Yet we all occasionally see sites that make us feel as though we’ve slipped back in time (for some real fun, go to an actual web Wayback Machine and type in the URL of a site of some major brand, like Pepsi then select a year and month/day to see what that site looked like on that date). They still feature some of the goofy gimmicks that were hallmarks of a burgeoning new industry, but now are remnants of a time we should be proud to have moved past. These gimmicks, at this point, are annoying and will likely turn away some of your best prospects.

Here are the top 10 features NOT to include on your site (or remove if you’ve still got ‘em):

1. Flash. Flash graphics and animations were fun at first; they captured viewers’ attention and showed what’s possible beyond text (Flash made the Internet more like TV). Now Flash is a bit of a loading nightmare. If you’ve ever sat through a long load – even a “clever” one a glass filling with beer or an acorn taking root – you’ve been on a Flash site. Probably not for long, though; slower page loads result in increased page abandonment (40% of consumers abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load). What’s worse is that iPhones and iPads can’t view flash and search engines don’t “see” it!On the other hand, search engines love text, and your home page should have it. Your homepage is your front door…your first impression…your billboard. Don’t waste this space; use it to quickly tell visitors what you do and what you have to offer. Here’s an example of a beautiful and creative site created by a very talented Flash designer that makes my case: http://portfolio.lutincapuche.com/
2. Flash/HTML versions. Some developers give visitors a choice when they reach the homepage: would you like our Flash or HTML version? Don’t ask visitors to do anything before your homepage is presented; there are too many other sites that’ll give them what they want immediately. And, while you understand the difference, anyone older than about 40 probably does not and won’t know which to select.
3. People coming out from behind the homepage and walking around. Some things were once done on web pages simply because they could be. Most people find a guy or woman walking out onto the homepage, interrupting their viewing with a welcome message or “great offer this week only” terribly intrusive (and a little weird). If you want to have visitors “meet” your CEO or sales rep, a video (one that doesn’t automatically start playing) is a much more accommodating way to do it.
4. Reverse type. White type on a black background is difficult to read and slows comprehension. One study showed 70% of those who read black text on white had “good” comprehension of the topic, while 0% had the same level of comprehension of the same material (in fact, 88% had “poor” comprehension of the white-on-black type).
5. Weird navigation. Navigation on the top of the page – or along the left side – is what the world has come to expect because it makes sense. It’s essentially your website’s headline and you shouldn’t hide it or make it a challenge to find. We’ve seen navigation spinning in semi-circles, floating on flower petals, on a dinner plate, lined up along a kidney-shaped swimming pool…these probably seemed clever (or even breakthrough) at the time, but convoluted navigation is a hurdle the visitor doesn’t want to jump over. See #1 for an example of difficult navigation.
6. Music. Aside from the fact that your barbershop quartet or Deliverance-like banjo tune alerted everyone in the office that I’m not working, music is corny and distracting. The only sites that should feature music are sites selling it (and even then it should not automatically start when the page loads). Video that plays automatically is almost – but not quite – as bad. The decision to listen to music or watch a video should be your visitors’.
7. Home pages with no copy, just images. A typical Google search returns millions of results. If your prospects hit your site and don’t quickly find something that addresses what they’re looking for, they’ll go right back to search results to find a site that can. A home page is a critical first step in confirming for visitors that your site is the resource they’ve been looking for; don’t delay or avoid presenting your message then and there.
8. Sites that don’t work in multiple browsers. According to Pingdom and as of March, 2013, Internet Explorer has 39% of North American browsing traffic, but Chrome and Firefox (28% and 16%, respectively) are also widely used – perhaps by your next big prospect. Make sure your site is programmed to ensure optimum and consistent performance on all the major browsers.
9. Crazy mouseover effects. Graphic navigation buttons (kittens that purred, people who burped, semis that honked) were pretty popular at one time but fortunately your visitors have become more sophisticated. Text alone is more clear and direct and doesn’t distract from your message (unless, of course, burping is your message).
10. Other silly effects, like blinking text, bobbling heads, and peeling pages. If a feature doesn’t reinforce your message or demonstrate your expertise, get rid of it. When it comes to design, less is usually more.

The point of having a website is to tell your prospects how you can help solve a problem. Say it simply, elegantly and powerfully – without bells and whistles that date your site and dilute your message.

If you’re in the process of a website development project and want to know more about basics of a good Inbound Marketing site – one that attracts leads with valuable content – download our eBook, “Website Redesign 101: 7 Steps to a Better Site” now!

My business partner and I launched our website TreatmentSaver 5 years ago with no real understanding of how to make money online. I am an Optometrist and my partner is a medical doctor so as you can imagine our prior training didn’t exactly help us prepare for what we would encounter running a web business! Our medical backgrounds were however the inspiration behind the idea for our site, as we realized that there were very few comparison websites for clinics. TreatmentSaver.com is effectively a website that allows people to book appointments online and save money in the process. We initially launched with laser eye surgery clinics as this was my area of expertise. We realized the importance of getting as many laser eye surgery reviews as possible and this was where our initial focus lay.

When we first launched our website we had no real understanding of the concept of conversion as we just assumed that people would book appointments! Unfortunately things weren’t quite as simple as this and it was only when no one booked an appointment in the first month of going ‘live’ that we realised we had to try and figure out why! After reading lots of CRO (conversion rate optimisation) blogs we set about trying to get our business off the ground. We made a whole host of changes some with positive effects and others not so positive. Whilst we are far from the finished article we certainly have learned a lot along the way and below are my top 5 converting tips which you could consider for your own site.

Traffic is useless on its own

We spent most of our time in the early days learning SEO in order to increase the amount of visitors to our site. I vividly remember breaking the 500 visitors in a day barrier and feeling very smug about life. It was only when this didn’t coincide with any appointments being booked that our celebrations subsided! The reality is that getting traffic is obviously important but traffic has no value unless you can turn it into some sort of business.

User testing rocks

This is something you absolutely have to do as it allows real people with no prior knowledge of your site to effectively test run your services. There are many websites out there such as usertesting.com which offer great insight into how your website is perceived. I would recommend paying for at least 10 sessions and act upon any issues that are raised during the testing. You may be surprised at the comments people have about your site, and in some cases you may be downright offended, but all this information is like gold dust, you just need to act on it!

Don’t trust your instinct!

Whilst it can be tempting to make changes to your site based on what you believe will improve conversion you need to realise that there is a good chance that you could be wrong. My advice to you would be to have a brain storming session with your business partner/team to discuss any issues that could be affecting your conversion. You should then prioritise this list and test each change one by one using A-B split tests. If following each test there is clear winner in terms of conversion you can should update your website accordingly and move on to the next item to test.

Site speed

This plays a huge role in site conversion especially in the era of broadband internet. There are various websites and programs you can use to assess the speed of your website and you should ask your web developer to try and speed up any pages that are especially slow. To highlight how important site speed is on conversion you may find the following fact helpful: A 1 second delay in page loading can reduce conversion by up to 7%.

Don’t stop!

As a web business owner your work is never done and this can be incredibly frustrating for some people. I remember when we first launched our website thinking how pleased I was that we had finished! Unfortunately you need to realise that your website should be constantly evolving and improving with the main focus being on increasing conversion. Any changes you make to your site need to be tested to ensure that they have no negative effect on conversion as this will lead to a drop in your bottom line profits.

I hope this article has been helpful and if you just take one thing away from it then this should be that testing is the key to everything. You need to view your website like a shop; you need to make sure that people entering are not just having a look and then leaving empty handed!

Good luck!

Image courtesy of Gerard Stolk (vers la Pentecôte ), Flickr.

Not Getting Messy

All too often, online business can get very messy when it comes to building up your presence. Usually, this means that once you start creating online content and graphics, you start to create a backlog of information that, without some organization, can fall into a rut. Over time, this can cause problems with your SEO techniques that you use to help generate client interest on the web. Don’t forget, SEO stands for search engine optimization.

The craft of interlinking is a crucial technique in SEO organization. Its clearly organized, well-planned architecture allows everyone that accesses your content to move from correct page to correct page with ease. It also improves your ranking in SEO through organic searches, so it is absolutely crucial that you make sure your interlinking is in top form.

Interlinking is a pretty easy process, thanks to online media creation tools. Once you have your content created, you can embed links to all of your other pages, blog postings, and product listings right in your metadata. After that, when your material is published online and goes live, it’s expected that you can click on those links to get connected to the desired pages. Getting this down with some practice and basic web site architecture is how you can begin to create link building within the total body of your online business material. It’s how you begin to avoid a big mess later.

Mapping Your World

Taking this theme of architecture a step further, you have to begin to map your web site material out more and keep tabs on where you’ve done your linking. All of your relevant business material is crucial here. You want to ensure that all your links are working in order to connect all of this material and keep your SEO working in proper form.

If you take a look at your analytics, you can note which keywords are generating the most traffic. Hence, it’s important to make sure any old material you have with those keywords or phrases are linked to your newer material. It’s a bit like using current on-page SEO with your off-page SEO, so the two work in harmony as a highway for dual traffic potential channels. Whenever you have a blog post with these keywords, have some archived content that’s related to newer material, or are trying to click update content with product pages, link them up. Make sure you do it just one page at a time and keep a record of what is linking to what other page.

Testing and regular maintenance are absolutely essential here. A simple error, such as an extra letter or word space in your metadata, can cause a link to fail. Also, you might find, by some odd circumstance, that your material is linking to pages or content that is completely foreign to your own work. You never know when this happens, but as soon as you discover it, you have to fix it, as it can mess up your whole interlinking setup.

Don’t Stop Now

Like a lot of SEO techniques, interlinking is not an exact science. It changes and requires you to keep it updated for whatever content updates you do, whatever new pages you want to link to as part of your off-page SEO with a partner page, etc. It goes without saying that you have to go over your interlinking plan with a fine-tooth comb on some sort of regular schedule to keep it working and current with online SEO techniques and trends. To keep your skills working, experiment with your blog or updates page to see how you can create your own interlinking. Don’t stop; keep working to master link building on your own.

To get more help on all your SEO, web site design, and web traffic needs, e-mail Numero Uno Web Solutions Inc. at info@numerounoweb.com.

All of that being said, there is a lot that can go wrong when developing a new website. As always with these posts, we will just be scratching the surface of what needs to be considered when developing a website for your company.

1. Decide what you want your website to do

What exactly is the purpose of your website? Is it a place your salesforce can visit to gain updates about the company? Is it meant to keep in touch with your existing customers or do you want it to attract new business? The answers to these questions will form the foundation of how you approach the development of your website for the duration of the project. Everyone in the company needs to be on board with the approach before this stage is left behind.

2. Determine whether the website will be directed at “you,” “we,” or “us”

This stage of website development will in part be determined by how you end up with step one. If your website’s purpose is to increase sales, you may find a “we” approach most beneficial. A “we” focused website will emphasize features and benefits, company history, and more. A website intended to increase sales could also use a “you” approach. “How can we help you, our customers?” “How can our products help you?” These websites may offer a lot of additional content like white papers in addition to basic product information.

3. Pick a navigation style that will be user-friendly

It is very common for websites to go live with navigation that is counter-intuitive. This is because after spending weeks or even months working on a project, you can lose track of how a site will be viewed by new eyes. Make sure that you keep your navigation simple. A nav bar that is too complex or a site that is too hard to follow will be left quickly in favor of one that is more efficient.

4. Consider SEO on the front end

It is possible to go into a website after it is live and optimize it for Search Engines. However, this is really doubling your work. The copy you wrote will likely have to be written again with emphasis on keywords. Page titles may need to be altered. The list goes on. Incorporating SEO research into your website on the front end can save time and can get your website moving up the search engine organic results faster.

5. Test. Test. Test.

A year or two ago, the biggest concern about a website was that it might have a flash opening or a lot of flash content throughout, which did not work at all on the popular iPhone. Mobile usage continues to increase steadily. While many people now visit your website on an iPad or other tablets, which can come close to simulating the computer experience, you still need to make sure that your website works effectively across all available devices and platforms. This does not take a long time to do, and the time you do spend is well worth the investment.

Of course, this is just the beginning of the “must do” list when working on a website, but this should be enough to get you thinking. If you have any questions let us know!

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/angelaypablo/860181962/ via Creative Commons

As some people know, online commenting has been one of the important practices to make a website popular. For hardcore SEOs, it’s safe to say, it has survived the updates Google is bringing into the search engine and internet marketing industry. Sadly, some people today don’t know the essence of commenting and just do it to spam. They don’t realize the real potential of online commenting.

No Empty Thoughts

Web business owners know that the comments that people make on website articles or blogs are very valuable. They are not only thoughts from unknown people but they are also considered as powerful lead generators and group builders that will advice web content evaluators regarding what to fund in the various web businesses that’s available.

More Readers More Engagement

There are media websites that cater to a lot of readers. Some of them are related to sports and daily national or international news. When a good story catches a reader’s attention, a web reader’s next move is to make a comment —- and look for an outlet. Coming up with live chat discussions, comment threads and options to put pictures from regular readers are ways and means to stir up engagement. Web publishers know that a healthy interaction between readers and writers, or readers and other readers help build a community on the discussion threads. People who place comments stay longer on the sites and there’s a high probability that click rates will increase. More page views from the community thread and new topics that arise from comments generate reader loyalty as they view the comments and replies that they get from their personal posts.

Comments Build Communities

The idea to stir up comment pages and generate income from it originates from the various exchanges that take place in social networking sites. People view their friends’ postings and they comment on them. In addition to this, some of their friends will react to their posts or “like,” them and eventually share the information on their personal pages. A single thought that will come from a single article that gets more comments will eventually come up with a new content as the community discussion builds up. Just like in a conversation, a single idea from an article doesn’t become one sided. There will be posts that will agree with the thought or someone will post a contrasting comment with a new angle on things. The topic on the original post evolves and becomes more interesting. Each new post is like a ring from a company phone that will lead to new sales from a happy customer.

More Comments More Profits

Interaction pages that motivate users to interact more maximize their returns. If all conversations on a topic are put in a single place, people who are following it will have the opportunity to interact with the other users and may lead to more sales results. Giving readers an easy access to join discussions helps readers identify themselves with others with whom they share similar interest. It helps them become part of a community that welcomes their idea. Sponsors of the topic gain the opportunity to get the actual pulse of their product’s target market.

Happiness Is End Result

The value that web publishers get from comments of readers may appear as unsolicited advice. They contribute to the improvement of goods and services. Readers like the idea that their freedom of speech isn’t curtailed. If advertisers know that a certain page attracts more readers, they’d definitely put their ads in it. Comments are actual proof of popularity. The longer a reader stays on the page means an increase in ad click rate. The reader benefits by gaining an intrinsic feeling that they are part of a group that has the same interest as they do. In the end everyone goes to bed happy.

More and more people choose these specialized builders when they decide to put their company or their projects on the online map, saving both time and a lot of money. On the other hand, web designers and programmers worry this trend will stick and slowly rob them of their jobs. But are these website builders really endangering the future of good old classic web design? Let’s take a look at each side of the story and see what lies beneath the ”noise”.

Target

First of all, web designers and web developers are usually targeting a different public. Since they’re more expensive and capable of building complicated customized websites, they target companies that are willing to pay a higher price for better quality.

Website builders mostly target freelancers, artists and small companies that can neither afford to pay a web designers, nor need a complex, corporate website that only an expert can develop. All they need is a ”face”, a presentation website where they can show their work and communicate three things to their target market: 1. That they exist 2. How they can be contacted and 3. Where and how they sell their products/work.

Truth be told, these people would probably never hire a web designer to build them a website, it would be over their budget and they’d probably put up a blog or go with an in-house offline advertising strategy. So as long as web designers and web developers understand that (normally) they’re not going for the same public as website builders, there’s room for everyone. Of course, there will always be a common slice of public they’re both trying to feed off, but this is an exception and should be treated as such.

Pros and cons of website builders

For a web designer, the good side of this website builder boom is the chance to sell templates for royalties or a fixed fee. And since these sites usually update their catalogue every month, you can make some good money out of this.

But let’s see why clients choose to use website builders and whether they get what they need or not. Obviously, there are both pros and cons:

Pros

• Easy to use
• No programming skills required
• Fast implementation
• Full service (hosting, software, maintenance)
• Low cost
• Feature-rich
• Support
• Security updates

Cons

• Relying on one provider only
• Limited flexibility
• Control over data
• Installing server-side code
• Only suitable for simple websites

All in all, if you don’t need a complex website, if you’re ok with the limited flexibility and you’re willing to take the risk of having others using your data without your knowledge (although this is a risk you forcibly take when you go online, anyway. I’ve seen hundreds of copy-cats shamelessly stealing from hard working artists), then using a website builder can be an affordable and time-saving solution to your problem.

I was actually curious to try out a recently launched website builder called Imcreator and see if I can build a decent website using this tool. To be honest, I actually liked it. I liked the way they describe the process on their own website and how simple it is for someone who has no clue about programming or web design to make a website for free in a few easy steps.

The whole process takes no more than 3 steps:

• Choose a design (there are thousands of templates to choose from. Takes a bit of patience, but you can find some really nifty designs)
• Customize your website (you insert your content – texts, photos, videos – with just a couple clicks)
• Publish (aka press the Publish button)

If you ask me, these website builders could very well be good news for both clients and web designers. Clients can get a ”face” in the virtual world in no time, without shelling out a lot of money, while designers can sell their work to these websites and get some money. Sure, it’s not like working directly with the client, but if you think about the target separation, you can see this as a good opportunity to make some extra-cash.

header image courtesy of the UMF

The fact is, most optimization programs don’t run smoothly and then suddenly fail in month nine. Rather, website optimization programs fail because they weren’t set up to succeed from the very beginning.

In order to avoid the pitfalls that can tank a project before it even gets off the ground, let’s take a look at the four things that most often sabotage a website optimization program.

1. Not Deciding on a Single Success Metric

You can’t run a campaign until you decide which metric is the most important. So provide a real context around how you’ll judge the success of your campaigns—and be specific.

The reason: You’re going to get a few outcomes. For example, you’ll see how many sales were driven, you’ll see the quantity of purchases, or transactions, or subscriptions. So one success metric is quantity.

Another is average order value (AOV). If AOV is your success metric versus quantity, those create two different successful performers at the end of that test. Or do you want to focus on revenue per visitor? Figuring out which success metric has the most important impact on the business for each campaign is a critical first step in developing an optimization program.

2. Not Asking “What Are We Trying to Learn?”

This is similar to the first point, but there’s a distinction: If you just throw a campaign up against a wall to see what sticks, without any specific metric goal or purpose behind it, you’re going to get a flat result. So it’s important to define your purpose and then commit to it.

Plenty of companies kick off their website optimization programs by running a campaign just to run a campaign. And the campaign involves other resources, requiring help from creative, development and other marketing stakeholders. But since the campaign wasn’t geared toward learning anything specific, the results were flat.

That’s not how you want to start things off. So have a purpose, have a specific learning about your customers or your customer segments that you want to gather to build your intellectual capital and inform your tests moving forward.

3. Not Leveraging the Power of Creative

There’s another common occurrence that sabotages optimization programs, and that’s not taking full advantage of what different creative treatments can tell you about your customers. For instance, running two campaigns with similar creatives and similar headlines (like “50% Off Now” and “Get 50% Off Now”) might reveal Version A outperformed Version B.

But that’s not a rich learning. Are you only trying to figure out which text works best? Instead, what if you tried two entirely different creative treatments, using contrasting colors and different images entirely? What if you stopped testing small creative tweaks and started testing entirely different creative treatments to figure out what works best? Those are the rich questions worth asking, the ones that will reveal new learnings about your customers and customer segments.

4. Not Challenging Assumptions

Every company has assumptions, sacred cows if you will: Some brands never change anything above the fold, some believe in more conservative hero images on the homepage. But if you don’t challenge those assumptions, you’ll never realize new customer segments, new revenue streams, new ways to build the long-term customer relationships that encourage loyalty.

Assumptions are bubbles that need to be burst. If an element above the fold has sat there for years on end, why not try something new? A lot has changed – your clients have changed, platforms have changed, devices have changed. Even asking a simple question can help: What’s the most common screen resolution for your visitors? Asking that question could reveal your current homepage layout isn’t even effective for the majority of your visitors.

Obviously, more than four things can sabotage a website optimization program. But these are four issues most companies have control over and can act on. So whatever you do, ensure you kick off your optimization program right by defining your metrics and your purpose, trying new things, and challenging assumptions about the website.

That’s a surefire way to make sure you create and run the campaigns and tests that will drive learnings, customer satisfaction, and revenue.

Black Keyboard Grenade image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Mastering Big Data: Best Practices, Dos & Don’ts
Big data offers big opportunities for marketers, enabling them to deliver the most relevant website experiences possible to visitors. But there are hurdles to overcome. Find out how to avoid big data missteps and stay on the path to success. Download your free copy today.

In this post, I’m going to dig deeper into targeting your low funnel keywords. Now that you know the type of page layout to utilize, it’s time to take it step further and start looking at ways to better create your content and messaging. If done properly, this is the most cost effective way to increase your conversions and decrease your CPC, all while not needing to spend another cent on your paid search campaigns.

We’ll look at three ways to better target these terms: dynamic content substitution, reduced friction, and leveraging ad extensions.

Dynamic Content Substitution

Remembering that people searching for low funnel keywords already know who you are and that they’re ready to purchase your product or services, it’s absolutely imperative that you find ways to make your landing experiences as relevant to their need as possible. Enter: dynamic content. This is one my absolute favorite techniques for low funnel keywords because it lets you:

• Put the power of logic to work to create just one page to serve dozens of keywords
• Display unique content based on a search query, geolocation, or anything else passed in on the query string
• Swap out images, headlines, blocks of texts, forms, etc. to make your landing experiences hyper relevant to individual users

Creating this type of relevant experience let’s you satisfy three basic marketing needs:

1. Increase page relevancy for your site visitors, ensuring them that this page is all about them and what they desire
2. Increase page relevancy for Google to decrease CPC and increase quality score
3. Decrease resources required for page creation. You only need one page!

In this example, all of the arrows are pointing to content that was dynamically swapped out based on the state that some came through.

Imagine if you had to create a unique page for all 50 states! This is what the power of dynamic content substitution can provide.

Reduced Landing Page Friction

In my previous posts, I referenced the idea that when dealing with visitors who are already at the point of wanting to convert, the best thing you can do is get out of your own way. This is really where reducing the friction on your landing pages come into play.

This should be achieved in a variety of ways, but the end goal is consistent:

• Remove “leaks” from your page, or links that take people away from the conversion goal
• Don’t make your visitors jump through unnecessary hoops
• Eliminate any unnecessary “work”  that they have to go through
• Eliminate distractions

This is best demonstrated through the use of a less than stellar example.

In the above example, my search query was “nine west pumps” and the page on the right is where I was taken. Now you’ll notice that there are clearly images of pumps on the tope of the page, and the headline even references the shoe type that I searched for. However, this is nothing more than an image that I cannot engage with in anyway.

In the results section of the page, which is where I really want to see some pumps, there are none to be found. This leaves me with no choice but to move to the left hand navigation and once again search for pumps. Actually, I suppose it leaves me with two choices: redo my search or leave. This site simply gave me too many distractions and made me jump through too many hoops. I left.

Leverage Ad Extensions

I have to preface this last section by saying that Ad Extensions (while totally cool), are still in Google Beta testing. This means that unless you’ve been invited to participate, it’s something that you’ll have to put on the backburner until a more wide scale release. That said, it can be really awesome, so it’s definitely something to be aware of and to plan for.

Ad extensions make it even easier for someone to convert on your page by taking a common, and often the first field on a form, and placing it directly in the ad itself. This lets visitors start the conversion process before they even land on your page. Better yet, it lets you take the information they input in the form and display dynamic content (see above) to better target that visitor.

In this example, I searched for “Florida car insurance”. In the ad, I was able to input my zip code and was then taken to page that showed all sort of content specific to me.

While there are lots of ways to make your landing experiences targeted to low funnel keywords, the above three are a few of the most successful that we’ve utilized. If you’re sending all of your keywords to the same, generic pages, it’s time to start looking at a few additional techniques.

Keep an eye out for my next post where I’ll talk about targeting high funnel keywords and how to get a return from visitors that aren’t yet ready to buy.

Here’s a breakdown of three I’m really into right now:

1. LaunchRock

Launchrock is probably the quickest, easiest way to set up a website intended to start building an audience. The site builder is simple and intuitive–you describe your idea, upload a nice image and point your domain name to the site. Launchrock then provides a simple form asking potential customers to sign up to be notified of the pending launch of your product. In less than an hour, you can have a great site that helps you build a list of potential customers and prospects.

We’ve been working on a major change at VerticalResponse, and we’ve been using LaunchRock to collect e-mail addresses for folks that want to get the scoop, or be a part of a beta. We’re loving it.

Cost: Free with no limits to how many e-mail addresses you can collect.

2. FiveSecondTest

We regularly use tools like Optimizely to test our landing pages and homepage of our site, but when I discovered FiveSecondTest, I was intrigued. The site is a crowd sourced usability test for your home page, landing page, e-mail marketing, or your app. Here’s how it works:

• You upload a screenshot or mockup of your page, app, etc.
• You pre-load a few questions for testers to answer.
• Then the fun begins. Testers have five seconds to view your image and must then answer the questions you have set.
• FiveSecondTest collects all of the responses for you, extracts the frequent keywords and then presents the data with easy-to-understand graphs.

You can also participate by taking a minute to serve as a tester and get free testing points for doing it. It’s pretty eye-opening to see how sites are presented and just how much there is to digest in five short seconds. It can make you think about your own site through a different filter.

Cost: Free and paid options.

3. Conduit

Conduit enables you to create a mobile website and mobile apps in a snap. With so much web browsing being done on mobile devices, it’s a no brainer to get on the mobile site bus now, and thanks to the Conduit folks, you can do it by simply copying an auto-generated code into your regular site. Anyone who visits your site on a mobile device will be redirected to your mobile site–just like that. Conduit’s mobile app maker is equally as friendly with a nice selection of designs and templates, you can customize your app to complement your company look and feel and you’re good to go. Where was this when we built our mobile app?

Cost: Free and paid options.

Have any other cool website tools to add to my list? Share away in the comments, I’m always game to try something new!

This article by VerticalResponse CEO and founder Janine Popick originally appeared on Inc.com.

The following are some strategies which could help you enhance your eCommerce site, and thus stay ahead of the competition.

1. Segment your audience

To enhance your chances of success, you need to split your audience into specific segments. This will make it easier for you to establish their interests and preferences. In addition, you will be able to determine which segments bring in the best returns. Make sure your sales messages are customized for each segment of your market so as to ensure every individual receives relevant offers and information.

2. Create great content

Content is what enables you to get the sales message across to your audience. Therefore, you need to find a way of making it as convincing as possible. The main aim of the content in your pages should be to convert prospects into buyers. Besides text content, it would also be advisable to add product images which would compel visitors to click on the ‘Buy’ button.

3. Engage your audience

Engaging your audience is very important for the success of your eCommerce site. Make sure you respond to questions and comments left by visitors at the end of your posts. You could also consider inviting consumers to share reviews and testimonials of your products and services. Running competitions on your site can also be a very effective strategy for retaining the attention of your audience.

4. Use videos

Embedding videos on web pages is a very popular way of marketing products and services. For instance, you can share videos which show the different features of your products, as well as how they work. Such visual displays will greatly increase your chances of converting prospects to customers. In addition, videos can also help improve the search engine ranking of your site.

5. Eliminate shipping costs

What many online merchants don’t realize is that shoppers usually avoid purchasing products which have an extra shipping cost. This means that if you eliminate shipping costs, you will increase your chances of making a sale. In case such the free shipping option is not viable for an individual product, you could decide to offer it for bulk orders.

6. Get rid of useless page elements

Useless page elements such as flash animations, rotating graphics and flickering banners only end up annoying visitors, as well as making web pages unnecessarily heavy. If you decide to use any design element to grab the attention of visitors, keep it subtle so as to avoid distracting them from the most important content.

7. Optimize your content for local search

Localized search engine marketing is one of the best ways of attracting more traffic to your eCommerce site. Take time to customize your ad campaigns and product descriptions so as to make them relevant to your local audience.

Personally, I love to cook. But would I be likely to visit a cooking blog that doesn’t have photos illustrating the steps of the recipe, or at the very least, a beautiful photo of the final product? No, because it’s hard to imagine how this great-sounding recipe should turn out if there is not a photo of the finished product.

The same goes for blogs and websites in all industries. Ryan Biddulph mentioned in a recent post that his site began to generate more traffic when he added images to each post. We are still a very visual society. If anything, the advent of the Internet and the subsequent movement of advertising and marketing to online platforms has driven us to be even more visual. Keeping your blog or website visually interesting will keep you readers/visitors coming back again and again.

Luckily, there are quite a few ways to add visual interest to your site. Here are a few easy suggestions:

Photos

– Using photos on your site can seem like an obvious suggestion, but you would be surprised how many people do not share photos. Usually the posts that get the most hits are the ones that contain several photos. Instead of a wordy blog post, sometimes just a quick photo share is the way to go. People love to look a photos, they feel like they are getting a glimpse into someone else’s world.

Graphics

– Have you ever realized that while you probably don’t notice every graphic on a website that you always notice if there is a lack of graphics? To me, a site without any graphics, fun fonts, or color looks like someone forgot to finish it. The last thing you want for your business or even personal blog, is to look like you didn’t put in the time or effort to finish the site. There are tons of websites where you can attain free graphics to use on your site. If you can’t find what you want for free, sites like Shutterstock offer relatively inexpensive graphics for purchase.

Infographics

– The use of the infographic on blogs and business sites is still relatively new. But infographics have caught on and the use of them is now spreading like crazy. They are a great way to cram a ton of information into one visually interesting space. Infographics use different fonts, images, colors, and sizes in order to relay information that otherwise could be thought of as dry or boring (read: statistics). You can pay a graphic designer to design an infographic for you, or if you are savvy with editing software like Photoshop, you can even make them yourself.

(Photo Source)

If you want to succeed, Seth Godin says, you have to be remarkable. The highly regarded marketing guru insists that beating your competition entails being unique and memorable towards your target audience.

If you don’t, he added, your target audience will find and go to someone else.

But how do you become or stay unique and memorable?

Here are four smart steps you can do to beat your competitors and catapult your business into greater heights:

1. Determine what makes your business unique.

In some ways, all businesses are unique. The first crucial step to making the most out of your business, whether you’re selling a product or offering a service is to know what makes you stand out from the rest. Identify that, and you’re on your way to experience success.

Many businesswomen who are able to identify earlier what makes their business unique become more successful.

2. Establish your identity.

Be specific with your brand. For example, Zappos is known for their great customer service. LL Bean is known for treating their customers with compassion. MACS Women’s Group is a brand known for motivating and helping women entrepreneurs to succeed.

Just like these brands, you should be able to create a special distinction for your own marketing story. It should be, again, unique.

3. Provide a high-perceived value proposition.

It is important that your customers know what you have that your competitors don’t. Show them what they can get from your business. Creative selling propositions will effectively attract potential customers to your product or service.

4. Be everywhere!

The “be everywhere” strategy is something that the business tycoon Donald Trump is known for, and he sure knows how to make it work for his business, and his unique brand as well. The Trump brand is almost everywhere!

Whenever Donald Trump has a project, people will immediately know about it. Propagating your business and making people know about it definitely pays off.

Utilize the viral power of social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and a whole lot more. Make your business “get everywhere” by harnessing social media strategies to reach out to your target audience. You will be surprised at the response you will get.

Fire up your strategies by following these tips! Get ahead of your competitors and attract your target audience to your business so you can be on your way to success.

When asking if you should utilize Facebook, Google or Bing advertising, it is important to consider the pros and cons of each channel and what will work best for your audience.

Facebook

Pros

• More control over who receives the message: On Facebook, the marketer can target by age, gender, location, interests and more, which you cannot do on search engines
• Very large audience base, which makes it a great way to increase brand awareness
• Average cost-per-click is usually lower than Google advertising (Facebook is around $1.08, and Google is at $1.44)

Cons

• Click-through rate for Facebook is generally much lower than other PPC advertising (Facebook saw an average CTR of .051% last year, while Google saw an average CTR of .4%)
• There is no way to see revenue gained from ad copy

Google

Pros

• Ability to track revenue by using built-in tracking codes
• Ability to target by geographic location and days and times of the week
• Target users by device, such as tablets, desktops and mobile devices
• Very large audience (comparable to Facebook and much larger than Bing’s audience)
• Ad copy contains extensions, such as location extensions, sitelinks and click-to-call (these extensions increase click-through rate on advertisements)

 Cons

• Very high competition among businesses
• Low level of control over audience targeting
• CPCs can become expensive when bidding on competitive terms

Bing

Pros

• Ad copy contains extensions such as sitelinks (extensions increase click-through rate on advertisements)
• Average CPCs tend to be the least expensive compared to Google and Facebook (Facebook was around $1.08 last year, and Google was at $1.44, while Bing was at $1.04)

Cons

• Smaller audience base than Google and Facebook
• Does not have the ability to track revenue

The Bottom Line

In general, there are many great aspects to running paid search campaigns on search engines, such as the ability to make adjustments in real-time to run ads as efficiently as possible and the ability to drive traffic quickly to new websites. Facebook also has fantastic aspects, such as targeting capabilities and an extremely large audience base.

Still confused? In order to decide which route is best for you to take in your advertising efforts, you will need to take several things into consideration. One important thing is figuring out where your audience is and making sure to be present in that space. If your audience does not use Facebook, then Facebook is not a good place for you to spend advertising dollars. You do not have to be present in all of these areas simply because they are available to you.

Understand your customer base, and you will have a much better idea of the best place for you to advertise. What are your tips for online advertising? Share in the comments below!

photo credit: William Hook

So the question is, how to increase website traffic?

Well I think I have an answer for you, actually I have 4 simple, easy to follow answers and I am sure if followed properly, they will yield best results for your websites and blogs. Though I can’t guarantee that you will see a sudden boost in your visitors, it will surly help you in long run.

How To Increase Website Traffic

• Focus on readers rather than bots.
• Try to use and implement LSI and long tail keywords.
• Build backlinks to improve SERP.
• Offer subscription.

Focus On Your Readers

Always care for your visitors and then only you will be able to convert them into your loyal readers. Offer them with best design, easy to use navigation and show them adverts without hurting their reading experience. If you follow these tips it will not only help you avoid Google page layout penalty, but will also make your website visitors happy.

Now if you are daily SEO news readers, then you must have noticed that almost every SEO guru will tell you to highlight your keyword in bold, italic and underline. Each of them will ask you to write article with word length more than 500 words. But do you think these steps are going to help you or are going to add any value to your article? Answer is NO.

Well we should highlight all important phrases, but only if it looks natural and is able to attract attention of your reader to that sentence. Considering the article length, we should not focus on number of words, rather than that we should understand whether the post is able to deliver the required information or not. Since its quality which matters and not the quantity.

Using LSI & Long Tail Keywords

If you are a novice blogger or webmaster then it will be really difficult for you to rank for some tough and highly competitive keywords. In such case you can go for LSI which stands for Latent Semantic Indexing and long tail keywords which are usually referred as low hanging fruits.

These types of key phrases are easy to rank since less number of peoples make searches using them and so it has lees number of competitive websites. So you get maximum chance to rank and grab the global traffic.

Tips & tool for implementing LSI and long tail keywords.

• If possible use them as your main headline.
• Use any of the related search term within your first and last paragraph. Use Übersuggest.
• Use lsikeywords.com to find LSI words for free.
• Use Google adword keyword suggestion tool for finding perfect long tail phrases.
• Try to use these words in your subheading and in middle of your content.
• Also use them as alternate text of any particular image in your post.

Build Backlinks To Improve SERP

We all are familiar about Google penguin, and so their is no reason to use black hat link building methods. Since it won’t benefit you but will surely harm your position and authority. You will lose all your organic website traffic and so leads and conversions.

The only way to succeed in current SEO era is white hat link-building methods. These include lots of different strategies. You can perform,

• Guest blogging,
• Can use article marketing (only web2.0 websites).
• Can perform commenting (both do-follow and no-follow).
• You can distribute press release which can be called as link bait, since many different news sources may include it in their websites.
• Finally you can even create your own blogging network for backlink distribution.

What I personally suggest is using Squidoo and Hubpages for article submission. You can even use some popular and strictly moderated article directories. It’s really important to submit quality content or else you will be hit by both Panda and Penguin updates.

And if you can invest in press releases then you can see sudden improvement in their domain authority and PageRank, which will ultimately help you increase website traffic for free. (Remember that today PageRank won’t help you even a bit to improve  search engine result position).

Finally, a few of the other, but common, methods are bookmarking, backlinks from video sharing sites, doc submission websites, forums. Though the link quality might not be so good but can be added as an effort.

Offer Newsletter Subscription

My personal favorite email marketing service is Mail Chimp. It’s a really good service for novice and start-ups since it offers you a free plan in which you can have up to 1000 subscribers. And that’s the reason why I just love them.

You can easily use their service to create a signup box. You can even use free WordPress plugins for this purpose. Finally, using the authentication key, you can connect your website and Mail Chimp. Now the only task left is showing your newsletter box in your sidebar, below content, above content or as a popup.

Whoever subscribes to your mailing list will become a part of your growing website and traffic. Now you can use this list to attract already interested subscribers to your landing pages.

That sounds really interesting but the most important part is creating compelling content which will help you automatically attract organic visitors. Without visitors you can’t think of getting any subscribers. So go ahead and implement all of my tips and tell me how it helps you.

So these were four of my personal tips which will surely help you increase organic traffic and website visitors for almost free. All your suggestions and comments are appreciated.

Lets take a good look at some extremely ugly websites that make money by the truckload.

POF (Plenty Of Fish)

AS EASY AS IT LOOKS Markus Frind and his girlfriend, Annie Kanciar, have loads of time to play in their Vancouver, British Columbia, apartment. Image source

Markus Frind, the founder of plenty of fish, lazes around most days after completing a gruelling 10 minutes work on his super ugly, but profitable website. Markus has no college degrees to speak of yet rakes in over 10 million dollars a year at pof.com, approximately 5 million in pure profit.

The site itself is so simply that it is really ugly. In fact POF looks even worse when you actually try and see how Markus makes his money.

Craigslist – Ugly Websites That Make Money or “Could Make Money”

The Craigslist business model seems crazy to some, but Craigslist President and Chief Executive Jim Buckmaster says this company has no plans to make more money. It seems they only need enough money to pay a few business expenses like web hosting services, electricity, and staff wages. The potential for this ugly website to make millions upon millions is obvious. There is no advertising, or none that is obvious to me anyway.

WiseGeek Making Money on the Back of Quality Information Only

The screenshot below shows the main menu on the Wisegeek homepage. Simple and ugly. But investigate further and you will see a huge amount of advertising on each and every content page.

If you press on one of these links that lead to a category page you will see 4 featured graphics at the top, then after that the page has literally thousands of links. It looks like they have listed every article in that section on that page.

Then when you look at one of these articles, the post has a huge amount of ads scattered through the content. I do not really know how much money this site makes but I guarantee it is a big chunk of change.

The one thing that all these ugly websites have is content that matches what their users want. They are simply providing what is needed and doing it well.

Therefore in this case, content is king here.

If you’re in software, an industry that creates more buzzwords per annum than every other tech sector combined, you’ve likely heard the phrase “user-centered design.” But unlike an email that uses the word “leverage” eight times, there are a lot of good ideas behind this bland corporate phrase.

The basics

How many interfaces do you rely on in order to perform your day-to-day tasks? How many have confusing menus or frustrating design quirks? A great way to avoid these pains: involving the end user more intimately at every stage of development. After all, it’s better to have surgeon-designed software than to be operated on by a computer programmer. And while neither is optimal, UCD can help bridge the gap between the two.

Influential backers

It’s probably fair to say IBM knows what it’s doing when it comes to making things. Their comprehensive take on user-centered design — a worthwhile read — is way more interesting and persuasive than any technical document has the right to be, which says something about their dorky passion for the concept. It’s also incredibly deep, with enough data to send any casual browser on a serious info-binge. No amount of care will turn a detail document into a national bestseller, but this is pretty darn close. On the opposite end of the computing spectrum, the award-winning devices from Fisher-Price further prove the idea’s weight with big-name businesses. Even if the latter design centers around computers with animal names on the keys.

For the developer

In a Smashing Magazine post on UCD in mobile software design, Lyndon Cerejo takes a page from IBM’s book in recommending the use of personas, or fictional users, that best embody the type of person expected to do the content. Building a larger spot for your clients during the development cycle, he says, is all about asking the right questions. In development, taking the users along for the ride streamlines things from the get-go, giving you a greater idea of what they want prior to launch while reducing the potential horrors of a relaunch.

In the enterprise

“Thanks in no small part to tech companies,” a Huffington Post update says, “the idea of user-centered design is everywhere.” Its author, Jethro Heiko, goes on to explain how he and others are working towards a human-centered workplace. The end goal? An office chock full of employee-friendly practices, such as the four-day work week. Are you getting excited yet? Flexibility, a core UCD concept, shows up in spades, with protocols for “designing, testing and improving upon work practices (and tools) that are customized to fit [employees].” Stressed employees generally feel the pain in their personal and professional lives. From business and ethical standpoints — not to mention the sheer thrill of working 20% less for the same pay — it’s always good to see the little guy get a nod from the suits upstairs.

In the end, though, it doesn’t matter whether you’re designing a mobile web page, making an app or even shaping office culture. Once you’ve taken the basic tenets and applied them to your own products and proclivities, you’re well on the way to a user-focused experience.

Running an online store is comparatively cheaper than running an actual store. Costs on premises, maintenance and displays can be saved. That’s why most online stores are able to provide unbelievable discounts on the MRP.

Online buyers are an educated lot. When they know you are saving costs by running a store   online, they expect you to pass on certain benefits to them.

While the percentage of discount you give to buyers depends a lot on that particular product, you can pass on benefits in different ways. Say you can afford to give a discount of 15% on a product; you can either choose to give the discount directly, or give a discount of 10% and provide free shipping for that particular item

Pricing has as much to do with the actual price as it has to do with perceived value. Display the MRP and strike it off to show a new discounted price and you already have your customer’s attention.

How to price your products

1.      Know your costs
The basics of any good business are that you need to cover your costs and then factor in for a profit before arriving upon a final price. You need to know how much your product costs and by adding a profit margin, you need to also know how many units you need to sell to turn a profit. While factoring in costs, don’t forget to add in overhead costs along with actual costs.

2.      Know your customers
It is very important to know your customers. Depending on what product you are selling, a discount may be helpful or harmful to your product. You will be surprised, but asking your customer what they think of your product pricing can give you some great insights.

3.      Know your competition
Don’t ape your competition, but know their public moves. Don’t spend too much energy on them, but following your competition can give you great ideas, tips, hints and in some cases customer insights too.

At the end of the day, Function + Benefit derived = Value. As far you can create value for the customer, she will happily pay for it.

In fact, these often are total life saviors for publishers, who need to monetize extra traffic likewise as for advertisers, searching for specific ad inventory to maximize their campaigns performance.

Ad Network Essence & Peculiarities

Roughly speaking, the notion of an advertising network can be described by one phrase: it’s a mediator between a publisher and an advertiser, helping out both sides in terms of expanding beneficial opportunities with trustworthy companies.

The only nuance is related to the requested payment for the done work (usually, revenue share), but otherwise there wouldn’t be any way for the companies to survive, right?

Within the wide diversity of networks on the market, some publishers, likewise as advertisers, can often find hard to choose the best one that would be beneficial and reputable at the same time. However, the mentioned choice can be simplified, if to check out the most valuable criteria before finalizing your decision.

Conclusive Factors of Ad Network Selection

When it comes to picking up an advertising network to deal with, you eventually have to answer a set of questions, which will help you opt for the perfect partnership option. In this respect, the criteria appear to include the following characteristics:

• Regions

The regional aspect is seemingly a controversial one in terms of finding the well-matching ad network. On the one hand, it’s generally suggested that international companies are better and much more reliable, whereas some experts admit that it’s possible to find a great local agency or network, if you’re dealing with specific traffic (Asian regions are hardly accepted by AdSense, for instance).

As for the local networks, especially those, working with China, Japan or India, these have got numerous flaws as well, much due to the communication barriers and insufficiently qualified support.

In a whole, it’s advised to surf for famous, yet not that “arrogant” ad networks, which have already earned decent reputation, yet can offer you interesting deals in the specific regions, like Epom Market, or Neverblue for mentioned Asia.

• Models

Clearly, most publishers are interested in working on a CPM model, whereas advertisers tend to offer the higher rates for CPA and CPC models, even though these haven’t managed to become the real world hits in terms of popularity.

As for the advertising networks, it’s frequently advised to choose the one, dealing with different models, so that you will simply manage multiple campaigns. The more or less interesting networks, namely, include likewise large enterprises, e.g. AdSense and the younger rivals, e.g. the mentioned Epom Market.

• Payment minimums

From a publisher’s perspective it’s better to get the earned money as soon as possible, so many of them are searching for low payment minimums from the side of advertising networks.

At the same time, most surveys reveal that the larger and the more reliable companies happen to offer higher minimums and tend to pay off the profits on a monthly basis, much due to the standard agreements with large advertisers. It’s your own option to choose, which direction to take, here.

• Revenue Share Peculiarities

It’s true that different ad networks establish different amount of required revenue share, the average being estimated around 30 – 70%.

This value is dependant on the kind of traffic, regional peculiarities, and the size of an ad network. That is, get ready to pay more working with the world-famous giant, if compared to mid-sized companies.

• Mobile Ad Network Divisions

It’s recently become a rule that advertisers are searching for various kinds of mobile ad inventory to purchase, and here’s where an ad network is virtually indispensable. If you acknowledge the necessity to work on mobile, make sure to select the network with a separate mobile division to get the best results.

Fortunately, a lot of large players have taken care of creating ones within their companies, as well as the smaller/younger competitors (e.g. Epom Market).

Take, for example, the use of a coupon code box. For visitors who already have a code to enter, the code box is an anticipated part of the checkout process. A retailer that does not help them find this code box will slow down the process—maybe even end it—for these shoppers.

But what about visitors who don’t have a coupon code? The code box presents this segment with a new decision: finish their order or look for a code in order to pay less. The possibility of saving money (and filling in an empty box) tends to be too difficult for most people ignore, so off they go on the web, searching for a coupon code. And that increases the risk of them seeing an ad from one of your competitors or otherwise getting derailed—not good.

To avoid this conversion-killing scenario, a retailer decided to test the impact of hiding the coupon code box on its cart page, replacing it instead with a text link in gray type that references the option to enter a coupon code.

When clicked on, the link takes visitors to the original cart page with the coupon box.

Note: The retailer put the text link in the same spot on the cart page where the coupon code box usually appears, so regular customers who are likely to have used a coupon before will not be thrown off. This placement also was prominent enough to stand out to new visitors who have coupons and are actively looking for a way to enter their promotion codes.

This smart approach to optimizing the checkout experience is generating good results for the retailer, with a 7.68% lift in average order value for the 50% of traffic that is seeing the test version. As it expands the test to a larger percentage of traffic, the retailer expects to drive even more incremental revenue with this campaign.

Mastering Big Data: Best Practices, Dos & Don’ts
Big data offers big opportunities for marketers, enabling them to deliver the most relevant website experiences possible to visitors. But there are hurdles to overcome. Find out how to avoid big data missteps and stay on the path to success. Download your free copy today.

Initially, the upgrade was only available to new signups within the U.S., but business owners around the world can anticipate gaining access in the next few weeks, as Google announced last week that businesses in the U.K. can now utilize the tool. The upgrade will gradually be dispersed to business owners, but SEOs still expect more updates. This version of the tool is a step up from the previous incarnation, but Google will still be working out the kinks that bother business owners. Most local businesses understand the importance of using Google’s tools, but the frustrations they express should spur Google towards improving its product!

What’s Better

Initial reactions indicate that the appearance of the dashboard is more in line with the current Google aesthetic. Although the aesthetic of a tool is not necessarily the most important point, SEOs do appreciate the chance to work within a more appealing design!

More seriously, one new feature the business owners will appreciate is the interface guides. These guides offer tips and advice that lead users through the process of setting up shop while avoiding any pitfalls. In addition, a new widget streamlines the set-up process into 3 quick steps.

With the upgraded dashboard, businesses are able to take advantage of heightened integration with other Google products. For instance, AdWords can be managed directly from the dashboard. In addition, the dashboard is connected to G+, so businesses can easily interact with their social connections.

SEOs are particularly excited about the prospect of quicker updates after edits. Google is notoriously slow in posting changes to business’s profiles, but this upgrade promises that updates will go live within 48 hours.

Other improvements include:

• More in-depth tracking insight
• The ability for service-based businesses to build a Google+ Local page
• A rich text editor that offers more options

What Still Needs Improvement

Mike Blumenthal astutely pointed out that the update is more focused on commerce than content. His post also discusses in length the problems that persist in this version of the dashboard.

Some of the problems that remain severely limit the capabilities of businesses to promote their brand appropriately. For instance, the new dashboard no longer offers the option to create a custom category for your business listing. Unfortunately, this means that all businesses must choose a category from Google’s pre-determined list of 10 choices. Another annoyance is the lack of ability to post videos on a listing.

The largest problem is that the process is still pretty messy. There are now 4 options on Google for managing your business’s presence. Wading through the different choices is confusing and time-consuming.

Finally, I have to point out that this upgrade is a shamelessly obvious attempt on Google’s part to monetize “Local.” The dashboard makes it easier than ever to purchase AdWords Express. Although you can’t blame Google for wanting to make a little extra money off of the local search trend, their promotion of AdWords Express is a little too in your face.

What’s your take on the new updates? Do you think Google took a step in the right direction?

Long web pages have become more commonplace of late, probably due to the fact that, for savvy web users, scrolling is not only accepted but, in some cases, is preferable to clicking between multiple pages. In relation to website design, the concept of the fold is losing its meaning – though it still holds some relevance within email marketing.

Long pages are particularly suitable when multiple pages of content on a subject are difficult to produce for any reason. In this situation, more traditional approaches to website navigation and page construction fall down. Typical scenarios might be either when you offer very few products (or just one), or your products are aimed at non-technical users who are only interested in what your products do, not how they do it.

Objectives of your long web page

 If you’ve decided that a long page is the right way to go, don’t rush in to producing it as you need to give your content some serious consideration.

Your aim is to get your prospect to read all the way to the bottom, or to contact you before they do – and presenting a long list of features is not going to do it.

Start by writing down every key question that you think a prospect asks themselves about a product when building a short list – what could rule yours in or out? These questions, known in marketing strategy as critical success factors (CSFs), are what your prospect needs to see answered when they read about your product.

The objective of your long page should be to answer every CSF questions. List your CSF questions in order of priority and you’ll have the basic layout for the bulk of your page.

Make it all very easy to read

Readability and navigation are key concerns that can kill your long web page if done wrong. Visitors have to feel that the page is inviting, easy and rewarding to read – they have to want to keep scrolling. Thus, when designing your page, the content, typography and visuals need to be carefully tuned:

• Keep copy succinct with clear headlines and plenty of negative space
• Choose images carefully and consistently – make the page visually rich
• Use calls to action (buttons or text links) to provide punctuation and to introduce welcome splashes of contrasting colour.

Bear in mind that the best way to answer each CSF question may vary. While carefully crafted copy may be right for one, a pricing table, testimonial or chart might be right for another.

End with a clear call to action

By the time your prospect reaches the end of your long page you really want them to be ready to contact you, so this is the time to ask them. We advocate including calls to action at regular intervals throughout your page so that prospects are never far from one – but the end of the page is the place where you really need to push for a response.

Consider creating a large, clear call to action that is hard to ignore. Better yet, include a short contact form right on the page – this way you save your prospect a click and increase the chances that they will enquire.

Need some inspiration?

While we were developing our long web pages we looked to some great examples for inspiration. Two are worthy of special mention:

KashFlow – www.kashflow.com

KashFlow’s home page is a near perfect example of the long web page in action. Here’s what we like most about it:

• They answer what they consider to be the CSF questions about their product
• They have great page layout with plenty of negative space and fantastic illustrations
• They combine a variety of content types to make a highly attractive page.

The only thing we think they could have done differently is to make the final call to action a little more prominent.

Mailbox – www.mailboxapp.com

Mailbox’s home page is another great example of the long page. It features:

• Excellent use of negative space – the page feels light and airy
• Extremely clear headings helping to guide the reader around the page
• Consistent illustration style that is easy on the eye.

Show us yours…

We hope this helps you when you decide to create long web pages for your project. If it does, we’d love to see the results. Or, if you’ve seen other excellent examples of long web pages in B2B marketing, we’d love to see those too. Either way, leave us a comment below.

The single most important element to having more visitors convert to leads on your website is what you say and the way you say it. You must have a content strategy. And the starting point from which to build this strategy is answering the three questions below from your existing customers’ perspectives:

How can you help me?

Potential customers can find your website in many ways. They may come from organic search, email marketing, referrals, a TV commercial, or a variety of other sources. Regardless of where your visitors come from, they need to know what you can do to help them the moment they land on your website. Think of your website as your company’s virtual elevator speech.

What can I do here?

Potential customers can likely do a number of things on your website. They can download a whitepaper, read an ebook, view your previous work, or read your blog. Don’t put obstacles in the way of these valuable actions. Industry jargon, too many clicks, cluttered design – these are all mistakes that convolute a potential customer’s understanding of what they can do on your site. Keep your message clear. Use terminology that is easy to understand and organize your website in a way that makes sense to potential customers, not to people within your organization who are intimately familiar with your products and services.

Why should I do it?

Potential customers need a reason. They need to know how you are going to make their lives better. That is the only reason they are going to download your whitepaper or request a quote. As soon as potential customers don’t find value in your site, they leave. Give them an incentive. Paint them a picture showing how you will improve their life and solve their business problems.

A visitor will only convert to a lead if they have found sufficient answers to these questions. Develop a content strategy focused on your existing customers that will help you design a website built for leads.

Welcome to another edition of the “5 Reasons” blog series. This will be a weekly blog series, with a fresh post every Monday. Last week’s topic was “Five Reasons You Should Consider Contests”.

This Week’s Topic = Five Reasons to Start Using Google AdWords

There are an infinite number of places to advertise online, and even more ways of doing it. But there are a few online channels that every company should test their way into because they’re so successful for others. Search marketing is one such channel, and Google AdWords is the way to get started.

Here are five reasons why:

• Your customers are already looking for you. People are searching on Google everyday. It’s likely some of them are searching for something you offer. And it’s just as likely they’re not finding you there. Help them find you by advertising on those searches.
• Your competition is already showing up. When people search online for something you offer, you hopefully show up in the organic results along with the rest of your competitors. But if you don’t show up on the first page, you won’t get very many visitors to your site. Help yourself by running ads and show up above your competition.
• It’s easy to test your way in. You can select a small number of very specific keywords. You can set low daily spending caps. You can see what works and what does not, and build up your budget from there. You are basically paying for results.
• It’s easy to manage. Google provides free training on the AdWords platform that anyone can take. You can also hire a part timer with AdWords experience, or an agency, that can manage it for you. Take it from someone who has been through the training, it’s not hard to learn.
• It will open you up to new advertising channels. Once you’re finding success on Google AdWords, you will be more comfortable and more aware of the other online marketing channels. Even through Google AdWords, you have additional advertising options, like their content network or remarketing opportunities.

As always, if you have your own tips, please include them in the comments below.

If you’ve been considering running a local deal you’re probably wondering about what you should and shouldn’t do when it comes to getting your deal out the door.

After all, you’ve probably heard some of the stories.

On one hand, there’s the small business owner who manages to acquire a steady stream of new and repeat customers based on one deal. And on the other hand, there are horror stories of small businesses having to shut down due to unanticipated customer demand and merchants being bound to unfair terms set by a deal provider.

In this video, you’ll learn 3 easy tips to create and manage successful local deals.

We’ll cover:

• Designing the right deal for you through an understanding of the deal goal and how this goal is beneficial to your small business.
• How to use additional incentives to get customers who purchase your deal to share and promote it to their friends.
• Determining who the deal should reach for maximum buying and sharing, as well as how to write enticing deal messaging to increase sales.

Want to learn even more? Check out our live and recorded webinars – you’ll find tips and best practices on email marketing, social media marketing, event marketing, daily deals in our Learning Center.

Google’s SMS search service is no more. Didn’t know it existed? The search giant may have been banking on that. It shut down the service with no warning whatsoever. The service previously allowed users to send a text message requesting a search via a short number. “Many shortcuts were available to retrieve the latest sports scores, information about local businesses, stock information, translations or weather information using the search option.”