SiteProNews

According to an article in PC World Magazine, the average visitor spends between 25 - 45 seconds viewing the main page of a web site. That’s about enough time to read this article to the point you are at right now and, maybe, most of the way through the next paragraph.With that short an amount of time available to get someone’s attention, your main page better do a pretty good job of selling. The problem is, most main pages do not get the job done as well as they could.

Sure, you could hire a professional copywriter to re-work your sales page. Then all you have to do is keep testing different copy versions until you either run out of money or you hit upon the winning combination of words.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: exit grab technology, Webmasters

Inside CRM just posted an article entitled “100 Awesome Webmaster Videos on YouTube“. If your learning preference is watching videos vs reading articles and/or ebooks, then this is a great resource. Check it out. And, if you have developed webmaster videos of your own, we’d love to see them posted in the SPN Webmaster community site

Tags: Articles, videos, Webmasters, youtube

Coming from an art background I know a few things about graphics, layout and design. I can usually manage to produce passable graphics for my different sites. But they are just that - barely passable.

Quite frankly, until recently, I didn’t have the money to spend on professional graphics for my sites. Now, as my sites are generating income each day, I can afford to re-invest some of my earnings into professionally produced website graphics.

That’s exactly what I did!

I just wished I had invested funds into these website graphics when I first started online because professional graphics will give you a much better conversion rate. Can’t begin to imagine the revenue I have lost by not having professionally produced graphics by web design specialists or experts. A well-done graphic is worth its weight in gold because you get a much higher response rate.

I am talking from first-hand experience here… for my latest site I invested in some professional graphics and the sign-up rate is much better than for my other sites. Plus, when I added these graphics to my other existing sites, my sign-up rates jumped 25% to 50% - just by adding this graphic beside the sign-up form.

So if you have a product, newsletter, ezine, guide… make sure you place a good graphic or picture right beside your sign-up form… this will increase your conversions and sales. If you’re thinking about creating a new site, consider investing in professional graphics - header, footer, logo… you won’t regret it.

Mainly because most surfers or visitors to your site will be a net-savvy crowd, within seconds they will make the decision if your site is worth their time or not. Unless you instantly project a professional image or site, they will have clicked that back button before they even blink.

Image vs. Trust

In order to have a successful site you must create trust with your visitors. Having custom graphics done will give your site that unique professional look that web-surfers now demand. First impressions are the only impressions you get on the Internet. You must hook your visitor at the first click, or it’s game over. Sad but true.

No matter what kind of site you have, using professional graphics will prove helpful to achieving your goals. These graphics will give your site a fighting chance to at least capture your viewer’s attention and allow time for your brilliant content to reel them in!

Here are some other reasons why you need professional graphics on your site:

- To give and project a professional image

- To give your visitors a tangible image of your product

- To improve the quality of your site for everyone IS a critic

- To help increase your sales or sign-up rates

- To make navigation of your site easier

Always remember, the web has become a very competitive place, you must do everything you can to give your site a competitive advantage over your competition. Professional graphics will make your site stand out; killer graphics will firmly place your site in your visitor’s mind and help them remember your site and entice them to visit it again.

Professional website graphics are very useful tools in creating a consistent overall image of your site. They will aid in your site’s navigation and give your visitor a good impression of your site. Well-designed graphics will help your site project a professional image and keep visitors from instantly clicking that back button. Professional graphics will give your site a fighting chance at making that sale or sign-up. In other words, professional graphics greatly increases your chances of having a successful site. That’s the main reason why you should use them.

The author is a full-time web marketer who owns and runs numerous websites, including two sites on Internet marketing. He contributes his online affiliate success to using the best Internet Marketing Tools: www.bizwaremagic.com and his proven strategies at List Building: www.bizwaremagic.com/opt-in.htm 2008 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

Tags: graphic design, professional sites, Webmasters

Five Powerful Tips for New Webmasters Being a new webmaster can be a challenge. There are a thousand different ways you can go and a thousand different things you can do. Here are five powerful tips to help you gain a good understanding of what you really need to do to make your website a success.

Tip One: Realize that your website is not a website; It is a collection of web pages. And each web page is an individual unit that should stand on its own. This sounds funny but it is very true, and very important, particularly for the new webmaster. The large search engines have made the web one big website. People search for things and will re-search and flip through websites with no concern for website loyalty. They are looking for answers to their questions and the search engines have made it easy to use the whole web as an answer finding tool. You will, over time build visitor loyalty but it will only come once visitors develop confidence in the quality of your website.

Tip Two: People will not click on your advertisements, product banners, or other affiliate sales stuff unless you give them a reason to. No need to put up pages with lots of affiliate links in the hope of making revenue -unless you give them good content that helps them make a decision to buy. If you put up recommended products for them to buy you need to explain to them the benefits, features, and the pros and cons of the product. Web customers come in two different types. The first type is ready to buy. And they will go directly to the big retailers. The second type and this is the type you are looking for, is gathering information that will help them make a good buying decision. Give them good information and give them the tools they need to make an informed buying decision. If they want to buy something they will just go to the big online retailers. Your role as a little webmaster is to enhance their understanding and help them in unique ways to make buying decisions.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Webmasters, website design

The best decision you can make as an online business owner is to decide to get out of your own way and begin to delegate those tasks which really don’t require your time and attention. A simple way to do that is by hiring a virtual assistant.

A virtual assistant is a business owner who specializes in handling the administrative details of your business from the comfort of her home office. Now that virtual assistance has been around for awhile, you’ll find virtual assistants who specialize in different types of administrative services: real estate, Internet marketing, and event management, to name a few. You may actually discover that you could use several virtual assistants in your business, each with a different specialization.

I can hear you now. You’re thinking, “There’s no way anyone can do this as well as I can.”

Are you guilty of “I’ll-do-it-myself-itis? If so, you’ve got much in common with most other online business owners in the world. We never think that anyone else will give something the time, attention, and dedication that we will. And, you’re right, to some degree. No one cares as much about your business as you do. However, if you don’t choose to delegate those things that prevent you from engaging in business development, marketing, and sales activities, you won’t be in business very long.

Whether you’re just starting out or have been in business for awhile, the thought of bringing on a support team member can be daunting, and you wonder, “How can I bring in someone else when it’s just going to increase my expenses?”

You need to make the shift to seeing this cost as an investment in your business, rather than as an expense, and let go of the need to be in control.

To help you evaluate what you might delegate to an assistant, take out a piece of paper and on the left side write, “What I Love to Do” and on the right side write. “What I Don’t Like to Do”.

Then, think about all of the functions you manage and roles you perform in your business, like planning and setting strategy, marketing, providing the service or product in which you specialize, dealing with financial issues, speaking, writing, networking, customer service, order fulfillment, etc. Most of my clients have three or four items on the “What I Love to Do” side — speaking, coaching/consulting, training, and writing. The remainder of the other functions and roles fall on the other side. The items on the right hand side, the “What I Don’t Like to Do” list, will serve as a great indicator of the types of things you need to be delegating in your business.

Based on my past experience as a virtual assistant and online business manager for a number of clients, here are 5 tasks should delegate to your Virtual Assistant right away to help you begin to generate additional income in your business:

1. Ezine. An email newsletter will help you get prospective clients into your marketing funnel. Your VA can format the plain text and HTML versions of your email newsletter. All you need to do is write your primary and filler articles each week and forward those to your VA to format and send the finished product out to your newsletter list.

2. Media. Have your VA research an industry-specific media list . This value of this list is in developing relationships with these media contacts so that you’re the expert they immediately think of when they’re doing a story on your area of expertise.

3. Article Marketing. Write once and have that article work for you again and again. Have your VA submit articles you’ve written to online article databases to increase the number of links back to your website and to send more visitors to your website.

4. Strategic Alliances. Once of the quickest ways to grow your business is by creating strategic alliance or joint venture relationships. Have your VA research potential strategic alliance or joint venture partners who provide a service to a similar audience or whose client base could benefit from your product or service.

5. Product Development. Got recorded interviews sitting around gathering dust on your hard drive? How about information you’ve created for presentations that you’ve never done anything with? Have your VA coordinate the transcript and audio editing of any recorded files you might have and help you polish those into saleable products. Your VA can also help your format printed material into an ebook, ecourse, special report, etc. and before you know you, you’ll become an information marketer!

What operational aspects of your business could you delegate to someone else? If you had extra time, how could you increase the revenues of your business? Give these questions strong consideration–and use your Virtual Assistant to help you make more profit with less of your time today!

Online Business Resource Queen (TM) and Online Business Coach Donna Gunter helps independent service professionals learn how to automate their businesses, leverage their expertise on the Internet, and get more clients online. To claim your FREE gift, TurboCharge Your Online Marketing Toolkit, visit her site at http://www.OnlineBizU.com Ask Donna an Internet Marketing question at http://www.AskDonnaGunter.com.

Tags: ezines, seo, Webmasters

When somebody mentions something about a “landing page” or even a “doorway page” you immediately dismiss that as an archaic practice. But today with the search engines indexing almost every page of a website, “Every page of a site indexed by search engines is a potential landing page.”

In years past it was sometimes a tactic to create a single page for each search engine in the hope of winning top spot for a particular search phrase. This now heavily penalised practice of creating “gateway pages” was one of the earlier ways webmasters gamed the system.

But by landing page I’m not referring to a page that has been optimised for one specific keyword which would then lead you onto another webpage or even website, but rather a page that could possibly generate traffic to your website or even convert traffic. With so many pages including dynamically generated pages now ranking for search terms, each page is now a possible entry point for a search.

An important point to always remember is that each page is indexed by the search engines (or at least you hope it is if you’ve done your homework correctly). This would mean that each product in your catalogue has been indexed. While some websites simply put lists of products together many have pages dedicated to individual products. Each of these individual product pages could be a landing page for a search for that particular item.

While someone searching for “t-shirts” may find the home page of a multitude of suppliers, how many of those same sites would rank for the search “britney spears t-shirt”? This is where the optimisation of each page would come in handy. After all if your pages were optimised for their specific product they would be easier to find (and longer tail keywords do convert better). By the time the visitor reaches your website they are not only keenly looking for your product but are able to instantly find it at the page they find themselves on.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Webmasters

In Cajun cooking, almost every dish starts with what’s known as “The Trinity” onions, celery and bell peppers. These 3 ingredients are the foundation of almost every savory dish. Whether you’re eating gumbo, jambalaya, or even a Cajun soup, they all start with these components. These form a delicious base to each of these dishes.Like Cajun food, getting a small business listed on the search engines also is based on a trinity of components. These components give your search engine efforts a base to be built off of, and ensure that you’ll be successful. Those are: the ease of getting listed, the effectiveness of your listing, and then finally, the level of placement.

1. Ease: If you’re like most small businesses, you’ve got a lot going on. You’re running your business, doing your marketing, creating your products and/or delivering your services, and trying to squeeze in some life balance on the side.

Hours and hours of search engine optimization work are the last thing you need to add to your to-do list. You need a simple, easy system to get the most search engine attention for the least amount of work.

2. Effectiveness: Effectiveness is two-fold. First, you want your efforts to be effective with the search engines. You want them to look at your site’s code and to rank you well.

Second, you want your listing to be effective for your searchers. If a searcher is looking for products or services like yours, then you want them to see your listing’s description, read it, and to be compelled to click on it.

3. Position: Your website probably doesn’t have to be ranked #1 for your best keywords to get all the attention you need being in the top 10 is just fine for most small businesses. You also probably don’t need to be ranked well for a very general term, like “consulting”. You have to find the combination of search terms and position on the search results that works best for your business and gives you a balance of ease of maintenance (staying in the rankings) and bringing you good clients.

How do you take advantage of the trinity when you work on optimizing your site? Here are some suggestions on how to address each of these issues in your plan:

Ease:

1. Start with solid advice. There are a lot of search engine systems out there, and a lot of “how-to” advice. Make sure that the system you’re using has been tried and tested, so that you’re not just going to be spinning your wheels as you work on your optimization.

2. Break your efforts down into short activities. Optimizing your site for the search engines takes several steps and trying to sit down and just do them all, end-to-end, will take a while. To preserve your sanity, and to do things in a way that will make your efforts have the most impact, plan to do each step one at a time, and then upload your revised files and wait a bit before making additional changes. That way, you’ll avoid going crazy, and you’ll also be able to evaluate the effectiveness of your efforts along the way.

Effectiveness:

1. Really look at what you want your site to do for you. Is it really important that you get huge numbers of visitors to make lots of sales? It may be if you’ve got a product to sell. But, if you’re a one- or two-person service business, then it’s more likely that you only need a few well-qualified visits to make all the sales that you can handle.

2. Experiment with your description in your listing. Use different description tags on different pages of your website to see which compels more searchers to click. By looking at your site statistics, you should be able to see which page your visitors are coming in through.

Position:

1. See where you really need to be ranked. If your optimization efforts have gotten you to the second or third page, then you’ve already got a good start. You may just need to do a bit of work to raise your ranking to the first age.

2. Ask your best clients and visitors how they found you. What words were they searching on? Which search engine did they use? You want to get more of these “best” clients through your website, so asking clients who you already work well with about how they came to work with you will help you to make your listing more effective.

These few tips will help you optimize your website with a solid base of the optimization trinity�making sure the process will be easy, effective and will get you the position you need.

Erin Ferree is a brand identity designer who creates big visibility for small businesses. As the owner of elf design, Erin is passionate about helping her clients stand out in front of their competition and attract more clients. One of the best ways to do that is with Search Engine Optimization, which you can learn about in her eLearning product, Raise Your Ranking, which is available at http://www.howtoraiseyourranking.com .

Tags: search engines, Webmasters