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How Does Your Website Make Me Feel?

By Philippa Gamse in Featured

When people think about the Internet, they think about technology. When people hear that I am a Website strategy expert, they see me as a “techy type”.

But for me, the most intriguing aspect of your online business isn’t about the technology. It’s about human connections, and how you can create these in a virtual environment.

It’s commonly understood that “people buy emotionally, not intellectually.” Even when people think they’re making a rational decision, powerful subconscious factors come into play. To sell effectively, we’re told to anticipate our customers’ needs, to demonstrate that we “feel their pain”, and to respond to clues in their body language and tone of voice.

8 Steps to a Customer Focused Website that Turbo-Charges Sales

By Colette Mason in Featured

For any serious, professional, website investment, the user testing phase has become an integral part of the path to making more money online. Before your site is published, usability testing gathers feedback from the very people it is intended for -, with its main objective to ensure you’re creating a website that has an intuitive and easy to use interface, targeted to all users. But how do you reap the fullest benefits from your user testing sessions?

1. Choosing Your Subjects

The results of your session well depend largely on the people you test it on. Do not get people who may be biased, such as family, friends and workers from your company. People who have prior exposure to your project may yield flawed results and rate your site high in web accessibility when in fact, it is not. Assemble a focus group, people who fit a specific profile, to be the subjects. You can ask a market research firm or a temp agency to source out your participants. Subjects must not know the name of your company or other details to maintain objectivity.

2. Before Starting the Usability Testing Session

The atmosphere of the web usability study session must be as normal as possible. To achieve the best results, participants should be at ease and feel like they are using the site at home or work. Make sure the participants know the exact location of the testing session; if necessary, meet them at local stations. Do not use technical terms such as “usability testing” or “market research’ as these will only cause confusion and create tension. Inform your subjects beforehand of the length of time the testing will take and the type of tasks they are expected to do. When the participants have familiarized themselves with the environment, it is time for the signing of legal documents. Use simple English language that is easy to understand and make your forms as short as possible. Legal papers can add to a subject’s nervousness. Assure him that the tests are completely confidential and you only need his permission to use the information generated during the test as part of the results.

3. Starting the Usability Testing

Acquaint the subjects with their surroundings before going to the main tasks. Tell them the name of the website and the URL and get their initial thoughts, like what they expect from the site or what they would like the site to be. Record the terms or phrases they use; this shows you value their opinions and feedback. These terms may also be used as pointers for future references in functionality and navigation concerns. Next, let them visit the business website they’ll be testing. Find out what their initial reactions are before allowing them to get familiar with the site. Such inputs may give you ideas on how they evaluate a site for web credibility. Assure the subjects that their tasks will not be difficult and, most of all, that they are not the ones being tested.

4. Choosing Tasks

Choose tasks that your potential customers will consider important to their decision of whether to purchase or not. These play a significant role in ensuring the success of your business website. Such tasks are: Buying productsPaying billsContacting the client Encourage the participants to give suggestions of other tasks they want included. You can determine their expectations and requirements from their suggestions and set new functionality and priorities.

5. How to Express Tasks

People respond and perform in more natural way if they are given scenarios instead of instructions. In phrasing the tasks, it is more effective to say “Scenario A has occurred, and you need to ring the company urgently – find the telephone number” rather than “find the contact us section of the site”.

6. Presentation of Tasks

Give participants one task at a time. Simultaneous tasks may intimidate them, or alter their normal approach to the testing. If you require the subjects to use inputs from outside the test (e.g. an email giving them a password to the site), give them these inputs in the form they will be presented. This will provide useful feedback on all elements of the process, rather than simply the site.

7. What Your Behavior Ought To Be During Testing

Always keep in mind that the object being tested is the website, not you or the participant. All input is treated as important; this needs to be clearly pointed out to the participant. If there’s a step or a task that participants struggle with, it’s really important to tell them it’s not their fault. During the test, it’s important not to be “seen or heard”. You must not do the following actions: provide clues, suggest directions or react to what they say or do. These could alter the test results. So keep your actions neutral, even a shaking of your head or huffing is a no-no. The only time participants should hear from you is when they need help in giving an opinion or clarifying a response. Because they have invested much time and money in the project, clients often find it hard to keep quiet during tests. If your client wants to be present, put him in a separate room and provide an audio/video link.

8. When the Usability Testing Is Done

Upon completion of all tasks, gather and document as much information as possible. Ask for overall impressions of the website and detailed feedback on each task. You will be able to measure their experience, whether expectations were met and if their views have changed during the process. Always welcome suggestions- they will be useful in providing insights to improve web usability and accessibility and creates goodwill between you and the participants. Finally, ask the participants what they remember about the site structure and its functions. If they remember these clearly, it is a confirmation that the site is structured logically and this will help identify any labeling issues you may have missed.

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Colette Mason – If you would like to discover more whitehat, fast, fun, customer-focused ways to increase your website conversions, visit the www.websitesuccesssystem.com. The Website Success System is a step by step guide on how to build a good website for your business.

5 Types of Links You May Not Have Thought of Tracking

By Jill Whalen in Featured

Think you’re doing a good job of tracking and measuring the success of every link to your website that gets announced to the world in some fashion?

While most website marketers are tracking website referrals from search engines, as well as links from other websites and paid search advertising campaigns, a lot of visitors show up as “Direct Traffic.” Do you ever wonder where they came from? I know that I do!

I’ve talked about ‘campaign tracking‘ via Google Analytics before, so I won’t bore you with the mechanics of how to create these links so they don’t look ugly. But do read that article if you need a refresher course. After you have a good system in place for adding campaign tracking codes to your URLs, the most important thing you can do is remember to use them on everything!

So, You Thought YOU Owned Your Website?

By Ben Kemp in Featured

As part of being an SEO consultant, I’m frequently asked to conduct SEO Audits on potential client’s websites. Amongst sundry other tasks, I always check to see who the legal owner of the site is. With surprising regularity, it turns out NOT to be the guy who commissioned the report, and who mistakenly thinks HE (or she) is the rightful owner!  There is more than one aspect to this…

Domain Registrant

Each country has rules governing ownership and transfer of domain names. These rules are clear, unequivocal and rigorously enforced.  In all instances, the “registrant” is defined as the legal owner.

Constructing A Website That Works

By Karen Thomson in Featured

Before you even consider starting to build your first website, you need to think very carefully about what you are going to include in it. For instance, you should not create a site that promotes numerous unrelated affiliate products. As you can imagine, a potential customer will not want to wade through fishing tackle supplies when she came to your site looking for handbags! What’s more, the search engines won’t approve of it either; they won’t be able to distinguish what it is you are trying to sell and therefore won’t rank it well for any of your products. The more products you have on your site means that they have to compete with each other to be viewed when what you really want is a fewer amount of related products that complement and enhance each other.

Here is a basic list of things that you must consider when creating your first and each subsequent website.

• The website needs to be clearly laid out, with separate pages for different topics within the overall subject matter.
• The site will need to focus on a specific subject which is aimed at a distinct audience.
• Both outgoing and incoming links to and from worthwhile and excellent top quality websites should be included.
• Diverse pages should link into each other where relevant.
• There should be plenty of superb content packed with useful information.
• Any affiliate or referral links need to be sprinkled throughout the web page in the relevant places; they need to be tested to see what works the best.
• The correct use of keywords and phrases which will help attract visitors and improve positioning within the search engines need to be used.
• And finally, you must include an internet site map to make it less difficult for visitors to move around the internet site and find what they need. This is often considered redundant in the process of building a website, and that is indeed the fact if you made a sitemap just for the sake of having one.

A sitemap literally acts as a map of your site. They can always refer to your sitemap to see where they are, and navigate through your pages with the utmost ease. There is no need to get the “big picture” of your site by reading through each page, and by doing that you will be saving your visitors’ time.

When you create a sitemap, you are actually creating a single page which contains links to every single page on your site. Imagine what happens when search engine robots hit this page — they will follow the links on the sitemap and naturally every single page of your site gets indexed by search engines! It is also for this purpose that a link to the sitemap has to be placed prominently on the front page of your website.

Don’t get overwhelmed by the amount of things on this list, they may take a little time to put together but they are not difficult by any means. Once they are in place, you can tweak and test your site and add new content to keep it fresh and interesting which in turn will keep the search engines and your website visitors very happy indeed!

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Karen Thomson is a successful Internet Marketing Consultant. If you found this article useful, claim your free social media for business e-book and more goodies, available at http://simplecashblogbonus.com

Learn How to Effectively Use Email Marketing

By Anton Pearce in Featured

When you are launching an email marketing campaign, your goal is to become a familiar piece of your subscriber’s world. As you become familiar, your readership will begin to feel like they know you, and in time, they will come to trust you as well.

If you want readers to welcome your emails, build them so that your distribution list will be happy to receive your emails, and they may even come to look forward to your emails. Pay close attention to your content, and then pay close attention to the look and feel of your email.

7 Tips for Email Marketing

Remember that your email reflects on your company, so develop your brand, and be consistent with how it looks and what it says. If you do not want tot be perceived as a spammer, then do not act like one. Here are some helpful tips that will show you how to develop trust through your emails by paying attention to how they look and how they make you look.

1. Use a consistent sender name

When a recipient gets your email, they should be able to immediately recognize who you are. So make sure that your sender information is filled in correctly. Choose a name and stick to it. It can be your company name, your product name, or your online name, but for your readers to know you it must consistently be the same name.

2. Create eye catching preview pane

Most people are inundated with email, so make sure that when they receive your email they see something that will spark their curiosity in the preview pane. Give them just enough information to let them know that want to read more. By not properly formatting your email to make full use of the preview pane, you run the risk of having your email deleted even before it has been read.

3. Ask for feedback

Never send out an email that cannot receive a reply. If you have a prospect that wants to contact you the last thing that you want to do is make it hard. So, when you are creating your email find ways to engage your prospects with questions or a forum for a comment. Ask for suggestions, and encourage questions. Even if you get negative feedback, your prospect has done you the favor of offering you a way to improve your email marketing campaign. One of the easiest ways to find out what people are thinking is simply to ask.

4. Include contact information

Make sure that your email includes you company’s complete contact information so that your readers see you as a tangible company. Give your company a physical place, so that people can picture where you are. They will feel more comfortable about you if you have a real presence rather then just floating around in cyberspace. Always publish your contact information in the same place. So if you have a logo for a header and it includes your contact information, always send your emails with your logo header. By seeing your information over and over, prospects will begin to consider you someone that they know and feel comfortable with. So always print your contact information in the same location in your email.

5. Always include complete contact information in the footer

By always including your company’s contact information in the footer of the email, if your prospect becomes frustrated looking for an address or phone number, they will know that they can always find it in the footer of your email. When someone is trying to get in touch with you, it should be effortless for them to locate your contact information.

6. Always keep the same look and feel

People are comfortable with familiar things, and they do business with comfortable companies. By being aware of your brand and always having the same look and feel to you emails, you will become familiar to your prospects. Use your logo, colors and tagline to burn your identity into your prospect’s mind, and they will soon come to view you as an old friend.

7. Use a reliable design

Do not waste a lot of time designing your email. You need them to look professional and have good content, but they do not need a lot of bells and whistles. Keep your format simple, and keep your content rich, and in time you will garner the respect and trust of your readers.

For any marketing campaign to be successful, your prospects have to trust you. You have to make sure that your message works for the demographic that you are trying to reach. Keep your formats simple, so that your emails will look professional for all of your recipients. Pay attention to your format to make sure that you message appears correctly for your subscribers.

While content is important in email marketing, appearance is equally important. Remember these suggestions as you create your email marketing campaign, and it should be very successful for you.

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For a free, no-obligation consultation, contact Anton Pearce via www.antonpearce.com. Set aside just 30 minutes and discover how you can use online marketing to get all the clients you need to fill your practice. Anton is an online marketing consultant who specializes in helping health and wellness professionals to market their services online.

What Are Meta Tags and Why Do I Need Them?

By admin in Featured

There is no other way to put it; the World Wide Web is big business. As an example, you only have to look at the phenomenal success of the online bookstore, Amazon. In 2008, Amazon brought in over nineteen billion dollars in income, yet only required an operating budget of approximately eight hundred and fifty million dollars. It really is no surprise to anyone then that more businesses are investing in expanded web presence and capability. Yet, not every organization has the same successes. Barnes and Noble was selling books online before Amazon was even an idea, and yet it isn’t Barnes and Noble that people think of when considering online bookstores, it’s Amazon. The key? Amazon took greater advantage of the opportunity to effectively market their product.

Search Engines, Spiders and Websites, Oh My

The most important and often least understood tool for online marketers is the search engine. The primary type of search engine is the web crawler – these are largely automated programs that crawl through available web pages, indexing data according to a variety of parameters. In short, the crawler, or spider, examines each page of a website. Once it has examined the page, it submits it to an index. Then, when a person uses the search engine software, the index provides links to these pages, ranked according to relevance. It is worth mentioning two other points. First, not all engines index the same way. Some use keyword density; others focus on the content of the first paragraph. Second, any changes to a webpage are likely to affect search rankings, so webmasters must carefully consider each change and its possible effects.

I Never Meta Tag I Didn’t Like

One important part of preparing a page for good search engine rankings is effective use of HTML meta-tags. These tags do not directly relate to the position a site will have in a search result, but they do offer webmasters some control over the way their sites are presented when they come up in a search. In brief, meta-tags are additional bits of code added to the head of your HTML document, right after “TITLE.” Because of the tendency for unscrupulous coders to find and abuse loopholes in search technologies, search engines do not rely heavily on these tags for rankings. Their benefits to web users are important, however.

First, there is the Meta Description tag. This is a brief report about the content of the webpage in question. When a search engine presents users with a hyperlink, there is frequently a small description accompanying that result. In many cases, that is the Meta Description tag the Webmaster put in the HTML document so that when a spider visits the site, it indexes this information. This is not always the case, however; Google in particular will generate its own description for a site.

The Meta Description is often the first piece of information someone using a search engine will see. The URL may not mean anything to them, but this description will. If it is poorly written, the user will likely skim right past the site for one that presents itself more effectively. Thus, the key is effective, concise writing that conveys exactly what the site is about.

The second tag is the Meta Keywords tag. This tag is a list of keywords the Webmaster considers most pertinent to each page. Proper use of the keywords tag is also vital. While search engines use a variety of keyword systems, and have in recent years de-emphasized the Meta Keywords tag, it still contributes to website rankings and should not be neglected. The best method is to examine each page carefully, and pick approximately ten keywords that best represent the data therein. Too many nonspecific keywords will lead to inconsistent search results, and too few means missing an opportunity to get a message in front of users. In addition, many sites are actively on the lookout for keyword abuse. Google in particular is known to ban certain pages from its index entirely if they consider the article to be an abusive, loophole-seeking piece.

There are other, less relevant tags that can provide some benefits, though they aren’t as important as the previous two. An example is the Robots tag, which is only useful in making sure certain sites do not index a particular page. This can help a Webmaster keep their content from being associated with undesirable elements, but it does not contribute directly to higher search placement.

No Meta Tag is an Island

Once again, it must be stressed that meta-tags are not a magical solution to the very complex problem of online marketing. They must be regarded as one tool in an inventory of other tools, and should be used responsibly. Properly implemented, they will help complete an effective marketing strategy.

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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/

Your Website’s Missing Ingredient

By Jerry Bader in Featured

“My mechanic told me, ‘He couldn’t repair my brakes, so he made my horn louder.’” – Comedian, Steven Wright

We all want our websites to be more effective, and if you’re like most business people you are constantly searching the Web for anything that will help. What you find is a cabal of experts armed with statistics, analysis, charts and graphs all pointing to how they can get you high-up on the search engines and drive more traffic to your site. The problem is that like Steven Wright’s mechanic these guys are adjusting your horn when it’s your brakes that need fixing.

There is little point in attracting more visitors to your site if your site has little of interest to say. Even if your site is jammed packed with useful products, services and solutions if it doesn’t connect with your audience, they will never invest the time necessary for you to make your case.

How to Market Your Website with a Creative Commons License

By SEO Sapien in Featured

People can share, reuse, and alter content that is licensed under Creative Commons. You can license a variety of different materials under Creative Commons, and doing so is particularly beneficial if you would like your content to spread. When you license your content under Creative Commons, it gives people permission to share it with attributions. Creative Commons licensing can be an effective way for you to market your online content.

Creative Commons was designed with the way the web works in mind. On the web, sharing is a natural activity, and Creative Commons licensing allows you to share with little restriction. Although there is still a heated debate about whether it is right or wrong to share content freely, from a marketing perspective, unrestricted sharing is ideal. Even new digital content producers can get noticed quickly, thanks to unrestricted sharing.

Free Traffic and the 4 Vital Elements of a Successful Website

By Brye Bishop in Featured

Let’s face it, anyone can build a website, there are countless companies out there offering a vast array of web building solutions, some good, some great, and some quite frankly are a complete waste of time! But throwing together a website is really only part of the story, only part of the process. There are literally, hundreds of thousands of web pages, that will never be viewed and therefore stand no chance of commercial success. Some of those sites are relatively good; unfortunately their owners have misunderstood the process and have the cart before the horse… In the online world nobody just happens by your website, credit card in hand!

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