With more than 77% of all American adults now online, and more than 175 million Americans using the Internet regularly, the argument that a website is an essential business tool is resolved before the debate begins. If your company isn't taking steps and making a continuing effort to maximize its website it is leaving customers and revenue behind (for competitors to pick up).
Some of the hesitancy in developing and maintaining a good website is derived from misunderstandings of what it takes to make a website productive. This article shares 8 things you can do with relative ease to enable your website to deliver better results. They are:
1. Make Sure Your Website is User Friendly
Whether in an offline or online environment, your target market can't be expected to buy your product if you do not make it easy to find and purchase. Your website can enhance the ease with which information and specs about your products/services can be found, thereby making the decision to buy them easier. Your website needs to (a) open quickly, (b) be easy to navigate and find information, and (c) provide a painless checkout process. If you can meet these three criteria, visitors will enjoy being on your site, and your sales through the site will increase.
2. Give in to Speed
According to some sources, you have about 30 seconds to convince a visitor to your website to stay there and look for what they came to purchase. If your website takes these same 30 seconds to upload, or you have a 30 second flash that is well prepared but devoid of any message (loved by the graphic design folks and marketing people for its creativity and hated by visitors because it takes time and says nothing), then you will lose visitors even before you have a chance to present your benefits and offer. The key to speed is a well designed site hosted on servers that deliver high speed.
3. Know Who Your Site is Targeting
The better you understand your target market the better your website will perform. Keeping in mind that the website is a marketing tool, and that knowing your market is a fundamental of good marketing, it makes sense that your website should be developed with your market in mind. You need to understand how you market behaves not only in terms of buying habits and spending patterns, but also, in the case of effective web development, online. The online behavior of your market will help you construct the site to meet their expectations, needs and preferences. In most cases the market will demand (a) that your site be updates and provide the latest relevant information, (b) that the site enable their inquiries through the latest online technologies, and (c) that the website be convenient to navigate.
4. Know Your Goals
Just as with offline business, "getting more sales" is not a useful goal in that it is vague, overly apparent, and devoid of any market based elements. You need to approach your website with goals and objectives in mind, not only so that the site can be constructed consistent with them, but also so that the maintenance of the site can be executed to support them. For example, the goals of your website could be "present products in an attractive manner that allows prospective buyers to visual their use and benefits". Another legitimate objective could be "to present information on products and the company so as to educate consumers and broaden our customer base". In both instances, the goals are clearly defined, and the websites constructed around them will be designed in architecture and appearance to maximize the success of the stated objectives.
5. Develop a Smart Web Architecture
When it comes to the architecture of your website - where the information is placed and the paths visitors take to get to it - the most critical tool you can deploy is common sense. Most people will look for information in the place where it is most logical for it to be. If you get creative, or want to make a point with your navigation (or the names you give to the information links you have) you will find that most people will leave your site rather than try to unravel the brilliance you are showing through your very clever structure. In other words, people are on your site to get to something, the easier you make it for them to get there, the better your website is. Period.
6. Operate According to a Plan
Like any marketing tool, your website needs to be tied into your overall marketing strategy and needs to be reflective of your company, its products, and the message and image it seeks to communicate to the market. Your website needs to have a plan of operation that detail, through a process and in accordance with steps, timelines, and accountability elements, the milestones for measuring performance and success. The plan needs to include (a) processes and timetables for updates and announcements, (b) your web marketing campaign, and (c) how your site will compete against similar sites.
7. Market Your Website
Like every other aspect of your business, if you do not market what you are doing nobody will know about it or why what you are selling is something they should buy. There are many ways to market a website and, as with Tudog's approach to traditional marketing, we recommend a basket of tactics. These include (a) organic embedding of metatags and other keywords into the content of your website so as to secure a higher natural listing on the search engines, (b) the purchase of select keywords to ensure high search results when these words are punched in, (c) affiliate sites and appearances on other sites, and (d) targeted web ads. These marketing tactics will assist you in driving traffic to your site, as well as serve to raise general awareness for your company.
8. Monitor Your Activities
The Internet offers excellent opportunities to monitor and analyze your activities so that you can be certain that what you are doing is not only working, but maximizing your potential. The web can help you determine how many people are coming to your site, where they are going inside the site, where they came from into your site, and whether or not they made a purchase. You can use this information to determine the efficacy of your navigation, architecture, content, graphics, message and marketing.
Your website, like all other aspects of your marketing, is a window into your company and a reflection of not only how much respect you have in what you do, but also how much respect and commitment you have toward your customers. A professional website demonstrates a professional attitude. Anything less is
Selasa, 08 April 2008
Empty Profiles - The Scourge of the Dating Website
Prior to recently launching sugardaddyhaven.com I spent many weeks researching hundreds of dating websites, niche dating websites and dating chatrooms, and it became obvious to me that the main problem in trying to create a community of genuine and responsible members is the curse of the incomplete profile.
Many dating sites offer a free trial period in order to give the prospective customer the opportunity to test the facilities available, and perhaps even make contact with new friends before deciding to join as a paying member. The idea works great in theory! But the truth is that when anything is offered for free, it will often attract those who are only partially interested or have no interest at all.
Many of the dating websites I visited as part of my research revealed higher than fifty percent of their membership had neither completed their profiles or included a photo. It is not rocket science to agree that this practice is a complete waste of time, not only for the member concerned, but also for the website owner and indeed the other genuine members of the dating website. There is nothing more annoying than to run a search of the member database only to discover a host of profiles with little or no information about the member, and littered with "I'll tell you later" answers to the simplest of multiple choice questions.
Most dating sites will inform members of the importance of adding photos to their profile, and many, including our own website at sugardaddyhaven.com offer the facility of password protecting their personal pics so they are able to choose who will view them. However a staggering seventy-eight percent of dating site members we interviewed, informed us that they will only search for members who include a photograph with their profile.
I, personally can never understand how anyone can join a dating website and not bother to fill in his or her profile. How can they ever expect to create interest from other members, and my guess is they will not get a single response in their inbox. After all, your profile is your salespage. An opportunity to present yourself to the world.. describing not just your physical statistics but likes and dislikes, a brief synopsis of your character and a reasonably detailed description of your ideal mate. The addition of a photo or two will definately increase the amount of interest in your profile by three hundred percent at very least.
So how do dating site owners encourage their membership to present a quality profile that will not only increase the chances of creating interest but also enhance the whole website, as we are all in agreement that incomplete profiles are a complete waste of time and space.
Although we have only recently launched sugardaddyhaven.com we have taken a fair yet strong stance in the problem of empty profiles. We do not believe that nagging the member with a barrage of email reminders will entice them to return to the site, solely to complete their profile. Quite the reverse, in fact badgering would be more likely to ensure that the member never returned to the site again.
We at sugardaddyhaven.com firmly believe that the process of creating the profile needs to be completed at the time the user registers as a member. In an effort to ensure that the whole process is completed during registration we have introduced an extention to the free membership period for those who create a complete profile at that time. So now, in addition to the thirty days free trial period, we offer a further thirty days to those who complete their profile at the time of registration. And to further discourage those who still decide to display no information, such profiles will auto-delete if not completed within seven days.
Any dating website can only be judged on it's membership, and whether joining as a free member or upgrading to paying member, once you join a dating site you have a moral obligation to create a profile and present yourself to other members who have the same interest as you. Otherwise you will have nothing to offer that particular dating community and there is little point in you becoming a member.
Although early days yet, first signs are encouraging at sugardaddyhaven.com and we hope this move will enable us to to maintain a dating website with a one hundred percent profile completion, which can only benefit our genuine members.
Trevor Taylor - Sugar Daddy Haven - An Exciting New Experience
Many dating sites offer a free trial period in order to give the prospective customer the opportunity to test the facilities available, and perhaps even make contact with new friends before deciding to join as a paying member. The idea works great in theory! But the truth is that when anything is offered for free, it will often attract those who are only partially interested or have no interest at all.
Many of the dating websites I visited as part of my research revealed higher than fifty percent of their membership had neither completed their profiles or included a photo. It is not rocket science to agree that this practice is a complete waste of time, not only for the member concerned, but also for the website owner and indeed the other genuine members of the dating website. There is nothing more annoying than to run a search of the member database only to discover a host of profiles with little or no information about the member, and littered with "I'll tell you later" answers to the simplest of multiple choice questions.
Most dating sites will inform members of the importance of adding photos to their profile, and many, including our own website at sugardaddyhaven.com offer the facility of password protecting their personal pics so they are able to choose who will view them. However a staggering seventy-eight percent of dating site members we interviewed, informed us that they will only search for members who include a photograph with their profile.
I, personally can never understand how anyone can join a dating website and not bother to fill in his or her profile. How can they ever expect to create interest from other members, and my guess is they will not get a single response in their inbox. After all, your profile is your salespage. An opportunity to present yourself to the world.. describing not just your physical statistics but likes and dislikes, a brief synopsis of your character and a reasonably detailed description of your ideal mate. The addition of a photo or two will definately increase the amount of interest in your profile by three hundred percent at very least.
So how do dating site owners encourage their membership to present a quality profile that will not only increase the chances of creating interest but also enhance the whole website, as we are all in agreement that incomplete profiles are a complete waste of time and space.
Although we have only recently launched sugardaddyhaven.com we have taken a fair yet strong stance in the problem of empty profiles. We do not believe that nagging the member with a barrage of email reminders will entice them to return to the site, solely to complete their profile. Quite the reverse, in fact badgering would be more likely to ensure that the member never returned to the site again.
We at sugardaddyhaven.com firmly believe that the process of creating the profile needs to be completed at the time the user registers as a member. In an effort to ensure that the whole process is completed during registration we have introduced an extention to the free membership period for those who create a complete profile at that time. So now, in addition to the thirty days free trial period, we offer a further thirty days to those who complete their profile at the time of registration. And to further discourage those who still decide to display no information, such profiles will auto-delete if not completed within seven days.
Any dating website can only be judged on it's membership, and whether joining as a free member or upgrading to paying member, once you join a dating site you have a moral obligation to create a profile and present yourself to other members who have the same interest as you. Otherwise you will have nothing to offer that particular dating community and there is little point in you becoming a member.
Although early days yet, first signs are encouraging at sugardaddyhaven.com and we hope this move will enable us to to maintain a dating website with a one hundred percent profile completion, which can only benefit our genuine members.
Trevor Taylor - Sugar Daddy Haven - An Exciting New Experience
Here's 4 Quick and EASY Steps To Getting Your Website IN Through Googles 'Back Door'
Google... one of the Internets MOST powerful search engines recently announced a new FREE service that makes it easier for you to improve your websites coverage within Googles index through its NEW collaborative crawling system.
On the down side though, Google does not 'Guarantee' immediate inclusion, But, is still good news for those of you who have just finished building a website and are ready to submit to the top search engines.
So, what's this NEW service called that Google just released?
It's called "Google Sitemaps".
The real cool thing about "Google Sitemaps" IS it accepts RSS(Real Simple Syndication) and Atom feeds with the .XML extension as one of the accepted formats for submitting your websites Sitemap for inclusion in Googles index.
This is just one of the four formats Google accepts and is the one that I'm going to use for the rest of this article to show you how to generate your own .XML sitemap of your website for inclusion in Google.
It's real easy to do so don't worry about it being to complicated.
So, with that said, lets go to Step #1.
Step #1. Sign up for "Google Sitemaps".
This step is easy, simply follow the link provide below and sign up for a Free account. It should only take you a few minutes to do, then once your done, come back here and go to Step #2.
Go to: http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login
Step #2. Generate your .XML sitemap.
In this step your going to generate a .XML sitemap for your website using a Free online sitemap generator.
This Free online generator will build you a sitemap up to 500 pages. If you have a larger website with thousands of webpages you'll have to use a paid service and/or software to generate yours.
Go to: http://www.xml-sitemaps.com
Enter your required information on the form provided.
Step #3. Upload your generated .XML sitemap to your server.
Once your generated sitemap is finished(your generated .XML file should be called site.xml.gz) it's now time to upload it to your server using your FTP(File Transfer Protocol) program.
This is very important that you do this before submitting it to Google Sitemaps for inclusion.
Step #4. Submit your NEW .XML sitemap to "Google Sitemaps".
Now that you have generated your "Sitemap" for your website and uploaded it to your server all you have to do now is to go to "Google Sitemaps" and submit your sitemap URL.
(ex. http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml.gz)
That's it.
Now, depending on Google, your sitemap should get downloaded within the next 24 hours, so be sure to check and see that it did and that there wasn't any problems or errors.
Also, your going to want to be able to track your indexed webpages within the search engines, especially Google, so you can see how things are going, so I'll leave you with one last resource that will do this for you.
Go to: http://www.uptimebot.com
All you have to do is enter your URL and click "GO".
The results page will list the results from Google and 9 other popular search engines.
Well, there you have it... "4 Quick and EASY Steps To Getting Your Website IN Through Googles 'Back Door'".
On the down side though, Google does not 'Guarantee' immediate inclusion, But, is still good news for those of you who have just finished building a website and are ready to submit to the top search engines.
So, what's this NEW service called that Google just released?
It's called "Google Sitemaps".
The real cool thing about "Google Sitemaps" IS it accepts RSS(Real Simple Syndication) and Atom feeds with the .XML extension as one of the accepted formats for submitting your websites Sitemap for inclusion in Googles index.
This is just one of the four formats Google accepts and is the one that I'm going to use for the rest of this article to show you how to generate your own .XML sitemap of your website for inclusion in Google.
It's real easy to do so don't worry about it being to complicated.
So, with that said, lets go to Step #1.
Step #1. Sign up for "Google Sitemaps".
This step is easy, simply follow the link provide below and sign up for a Free account. It should only take you a few minutes to do, then once your done, come back here and go to Step #2.
Go to: http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login
Step #2. Generate your .XML sitemap.
In this step your going to generate a .XML sitemap for your website using a Free online sitemap generator.
This Free online generator will build you a sitemap up to 500 pages. If you have a larger website with thousands of webpages you'll have to use a paid service and/or software to generate yours.
Go to: http://www.xml-sitemaps.com
Enter your required information on the form provided.
Step #3. Upload your generated .XML sitemap to your server.
Once your generated sitemap is finished(your generated .XML file should be called site.xml.gz) it's now time to upload it to your server using your FTP(File Transfer Protocol) program.
This is very important that you do this before submitting it to Google Sitemaps for inclusion.
Step #4. Submit your NEW .XML sitemap to "Google Sitemaps".
Now that you have generated your "Sitemap" for your website and uploaded it to your server all you have to do now is to go to "Google Sitemaps" and submit your sitemap URL.
(ex. http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml.gz)
That's it.
Now, depending on Google, your sitemap should get downloaded within the next 24 hours, so be sure to check and see that it did and that there wasn't any problems or errors.
Also, your going to want to be able to track your indexed webpages within the search engines, especially Google, so you can see how things are going, so I'll leave you with one last resource that will do this for you.
Go to: http://www.uptimebot.com
All you have to do is enter your URL and click "GO".
The results page will list the results from Google and 9 other popular search engines.
Well, there you have it... "4 Quick and EASY Steps To Getting Your Website IN Through Googles 'Back Door'".
Senin, 07 April 2008
Ecommerce Advertising Vs Website Optimization
One of the biggest propaganda campaigns on the Internet is that
Minggu, 06 April 2008
Four Ways To Make Money From Your Ecommerce Website
There are four basic ways to make money from your web site. You can sell products and services. You can sell subscriptions or memberships. You can make money from advertising. And you can use your site to generate referrals and commissions.
Most businesses only use one or maybe two of the four. You can increase your direct revenue and your opportunities for cross-promotion if you consider them all.
Here's a review of what you need for each. In every case you want to deliver what your customers expect and automate as much of the process as possible.
You can make money on your site by selling things. You can sell products or services, but to make money you have to make sure you have mastered the details.
No matter what you're selling you'll need a good shopping cart. Online shoppers expect to be able to pay with credit cards and with PayPal and complete transactions online. Your shopping cart should calculate shipping charges and sales tax automatically.
If you're selling physical products, make sure you've worked out all the fulfillment details. Make sure that you have a shipping and inventory system that will deliver great service to your customers.
Since the net is a worldwide phenomenon, you may get orders from other countries. How will you handle them?
You can also sell digital products such as e-books and Special Reports. Buyers will expect to be able to download their digital product as soon as they've completed paying.
You can sell services. Many companies are conducting classes on the web, called "webinars." You'll need to be able to take orders and send acknowledgments to those who sign up. You'll also need a reliable way to deliver your webinar.
You can make money on your site by having subscribers or members who pay you a fee. A membership or subscription fee is simply payment for privileged access.
People will pay for access to current content, to archives, to services or to other people. Determine what mix of these is best for your business. Make sure you can handle subscription payments, acknowledgments and renewals.
You can make money on your site from advertising. This used to be quite complicated. But today, with Google's AdSense program just about any site can generate advertising revenue.
You can make money on your site by using your site for referrals and commissions. On the web, these are called "affiliate programs." They can help you make money two ways.
When you send business to another site using an affiliate link, you generate a modest fee for yourself. Whenever you recommend a product or service on your site, check to see if there's an affiliate program that will pay you for the link.
Your own affiliate program can help you draw more desirable traffic to your site. You'll need software to help you keep track of the business that affiliates send your way. There are standalone packages for this, but affiliate software is also part of most sophisticated shopping cart packages.
None of these items is rocket science. So use this article as a checklist and take a look at online shopping cart software and ecommerce providers like 1AutomationWiz.com to help you automate all of these methods on your ecommerce web site.
The bottom line in increasing revenue is using as many of the above income generation methods as you can, as effectively as possible. It's another case of how the marketing magic is in the mix.
Most businesses only use one or maybe two of the four. You can increase your direct revenue and your opportunities for cross-promotion if you consider them all.
Here's a review of what you need for each. In every case you want to deliver what your customers expect and automate as much of the process as possible.
You can make money on your site by selling things. You can sell products or services, but to make money you have to make sure you have mastered the details.
No matter what you're selling you'll need a good shopping cart. Online shoppers expect to be able to pay with credit cards and with PayPal and complete transactions online. Your shopping cart should calculate shipping charges and sales tax automatically.
If you're selling physical products, make sure you've worked out all the fulfillment details. Make sure that you have a shipping and inventory system that will deliver great service to your customers.
Since the net is a worldwide phenomenon, you may get orders from other countries. How will you handle them?
You can also sell digital products such as e-books and Special Reports. Buyers will expect to be able to download their digital product as soon as they've completed paying.
You can sell services. Many companies are conducting classes on the web, called "webinars." You'll need to be able to take orders and send acknowledgments to those who sign up. You'll also need a reliable way to deliver your webinar.
You can make money on your site by having subscribers or members who pay you a fee. A membership or subscription fee is simply payment for privileged access.
People will pay for access to current content, to archives, to services or to other people. Determine what mix of these is best for your business. Make sure you can handle subscription payments, acknowledgments and renewals.
You can make money on your site from advertising. This used to be quite complicated. But today, with Google's AdSense program just about any site can generate advertising revenue.
You can make money on your site by using your site for referrals and commissions. On the web, these are called "affiliate programs." They can help you make money two ways.
When you send business to another site using an affiliate link, you generate a modest fee for yourself. Whenever you recommend a product or service on your site, check to see if there's an affiliate program that will pay you for the link.
Your own affiliate program can help you draw more desirable traffic to your site. You'll need software to help you keep track of the business that affiliates send your way. There are standalone packages for this, but affiliate software is also part of most sophisticated shopping cart packages.
None of these items is rocket science. So use this article as a checklist and take a look at online shopping cart software and ecommerce providers like 1AutomationWiz.com to help you automate all of these methods on your ecommerce web site.
The bottom line in increasing revenue is using as many of the above income generation methods as you can, as effectively as possible. It's another case of how the marketing magic is in the mix.
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