Is Your Website Outdated?
A Web site can be your number one marketing tool if you keep refreshing it with new information and make it valuable to your target market.
How long has it been since you made any changes to your Web site?
For many companies, once they put up a Web site, they are done. Yeah, maybe they will add some current news events now and then, but generally a finished Web site is not something a company thinks about too much. It functions as an electronic brochure for them and that’s the end of the story. But should it be?
Let’s begin to answer that question by looking at the main reason people use the Internet: to find information. Is the information on your Web site the most current available or is it dated?
How many of you have visited Web sites that list the last update as 2004? Or how about a Web site that lists a copyright date of 2005 and shows a visitor count of 1500? Sad, isn’t it. Sad because these companies haven’t figured out that a Web site is a dynamic marketing tool that constantly needs review and tweaking.
I’m not talking about drastic, complete overhaul; I’m talking about making changes based on your target market and how they buy. Even if you feel your company only needs a Web site as an electronic brochure you need to think about how your target market buys.
Who is Your Target Market?
Who do you want to visit your Web site and buy your product or service? If you haven’t done an analysis of your target market recently, you might want to take a look again. Businesses change, markets change and your target audience changes.
Think about what’s been going on in your business in the last six months. How are things different?
*Have you started selling new products or are you offering new services?
*Have you taken your business in a new direction?
*Are you becoming more targeted as to who you do business with?
*Are you now targeting a specific industry or demographics that you weren’t six months ago?
*What are you doing that’s bringing your most money?
*What are you doing that is not bringing in money?
*Have the buying patterns of your customers changed?
*Are there any business trends that are affecting your business?
*Is the local business economy affecting your business?
*Have you done a recent survey to find out who your competition is?
*Have your surveyed your customers recently to find out their needs?
*Have the goals for your business changed?
By answering all these questions you will have a current market analysis of your customers and be better prepared to meet their needs.
How Does Your Target Audience Buy?
That may seem like such a basic question, but the answer can make or break a business on the Internet.
For example, do you accept credit cards on your Web site? Someone who sells a service such as a consultant or a business coach may feel that there is no need to accept credit cards through their Web site because they are not selling any product. However, you could be wrong if credit cards are the way your clients buy. Maybe they would prefer to just go to your Web site to make their payments rather than taking the time to send you a check.
What if your customers are a little nervous about using their credit cards on the Internet, have you considered offering a PayPal payment system? For a small business, PayPal is a very cost effective way to collect money online without going through the cost of setting up a merchant account and paying its monthly fees. You can make it easy for people to give you money when you know how they buy. Now let’s look at your Web site itself.
Make It Easy For Them to Buy
It doesn’t matter whether you are selling a product or a service, people need and want information to help them in their buying decision. The easier you make it for them to make that buying decision, the more likely you will be the one who gets the sale.
Right now I’m working on a Web site for a small online business that has plenty of competition for the products it is selling. However, when I reviewed the online competition it became very clear that none of the sites did a good job of organizing the information so that the consumer could easily make an informed decision. Some of the sites had good information, but it was so scattered throughout the Web site that the visitor had to really look to find the information.
After talking with the owner and identifying the demographics and buying habits of the target audience, I completely reorganized and rewrote the content to meet the needs of the buyers. The content was rewritten to specifically appeal to an audience of women ages 35 plus. We grabbed that niche market to stand apart from the other online competitors who were trying to appeal to everyone.
From a navigation viewpoint, I changed things to make it easier for a visitor to buy the products. Instead of three to four clicks to make a sale, a visitor only has one or two clicks to buy a product.
As soon as this Web site goes live with the changes, this online business is going to be racking up the sales because we took the time to analyze the target audience and how the target audience buys. You can do the same thing with your Web site.
Make sure your site’s information is timely, interesting, and reflects the changes in your business in the last six months. Think like your customer, make it easy for them to buy and you’ll never go wrong!
Michelle Howe, MBA, is an expert
in online copywriting. Visit her Web site at http://www.InternetWordMagic.com
for a FREE audio download of “Pay-Per-Click Success:
Attract More Customers in 30 Days or Less” and FREE
report, “The Five-Step Plan to Article Success.”
Do I Need A Logo?
So is a logo important to the success of a business? Do you remember those long road trips with mom and dad when you were a kid? You get to a new city and its supper time. What’s the first thing you look for? That’s right the golden arches. If those arches aren’t a some familiar to you, then all of would have eaten in a lot of little Diners instead of sinking our teeth in that two whole beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun.
Let’s define logo: A company or product identifier – for example, a representation of a company’s initials or a drawing that is the exclusive property of that company. In publishing usage, a virtual equivalent to the trademark.
Your Logo symbolizes the essence of your site. More importantly, it will define your
visitor’s initial perception of your site. Your logo if attractive, clean, and simple will create an appearance that subconsciously tells visitors that you are professional in the way you do things and it is a good way to start solving the solution to the problem that she is seeking.
But if you overdo it with a barrage of colors and special effects, your visitor will cringe at the circus-type presentation. And, if she doesn’t leave right away, she’ll proceed with a cautious and fairly critical eye. This means that her defense wall is up and you are unlikely to get a sale or referral.
The old saying that mom use to tell you every time you were going out for a job interview “you never get a second chance to make a good first impression.” has never been more true in the world of online marketing. Your logo is a giant initial step in the right or very often (because of hot dogging) wrong direction to success. Please resist the urge to do a triple sow cow when you can do much better with a double lox. Consider your Logo as your outside business sign on the “streets” of the Web. It needs to catch your visitors’ eyes and draw them into your site.
Your main goal with the logo is to attract them enough to want to stay to read the great content that you worked so hard to put together through keywords etc…This of course leads to the ultimate prize of you getting a click thru to your download page of affiliate partner’s site.
Last point is to make sure the Logo fits the overall theme of your site, and the mood that you want to create in your visitors minds.
David McLauchlan has this outstanding e-book titled “Article Cash Creator”
This ebook is making a lot of people very rich
http://www.article-cash-creator.com/
Website Seduction – Love At First Sight
Think of the people who visit your site as blind dates. When you open the door, your blind date usually knows whether they are attracted to you within the first minute. How do they know? Easy. By how you look, what you say, and how you treat them. If you open the door wearing the same clothes you wore in 1987, say, “Wow, from my friend’s description, I thought you would be a lot better looking,” and sneeze in your dates face, not only will you never get a second date, your date will run for his/her life.
The same rules apply to your website. When people do a search for something they want to buy, they usually have many sites to choose from. If yours does not impress them right off the bat, it takes about five seconds for them to find another that does show them what they want to see. There are plenty of other fish in the sea. You are just one among many.
So what do people want to see, you ask? There are 3 standards of website excellence, and they are the same standards you would use to judge your blind date:
1. How it looks: If I visit two different websites with the purpose of buying something, and those two websites sold the exact same product at the exact same price, I would buy from the site that looked better–the one whose design made me think, “Wow, these guys must be making good money if they can afford to hire a good graphic designer.” The more money I think the business makes, the more I will identify them with value and professionalism.
The bottom line is, you need to make web design a priority. There are plenty of people out there who have graphic designer friends willing to design their website for next to nothing. Those people have the advantage because, even if they aren’t the superior business, visitors will perceive them to be superior.
If you don’t have any connections with graphic designers willing to do you a favor, see if you can find a starving artist willing to design the layout of your site. If anyone has an eye for aesthetics and is willing to work cheap, it’s a starving artist. Once you know what your site should look like, either you or a web designer can bring the artist’s vision to life.
Take the time to design something that represents your business or product well. Don’t just throw up a website with gaudy wallpaper, out of focus pictures and graphics placed at random. Remember that first moment when you open the door to a blind date. Remember how much appearances count for in this world.
2. What you say: You want the person who visits your site to know instantly what you’re selling and why they should buy from you. Visual representation has a lot to do with this, but you need to watch what you say as well. You must be clear, concise and focused. Don’t make the visitor decipher a cryptic headline full of spelling and grammar errors. Include headlines that shout to the reader exactly what you want them to hear.
Go over your copy a hundred times if you must, or have a proofreader edit your copy. You must be sure that a potential customer won’t get lost in a stream of consciousness narrative about your product or company, and come out saying, “What was that all about?”
Above all, think carefully about the colors you use for your font. Make sure there is plenty of contrast between the background and the font color. Never put a yellow font on an orange background. Also, be careful with white fonts on black backgrounds. If the letters are large, they will be easy enough to read, but if they are 14 point or smaller, your visitor won’t even bother with the copy. No matter what colors you use, always make your font large enough. If people have to squint to read your copy, it is too small.
3. How you treat them–It is socially acceptable for a woman to keep her date waiting, letting him know that she doesn’t consider him a priority. However, it is not acceptable for your site to keep a visitor waiting. If your site takes too long to load, the visitor will simply find another site.
Do what you can to ensure that your site will download quickly. One easy thing to remember is that, if you have too much content on a page, it’s going to take a long time to load. Also, if you are on a free server, and you are sharing a port with others, your loading time will be lengthy. More specifically, if you have images that are uncompressed, they could be at 70k or 80k, as opposed to compressed images that look almost identical and load at a preferable rate of 5k or 10k.
Sam Serio is a Marketer and writer. For more on jewelry and gemstones,we invite you to visit http://www.morninglightjewelry.com to get your FREE copy of “How To Buy Jewelry And Gemstones Without Being Ripped Off.” Informative articles, comparison shopping, rare book excerpts, & link directory.
How To Use Visual Impact To Sell Your Site
In creating a website designed to sell a product or service, there exist two vitally important, and mutually dependent factors that will either serve to make, or break, your sales pitch. The first of these, as you probably know, is your copywriting skill. Without professional, persuasive copy, your project simply won’t get an inch off the ground.
But while copy is the number one ingredient to a successful sales website, the second factor: the aesthetic factor, runs a close second. Simply put, if you have compelling copy and an ugly or visually distracting website, your whole business is going to suffer, and suffer big time! It stands to reason that the best option for you and your online business, is to harmonize the copy into the visual design so one supports the other, and vice versa. Some key pointers are provided here to assist you in doing just that.
We are going to be looking at three essential visual features of web page design for your sales letters: 1. Use of color, 2. Choice of font, and 3. Layout.
1. Use of color
Be sure to take into account effective use of color while designing your website. This rates as highly important because people subconsciously relate different emotions to different colors. We don’t use phrases such as ‘to see red’ without good reason.
But the bottom line is this: you really can make your product or service more appealing by making a careful choice when it comes to color combinations on your sales site. Following you will find a basic guide:
Black and white looks very business like and exudes authority (however it can be hard to read if your site uses a lot of text, so do consider this factor too.)
Blue inspires trust and confidence.
Neutral shades such as browns and greens tend to put people at ease and make them feel more comfortable.
Reds can be highly effective for drawing attention to headings and other areas of your website you wish to make stand out and trigger action. However, they also can trigger subconscious warning messages, so be careful how you use them. Examine the most successful marketers websites, and see how and where they use red, as an example to follow.
A final point on the subject of color: Don’t make the pages hard or even impossible to read by using a dark coloured font on a dark background, or bright coloured font on light
background. You would be surprised how many designers do this, oblivious to the detriment it is having on their overall web-marketing success.
2. Choice of font
Resist the temptation to use that fancy new font you just downloaded because it will not necessarily be installed on everyone else’s computers. Putting-non standard fonts on your web page doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone will be able to see them. Their browsers will revert to a standard font, already installed, which can ruin your layout making your site, and consequently, your service or product, look instantly unprofessional and third-rate. Away clicks your potential customer, never to return!
The rule here is simple: Stick with the standard fonts that everybody already has such Arial, Courier or Times New Roman. Georgia has also become a popular choice on websites in recent months. However, if you want a fool-proof solution, use Verdana because it was specifically designed by Microsoft to be read via the computer screen comfortably. A final point on fonts: Remember to set the font size so it can be read easily on different monitors.
3. Layout
The final component we will look at here is a feature of layout – page width. In a nutshell, don’t make your visitor scroll left to right to read your page, because he or she will tire of it very quickly and leave! It smacks of amateurish design and probably worse, lack of sensitivity to the needs of the visitor. Avoid this by setting the page width to a maximum of 600 pixels, and you should have nothing to worry about.
Incorporate these features into your web design and you will be off to a good start, avoiding three of the basic errors that scream, ‘Amateur!’ on so many sites on the Web, and that drive visitors away before they even look at what you have to offer
Setting up a sales website can be a daunting task, especially for the beginner. For more information on how you can easily set up a highly professional and effective mini-site, visit http://www.minisitemadeeasy.com
Welcome To Fantofa Articles Directory
Welcome To Fantofa Articles Directory