Posts Tagged internet marketing
3 Proven Techniques For Improving Your Website’s Usability
Posted by rians in General Interest on August 19th, 2010
The number one factor that makes or breaks your web site is whether or not men and women can use it. This can be generally referred to as your website’s usability. It seems basic: if people can’t do what you need them to complete (purchase things, subscribe to things, request a call, etc.), they won’t do it. Yet, since internet sites are so easy to change, several firms just generate web sites, world wide web applications, e-newsletters, etc., and hope that the changes will aid their company. If you would probably prefer to enjoy an important total as well as in depth technique with regards to web design in that case , you will want to absolutely be sure to take the actual moment to be able to have a look at my personal Never Fail List building Bonus system when considering further info.
What further confuses this really is typically a lack of clear insight into your website’s performance. For example, how nicely does your blog convert guests into buyers? What are the key decisions that website visitors should make on your website? Do you give them the facts and tools needed for making those people decisions?
This article will assist you focus on three proven approaches for improving your website’s performance: website analytics, usability diagnostic tests, and personas. Exactly how you choose to implement these approaches is certainly as much as you. Nevertheless, 1 point is guaranteed: all 3 methods enable you to get closer to the individuals who pay a visit to your website: their needs, their desires, and their behaviors. This info is critical in the event you plan to optimize your website’s usability to attain your objectives.
1. Measure Progress with Website Analytics
Many businesses mistakenly install a standard “website statistics” program and only get a group of regular reports. Commonly, these reports do extremely little to enable you to judge the true effectiveness of your website.
Would like to get a jumpstart on making your personal web site analytics? Just stick to these 3 basic actions:
1. Begin while using end in mind – begin with your goals. Define your site marketing and advertising technique aims (i.e. “Increase the number of qualified prospects coming from web search engines”), and what you need your blog website visitors to accomplish to reach those people objectives (i.e. “See our listing inside top 10 in Google and click on it)
2. Get in touch with your visitors’ behavior on your blog. Track how numerous unique website visitors you receive, and how long they stay on your web site (including how many pages they view). You choose all of these numbers to be going up, because that means you are receiving more visitors who are staying about the site longer. You’re maximizing the odds that they will do what you need them to do.
3. Develop your conversion rate. Track how a lot of website visitors do the key action you desire them to perform and compare this quantity to your total site visitors. This helps you determine your conversion rate. As an example, if 15 out of 100 guests requested a lot more details from you (and that is one of one’s objectives), then your conversion rate for facts requests is 15%.
Once you’ve these crucial internet site analytics in place, you are able to start to evolve your tracking and appear for trends to optimize for. Here are two examples:
• Let’s say you notice higher conversion rates on weekends. Then you might desire to spend much more on on the internet advertising on weekends and cut down your spending through the week.
• Let’s say you would like a lot more website visitors and embark on a search engine optimization project to enhance your rankings. Then you can track the boost or decrease in visitor flow from your project’s activities.
Regardless of what you want to achieve, obtaining to web site usability initial starts with solid internet site analytics. Why? Simply because web page analytics force you to identify those people parts that matter most, and identify how nicely or poorly that you are performing in them. Once you know this, you happen to be armed with essential information that may assist you to concentrate your efforts and figure out where points like usability testing can support probably the most.
2. Leverage Usability Testing
Usability tests is in which you carry men and women who would use your site, and really watch them applying it. Usually, you ask the individual to do issues for the web page, and you watch either around their shoulder, behind a one-way mirror, or via a second computer system where by it is possible to see what’s being recorded within the test out personal computer.
It’s amazing how several factors it is possible to make much better on your website just by watching persons use it. Yet, as you receive into it, you may find that hiring a usability expert for a testing project could be unnecessarily costly. Usability professionals are helpful, considering that they typically have substantial expertise in planning and conducting tests, as properly as interpreting test outcomes. Even so, usability testing does not have being fancy or formal: folks are going to give you their opinion whether or not you’re sitting in a research firm or at Starbucks. So be careful when hiring a specialist that looks to produce the diagnostic tests course of action complicated or costly. When a person does this, it is commonly only for their personal financial gain.
To successfully conduct a usability test, just stick to these 5 actions:
1. Define your aims. Begin while using the end in thoughts. What do you want to accomplish with this usability analyze? Do you’ve got particular places of your internet site that you need to increase? If so, this is an excellent method to get ideas on how to generate those people parts better. Are you preparing on rolling out a new area of your internet site? A usability check is a fantastic approach to do a “trial run” ahead of the huge launch.
2. Recruit the participants. This will bring probably the most time, and may be one of the most frustrating portion in the test method. You’ve to find men and women to participate (which might be tough, particularly when you should match distinct demographic profiles), and then you have to schedule them. Then, some will cancel, some won’t show, and some will be wonderful analyze participants. The very best solution to get a feel for the individual is usually to talk to them directly far more than the moment above the phone. TIP: Make sure to call the individual the day from the analyze to remind them about it.
3. Script the test. You’ll want to have an intro script, the test script, plus a post-test survey. The intro script serves as a checklist of items you want to become positive to cover with the man or woman just before you begin the examine. TIP: Throughout the element, try to concentrate on producing the individual really feel comfortable giving their opinion, and reiterate that any feedback is good feedback. The next component, the analyze script, is a checklist with the actual things you choose the individual to do. That is followed by the post-test survey, which permits you to ask the individual questions, and later compare those people answers to what they said throughout the test.
4. Conduct the analyze. This really is the fun component! You sit down with the man or woman, and walk them through the test scenario. Some tests advantage from close “hand holding,” although others benefit from letting the individual do whatever they believe is appropriate. It totally depends for the goals, and they facts you would like to collect. In either case, the best issue to try and do is always to record both the individual and what they do around the computer. TIP: Make sure you compensate the individual for their time.
5. Report the final results. The greatest method to report the final results is two-fold: Earliest, do a quick, one-page or much less recap of each session right away after the examine. That way, the information is still fresh inside your thoughts. TIP: Include a picture with the user within your recap, considering that it will aid make that person’s feedback “come alive.” Subsequent, bring the facts collected throughout tests, and create 1 to 4 “personas” – user profiles that explain the kind of individual, what they need to have from the internet site, what concerns they encounter frequently about the website, and what might be changed to support them. This will assist you to explain the results to other people, and also you can reuse these personas later when you are adding or updating regions of your blog. Gain knowledge of recommendations on how Bill McRea increases his own web revenue making use of his unique approaches hence seriously charging his email’s opt-in list establishing combined with netmail merchandising.. Uncover even more around his personal precise tactics simply by reading my own Never fail List building Review regarding a lot more specifics.
How many folks need to I test?
For most usability tests, it is possible to learn the maximum amount by only diagnostic tests ten men and women. As well numerous far more and you’ll start off to see as well a lot of recurring patterns. When you go less than ten, you might miss things or not see enough of a pattern.
3. Create Personas
Let’s face it – no a single reads a 20-page usability report from cover to cover. It just doesn’t happen. Normally, important decision makers ask for “recap” presentations, and then “latch on” to a single or two critical points from the study, quoting that point around and around again.
This presents a great opportunity: why not give individuals key choice makers something memorable? Enter personas.
Personas are a approach to get everybody involved thinking about the actual persons who pay a visit to your web site.
What Personas are:
- Fake men and women based on genuine info
- A practical tool to maintain concentrate in your target buyers
- A way to generate your data come alive and be much more memorable
What Personas are not:
Every single possible customer profile
“Made up”; they’re created from actual information, like usability examine outcomes
A replacement for existing approaches we design and build our web site
Reporting user tests as personas is an incredible way to:
1. Get essential decision makers on board while using the persona concept
2. Communicate internet internet site concerns from the context from the men and women basically using your site
Developing personas from usability diagnostic tests info is time-consuming, but very valuable. Just appear across the information for essential trends: what typical roles, objectives, and actions do you see? Can you group the feedback along people points? You will swiftly start off to evolve a handful of personas which may be refined more than time. Add a name and a few pictures of that “person” and you will be on your method to making a a lot more user-focused internet site experience.
Once again, exactly how you select to implement these strategies is definitely up to you. Even smaller actions can make a massive impact. You do not have to possess super-sophisticated web site analytics, check your website with 100 users, or develop very detailed personas. Every step you carry in these three places, no matter how major or how small, will assist you to get much more from your internet site, and your blog marketing strategy. If you could like increased facts on web design marketing and advertising procedures and internet marketing strategy please browse through my blog.
3 Traits Of Quality Seo Web Design
Posted by rians in General Interest on March 31st, 2010
When it comes to web design, there are so amazing designers out there. Most web designers are very creative and have a strong artistic background.They are able to use their artistic talents to create layouts that are guaranteed to catch the eye of your visitors. Unfortunately, there is one major thing that most web designers are missing. The majority of web designers are not familiar with the concepts and implementation of search engine optimization techniques.Even if a web designer has at least some basic knowledge of SEO, the majority do not worry about implementing search engine optimization strategies into their designs.While this may seem like a trivial detail, it can actually be the root of some major problems.No matter how attractive your web site is, if it is not indexed by the major search engines, the traffic it receives is going to be minimal.Once you realize this is happening, you are going to have to hire someone with SEO knowledge to fix your layout. Therefore, you may end up paying double for something that should have been done the first time around. Whether you are a web designer or someone getting ready to hire a web designer, here are three traits of quality SEO web design:
Usability: As a general rule of thumb, if the design of a web site makes it easy for your human visitors to navigate, it will also be relatively easy for search engine robots to access, crawl and index your web site. Making your site user (and search engine) friendly includes minimizing (or completely eliminating) things such as Flash, Javascript navigation and layouts designed with tables. By designing with usability in mind, you can be sure that your visitors and the search engines will be happy with your web site.Avoid Being Sneaky: Because web designers are generally very creative people, they like to push the envelope when it comes to designing web sites. Although this mentality can result in some truly amazing web layouts, it can also cause problems if taken too far. When creating a web site layout, it is important to keep the web master guidelines of search engines like Google in mind. Incorporating things like hidden text into your designs is a sure way to get penalized (or de-indexed) by search engines.
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A Few IM Tips To Get High SE Rankings
Posted by rians in General Interest on November 26th, 2009
If you’re building a new site, or merely want to enhance the natural search rankings of an existing website, there are some internet marketing techniques you need to grasp – particularly those that can offer a significant boost to your rankings.
Marketing mavericks begin with Google
I’ve seen assorted stats, but one thing is clear, Google is the predominant player of search – commanding roughly 60% of all search site traffic. Ask any marketing professional where he or she would spend their SEO efforts and they will undoubtedly say’Google’. Do what you can to rank well on Google. As a consequence, you will get results on other search engines as well . If you are an established business, probabilities are that your web site has been up for at least a year. Google likes to see lastingness and responsibility. If you intend to be around for some time, register your domain for three years and show Google that you’re in business to remain.
Optimize your home page for a Keyword Phrase
You have to use the best keywords if you would like your website to pop up at the apex of any search result list. This can be hard because most single keywords are very competitive. What should be the solution? Another online marketing secret is to employ a keyword phrase, not just a individual keyword. Additionally, you wish to find a keyword phrase that isn’t very competitive but generates a good level of traffic on a daily and monthly basis. To do so, pursue these easy steps :
Visit the Google keyword search tool. This specific tool provides accurate info on how many people typed in a particular keyword phrase for the previous month. Type in your keyword and observe other keyword proposals. Choose some of the keyword phrases to
judge. The larger number of folk searching on a keyword phrase generally signifies that it’ll be tougher for you to get top ranking for that phrase. A good number to aim for, re monthly keyword phrase searches, is around one thousand – two thousand a month. Type in Google the keyword phrase you have selected. After entering each, pay attention to the total number of results which appears in the upper right after your search. This is the quantity of internet pages that are associated with this keyword phrase. You want to find the keyword phrase that commands the highest amount of monthly searches ( step two above ) and the lesser number of
competitors.
On-page Optimization
If you are intend to rank high for any keyword phrase, you need to manage your so named on page optimization. Particularly, your use of H1 and H2 tags, page title, alt pictures, bold text, italicized text, underlined text, and keyword proximity. The internet promoting secret here is to repeat your competitors and do things a touch better. In order to achieve that, type in your keyword phrase in Google and visit the top 5 sites ranked
individually. Select ‘view source’ on the View tab in the Net browser window you are using for every site and see what your hardest competition has done. Did they insert the keyword phrase in their page title? Does the keyword appear in bold text? Italicized text? Underlined? Does the keyword phrase appear in the 1st 25 words on the page? How about the last 25 words? You’ll need to replicate what the top competitors for that keyword phrase have done and enhance on it. You do not want a selling expert to show you a way to do what
I have just described, simply imitate the best and evaluate each point noted. Design your website to appeal to Google and other key search engines.
Off - Page Optimization
The final online marketing tip you must understand is the importance of off-page optimization. This refers to the number of back links pointing to your website, the PR rank ( stands for Page Rank ) of the websites linking to you, and the anchor text of the link. There are some simple things you can do to begin developing an assertive link campaign targeting those sites that link to your competitors – for the keyword phrase you have chosen. The best recommendation I can provide you with however is to analyze SEO and link building software on the internet. A very good source on this I would point is Biggest Firesale 2. This will allow you to make the best of your time and target the best sites to boost your link renown.
Building your link recognition is an arduous task and in my judgment troublesome. I’ve certainly learned over the previous couple of years that your efficacy in this area is finally decided by the tools you use and effort you exert.
Take my word for it, you do not want to build your links by hand you will never get in front – so research options online. You have some pointers on my internet sites. Once you begin developing links, you will need to monitor them on a continual basis.
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Affiliate KungFu
How To Improve Your Website To Increase Your Customers?
Posted by rians in General Interest on November 14th, 2009
If you’ve been to my site before, you might’ve noticed that I’ve changed things around a bit there. I firmly believe that every business needs to continually change in order to grow and as it’s my aim to grow my business, I’ve redesigned my blog so that I can bring information to my readers in an eye-friendly format and in a way that promotes my own online brand.
I thought this might be a good opportunity to remind you that change can be good and can open the doors for you to allow real growth. If you’re in the world of online business, having the right set up and the right knowledge can make a vast difference to your level of success.
There’s a saying that says, “if it’s not broke, then don’t fix it.” But another important saying is, “The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.” A really important aspect of online business success is to analyse your current results.
If you think they could be better, a few tweaks might help. You might not want to do a total overhaul like I did but even making a few tweaks could make a big difference in your conversion rate from visitors to customers.
What Changes Can Help?
Here are a few helpful tips for you to get more results out of your online site:
· Add social media buttons so people will share your site with others (Psst…Don’t hesitate to share this post with your friends! 
· Make sure your site is easy to navigate. Can you get to the home page from every page on your site? Does every site offer a clear way to learn more or to buy something?
· Put important and eye-catching information above the fold. Staying above the fold on the website equates to ensuring that the section of the screen that’s visible to visitors has important info. Grab their attention before they have to scroll and you’ll have more of a chance of them doing the actual scrolling to get to your “buy now” button.
· Analyse your web analytics regularly so you can see what is working and investigate things that may be preventing you from making money. There are loads of web analytics tools available for free to help you check various things like: keywords, links, bounce rate, and more.
Don’t forget to check your site on a regular basis to see if it’s time to make a change or if a recent tweak is improving your success.
How To Optimize Your Landing Page Successfully
Posted by rians in General Interest on November 13th, 2009
It’s important to pre-sell your affiliate product beforehand and you can do this by optimizing your landing page. This is why your website design is extremely important. Your landing page must not have anything that will distract your visitors, while they are reading your content. You must lead them to do one thing only and that is to click on your affiliate link. Below are some guidelines that you can use to fully optimize and improve your landing page.
Click Here To Find Out How To Increase Landing Page Conversion Rate
Relevant Content
Relevancy is important. Your landing page must be able to match the keyword and products to your target audiences. This is because relevant content draws in more relevant visitors and they are more likely to purchase from you. You must make sure that your content is related to the product that you are promoting. For instant, when you are promoting a weight loss product, the content of your webpage must be weight loss related, it must be something like “cause of obesity” or “danger of being overweight”. Don’t sell a beauty product on electronics webpage. This is a major mistake make my many affiliates.
Be Specific
It’s very important that the minute a visitor landed on your landing page, he must be able to tell what it’s all about. If your site is so unclear that your visitor has to guess, then your landing page has failed the optimization test. Always keeps your content clear and direct. If your visitor don’t knows what your webpage is all about, he will leave almost immediately.
Keep Your Headline Strong
The most important part of your landing page is your headline. It will determines whether your audiences will stay and read more or turn around and goes away. Stir your reader’s emotion with your headline and entice them in to read more. Focused on your product’s major benefits, and make it clear and easy to understand.
Show Them The Benefits
Talking about the benefits of your product is an important factor to successful landing page optimization. First, figure out all the benefits and list out the major ones. Write them in such a way that they appeals to the readers’ emotions, such as how their lives will improve when they start using the product. If your visitors knows what benefits they get from the product, they are more willing to buy from you.
There is a difference between benefits and features, you must not confuse them. Features are about what the product does and benefits are the things that your client gets when he use your product. Always talk about the benefits, as they have bigger impact and help convert sales better, compare to features.
Make Your Site Professional
People will be wary if your site looks sloppy. Therefore, it is important to win your visitor’s trust by having a clean and professional looking landing page. Here is a basic guide to making your website look professional:
- Fonts must be Verdana and Arial, and sizes from 10 to 14
- Background must be bright and text must be dark
- Keep the most 3 columns in your web page
- All links must be in standard blue text
- Your landing page must have the images of your product
- Make sure the content is grammatically correct and error free
There are thousands of affiliate landing pages, but most of them are poorly optimized. This is why they don’t make money and many affiliates still wonder why. And then they think that affiliate marketing is a scam, so they quit and go do something else. Don’t let this stop you. Just optimize your landing page and dramatically increase your sales by following the advices above.
Read More About How To Increase Landing Page Conversion Rate
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Making Use Of Seasonal Events To Convert More Sales With Your Website
Posted by rians in Uncategorized on October 26th, 2009
It may sound painfully obvious, but not everyone is making use of it. That’s right, seasonal events such as Christmas, which is just around the corner, by their very nature generate a lot of excitement in people and any savvy web marketer will make use of these events to boost sales from their website.
It is reported that during the months of November, but especially December each year, retail business goes up by between 50 and 75%! That means that in these two months, people buy 50 to 75% more retail goods and by that I don’t mean food and household necessities. This spending is purely on things such as gifts and festive food. The interesting thing is that for some reason, people are just in a more giving mood during this time of year and they will spend money more easily on things that they would never have considered buying throughout the year.
They are also more keen on spending money on things they want, but would not have had the heart to buy earlier in the year. Knowing this is like gold to any online marketer. This means that that customer that was browsing your products online all year, but just not willing to buy, is now more likely than ever to buy and you need to target him now.
While it is true that you will not necessarily know who this customer is, there are ways to make sure you target him in this time. The first and obvious way is to send him an email. Send all your customers more frequent emails during November and December, at least one a week to remind them of your great product or service, just in case they forgot how much they wanted that product.
Sweeten the deal, by offering a discount on the product. But let’s face it, if it isn’t really a discount, you won’t have much success. If you are selling a product online, chances are that your markup is substantial and that by offering a 20 to 25% discount, you will still make a substantial profit. Only, now you have the prospect in a buying mood and the discount is just what he needed to make the choice to buy.
To add some pressure, make the discount available for a short time only, so that the customer will be forced to act now. You can even offer some free bonuses if you have something to offer and if you don’t, just browse the web and the chances are that there is at least some free e-book out there that you can send your customer as a free gift.
On that point, it is Christmas after all and if you can send your list a free gift, of whatever nature, chances are that they will reciprocate by buying from you.
November and December are any online marketer’s best months for business, so step up the efforts and you will be rewarded.
Rian Schoeman
SilverFox Web Design
D.I.Y Web Design – Do You Really Need a Web Designer Anymore?
Posted by rians in General Interest on July 24th, 2009
With so many resources out there, is it really necessary to hire a web design company these days? Just think of all the great resources like WordPress, Joomla, Blogger and so may HTML editors out there that enable just about anyone to create a good-looking website.
Even children can create and upload their own websites these days. So, this brings us back to the question, do you really need the services of a professional web design company today?
The answer is yes and no, all depending on what you are striving to achieve with your website. If the intention is just to have a website where you can upload images of yourself or share some information about yourself, you could very well just create a Facebook profile or set up a Squidoo lens. Tell you friends about it in an email and soon you will even have some traffic to your website.
But this is if you are setting up a website just for fun. There is another side to web design, one that is much more serious and that is web design for business purposes. While these same tools can be used to set up a business website, chances are your business website has been created to serve as a tool to either promote your business or tell your customers more about the business.
This is where things get serious. Not only do you want to promote your business, but you want to do it right. That is not to mention all the things you may want your website to do, such as gather email addresses and even have e-commerce capabilities. This is where a professional web design business comes in.
You see, a web designer is not just someone who can quickly slap together a website for you, no a web designer is so much more. So for example, any good web design company will follow a proper consultation process with their client. They will gather information about the business, the needs of the business, the type of clientele they cater for and lots of other important information.
They will then set out to do some market research on the target market of the client and look at what type of corporate image the client should strive for in their website design. This aspect alone can make or break a company’s website.
On top of that, a client would want their website to rank as well as possible in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP’s). What is the point of having a website if no one ever sees it? To achieve this, various onsite Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques need to be done and if you are really serious about promoting your business in the Search Engines, you will also need to have an offsite promotion strategy.
A professional web design company should be able to assist you with all of the above, in other words, not just the technical aspects of building the website, but also advice as to the market and how your website should look and also how to promote it, via the internet.
Then you need backup. What if something goes wrong with your website, or for some reason it is kicked off the Search Engines? Chances are that if you have built your website yourself, you may not know how to approach this project. On the other hand, your web designer has probably seen this many times before and should be able to assist you quickly and efficiently.
So, do you really need a web designer these days? The answer is simple, you do not need a website designer if you are not serious about your website, but if your website is a tool for your business and more than just a fun project, you are much better off in investing in the services of a professional web design company.
Rian Schoeman
SilverFox Web Design
Major Web Design Conference To Be Hosted By UVA
July 6, 2009 — EdUI 2009, a conference to be held Sept. 21-22 at the University of Virginia, will focus on Web design, usability and accessibility – designing Web sites so users of all abilities can effectively access online information and services.
The conference will bring together experts and innovators recognized in the fields of user interface design, usability research, accessibility, web programming, social media and instructional technology and will provide workshops and presentations as well as opportunities for participants and attendees to network.
The conference is geared to Web professionals in higher education as well as designers, developers, webmasters, managers and professionals interested in interactive design involved in creating Web sites for any institution or industry.
“The higher education market is starved for this kind of information,” John Loy said.
Loy, a U.Va. Library Web designer and information architect, began laying the groundwork for the conference after meeting EdUI 2009 keynote speaker Jared Spool at a conference in Seattle last year. Since then, he and a team of University and regional Web community members have worked to bring the conference to fruition.
“We are embracing a community model for planning this. Many in the IT and communications field are involved,” said Trey Mitchell, webmaster for the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.
Susan Teague Rector, Web application manager at Virginia Commonwealth University and a member of the planning team, is excited about the conference. “It’s a great opportunity to hear leaders in the Web community speak about what’s next on the horizon in terms of user experience, usability and Web design.”
Online learning management is also an area that will be covered during the conference. There is continuing demand for professors to adopt online tools to reach their students, Mitchell said. “Students live their lives online and teachers need to be aware of trends and student expectations.”
The team has lined up a group of speakers that are some of the “most sought-after experts in the web industry,” Loy said.
“These are the ‘rock stars’ of the Web design world,” Mitchell said.
The conference keynote speaker is Spool, a pioneer in Web site usability and founder of User Interface Engineering, a usability research organization. Spool teaches at the Tufts University Gordon Institute and is the author of “Web Usability: A Designer’s Guide.”
Other featured speakers are:
• Michael Wesch, assistant professor of cultural anthropology and digital ethnography at Kansas State University, a leader in exploring the impact of social media and digital technology on society and culture. His videos have been translated into more than 15 languages and cover technology, education, information and culture. His most popular videos, “The Machine is Using Us” and “A Vision of Students Today” are available on YouTube. He has been dubbed “the explainer” by Wired magazine and an “Emerging Explorer” by National Geographic, and has received numerous awards for his work, including a Wired magazine Rave Award and the John Culkin Award for Outstanding Praxis in Media Ecology. Wesch is a graduate of U.Va.’s College of Arts & Sciences with a major in anthropology.
• Molly Holzschlag, an advocate for Web standards. A lecturer and author, she has written more than 30 books, including “The Zen of CSS Design,” which she co-authored with Dave Shea.
• Dana Chisnell, a usability research consultant who focuses on user interface design and technical communications surrounding design issues in software, hardware, Web sites, online services, games and other applications. The founder of UsabilityWorks, Chisnell has worked with Yahoo!, Intuit, AARP, Wells Fargo, E*TRADE, Sun Microsystems and others to improve the design of their products and services. She is considered by many to be an expert in usability issues for older adults and presenting information in “plain language” that makes sense to most users, and issues related to ballot design and voting accessibility.
• Dan Rubin, the founder and principal of WebGraph and a leader in Web standards and usability. He is a contributing author of “Cascading Style Sheets: Separating Content from Presentation,” a technical reviewer for “Beginning CSS Web Development,” “The Art & Science of CSS” and “Sexy Web Design.” He is the coauthor of “Pro CSS Techniques” and “Web Standards Creativity.”
• Derek Featherstone, founder of Further Ahead, a Web development and consulting company, and a Web accessibility technical trainer and author. He consults to government agencies, educational institutions and companies in the private sector. He is lead of the Accessibility Task Force of the Web Standards Project and a member of the DOM Scripting Task Force.
“To interact with this caliber of speakers for professional development, one would need to attend a conference in a major city like Seattle or New York,” Mitchell said.
Fees for the conference are $500 for the public and $425 for U.Va. employees, who can defray the cost by using the employee educational benefit. Registration and information is available at www.eduiconf.org.
“At a time when staffs and budgets are cut back, it is a tremendous opportunity for those at U.Va. to attend this conference,” U.Va. webmaster Nancy Tramontin said. Everyone in her office plans to attend. “Under normal circumstances, staff might pay thousands of dollars to travel and attend a conference with these speakers. We are grateful to this opportunity.”
The conference is organized by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and U.Va. in partnership with User Interface Engineering.
Large or Small Website for Your Company’s New Online Business?
Posted by rians in General Interest on July 3rd, 2009
You are a new online business owner, and the last thing that you need is one more decision to make. I’m sorry, but I have one more thing for you to ponder: What should be the size of your first website?
There are two competing views on this issue and both have data to support them. Of course, if we automatically knew which was the preferred size, there wouldn’t be a choice to make.
I should stress that this topic is not related to the size that you want the business to ultimately become. Businesses that operate a number of tiny sites can grow as well as those that concentrate on one major “money site.” Neither should your decision be based upon some preconceived notion of your target market or your niche. Both small sites and large sites can succeed in any niche.
In other words, the answer to the question is not automatic, and I’ll warn you right now that I’m not going to recommend the “one magical size fits all” approach.
Small websites should be concentrated on a narrow sub-niche built around a cohesive, limited set of relatively long-tail keywords. Sites that are designed to become quite large eventually will develop most of their content in the same focused way, but they will also begin search engine optimization on the shorter, very high competition keywords at the same time.
The two approaches call for different models of long term growth, although both may begin largely concentrating upon a relatively narrow slice of the market. Businesses that begin with a large site as the eventual goal, with fully develop one small sub-niche, then gradually add new sections dedicated to other sub-niches onto their original site. Those who initially built a small site, with intention of always leaving it small, will take a “duplication of success” approach, as they gradually add more an more individual sites to their virtual empire of tiny websites. Thus with each new department in the mega-site model, there is a new set of search phrases upon which to focus. These sites are built upon what is often called the “silo” structure. As the large site grows to twenty departments or categories, the business with small sites might grow to twenty or more individual websites.
Positive cash flow can be established sooner with the small site approach. This is partly due to such a business not investing resources into those most competitive, high level keywords. In the long run however, over the course of many months or even years, the mega-sites can become competitive for the high traffic keywords and might even become recognized as an authority in the broadly based market.
I’ll point to three practical ramifications of how you decide to approach this business decision.
The first has to do with start up cost. Although you’re still beginning relatively small with the site that you plan to become large, the foundation for a larger site must be laid. That means that the site’s eventual architecture must be created and the systems put in place that will eventuall become necessary for operation. Thus, it is more expensive to begin such a site, even though you may start nearly as small as the mini-site business. Mini-sites are much less expensive to build than it is to build the foundation for a larger business site.
A second practical difference pertains to your approach to keywords. Your keyword research for a smaller site will be much more tightly focused upon the long-tail terms, especially those that show commercial intent (thus more likely to convert sooner rather than later). If you opt for the silo site, you will be splitting the focus of your keyword research. In one way, you will be imitating the search of your small site competitors by looking for those longer tails that are higher converting, but you must also identify all of the high traffic keywords so that you can begin to attract visitors who are gathering information rather than ready to make a decision to buy or sign a contract.
Issues pertaining to page rank is the third practical ramification of your large vs. small decision. Page rank is impacted by a number of variables in search engine algorithms (formulas), but one of those is the number of pages that a site has (assuming that the site has a search engine friendly linking structure). Thus, it is more difficult to achieve a high page rank than it is for a large site because of its inherent value on that variable.
So I hope I have given you ideas to chew on, even though I haven’t provided a clear cut answer to you. Perhaps, though, these ideas provide you with an inclination as to which approach you should take considering your own unique business circumstances.
Paying For Clicks – Still The Fastest Way To Instant Web Traffic
There are so many success stories you will hear about businesses making it good on the internet. The troubling thing is that for every success story, there is probably the story of a hundred failures. Many have unsuccessfully launched a business enterprise that is internet based but only a handful shall succeed.
Is this through luck? That is even more remote. It takes good business sense and a lot of help and team effort. Most importantly, it is the eagerness to succeed and the determination to learn and the willingness to invest in a lot of hard work and some money.
The Very Basic
Like Neo, traffic is “The One”. Without traffic, all your effort would just go to waste. Every business needs customers, without them you wouldn’t have anyone to sell your products to. On the internet, website traffic is like walk in customers in the real world. It is a matter of simple mathematics, the more people you get to your site, the more sales you are likely to make.
But like any business that’s in every corner building or in the mall, not everyone that goes in will buy, but the greater of number that do come in to browse your merchandise, the greater number of people that will buy your products. It is a simple and known fact.
But, how do you get traffic, traffic large enough that could make a small percentage of eventual buyers enough to make a good profit. Many big companies generate traffic of tens of thousands a day and a measly ten to fifteen percent actually buys, but that small percentage is enough to provide them with good business.
Many of these success stories, did it the easy way, by paying for their traffic. You may have heard this one before, but you have to spend money to make money. Advertising is the key. The more people that knows that your site exists; the more people would of course go to your site, that’s common sense.
There are many ways of generating free traffic, but the truth is that they will not achieve anything like the same results as paid advertising. These paid advertisements include advertising schemes by Google and Yahoo.
The Value of Searches
The search engines are the easiest and fastest medium for finding what a person needs on the internet. Search engines have been very popular because they provide a vital service to many people. They are free and easy to use. With this popularity, they get many visitors and clicks and they are the most commonly visited sites on the internet today. It is easy to understand why so many companies would pay to advertise with these search engines.
Search engines are the number 1 source of information to millions of people that use them each day. They provide targeted links to possible sites that may be of interest to the searcher. If your site’s link pops up in the high rankings of the search results pages, you have a great chance that visitors will go to your site. While search engine optimization is a cheaper and low cost way to get your site a high rank, paying for advertisements will ensure that you will be on the top ranks and by that I mean those pop up ads on the right hand side bar in the search engines.
When you pay for your advertisements, it is like paying for your traffic. You may think this not to be such a good idea, but the truth is that the payoffs could be astounding. When you pay for your traffic, you are guaranteed of a consistent traffic flow to your site. You will hardly have a dry day, every day will result in sales.
Paying for your Traffic
Usually, you will be charged with the number of hits a link gets when your ads is clicked, this is called pay per click. With some of the smaller search eniges, you will be charged for the number of times your ad appears. It is imperative that you have good keyword content in your ad. There are many tools that aid you in using the right keyword for the right moment.
All the money you spent in paying for your traffic will not be for naught. You will get an impressive boost in traffic which will also result to a great boost in your sales figures. Paying for your traffic would be a really good idea and you will get all the benefits it has to offer.
Setting up a pay per click campaign is in reality not all that easy and many people will give up before even trying, because of the fact that it can be so complicated. Fortunately many web design companies can assist you with your website promotion and it is therefore important that you make use of the services of a full service web design company from the start, one that will not only help you set up a search engine friendly website, but also one that can help you with your pay per click advertising campaigns.
While pay per click is the fastest way to get traffic to your website, you could lose a bundle if you are not careful. For this reason you have to make sure that your web design company is well-versed in pay per click campaigns, so that you will actually make money and not just lose money.
Rian Schoeman
SilverFox Web Design