Posts Tagged web traffic generation
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.
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
Being Relevant – Keep Your Message Fresh!
If there is one thing we all have in common it is that we want to be relevant to our customers, no matter what business we are in. The fact is that if you are not relevant, you will lose your customers to the competition. But how does one stay relevant in the eyes of your customers?
I touched on something important in the last sentence. It is one thing to be relevant in the industry, but another to be relevant to your customers, who in the end are the group you want to stay relevant to. You see, you could be an expert in your field, the number one, the person with all the knowledge, but if that knowledge comes across as purely technical or academic, you may impress your peers, but are likely to lose your customer, because you are not relevant to them.
Stuffing a customer, who is not an expert’s head full of academic and technical terms that he does not understand will more likely bore him than impress him and he would much rather go off and look for information that is relevant to him than your ‘technical drivel’. For this reason you have to keep your message relevant or fresh.
By this I mean that you can still go ahead and impart your vast knowledge of a topic on your customer, but it has to be done in such a way that it is fresh, easy to read or understand and relevant to the customer’s point of view. Say you are in the crane industry and you are an engineer. From your years of knowledge and experience you know that if a crane’s arm is extended at a 30 degree angle, with an extension of 3 meters and a cable with a breaking force of six tons, the forces working in on the rotator axle are X.
To you this might be fascinating and to a certain portion of your customers too, but for most of them it would mean nothing. Now let’s say you take the same example above and your are pitching to a prospective customer who is looking at the crane, wouldn’t it make much more sense to tell him that this crane with its arm extended as it is and the current cable would be able to lift a tanker truck?
That immediately puts it in the realms of this customer’s understanding. He is now thinking of how immensely strong this crane is and how easily it would be able to do the job he wants to rent it for. He might even ask you how you know it and if he is interested, you can then show him how you did the calculations. Now he will be impressed with your knowledge, because you first put it into terms that he understands and then you gave him the proof. To him, you are now an expert. If you had done things the other way around though, you would have lost him at the word go.
Let’s take our business, which is web design. There is so much involved in the field that I could keep the customer occupied with information about the technicalities of web design such as SEO, CSS, keyword density, back links and more and in the process of doing so bore the customer to death.
Alternatively I can use examples such as, we have designed site X (and let him have a look at it). When we first submitted the site to Google, it was nowhere to be found if one searched for the term that the site was submitted for. I can then tell the person to key in the keyword into a Google search and then let him see that this sit appears on the first page of Google. After he has seen the evidence, I can then tell him about what is involved in achieving this and by doing this, I will have once again put things into terms he understands and then I can show him how it works.
You see, it is all about keeping the message relevant or fresh. The same goes for writing articles or newsletters, in fact any promotional material. You have to think about the material from the perspective of the client. Ask yourself how you can put your message into terms that your client is likely to identify with – not only understand, but identify with. Once you get that right, you have a foot in the door.
So remember, no matter what business you are in, always keep your message fresh!
Rian Schoeman
SilverFox Web Design
Web 2.0 – Is Your Web Designer Doing It?
We’ve all heard of web 2.0. If you have not, you have been missing out on the biggest phenomenon to have hit the internet since, well the internet!
Web 2.0 is the collective name for the new social media websites that have become so popular on the internet and where the new internet billionaires are being made. You may have heard of MySpace, YouTube, FaceBook and Twitter. If you have, you have heard of web 2.0. All of the above sites are social media sites, where people that share common interests can get together and share their interest.
For you as an internet marketer or web design firm, you need to be right at the forefront of using this phenomenon to your advantage. Where can you come across an easier source of contacts than on one of these sites? Think about, all the work has been done for you. Where as formerly you had to go out and look for forums where people shared interests you know have 3 or 4 points of contact where you can find as much traffic as possible.
All you have to do is to go to any of these sites, go the search function and type in the term you are interested in. If it is web design, for example, you will find tons of people and even groups with tons of people that share your common interest. All you have to do is to join the group or follow certain people and start sharing with them.
Before you know it, you will be part of a group of people with whom you can interact and share information. Later you can start promoting your products and market it to those people or get them to become your affiliates.
If you are making use of a web design company to do your website promotion and traffic generation for you, you need to ask them if they are making use of web 2.0 to get your message out there. If they are not, you are losing out, so make sure you talk to them and get the most out of what the internet has to offer today.
Rian Schoeman
SilverFox Web Design
Internet Marketing 101 – Viral Marketing
Viral marketing is one of the best and most effective ways of getting your product or message out there. Yes, there are other ways of marketing, but let’s face it, if you do not make use of viral marketing, you will find yourself going about the process of making internet business work for you at a much slower pace than what you could.
Viral Marketing also known otherwise as Viral Advertising is a marketing technique used to build the public awareness of one’s product or company. It involves using many forms of media to reach out to the public without actually promoting the product. The idea is to create something in the media that is so interesting or addictive that people tell their friends about it.
On the internet this is one of the easiest things to do. A good example of this is Coca Cola and Youtube. Have you been to Youtube and typed in Coca Cola? They’ve got their own channel on YouTube. Take a look at how many time some of the videos there have been viewed. Some of them have had over 2, 000, 000 views (that’s 2 million views) and that is without even flighting the video on TV.
How do they do it? Well, they create an interesting video or ad and post it on YouTube. A few people see the video and if they find it worthwhile they email the link to their friends. In turn these friends view the video and email the link to their friends and so on and so on. Before you know it, the ad has spread like a virus all across the world. Since Coca Cola is a global brand, one ad can spread the message to all countries from one source. Not only does the Coca Cola company get their message all across the planet, but by using viral means they save and make millions.
That, in a nutshell is viral marketing and the power of viral marketing.
In order to succeed in viral marketing you need a few attributes or virtues, the most important of all, which is probably creativity.
This is one virtue a marketer must possess to lead the race in the ruthless competition in the Internet based business field. With so much competition and rivalry going on, every method of marketing must be employed and utilized.
It doesn’t matter if you have a killer product or a fantastically designed website, if people don’t know that you exist, it doesn’t matter, and you are not going to make it big. Worst of all, you business could just get killed.
Here it could be worth your while to invest in the services of a good web design company. As in the Coca Cola example above, you need to create something that will generate enough interest for people to pass it on.
You could for example ask your web design company to create certain media, such as a cool flash game, funny video, amusing story and such that you can place on your website or even YouTube and Facebook. You will obviously brand it with your company logo or provide information about your company as part of the game and when people pass it on, they will be promoting your brand without any effort from you and often without knowing that they are helping you.
You need to be creative though. It could help to look at sites like Yahoo.com to see what the most popular searches are at any given time. If something has been or is likely to be in the news for a while, like the US elections were recently, then you can play off that and create something that would attract interest. So, for example (and I am by no means trying to promote this type of thing), soon after the incident where a journalist threw his shoe at George W. Bush, a game where you had to try and hit a character looking like George W. Bush with shoes. This game spread across the internet like wildfire.
This is a perfect example of how you can harness the power of current media events to create a viral marketing campaign that would get you noticed! Just be creative and like I said above, it might be worth your while calling in the experts to help you with this.
Viral marketing has become a popular means of advertising and marketing because it is relatively low cost. To avoid being tagged as spam mail, viral marketing counts on the eagerness of one person to pass on the product. If a person sees the name of the person they know as the sender, they won’t block the email and will more likely than not open it and pass it on! See, other people are doing the work for you.
Using Viral Marketing to your advantage
The main and foremost advantage of viral marketing is that you get a lot of publicity and public awareness about your site and your company. You get to generate a flow of traffic with the potential of becoming customers. With a little ingenuity and imagination, plus some incentives or prizes, you can reach out to a great number of people and announce your existence.
Almost everyone these days is catching on to the power and possibilities offered by Viral marketing. Not using it could kill your business. Along with other schemes and methods in promoting your site, like Search Engine Optimization and such, viral marketing could easily push you ahead in the rating games.
Viral Marketing could be a fun way to get people to know about you and your company. You get them to pass your advertisement along. All it takes is a great idea, a good addictive game, a funny story or a cool video. Create gossip or a buzz, many movies are promoted by using scandals and gossip to make them more popular. Remember the movie “The Blair Witch Project”?
So, if you are still stuck in the business doldrums, now is the time to get your brand noticed. Get busy working on your fun idea and soon you’ll see it spread across the internet like a virus!
Rian Schoeman
SilverFox Web Design
“Folksonomies” – a New Viral Marketing Tool
A new consumer phenomenon is called “tagging” or “folksonomies” (short for folks and taxonomy). Tagging is powerful because consumers are creating an organizational structure for online content. Folksonomies not only enable people to file away content under tags, but, even better, share it with others by filing it under a global taxonomy that they created.
Here’s how tagging works. Using sites such as del.icio.us – a bookmark sharing site – and Flickr – a photo sharing site – consumers are collaborating on categorizing online content under certain keywords, or tags.
For instance, an individual can post photographs of their iPod on Flickr and file it under the tag “iPod.” These images are now not only visible under the individual user’s iPod tag but also under the community iPod tag that displays all images consumers are generating and filing under the keyword. Right now Flickr has more than 3,500 photos that are labeled “iPod.”
Tagging is catching on because it is a natural complement to search. Type the word “blogs” into Google and it can’t tell if you are searching for information about how to launch a blog, how to read blogs, or anything else to do with blogs. Large and small sites alike are already getting on to the folksonomy train. They are rolling out tag-like structures to help users more easily locate content that’s relevant to them.
Although tags are far from perfect, marketers should, nevertheless, be using them to keep a finger on the pulse of the Web public. Start subscribing to RSS feeds to monitor how consumers are tagging information related to your product, service, company or space. These are living focus groups that are available for free, 24/7. Folksonomy sites can also be carefully used to unleash viral marketing campaigns – with a caveat. Marketers should be transparent in who they are, why they are posting the link/photos and avoid spamming the services.
Folksonomy, a new trend that is catching on very quickly and that you should be getting involved in if you want to succeed at viral marketing.
Rian Schoeman
SilverFox Web Design
How To Grab Attention With A Good Subject Line
The race for supremacy in internet based businesses has been really heating up and many sites have been put up to help others to get ahead for a small fee. But there are also ways in which you don’t have to pay so much to get yourself a good list of loyal followers. Having sufficient web traffic and visitors allows you to put up a foundation wherein you can build an opt-in list and make it grow from there.
An opt-in list allows you to provide newsletters to your subscribers with their consent. When people sign up, they know that they will be receiving updates and news from your site and the industry your represent via an e-mail. But that doesn’t mean that all of those who subscribe read them at all. Many lists have been built due to an attachment with free software or for a promotional discount and such. Some are not really interested in receiving e-mails from companies and just treat them as waste of cyberspace and delete or trash them without so mush as opening the e-mail and scanning them.
You can change all that. While forwarding an email message is relatively easy after producing your newsletter, getting people to open them is not as easy. You don’t want to waste all the time and effort used in making the newsletters, you want people to read them and have their interest piqued. You want the reader interested enough to go to your website and look around and more especially purchase and acquire your products or services.
One of the numerous ways you can tempt or persuade your subscriber is by providing a well thought out and well written subject line. The subject of an email is what is often referred to when a person or a recipient of an email decides whether he or she wants to open or read an e-mail. The subject could easily be regarded as one of the most important aspects of your promotional e-mail.
Your subject must be short and concise. It should provide a summary for the content of the e-mail so that the recipient will have basic knowledge of the content. This is really vital in grabbing the attention of your readers and subscribers. You want your subject to instantly grab the attention of your subscriber and get them to be intrigued to open up your mail. Remember, it is not necessarily true that a subscriber opens up all subscribed mails.
A good subject must always be tempting the curiosity of your recipient. It must literally force the recipient to open the mail. A certain emotion must be ignited and get them to open the mail. It is essential to use specific words to get the reaction you need. Keep in mind that the recipient or subscribers spends only a few seconds looking over each subject of the e-mails he receives. You must grab your reader’s attention right away. Our research has shown that a subject line that appeals to most people’s sense of curiosity is the most effective and gets the most emails read.
There are many forms you can use for your subject. You can provide a subject that says your e-mail contains content that teaches tips and methods on certain topics. An example of this is using keywords and keyword phrases such as, “How to” , “tips”, “Guides to”, Methods in and others like that.
You can also put your subject in a question form. These may include questions like, “Are you sick and tired of your job?” Or “Is your boss always on your case?” Try to stay on the topic that pertains to your site so that you’ll know that your subscribers have signed up because they are interested in that topic. This form of subject is very effective because they reach out to your recipients emotions. When they have read the question on your subject, their mind starts answering the question already.
You can also use a subject that commands your reader. Statements such as “Act now and get this once in a lifetime opportunity”, or “Double, triple and even quadruple what you are earning in one year”. This type of subject deals with the benefits your company provides with your product and services. Just be careful not too sound to much like an infomercial, because then your email will only be deleted as spam.
You may also use breaking news as your subject to intrigue your subscriber. For example, if you deal with car engine parts you can write in your subject, “Announcing the new engine that uses no gasoline, It runs on water”. This creates curiosity with the reader and will lead them to open the mail and read on.
One very important thing to remember is to put your reader’s name in the subject line of your email. This is important for two very specific reasons. The first is that when the reader’s name appears in the subject line there is a very small chance of the firewall blocking it as spam. After all, what are the chances that a firewall will block the name that belongs to the email address if it appears in the subject line?
The second reason is that people respond to their own names. If someone sees his own name in the subject line, he will be either curious or confident, thinking that the email is from someone he knows or that it must be from a mailing list that he subscribed to.
Of course, you will need to make use of some mailing list software if you are going to include first names in all the subject lines, unless your list is very short. So, when you look for mailing list software, be sure to look for software or a service that has the feature of automatically including first names in the subject line of the email.
If you keep the above information in mind, you are guaranteed to achieve much more success with your email campaigns.
Rian Schoeman
7 Ways To Make Money Using Nothing More Than Your List
An opt-in list can be quite crucial to any site or internet based company. Even for a small venture such as a niche profit site an opt-in list can make a world of difference and also generate some extra income for your pocket. Rarely would you see an e-commerce site, big or small, that is without an opt-in list.
An opt-in list allows for a company to market their wares and site via e-mail. With an opt-in list, a site and a subscriber consent to sending and receiving a newsletter from your company. Through this, you can keep your subscribers abreast of what is currently available on your site as well as whatever is coming out.
And because there is mutual consent between the two parties, any mail sent to the list is not considered as spam. There is a great number of successfully read promotional materials such as catalogs, newsletters and such that are sent because the subscribers themselves have signed up for them, meaning, they do want to be sent those items.
Building a list is crucial, only a small percentage actually subscribes for an opt-in list. Many people find promotional mails annoying but if you provide a good newsletter or promotional material, you will see your list build up and grow. You can also achieve this by having good content on your site. If people like what they see and read on your site, then they surely would want more. Newsletters would be a way to attract them back to your site – a little teaser or appetizer if you will.
But other than marketing your wares and your services, an opt-in list can also be used to earn extra profit. Not all lists can be used though. It would be good to first build a successful list with a huge number of subscribers. The more subscribers you have, the more money you stand to make. Here are seven ways to make money using nothing more than your list.
1) Place advertisements. There are many corporations who will be willing to pay to put their banners and ads on a list with many subscribers. Selling or renting out lists is not a good idea so rather than doing that, many companies would just rather place ads with lists that have a huge subscriber base. Your newsletter could be placed with many ads and each one spells money. A well designed ad, done by an experienced web design firm, will actually add to the visual appeal of your newsletter and may even attract even more subscribers.
2) Have affiliations with other companies that have at least a semblance or relation to what your site is about. Here other companies will provide links and brief descriptions of what products and services they offer. With every click made on the link that directs or leads a subscriber from your list to their site, the company will pay you. This is called P4P or pay for performance.
3) Make deals with other companies by asking for a small percentage of sales done through your list. With every sale done by customers that have come from your list and have gone there because of your newsletter, the other company will pay you a small percentage of your sales. The more people who buy from them, the more money you will make.
4) You may also get products from other sites on a consignment basis and sell them to your list via your newsletter. Place descriptions, articles and photos of the product in your newsletter. There will be those who will buy from you and when that happens, you can order the product from the other site and sell it to your buyer.
5) Sell e-books or a compilation of your articles on your list. Manuals and how-to articles are in great demand. Many people will be willing to shell out money to gain knowledge about a certain topic and subject. With your existing list trusting your expertise in that area, an e-book could be offered and sold or used as an incentive.
6) Create a network out of your list. Get people to invite more people to view your site and subscribe to your list. The larger your list, the more people will be able to click on your links and affiliate links as well as make your advertisement rates higher.
7) Subscribers are willing to pay for information if they know that it can be trusted and relied upon. Use your list to get more and more people to subscribe to you as well as browse your site. Lastly, you can use your list to earn money by making them your partners. Your list will be the bloodline of your growth and increase.
Some of these techniques may seem difficult to implement but there is lots of list building software and bulk email companies out there that could assist you. Of course you can always employ a reputable web design company to design your newsletter template for you and to create your opt in list for you, with all the bells and whistles attached.
Some internet marketers make huge profits with their opt-in lists, so don’t ignore your list, it is literally the life blood of your organization.
Rian Schoeman
SilverFox Web Design.
Getting A Website? – Don’t Just Do It, Plan, Plan, Plan!
For many people or businesses the thinking around websites goes like this: “Okay, so now I have a business, what’s next, hmm, maybe I need a website”. The next thing you know they are either going out there trying to design their own or searching Google for Web Design firms.
What’s wrong with this natural next step you may ask? Well, it is simply that the person in the example above did not think through their website. Often they will start designing the website or hiring the Web Design firm and give them a mandate of “please design a website for us”.
When hiring a web designer, of course, your chances are much improved of getting a properly designed an thought out website than going at it yourself, but you do get web designers that are just in it for a quick buck and that will quickly put together, even a great-looking website, but with very little substance. Such a site is just as good as not having a site at all.
So, what should you do when you’re considering a website? Below follows some guidelines. They are not the be-all and end-all of web design, because there is so much more involved in designing an effective website, but they will at least provide you with some direction as a person who may not be an expert in web design.
1. Do I even need a website?
Yes, that’s right, while a website can be a huge asset, not all types of businesses need one or are geared for one. So for example, a roadside exhaust repair service that is a totally informal business will not need a website, because of the nature of the business and the cost involved in getting and maintaining a website.
2. What type of business do I have?
This is a very important question to ask yourself and it involves a number of sub-questions as well. So for example, you need to look at your clientele – what type of customer do you cater for, are they advanced, educated people or lower end consumers? Are they likely to browse the web, looking for the best deal or to find a service such as yours closest to home?
3. What type of product or service do you offer?
Is it a physical product or an electronic product, or a service? For electronic products you undoubtedly need a website, but for certain physical products your chances of needing a website are less than for certain services for example.
4. When you’ve established who your potential clients are and what type of business you have, it is time to think of the site content.
What is it that you want to convey to these customers? People surfing the web are looking for information primarily. It could be information on a topic, or information on a product or service. So the first focus of any website should be to provide information and not just generic information, but proper, valuable information on the topic the browser is looking for.
First provide the information and then provide the pitch or make sure that you pitch is included in the information in such a way so as not to make it seem forced, but natural.
When you’ve established what information it is that your clients are looking for, now you can start looking at the contents of your website. While most websites follow a basic formula, having tabs such as Home, About, Products / Services and Contact, your site might not benefit from such a generic structure.
To take an example, some of the most successful sales websites are one page sites. They simply contain a sales letter with lots of valuable information about the product or service and a link to the order page. If your product or service is suited to such a website then you should without a doubt follow this recipe and break away from convention.
Some websites may have the aim of providing information first and foremost and have sales only as a secondary goal. If this is your type of website, then a sales letter format will obviously not benefit you. For you, a website structured in such a way as to be more of an article archive might be the solution.
5. When in doubt, consult a Web Design firm.
I have touched on this above, but since there is so much involved in building a website, sometimes it makes more sense to hire an expert. In the end a proper web designer can save you lots of time, money and frustration.
Make sure that you hire a reputable web design firm. Don’t assume that because someone has a top Google ranking they are the best or have a good reputation. Ask to see examples of their work so that you can see if their style matches yours. Ask for some references and actually phone these references to find out if they were satisfied with the service they got.
If they have a portfolio page, you can click on examples of these websites and go the contact information to get more, independent references.
Look for a company that will supply you with a proper web design plan and make sure you agree on all aspects of the scope of the project. Look for a firm that will guarantee satisfaction.
While web design and designing a proper website is a vast and complex field, if you keep in mind some of the above hints and tips you may find that you are more likely to get what you need, instead of a pretty website without much substance that you want.
Rian Schoeman
How To Build A List Of Eager Subscribers
Every online business provides great service to generate satisfaction among their customers. As each and every customer receives satisfaction over their products or the services they get, there is a great chance that they will become a return customer and buy again. Better yet, they will recommend you to other people that could generate more business for you and your site.
As more traffic is driven to your site, you can entice many of them to subscribe to your mailing list or opt-in list. This is a list where in website visitors agree to be sent promotional materials such as newsletters, catalogs and such that could keep them updated about your site or the niche of your site. These promotional materials are sent via e-mail to the members of the list in different time intervals.
When using e-mail as the media of your marketing and advertisements, you eliminate the need for high costs. Email is free and if you can manage to make your own promotional advertisements you can also save a bundle there. With an opt-in subscribers list, you are pretty sure that what you are sending out is received, viewed and read by the subscribers and not simply being deleted. They have signed up for service and have consented in receiving it.
This means that there are constant reminders to your subscribers about all your products, new products and services as well as any promotions and special deals you are having. There is also the chance that they can be forwarded to other potential customers as they tell their friends and families about you and your site.
Of course you should be also aware that a subscriber may unsubscribe when they feel that they are not getting what they want or expected. Make sure that they are satisfied with your opt-in marketing strategies and keep them excited in receiving your newsletters and catalogs. Here are some tips that can help you build a list of eager subscribers.
Make your promotional materials interesting and fun. Try to use a little creativity but not too over artsy. Build around what your product or service is about. For example; if you are selling car parts, put some pictures of what is new in the auto parts world, a new wing door possibly that can fit any car and make it look like a Lamborghini.
Try to research what people are looking for, these way, you stay one step ahead of them all the time and you will be their bearer of new tidings. They will be eager to receive what you are sending them because they new you always have fresh and new things to share with them.
Write good articles that can be very informational but light at the same time. If your subscribers enjoy your articles, they will go to your site by clicking the links that you will be putting on your newsletter to read some more. You can provide articles that can connect to many people. Be diverse in your articles. Put something humorous, then put something informational, then put something that has both.
Are you wary about this because you don’t like writing? No problem, there are many professional and experienced article writers that can do the job for you for minimal fees. They know what they are doing and can provide the need that you have for your newsletters, the money that you pay for your articles are going to be met by the many sign-ups and the potential profit from the sales that you will get.
Create and send an E-book to your customers about anything that is related to your business or site. Use your knowledge and expertise in the field you have chosen to help other people who are similarly interested. Offer this e-book for free. You can write about anything informational and helpful to your subscribers. For example; you can do manuals and guides in so many things. This e-book could be used as a reference for many people.
Share this e-book with everyone, even other sites; just make sure that they don’t change the links in the e-book that will lead people to your site. If you want, you can always get some people to write it for you just like your articles. Your investment once again will be covered by the great marketing this will generate.
Add e-coupons in your newsletters that will help them avail to special discounts. Put a control number in your e-coupon so that they can only be used once. When people get discounts that can be found in your newsletters, they will be eager to receive your newsletter in anticipation of what you are promoting next.
If your subscribers can get benefits from your newsletters, they will be very eager to receive them. Just don’t flood your mailing list with mails so that you don’t annoy your subscribers.
Rian Schoeman