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URL Shortening Services Are Holding You Hostage – Fight Back!

By Willie Crawford in Webmasters

One of the most useful tools to come along in recent years for online marketers is url shorteners.

There are sites where you can paste a long, ugly url into a form, and the site will give you a much shorter url to use in your emails, newsletters and promotions.

There are also scripts that you can install on your server, that allow you to generate your own shortened urls, which is what I prefer, due to the great control it gives you.

In-case you are not using the tiny urls, you’re probably losing a lot of sales and traffic. The benefits of using shortened urls typically include:

• They allow you to conserve space when posting to micro- blogging platforms such as Twitter, where each of your posts is limited to a mere 140 characters.
• They look more professional than long, unwieldy affiliate urls (especially if they have your own domain name in them). Longer urls can wrap to two lines in your emails, forcing many readers to copy and paste the pieces of the link before they can visit a recommended page. Many won’t jump though that hoop!
• They allow you to log into a control panel and change where a particular link sends traffic without you having to track down all of the places where you have placed that link and manually swapping them out. This comes in handy if you are promoting a particular product, and due to whatever reason, you decide to promote a different product in the same category.

There are also times when affiliate programs change the software that power things, forcing you to change your affiliate links for a given product. If you use the right url shortener, you would merely need to log in to your control panel, click an edit button, change the destination link, and all of your links scattered across cyberspace now STILL point to where you want them to.

This is essential for ebooks, because once an ebook is in your customers’ hands you can’t update those links in most cases. Only ebooks that connect to the Internet each time that they are read (which most of MY customer don’t like) allow you to change links inside the ebook after it’s distributed.

There are literally dozens of third-party link shortening services. I’ve used several of them and they work great except that they control YOUR links. If they get any complaints, or simply decide to change their business model, they could kill off all your links instantly.

Premium, third-party url shortening services also hold you hostage. They charge you a monthly fee for extras, or for the ability to have more than a handful of urls on their platform. Some charge you extra if you generate more than a few thousand clicks – they penalize you for being successful.

If you stop paying for these premium services, they often shut off all of your links INSTANTLY. Once you have all those links floating around cyberspace (in ebooks, articles, ads, press releases, ezine editorials, etc.) you don’t want to just kill them off, so you’re STUCK often paying hefty fees, month after month.

I recently looked at one service that had the audacity to charge $97 per month to allow you to “white label” their third-party service, and use your own domain name with their service. Using your own domain name within shortened links is a great idea because it brands you and your domain. If properly configured, it also passes along “link love” from the search engines, and helps you to rank higher for your keywords.

However, paying a monthly fee is unnecessary, and therefore wasteful. Instead invest that money in another area of growing your business.

Here’s the better solution that I use…

I’ve installed an inexpensive link shortening script, that works just like those third-party hosted shorteners, on my OWN server. I paid less than $40 for this script AND I own it and can use it forever, on as many of my own domains as I want to (in-accordance-with the terms of their license).

Think about it. If you’re using one of those services that cost just $30 per month, you’ll save $360 per year using the solution that I use. You’ll save $1164 per year compared to that company charging $97 per month!

Heck I could even offer MY OWN url shortening service to my customers if I wanted to, using this same under-$40 script. I don’t because spammers love these services, and would harm my brand and the reputation of my domain name.

That’s another reason why you don’t want to use a third- party hosted url shortening service. Many ISP’s get so many complaints about emails containing urls from some of these services, that they filter against emails containing some of their domain names. It does no good to build a list of 50,000 if only 20% of your email gets through because of a poor decision that you made. You’re missing 80% of potential sales.

If you are the only one sending out from the domain name that your url shortening script resides on, and you market ethically, you should not have this problem of being blocked by spam filters.

I’ve just shared with you some things that most marketers using url shortening services never really give much thought. Now that you understand these things, you can set up links that will work for you long-term, brand you and your domains, cost you very little, and provide all of the benefits that led many marketers to use those third-party hosted solutions in the first place. The big difference will be that you’ll be in-charge of your links instead of being a hostage to those third-party url shortening services.

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Willie Crawford is an Internet marketing consultant and super affiliate who has been marketing goods and services over the Internet for over 13 years. To closely track his promotional efforts and to cloak ugly affiliate links he recommends using a url shortening script hosted on you own domain. Willie’s favorite script is at: http://YourOwnShortUrl.com/

Ten Ways to Use PHP on your Website

By Chuck Matthews in Webmasters

PHP is a programming language that allows your website to go beyond a basic HTML document, and create an interactive experience. Open source means that the source code is available to someone with proper access to the site, so that they can easily make changes. When the Internet was first getting started, most of the pages on websites were basic HTML documents. Meaning that when you visited a page (about.html, for example), you downloaded all of the content of the page into your browser.

How Do I Know if I have a PHP Site?

If you are visiting a site, and you see that the page name ends with .html, this means that the page is most likely a plain old HTML page. If the page name ends in .php, then you the site is a php based site. Other dynamic programming languages include .jsp (Java Server Pages) or .asp (.NET or Active Server Pages). Occasionally you’ll see sites that end in .html that have dynamic code embedded in them, but this requires some tricks to accomplish on the server.

We have several sites that use static HTML pages and have great results. There are some pages that have dynamic content, but most of the pages are built in straight HTML. It’s great for search engine optimization, as some of those pages have been active for years. However, as the number of pages grow, it becomes increasingly difficult to update menu or navigation items, because it means you have to open each page, one at a time, and modify the contents.

Advantages of using PHP

PHP works a little differently. Instead of downloading the entire page (with the navigation, content and everything in one file), php allows you to embed programming code that isn’t displayed to the end user. This programming code allows you to tell the page, “Insert the top navigation here.” Or, “put the content for the page over there.”

PHP allows you to personalize a page, for example, or automatically detect that a user is coming into the site from a mobile device and display a different version of the site that is optimized for their Blackberry or iPhone. PHP keeps most of the code for the site “behind the scenes” so that the page that is displayed to the end user loads quickly and doesn’t require the browser to do processing work — the work is handled instead by the server.

PHP Is Ideal For Working With Databases

One of the biggest advantages of a programming language like PHP is that it allows you to easily interact with a database. If you’re unfamiliar with databases, think of a database as a souped-up form of an Excel spreadsheet. You have columns (i.e. page name, content, title) and rows. Rows typically would hold information that is organized by column headings.

PHP makes it easy to read information from a database, and then display information onto a web page. So, if you’ve ever used a site where you type in your zip code to find a store location near you, the system likely is taking your zip code, performing a database query (i.e. find all stores within 10 miles of the 80303 zip code) and display the results so that you can find your way. In order to do this, we have a geolocation database that allows us to tell the approximate distance between two zip codes.

You could do the same thing by building out a series of web pages that has each location. And while this is fine for three or four locations, as the number of locations increases, PHP allows you to automate the process.

Keep Content Organized

One of the ways we’ve been able to streamline the process of building websites is that we’ve standardized our process using our PageDirector content management system. There are many, many ways to build websites. Each designer seems to have a slightly different way of putting a site together. We are frequently asked to work on sites that other people have created, and in order to make simple changes to the content or navigation, we often have to dig around in the code to find where things are located. This takes time and isn’t very efficient. The PageDirector system, however, keeps all of the content for the site neatly organized in a database table. So that anyone can easily find the content and make changes quickly and easily. One of our clients said to me in an email to me yesterday, “It’s really efficient and a simple tool to use PageDirector. It makes my life easier being able to update the website fast.”

How Does It Work?

When someone clicks on a link to go to a page, the system pulls the right content from the database, grabs the menu items from another location, and on-the-fly creates the page for a person.

Summary

PHP is a server-based programming language that allows you to create an interactive experience for your site visitors, and keep content and other information organized within a database.

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Chuck Matthews – PHP is a programming language that allows your website to go beyond a basic HTML document, and create an interactive experience. PHP is a server-based programming language that allows you to create an interactive experience for your site visitors, and keep content and other information organized within a database. This article explores some of interactive applications that can be developed using PHP applications.

Increase Landing Page Conversions with These Subtle Tricks

By admin in Webmasters

Most landing pages are often way too cluttered for their own good – hence the low conversions and high bounce rates. Consumers have shortened attention spans online so overly complicated landing pages with pop-ups, animations, and too much to focus on will only lead them to click away. The following subtle tricks should help you create a more effective landing page that boosts conversions and sales.

Don’t Forget to Provide a Clear Call to Action

Too many people dismiss the importance of a clear call to action. After reading your landing page, users should know exactly what they are supposed to do, whether it is to fill out the form or click “Buy Now.” Adding a call to action to a landing page where one is lacking or making your current call to action much clearer and more prominent can have a dramatic impact on conversions.

Make sure that you only provide one call to action on your landing page. If you provide several different conversion options, people will get confused and your sales message will get diluted. Your prospects just want to sign on the dotted line so make it easy for them to do so.

Keep it Simple

The majority of landing pages are cluttered and overwhelming. Make sure the design of your landing pages is as simple as possible. Get rid of the distracting audio, animation, and bright colors. Make the visuals of your landing page so simple that visitors are guided to the call of action without interruptions.

Text should also be minimized when you are simplifying the design and look of your site. Make the content on your site easy to read and digest by dividing it into sections, using bullet points, and keeping things concise.

If you’re using a form to capture leads on your landing page, try to keep it as short as possible. If your form has too many fields, you will end up losing sales because your prospects won’t want to spend time filling it out. Getting your prospect’s name and email is usually enough in most cases.

The use of simple language is also important. If a sixth grader wouldn’t be able to understand it, don’t use it. Jargon and marketing speak don’t increase sales. If your landing page is too complicated or wordy, your visitors will lose interest quickly.

Convey Your Credibility

Not only should your website be simple, organized, and professional looking, it should also convey your credibility. People have to trust you first in order to purchase something from you. In order to earn that trust, you can list the names of reputable companies you have worked with, provide testimonials, refer to awards you have won, list memberships you have to relevant professional associations, etc.

Take a look at your current landing pages. Are they simple, professional, easy to follow, and organized? If not, make some changes while keeping these tricks in mind. A landing page with a clear call to action and credibility will help you boost conversions dramatically.

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SEO Sapien is a SEO Company. We offer affordable and guaranteed search engine optimization services. You can visit our site at http://www.seosapien.com for more information and SEO Prices.

Track And Measure Your Advertising, Customer Acquisition Costs, And The Lifetime Value Of A Customer

By Hunter Waterhouse in Webmasters

As business owners and managers, we need to look at a variety of numbers to gain a better understanding of our businesses. In this article, we are going to consider two very important metrics in business marketing – Cost Of Customer Acquisition and Advertising ROI (Return On Investment).

One of the most important numbers we need to always be mindful of is the “Cost of a New Customer” or “Cost of Customer Acquisition”.

Understanding Customer Acquisition Costs

If you are unfamiliar with this concept, let me give you a quick tutorial on this advertising metric.

Suppose you run an advertisement in your local newspaper for your furniture store. Suppose for the sake of this example that you paid $1000 for your display ad in the newspaper.

Now, suppose your advertising brought 4 new customers into your store, who bought from you. Suppose also that the average spend for each customer was $1500.

With the example I am drawing, your $1000 display advertisement in the newspaper brought in 4 customers who spent a total of $6000 in your store.

I am going to keep this example simple, so that more people can keep up with the numbers.

On the basic premise of our example, you generated 4 customers after an outlay of $1000 in advertising. So your basic Cost Of Customer Acquisition was $250 per customer.

If your business received fewer customers, from your outlay of $1000 in advertising, then your Cost Of Customer Acquisition is more expensive.

But, if your business earned more customers who spent money, then your Cost Of Customer Acquisition would be much smaller.

In its simplest form, the Cost Of Customer Acquisition is the money spent to get the customer to your store divided by the number of new customers acquired. We will look at this in more detail, later in this article.

The Best Way To Measure Sales And Marketing Performance

Entrepreneur Magazine in a 1999 article reflected on the Cost Of Customer Acquisition in the dot com world. The article suggested, “the cost of new customer acquisition is one of the best ways to measure sales and marketing performance.”

In 1999, the Cost Of Customer Acquisition for the following companies were:

• BarnesAndNoble.com – $42
• Amazon.com – $27.60
• Priceline – $32.30
• Beyond.com – $29.30

On the surface, these numbers may seem small. But, Amazon’s Average Sale is in the $17-range! This makes the challenge that Amazon and other major retailers face fairly transparent. If these retailers could only count on one purchase from the newly acquired customer, then these businesses would be losing money by the truckload.

Fortunately, Amazon continues to perform well in Repeat Business from a single customer. The following calculations reflect additional numbers that we business people should also factor into our Cost Of Acquisition metrics.

The Real Value Of A Customer

Amazon’s first-sale may only be $17, but in 1999, Amazon’s Average Sales Per Customer was $116, up $10 from the previous year. Unfortunately, Amazon isn’t very forthcoming with these numbers, so after two hours research, I was unable to come up with more up-to-date numbers for you to consider.

The point of mentioning this is that it is important for business owners and managers to recognize that the Value Of A Customer is not how much sales revenue is derived from the initial purchase, but more importantly, from the Lifetime Value Of A Customer.

If we looked at Amazon’s Cost Of Customer Acquisition only in terms of that first sale, then they will be losing money hand-over-fist. With a Cost Of Acquisition of $27.60 and the first sale of $17, Amazon could not stay in business long if they were continuously producing numbers at that level. However, once you factor in the Lifetime Value Of A Customer, then Amazon is spending $27.60 to acquire a customer that is worth $116 in sales for them. Therefore, by measuring the Lifetime Value of a Customer, Amazon is spending only 24% of their revenue in order to acquire one customer.

Few businesses invest 24% of their revenue in advertising, but Amazon hopes that the Lifetime Value of a Customer will eventually exceed the $116 value, known to have existed in FY2000.

As the Lifetime Value of a Customer increases, the overall Cost of Customer Acquisition will fall, as an overall percentage value of Cost Of Acquisition divided by the Lifetime Value of the customer.

The Compounding Lifetime Value Of A Customer

If you have a hair-cutting salon and your advertising budget for one month is $1000, and you get 30 new customers through the door, who will spend an average of $20 for a hair cut, then your basic Cost of Customer Acquisition is roughly $33.34 to gain $20 in new sales.

But if only half of your 30 new customers become regular clients, then you can anticipate 15 of those customers coming to your hair salon at least once a month for the remainder of the year. Therefore, the first 15 customers will be worth $20 each, and the next 15 customers will be worth $240 each over the course of one year ($20 x 12 months). All told, your first 15 customers will put $300 in your cash register, and the next 15 customers will put another $3600 in your cash register.

Thus, in the hair salon example, your $1000 in advertising could generate new customers that will generate $3900 in new sales. Once you start to consider the Lifetime Value of a Customer, within the Cost of Customer Acquisition, then you will realize that the Cost of Customer Acquisition – although it might be higher than the initial sale – holds out the possibility and promise reducing itself as the Lifetime Value of a Customer increases over time.

As the end of the year winds down, you will be able to see that a $1000 expenditure was turned into $3900 in new revenue. In essence, for every dollar you spent on advertising that month, your return value was $3.90 over the course of one year.

In the second year, if only half of the original 15 regular customers or roughly 8 people stay with you for the full course of the second year, then the $1920 in revenue (8 people X $20 each X 12 months) you can expect from those customers could almost be considered free money. Of course, you will still have service fulfillment costs, but that second year will give you nearly $2000 in revenue that you will not have to chase.

Even if half of the customers drop off during the following calendar years, then a 50% customer attrition rate will allow you to have customers that could stay with you up to five years. Calculated against a 50% decrease in customers over each calendar year, your $1000 investment in advertising may translate into $7500 in revenues over five years ($3900 + $1920 + $960 + $480 + $240 = $7500), from the initial investment of $1000 in advertising.

The interesting thing about this scenario is that it is based on an advertising budget of $1000 ONE TIME. But, most businesses will continue the advertising process every month in every year. Therefore, the above example could compound month-after-month. Every month should bring the same or similar results to your business for the month and year.

Advertising Is A Process, Not An Event

Many small business owners have a dire misunderstanding of the nature of advertising and the value to be received from the advertising.

When business owners or managers fail to track and measure the new business generated from the advertising, then the business owners and managers will fail to see that advertising is an expense that can return huge dividends to the business.

When businesses fail to track and measure advertising successes, people tend to only see the money leaving the business without every seeing the reward coming back into the business. As a result, many business managers will employ advertising for a short time, then cancel the advertising, under the false belief that the advertising was not returning value to the business.

When businesses fail to understand the Lifetime Value Of A Customer, it is hard to appreciate any advertising method that fails to pay for itself in its first cycle. If Amazon was to only look at the initial sale generated by a new customer, they would quickly cancel all of their advertising efforts. Fortunately for Amazon, its management understands that the initial $17 sale is not the measure to use to determine the value of Amazon’s advertising efforts. Amazon’s management understands that the true Cost of Customer Acquisition should not be measured by the initial sale, but by the Lifetime Value of a Customer. In doing so, Amazon has ensured that it will continue to be one of the largest and most successful retail outlets on the planet.

When business managers fail to understand the Lifetime Value of a Customer, it is hard for them to appreciate and understand the compounding nature of the revenue stream for a business. It is hard for them to understand that money invested into advertising today, can deliver huge rewards over the next several years.

A Wake Up Call For Small Business Owners

According to Scott Shane, author of “Illusions of Entrepreneurship: The Costly Myths that Entrepreneurs, Investors, and Policy Makers Live By“, only 29-in-100 businesses will remain in business after ten years. That means that a full 71% of businesses started in any calendar year will be out of business in only ten years.

It is sad to say, but the reason most businesses fail is that business owners and managers fail to understand the nature of advertising, the importance of tracking and measuring advertising results, the Lifetime Value of a Customer, and the compounding nature of the revenue stream.

I don’t want to see your business on the trash heap of yesteryear. So, it is my hope that you will take this article as a wake-up call, as to the importance of advertising and its potential to lift your business into profits.

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Hunter Waterhouse has been helping business owners advertise their businesses online for nearly a decade. He is ready, willing, and able to put his experience to work for Main Street Businesses that seek to generate walk-in traffic to their stores, from the online exposure of their business. To learn more about how Hunter can help advertise your local business, visit: http://onlinemarketinglocal.com/

Web Analytics and Your Website – What You Need to Know

By Enzo F. Cesario in Webmasters

When it comes to the web, information is king. Indeed, the web itself is information, a massive collection of articles, videos, blogs, news stories and photographs trying to convey a message to various audiences scattered around the world. The big sensation over the last year has been Twitter, a system built around condensing information to a mere 140 characters and broadcasting it out to interested users with a minimum of frills and features.

YouTube, a site where literally anybody can upload their videos for the appreciation of others, became the fourth most popular site on the Internet in less than a year. Compare that to newspapers and television, which both have been experiencing decreasing viewership in recent years. People need, want, and will seek out every conceivable sort of information, and the Internet is the place to find it.

Who Wants To Know?

Information isn’t just of use to the casual browser or dedicated auction enthusiast, however. Equally and increasingly interested are the very people posting content to the many pages on the web. Who is visiting which pages? How much traffic is your site getting, and how does it measure up against traffic going to similar sites? What has changed since you put up the big new advertising system last year? Necessity being the mother of invention, this increasing craving for varied and precise forms of information has led to the steady growth of a field called Web Analytics.

What Are You Looking At?

Put simply, Web Analytics is a system of study dedicated to collecting, measuring, and reporting on web and Internet data. This general idea breaks down further into two broad disciplines. The first is on-site analytics, which concerns itself with the journey of each user to a website, and is of primary concern to the owners of that site. It records information ranging from a record of which pages are being visited to a comparison of which pages garner more purchases from visitors. Off-site analytics focuses on information on the Internet as a whole, such as what websites more people are visiting, and what sites are being talked about most frequently. Both methods seek to answer the key question for any website operator – what are people looking at?

But What Does It All Mean?

Proper Web Analytics goes a step further than simple data collection, however. It also concerns itself with interpretation of the data in a context that allows the site owner to take appropriate steps. Let’s use the advertising campaign mentioned earlier as an example. Simple web measurement would be the collection of how many hits and purchases the site gathered before and after the campaign. A serious analytic comparison would explain how quickly purchases picked up after the change, what products and portions of the site drew more traffic as a result, and which pages remained unaffected. In short, web measurement is the gathering of the data; Web Analytics is the comparison and interpretation of that data.

The importance of the analytics field to the modern site owner can be observed in the sheer volume of material available on the subject. Sites offer free programs allowing users to set their own metrics, and others can be purchased, offering extra features and a professional interface. Hardcover and electronic format books have been published dealing with the material, and people have formed associations for the purpose of standardizing Web Analytics methodology and terms.

There is even a Web Analytics conference, the E-metrics summit, held in Santa Barbara, California and London, England each year. Going even further, there are listed job offerings in the field that offer salaries approaching $100,000 a year. Clearly this is not a passing fad, but a serious, vital step for any website interested not just in drawing an audience, but keeping it.

It’s All About Information

Of course this all begs the question – how does a user get started. Moreover, to what degree should they seek to implement Web Analytic tools and techniques? Perhaps a bit counter-intuitively, the quest for information begins with information. Site owners know what they want to accomplish with their sites, be it promoting a specific product or generating an audience for geopolitical discussions in a casual atmosphere. This information is the best place to start because it allows the user to begin understanding what information will help them pursue their goal.

For example, if a page is intended to promote an e-book series, then the user wants to know what information will help them do that promotion. They can then look for analytic tools that will tell them what pages are more successful at selling e-books, and what techniques are less successful.

Taking the time to sit down and think through the purpose that analytic information is ultimately intended to accomplish will make the search easier, and more fruitful from the beginning. With this basic framework established, the next step is the web itself. A simple web search on ‘Web Analytics’ or ‘Web Analytics for beginners’ will return a substantial amount of information. From there users can locate articles, videos, and e-books that will help them make the decisions they need to make their websites successful.

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Enzo F. Cesario is a Copywriter and co-founder of Brandsplat. Brandcasting uses informative content and state-of-the-art internet distribution and optimization to build links and drive the right kind of traffic to your website. Go to http://www.Brandsplat.com/ or visit our blog at: http://www.brandsplatblog.com/

Top 5 Website Analytics Programs

By admin in Webmasters

The future of most businesses has become information analysis. And being that a strong online presence is taking first position in today’s business marketing strategies, you must analyze your website aggressively to understand its contribution to current and future profit generation.

Maximum online profit generation can only occur if you take an analytical approach There are a number full website traffic statistics and analytics systems available, but are you using any of them? And aside from Web Analytics, there are also comparison resources and performance metrics that should be considered. Do you know what paths visitors are using to gain access to your website? What is the ratio of new vs. returning visitors? Which keywords are drawing visitors to your sites? Which Search Engines? What is your bounce rate? Where are most of your inquiries coming from? Is your Home Page customer-focused? How do you compare to your competition?

What exactly will keep your business mojo running? Take a look at our Top 5 Web Analytics Resources. Some offer better information than others for user behavior and some are stronger when it comes to facts and figures. With your research and once you have done your own needs analysis, it should become clear to you, which will suit your situation the best. Enjoy!

1. Google Analytics – Provides full website analysis.

It is currently a free service, but it requires that you have an account with Google and that you meet specific online criteria. Once your account has been set up, Google begins to gather data on your site(s), and reports it back to you via pages and pages of graphs, maps and stats. Everything from the number of visitors to your site; to new visits vs. repeat visits ratios; average time on site; top traffic sources; top pages; keywords; and so much more, this program is a must. My two favorites have to be the map and site overlays. The map overlay tells you exactly how many visitors are coming from each area in the world; and the site overlay pops up percentages onto each link on your web pages, to show where visitors are clicking. This is definitely worth the investment in time that it takes to get set up.

2. Google Trends – Compares key words and phrases.

We all know the importance of key words and key word phrases. Here you can input two or more key words or phrases to evaluate and compare their effectiveness against each other, with the results displayed on a graph. You can drill down further to uncover results on specific target locations, and more. This is a very useful tool to help you choose the appropriate word content within your web pages, to ultimately boost your exposure and organic ranking.

3. Compete – Identifies competitive strategies.

Compete is an online competitive service that combines intelligent site and search analytics to help you improve your online marketing initiatives by identifying competitive strategies. Knowing this information can take your SEM (search engine marketing) and SEO (search engine optimization) efforts to the next level, and help you stay on top with site metrics and audience profiles.

4. WeWe Score – Rates your website’s customer focus.

When visitors find your website, they really only care about how well you can help them meet their needs. Your focus has to be on the customer, which is conveyed through the words you use on your site. This website counts certain words on your site that are the key indicators of whether your focus is on them, or on you. This can be helpful in better understanding the impression you are making on your prospects, and where you need to make changes in order to grab and entice customers to go deeper, when they land on your home page.

5. Trace My IP – Tracks IP addresses for traffic analysis, and much more.

Is the time coming that we will actually be able to zero in on the name of the person visiting our websites, and where exactly they are from? It appears that this kind of advanced data gathering is just around the corner, but for now, just knowing more about our visitor details through the activity reports provided here, is a great way to develop strategies; monitor results and improve outcomes.

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Leslie Lyon, President of Spas2b Inc. is a Spa Consultant, Trainer, Classroom and Distance Learning Educator, Speaker, Writer, and Advisor to number Spa-related Committees and Associations, now in 36 countries. If you enjoyed this information and wish to read more exciting, up-to-the-minute business news, log onto http://www.spas2b.com , or contact Leslie Lyon personally at llyon@spas2b.com, or 1-519-585-0626 in Canada.

How To Tweak And Change Your Web Copy For More Sales On Your Commercial Website

By Malcolm Leyshon in Webmasters

Are you a commercial website owner who has been struggling to make sales? Don’t worry, you’re not the only one, but the good news is that by making a few tweaks and changes to your web copy you can expect to get better and better results in terms of sales and sign ups. It doesn’t matter whether you are selling your own product or service, or running an affiliate marketing website.

One mistake that a lot of inexperienced writers do when producing web copy is focus on their need to sell their products, and not on the needs and sensibilities of their target market. What you need to do is to try to see things from the perspective of one of your commercial website visitors, and also to understand the apparently contradictory feelings that people have about buying and selling.

In the rest of this article I will look at those feelings people have about the buying and selling process, and how you can respond to them and harness them to sell more goods on your commercial website.

The first thing to understand about buying and selling is that people are emotionally driven. People love shopping and they buy for emotional reasons and use logic to justify their decision to purchase. So people love to shop, but – and this is where life gets interesting for commercial website owners – people hate the feeling that they are being sold to where they have not first given their consent to the seller. Consent is only given in an atmosphere of trust.

So how can this knowledge be applied to writing web copy for a commercial website?

Probably the first thing you want to do is to stop thinking that you are writing “sales copy”. Too often website owners slip into hyped up sales talk when trying to push their products on visitors to their websites.

Selling Affiliate Products

If you are selling affiliate products for commission one option would be to offer a range of similar products and adopt an editorial style in which you write comparative product reviews and talk freely about the pros and cons of each of the product products. By writing truthfully about the weak points, as well as describing the benefits of each product, you’ll be giving the reader everything that is necessary for him or her to make an informed decision. They will feel in control of the buying process and the issue of being sold to is largely removed.

Make sure your writing is friendly, warm and open, as you want your readers to both like you and feel that you like them to. It will give your readers the impression that you are batting on their side, which creates an atmosphere in which trust can be allowed to develop. The combination of being trusted and being liked is a powerful device for demolishing sales resistance on the Internet.

Selling Your Own Product

If you are selling a product that you have developed yourself, think in terms of the kind of problem it will solve, and who it will solve the problem for. Now, instead of trying to sell the product, focus on the problem. Don’t take the problem for granted but hammer home to your readers the fact that they also have this problem.

Your next step should be to talk about why the problem persists and then paint a picture of what life would be like if the problem were removed and how that would be of benefit to the reader.

It is only at this stage, once you have set the scene, that you introduce yourself and your product and talk up the unique benefits that it offers as a solution to the problem have been discussing. Now that your readers have the solution to the problem, the time has come to tell them what action they need to take in order to purchase the product.

By taking things in this order, you avoid the mistake of hard selling the product from the beginning of your encounter with your prospective customers. This gives you space to educate them about the problem, the benefits of solving the problem, and then the unique benefits of your particular solution. You will have set the right emotional tone and then supplied the benefits that reinforce the positive emotions and justify the purchase with logic.

Writing editorials style product reviews, or problem-solution style articles is a much better way to reach out to your website visitors and provide them with both valuable content and positive emotional reinforcement to create an atmosphere conducive to generating sales on your commercial website.

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Malcolm Leyshon – For more information about how to start a home business and get a Recession Proof Business with Internet Work from Home Ideas and Opportunities available at http://www.malcolmleyshon.com where you will find a wide range of tried and tested ideas including a daily newsletter and a free 325 page e-book.

Keep on top of your website maintenance

By Andrew Plimmer in Webmasters

You’ve probably tried many times in the past to visit a website only to find that it is no longer there, filled with broken links or that the information contained is well out of date. Just like you’d put in the effort to keep your home or your business in good condition, you should practice website maintenance to ensure that your visitors see a working site with updated content.

A website which is neglected will begin to show wear and tear. Visitors will simply go elsewhere if they see your site filled with out of date content and links which no longer work. You’ll need to ensure regular website updates to keep the content fresh and ensure that everything is working properly.

Many businesses fail to place the proper emphasis on website maintenance – which is a big mistake. To many consumers, your website is the point of contact for your business and your products and services. Suppose you had a brick and mortar storefront; you wouldn’t still be advertising a Christmas sale in May in your shop window, would you? Visitors will think your website has been abandoned and they will go to your competitors – hardly the result you want from your site.

Keep your content fresh

You’ll get a higher search engine ranking if you keep your content regularly updated, meaning more visitors will find and visit your site. Google, Yahoo and other search engines keep an eye out for updated content, so the more often you add new and relevant content, the higher your search engine ranking will be and the better you’ll be able to establish a reputation as an authoritative source of information in your field.

When you maintain a website by adding new content regularly, you’ll keep visitors coming back to see what you’ve added. This will build interest in your business and raise your profile online. You can use a blog or a news page to attract and retain the interest of consumers. Whenever you have new information to add that may be of interest to your visitors, get it up there on your site! You can also keep your visitors engaged by offering a newsletter or an RSS feed for updates.

To keep your site fresh:

Maintain up-to-date information on services, products and pricing; add photos, graphics and other multimedia content to the site regularly; feature a blog, articles and other new content regularly; send out announcements via email (or an RSS feed) about any company-related news.

Check all of your links regularly

There are few things which are more annoying than broken links. Broken links are those that point to a website or other resource which is no longer there or has been moved. You can either check your links yourself or hire someone to perform this service for you. Make sure to remove or update any broken links that you find.

If you remove any pages from your site, check if these pages are linked to by other sites and let them know that these links will no longer work (if possible, provide an updated link to these other sites). When you add or remove pages, make sure to update your site map so that the search engines can update this information as quickly as possible.

Your website will grow and change over time as your business grows. Website maintenance is an essential part of this business growth; your website will keep doing its job of attracting customers and driving sales as long as it is properly maintained.

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Andrew Plimmer is CEO of Suncoast Internet, Sunshine Coast web design, web development and search engine optimisation specialists. For a free consultation on web design and SEO at Suncoast Internet go to => http://www.suncoastinternet.com.au/

10 Tips to Keep Members Glued to Your Site

By Jeremy Gislason in Webmasters

The more times your customers visit your site, the more time they will have invested in your relationship and the more they will come to trust and rely on you. By building up their loyalty in this way, there is more chance that they will buy from you, follow your advice and buy your affiliate products, or click on ads that you recommend.

Put simply, a sticky site equals customer loyalty. Customer loyalty equals revenue.

1. Content. We can’t stress the importance of content enough. Keep the content up to date, and ‘time sensitive’. Remove out of date content so that it doesn’t affect the credibility of your site.

2. Give your site a personality. There is a huge amount of information on the internet, and you can be sure your members could find what you are providing elsewhere. What your members are really paying for is the way you present that information.

3. Remain focused on your niche. Don’t forget that your members joined your site because they had an interest in your niche. While it is fine to include content on a slightly different subject if you are sure it will be relevant and interesting. Never lose sight of your original subject. Wander too far off the subject and your may find your customers wandering off your member list.

4. Make information easy to find. Ensure the content on your membership site is organized in such a way that your members will find what they want easily. If your members view your site as a valuable information resource rather than just another website, they will want to us it again and again.

5. Provide what your customers want. Encourage your customers to ask for an article or information on a certain subject if they can’t find it. Writing an article specifically for one customer may seem like a lot of work, but if you think long term, that customer may then stay with you for the lifetime of your membership site.

6. Keep in touch with your members. Contacting your members via e-mail is essential to keep them engaged with your site. Send your members updates, informative newsletters, and reminders, and ask them for their feedback.

7. Ask them to take part in surveys. Ask your members to complete a survey about your membership site and then make sure you act on their feedback and let them know you have done so. Send out a special edition of your newsletter showing some of the results of your survey and detailing how you have responded and any changes you have made. Feeling that they have had a hand in shaping your site will really make your members feel engaged in your online community.

8. Allow customization of your homepage. Having some functions that your members personalize on your site will really make them feel involved. Even a simple message at the top of the home page saying ‘Welcome back [member name]’ will have a huge impact on making your members feel valued.

9. Build a sense of community. Being part of an online community is one of the main reasons your members will renew their membership. Here are a few additional tips on creating that sense of community.

10. Promote an active forum. This provides a place for your members to get to know each other and begin to care about each other. Stopping their membership once they have become involved in your forum would be like losing a whole group of friends. Provide a function that allows your members to send private messages between each other. If you run competitions, or encourage your members to submit content, make sure you acknowledge the winners or contributors. Nothing makes a member feel a part of your site like seeing their name in the latest newsletter.

Jeremy Gislason is a leading expert on membership sites, marketing and online business. Do you want to market and sell all of your products faster? Free how to business and marketing courses at: http://www.MembershipMillionaire.com

Websites That Squeeze!

By Mary McNeil in Webmasters

Most websites conform to the traditional ‘brochure’ style where you present your services and yourself to potential new clients, as well as asking them to sign up and give you their contact details.

* Information capture as a sole purpose

If you’re serious about growing your mailing list, though, there’s a route you can take which involves turning your home page into what is known as an opt-in or squeeze page. The one and only purpose of an opt-in page is to get visitors to sign up. Its job is to squeeze contact details out of your website visitors!

Websites with an opt-in page as the home page appear to the visitor as a one-page site. There are no links to other pages, nothing to browse, and nothing for the visitor to do but sign up. Of course, you have to offer a reasonably generous reward for them to do so, and present it with a degree of compelling urgency. As a technique for growing your mailing list, though, it really works and it sure gets you focused!

* The opt-in page strategy

The question of whether an opt-in page is suitable for your particular website depends on how far you’re prepared to go down the route of growing your mailing list, of staying in regular contact with your subscribers and of using your list as the source of pretty much every single one of your future clients. It’s a widely-used strategy that’s been proven to work over and over again, so definitely worth considering.

Oddly enough, given the website-based material that I usually write, this opt-in page strategy is in many ways more reliant on email. It only requires that you have one page on your website… an opt-in page with the sole function of creating and growing a mailing list for your business. Once you have the contact details of your potential new clients, you can correspond with them via email – they don’t necessarily ever need to go back to your website again!

Of course, you can have a traditional-style website which you direct people to only after they have signed up on your opt-in page. In reality, this is more often how website owners use the strategy.

* So what makes a good opt-in page?

Actually the elements that make up a good opt-in page are much the same as the ones that should be present on any effective home page…

1. Write the content to and about your reader, not about yourself. When your target market visitor lands on your opt-in page, make sure they know this is THE website for them. How? Empathise with their problems and grab their attention with a blockbusting headline.
2. Let them know you have the solutions to their problems. Tease their interest. Offer them a form of these solutions for free. Your free offer needs to be relevant and enticing enough for them to want to get hold of it straight away. Don’t be afraid to give away some good information… when they see what you’re giving away for free, it increases their interest in what the paid-for information or service might include.
3. Sign-up box and call to action. Make these big, bold and utterly unambiguous.

* Keep testing and measuring your conversion rate

You may have come across some much lengthier opt-in pages that include many more elements than I’ve listed here. While these longer versions may work for others, I’ve always found that the clean, clear and concise versions produce the best results for me.

It’s very easy to measure the effectiveness of an opt-in page – the number of sign-ups as a percentage of the number of visitors to the page is your conversion rate. So why not experiment with your very own opt-in page and see what works best for you?

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Mary McNeil’s FREE bulletin: “How to Set Up Your Coaching Website AND Get Clients From It” is available right now. Click here to grab your copy

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