15 Website Elements That Attract Visitors
November 21, 2007
Here is a quick list of components that make a website attractive. They are listed in layers of attractiveness beginning with the “must” haves, to “nice to haves.”
1. State the website’s purpose up front and clearly of the site. Do this as quickly as possible. The visitor needs to know immediately if they have landed on the right site. They also need to know “what’s in it for me to stay here.” If you don’t provide this, they are gone. 90% of the sites on the Net don’t do this.
2. Give visitors the ability to search for exactly what they are looking for, if they have something exact in mind. A “site search feature” satisfies this best. Allow the search feature to be prominently displayed and not hidden away somewhere. It is best place in the navigational system so that it shows up on every page. Sales letter only websites are an exception to this rule. Return visitors and visitors that have something specifically in mind, want the option and ability to find what they want fast. So give it to them.
Intriguing Irrelevancies
November 21, 2007
Intriguing Irrelevancies
by: Allan T. Price
The Internet links us all to a vast array of information-sometimes more than we expect, and to sources we didn’t know even existed. When searching for ‘online dictionary’ I pulled up a variety of ‘ordinary’ dictionaries, and such sites as etymology dictionary (www.etymonline.com). Adding ‘desert’ to my search query pulled up sites as diverse as:
Dream Dictionary (http://www.soulfuture.com/dream_dictionary/dream_dictionary_main.asp)
and The Astrodigital Online Dictionary of Meteoritics (http://www.astrodigital.org/astronomy/metdict.html)
Like a lot of people I sometimes get diverted from what I’m doing by this kind of interesting link appearing in front of me, of which is entirely irrelevant to what I’m doing. In this case, I looked up a definition of the word ‘desert’ which I subsequently found, but in the end didn’t end up using. My search had nothing to do with meteors called ‘fireballs’ which are much brighter than normal meteors because they are roughly the size of peas, some even the size of a grain of sand. I love discovering this kind of trivia. Thankfully, using the Internet makes researching much faster so I can spare a few minutes to connect with interesting web sites, and still learn what seeing a desert means in a dream, before getting back to connecting with the facts I need to know today. You know the next time I see a very bright meteor, I may remember it is a ‘fireball’, and why it is so bright.
Success Is Simple: Five Steps to Online Success
November 20, 2007
The Internet can be a confusing place to do business. It often seems like there are a million ‘gurus’ on the Net, all speaking at the same time, and telling you how they have “the” road map to success.
The truth is … there is no one map. There are many roads to the destination we call success. How long the trip will take depends a great deal on the choices you make.
They say that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. So here are five steps to get you started on your road to online success.
1. Sell What People Want To Buy.
For a thousand years (or more) small business has thrived on one motto. Find a need and fill it. The Internet is no different that Wal-Mart. If Wal-Mart didn’t sell what people want they would go out of business in short order.
The best way to find what people want is to ask them. Contact the people you know and ask them what their #1 problem is today. Then tally the results and look for a pattern. Once you find the pattern, find a product or service to meet that need and contact them again.
Is FREE Killing Your Sales?
November 19, 2007
“FREE” what a great word.
We all like getting something for “FREE” don’t we? Especially when it’s something really good that we actually need and can use.
Everywhere you look on the Internet there are FREE ebooks, FREE autoresponders, Free websites, FREE this and FREE that.
And we all take advantage of this to some extent don’t we?
The ‘guru’s’ even tell you to give away FREE ebooks to get visitors to your site or to sign up for your newsletter. So “FREE” is good.
However, there can be a downside to “FREE”!
Let me tell you a little story - it will be short.
A month or so ago, I sent an ad to a newsletter. The ad was for one of my affiliate programs and like most affiliate programs, the URL was very long.
The editor of the newsletter suggested that I shorten the URL by using a re-direct service. Well the price for the re-direct service was really great - “FREE” - so I signed up and registered all of my affiliate programs.
Everything worked fine for quite some time.
Reach Out and Slap Someone
November 18, 2007
I got my first email account way too many years ago.
I was working for a large Chicago bank in the 1980s, when they introduced an electronic message service for internal communications. The only electronic mail that seemed to flow for the longest time were all those official HR notification of vacation time policies, etc., and of course, the ALL CAPS messages from the executive floor.
It took a brave soul to send out the first?”so, where should we go for lunch on Friday?” message.
It took a polite soul to create the first autoresponder message. It was nice of them to let people know that the reason their inquiry would not be answered immediately, and personally was because he (or she) was out of the office until XYZ date.
I’m still trying to figure out where the the personal and polite parts of autoresponse messages went. Sometime between then and now, the person who wrote that message left the building, but forgot to turn the machines off. Today, too many autoresponse messages are anything but personal, polite or informative.
Web Site Copy is about More Than Keywords
November 17, 2007
Let’s say you are writing a web site to sell beach homes on Vancouver Island, BC, Canada.
You look for some good keywords and come up with ‘Vancouver Island waterfront property’. So you use that term in your title, headline and here and there in the text.
So far, so good. The phrase will help you with your rankings. And the use of the phrase on the first screen of your home page will let your visitors know they are in the right place.
But for writers who focus too intently on keywords and phrases, there is a danger.
A danger in optimizing your pages for good keywords? Yes, I think so.
There is a significant difference between the keywords that pop into visitors’ minds, and the hopes and ambitions they carry in their hearts.
Let’s look at the real estate example again.
As a potential buyer I might type the phrase ‘Vancouver Island waterfront property’ into the Google search box, because that’s what I’m looking for. But that term doesn’t reflect what I’m feeling.
Having a home on the coast may have been a lifelong dream. It may be something I feel very strongly about. So when I come to your site, I am looking for two things.
A Short History of Blogs
November 16, 2007
A Short History of Blogs
by: Adrianne George
When Tim Berners-Lee invented the web over 10 years ago, he was the first one to create a blog (http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/News/9201.html). Who could have envisioned they would become so popular?
The Internet has not only changed the way we correspond in our personal relationships, it has also changed the way we select products and services. Through the power of the blog, viral emails, and SMS campaigns, one determined detractor can become much worse than an unsatisfied customer. Even employees can turn against you as Microsoft (http://minimsft.blogspot.com/) learned.
The Early Days
Now over 10 years later blogs are as common place as mobile phones. In the early days bloggers were considered to be little more than people with too much time on hands. In the late-1990s, people like Cameron Barrett (http://www.camworld.com/about/) and Jesse Garrett (http://www.jjg.net/about/) began compiling links to other sites like their own. A 1999 technology article in Salon (http://www.salon.com/tech/col/rose/1999/05/28/weblogs/index.html) reports that serious journalists looked down on bloggers who considered themselves journalists.
Nowadays
Streamline your Business Website with a Content Management System
November 16, 2007
I talk with so many people who have small businesses and would like to have a web presence but don’t know the first thing about how to even get started. Some of the reasons I hear are:
- I don’t know how to build a website.
- I have enough work to do… when am I going to maintain a website?
- I don’t want to keep paying someone everytime I want to update my website.
So when I tell them they CAN have a website without the technical knowledge, without taking a lot of time, and without hiring a webmaster, they are eager to find out what this incredible solution is.
The solution is a CMS!
What the heck is a CMS?
A CMS is a Content Management System. CMS’s are the newest technology for the non-technical business person to easily maintain a website without technical assistance. A CMS can be quickly installed onto your existing website, contains its own database that stores all of your website information, and gives you a nice user-friendly administrator window that allows you to easily update everything on your site without having the need to understand html or hire someone else with technical knowledge.
Ten Day Plan to Online Sales
November 15, 2007
Recently one of my students asked a great question: We have a product we want to sell online - and we need to make money fast. We already have a domain name. What should I do in the next 10 days?
Here are some ideas:
1. Take *good* photographs of your product. The picture will allow you to charge more, so get a great digital camera and take those pictures. 2. Write a good short sales letter that paints the story of the product - your reason behind creating it, benefits to the reader, vivid pictures of what it will mean to the buyer, etc. 3. Set up a paypal account and arrange to take payment. 4. Start lining up partners who will do an email for you. Find people who already send an email newsletter to your potential customer. 5. Plan to send sample products to the partners you want to work with. That will get their attention and you can seal the deal via email. 6. Set up your site on a template-driven site. It’s something you can do yourself with no programming knowledge. You can choose a templates so you have no design costs. It generally includes hosting, so you have no additional hosting costs. You can upload your own photos. 7. You’ll need a technical person on call in order to connect your web page and paypal - or at least someone who has a little backgroud in doing this. It’s faster than doing it yourself. 8. Use this site for just this one project. Don’t try to do too many things with it. 9. Look around for other sites with similiar ideas - selling the same type of product. Then handle yours approximately the same way. 10. Prepare an email for your partners to send to their lists and get it to them a few days before their newsletter goes out. That means you need to get this ready now!
Seven Tips For A Successful Internet Marketing Campaign
November 14, 2007
Often there can seem to be very little difference between two marketing campaigns. However the difference between average marketing and profitable marketing is immense. Here are my 7 tips for ensuring success from your marketing campaign.
Promote to the right audience.
If your campaign is to succeed it must be aimed at the right people. That is people that are willing and able to respond. In other words they have a need/want for your product/service and the money and authority to buy it. You need to know exactly who you are after and make sure the promotional medium you use is correct. So if you’re selling something to Accountants then you need a list of Accountants to make your offer to. Makes sense right.
Minimize risk for the customer.
A potential customer will not buy from you if they believe the risk of doing so outweighs the return they will get. Or if they are unsure that you will deliver what you have promised. So ask yourself what can you do to let the customer know that the risk is firmly stacked on your side and they really have nothing to lose? Answer this question and do it to maximise results from your campaign.
