3 Signs of a Successful Web Site
When was the last time you visited the web site for Boeing or Comcast? When you got to the home page, most likely the first thing that came to mind was “Great, Im here, now where can I find what I need?”
Now think of a time when you visited a web site that you felt was inconsequential. Maybe it looked like a million sites you’ve seen before, was obviously done with shortcuts, or just plain looked like it was done by a grade-schooler. I’ll bet when you saw that site you weren’t thinking “sign me up,” but rather “is this company really in business?”
Trust is the key to having an effective web site on the Internet. If a caller to your site doubts your integrity, most likely they will exit your site and will never return. I would like to point out a few of the essential ingredients to forging that belief and developing an effective web site.
Number one is to make sure that your web site clearly identifies you as a real company run by real people. Visitors to your web site must know from the first moment they arrive how your company stands out from all the others out there. There are numerous ways to achieve that goal. You should make sure your text is well written and speaks to your visitor, and you can get unusual graphics to enhance that message. The core component is to never lose site (and dont let your web designer lose site) of who your company is, and how you want to present that to your visitors.
Next, your web site should communicate at once that you have a record of performance in your field. One technique is to use compelling testimonials and use great copy writing to back them up. Don’t bury your achievements in the far reaches of your web site, ensure they are prominently shown on each page for the visitors to see.
Lastly, you must convey through your web site that you can resolve your customer’s troubles. Site visitors have plenty to do and would be thrilled if you could offer them a solution to their problem and they could stop hunting for one. Your effective, believable web site is your advertisement to make that happen.
Three Keys to Achieving an Effective Web Site
Have you visited Amazon.com or Comcast.com lately? What was the first thing that came to mind when you arrived. Most likely, it was something like: “Terrific, now that Im here, lets get to what I need.”
Now think of a time when you visited a web site that you felt was inconsequential. Maybe it looked like a million sites you’ve seen before, was obviously done with shortcuts, or just plain looked like it was done by a grade-schooler. I’ll bet when you saw that site you weren’t thinking “sign me up,” but rather “is this company really in business?”
Having a successful web site on the Internet has everything to do with trust. If your site visitor does not believe in you right off the bat, youre likely to lose that visitor forever. Here are some of the key elements to building that trust and creating a successful web site.
The first key component is that your web site must communicate that you are a real company. Your visitors need to know immediately from your web site that your company stands out from the pack and that there are real people behind the site. There are a number of techniques you can use to meet that goal, including excellent copywriting and compelling graphics and layout. The critical thing is to ensure that you and your web designer are always working toward your vision of what your company stands for and how you want the world to find it out.
Additionally, your site should tell visitors right away that you are well respected and successful in your field. Use effective copy writing and great testimonials to back it up. Don’t be shy and bury your praises far within your site. Instead, display them clearly on every page so that your visitors will see them at once.
And, finally, it is critical that your web site reveals that you have the solutions your site visitors needs to resolve their problems. They are busy people ad dont want to spend the day surfing the web to find the answer to their predicament. If your site is credible and provides that solution, they will stop looking and take you up on your offer.
Top Reasons to Use Review Site Templates
Review sites are fast gaining popularity today. Both online and offline marketing use review sites to their advantage. Thus, it is no wonder why the review site trend is making its way up to the marketing ladder.
Basically a review site is a site where opinions of consumers are posted about certain products or services to benefit both people and businesses. The posts in a review site can be written by professional writers or by the average consumers. Epinion.com and Amazon.com are examples of the first review site models.
Before, review sites placed a premium on reviewers’ anonymity and even had a law under the Communications Decency Act which protected them from any liability caused by their comments. In the recent years however, review sites started to encourage their readers to use their real names when writing reviews. Some took it to the extent of posting their photos beside their names, which made the review more credible.
A review site can earn income in many ways. Advertising tops the list. And following close behind are paid enhanced listings, comparison shopping, and paid links.
Studies show that people visit review sites frequently because they want to know what others have to say about a certain product or service they are eyeing. A recommendation from another person who have used the said product or service weighs a lot in the decision-making of the buyer. This is how review sites work in the charm.
A business owner can benefit from review sites such that favorable ratings can increase sales and build client confidence. Internet marketers, on the other hand, can use a review site to their advantage by getting a higher conversion ratio in exchange for honest reviews. For the internet marketer, a well-designed review site means more commissions!
One problem that most affiliate marketer or business owner faces when designing a review site is how the actual site looks. For the site to do its job, it must look professional. And there’s no other way to achieve this with the least cost than by using a ready-made review site template. Using a ready-made template is very easy and you can even set-up one under a few minutes. It also features varying color schemes so you can get one for each of your niche.
Don’t be confused with which review site template to choose. Just visit websites which review ready-made templates and see how a particular template is rated for functionality, conversion factor, and ease of use.
Organic SEO — How Dense Are You?
Relax, I’m not questioning your brainpower. When it comes to organic SEO ‘How dense are you’ isn’t an insult, it’s a it’s a crucial measurement of how effective your site will be in search. There are lots of SEO copywriting services will insert your keywords or keyword phrases into the copy on your web site, and then bill you handsomely for organic SEO optimization. Jump ahead a few months, and there you are holding a site with no web lift – and your so-called SEO copywriting service is strangely absent.
Keyword density is half science and half art. It means incorporating not only the most effective keywords into your web pages, but at the most effective ratio of static content to new content. Every page of every website is different. There are formulas, but they change depending on the word count in your content, tags and meta tags.
An SEO guru I know likes to say that SEO density is a range. Still, we need to fall into that range. Too few keywords and you’ve missed the mark, wasted your money, and wasted time.
Having too many keywords may even be worse. You get pinged by Google indexing for what they call ‘keyword stuffing’. That can set your organic SEO effortsback a long way.
Whether your site is plagued by too few keywords or too many, the trouble with a lot of SEO copywriting is that when you finally find out it’s not working, you’ve lost months of valuable time. You lose traffic to your site, new customers and the sales that go with them.
There are lots of easy to use tools for measuring the density of the keywords on each page of your site. A great place to start is with the SEO Quake plug-in for Firefox.
Most organic SEO copywriting services rely on the more logical left side of their brain. A few rebels lean more on their right brain, the creative side. I’d bet my Organic SEO budget on the creative right-brained thinkers any day – the best will put effective keywords into content that jumps off the page, gets your clients attention and sells. But you’d better make sure they know their density.
Which brings me around to my original question: how dense are you? Does your website have the best length of content – with the best keywords for your service or product – inserted at a density level that gives you the page rank you’re looking for? If not — how dense are you?
Web Design Best Practices
For approximately the last eight years I have been doing web design work for various companies, organizations, people, and non-profits. Through the years I?ve learned many lessons and have become better by analyzing my past work and determining areas where I can improve not only my designs but also my interactions with clients. What I?d like to share with you today are a few best practices that I learned the hard way. Hopefully by you reading these, you will be cognizant of them and thus not have to learn them the hard way.
The first thing I would highly recommend is to ask your client to provide you with a list of 3 to 4 sites in their industry that they love. Next, you?ll want them to annotate next to each site what they love about it. Make them describe why they love it. You aren?t going to copy these web site designs, but it does help you get a good idea of what your client does and does not like. Remember, you?re always trying to please the client first, so whether you like it or not almost doesn?t matter. By getting this list from them you are helping yourself by understanding your client?s tastes.
To go along with the list of sites that they love, you?ll also want to get a list from them of sites that they don?t like that are also in their industry. Again, you?ll want an explanation of why they do not like the sites. This will help you in avoiding design elements that they do not like. This is just as important as the list of sites that they love. Ensuring that you design something that leaves out elements that they hate is important.
The next item to focus on is navigation. Navigation is particularly important because it will drive how you lay out the site. You?ll want to determine some important aspects such as how many items are on the main level of navigation, if they need drop down or pop out menus, and if they need any hot buttons. It?s important to establish the navigation early and have your client commit. Knowing this will help you decide whether to put the navigation across the top or in a sidebar.
These are just a few tips for you to think about. They certainly are not things that I was thinking about when I first started out as a designer. Now, they are some of the first things that I think about and talk to the client about. These few simple things have drastically reduced the number of revisions I?ve had to do because I already have a good idea of the client?s likes and dislikes.
