading some of my posts. the truth is, I would very much like to know what you think concerning search engine optimization and it's different applications.
So, I have gone a step further to install my yahoo chatbox on this page so that we can exchange ideas. Now you can chat with me directly and privately in real time. what ever we discuss is not seen by anyone else. it's totally private.
Now, Lets talk SEO, share ideas and learn. But most importantly, lets have fun as well.
All you have to do is enter a name/word in the "nickname" box, click "ok", and you are on to me live and direct.
What are you waiting for? hit me up NOW!
Cheers,
Festus
Top of the day you and yours. Hope you all had a splendid easter holidays.
I am always open to your suggestions, comments and even new ideas. I know a lot of people find it tasking dropping a comment on my spot after reading some of my posts. the truth is, I would very much like to know what you think concerning search engine optimization and it's different applications.
So, I have gone a step further to install my yahoo chatbox on this page so that we can exchange ideas. Now you can chat with me directly and privately in real time. what ever we discuss is not seen by anyone else. it's totally private.
Now, Lets talk SEO, share ideas and learn. But most importantly, lets have fun as well.
All you have to do is enter a name/word in the "nickname" box, click "ok", and you are on to me live and direct.
What are you waiting for? hit me up NOW!
Cheers,
Festus
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