Convincing your prospects to purchase from you is a hard job, but have you ever thought that you’re making the process twice as difficult for both parties if your prospects are convinced but don’t know how to buy from you? No matter how good you are at convincing your prospects, they won’t buy if they find the process cumbersome.

First, you will want to check that people can find your order form easily and hassle-free. You can write a clear, concise paragraph to direct your prospects to your order form so that you can minimize the chances of them getting lost. You can also reduce the chances of losing prospects by putting a prominent link to your order page from every other page on your site.

Also, do you offer multiple payment options? Some people may feel comfortable paying via Paypal, some may only want to pay with their credit card and others might want to send a cheque. The more options you offer, the better your chances of covering your prospects’ desired payment method. After all, it wouldn’t make any sense to sell hard to a prospect only to find that they won’t be able to pay you when they want to.

On the other hand, you will want to prove that you are a credible merchant. Is your order form secured using encryption technology? You would want to look into SSL for this. You can also offer a money back guarantee so that people will feel confident about buying from you. How about after sales support? Who do they contact when they have problems after purchasing?

Alternatively, you can add customer testimonials, your contact information, address, and so on to boost your prospects’ confidence. Make them feel safe about buying something from you, a total stranger to them on the other end of the Internet.

As a conclusion, it would be very pitiful if you sold hard and sold well to a prospect and something goes wrong when he or she is ready to pay. Eliminate any chances of that to maximize your profits!

Your website is where your business resides — it’s like the headquarter of an offline company. Hence, it is important to practise good design principles to make sure your site reaches out to the maximum number of visitors and sells to as many people as possible.

Make sure you have clear directions on the navigation of your website. The navigation menu should be uncluttered and concise so that visitors know how to navigate around your website without confusion.

Reduce the number of images on your website. They make your site load very slowly and more often than not they are very unnecessary. If you think any image is essential on your site, make sure you optimize them using image editing programs so that they have a minimum file size.

Keep your text paragraphs at a reasonable length. If a paragraph is too long, you should split it into seperate paragraphs so that the text blocks will not be too big. This is important because a block of text that is too large will deter visitors from reading your content.

Make sure your website complies to web standards at www.w3.org and make sure they are cross-browser compatible. If your website looks great in Internet Explorer but breaks horribly in Firefox and Opera, you will lose out on a lot of prospective visitors.

Avoid using scripting languages on your site unless it is absolutely necessary. Use scripting languages to handle or manipulate data, not to create visual effects on your website. Heavy scripts will slow down the loading time of your site and even crash some browsers. Also, scripts are not supported across all browsers, so some visitors might miss important information because of that.

Use CSS to style your page content because they save alot of work by styling all elements on your website in one go.

A lot of successful websites depend on returning visitors to account for a major part of their traffic. Returning visitors are easier to convert into paying customers because the more often they return to a site, the more trust they have in that site. The credibility issue just melts away. Hence, keep your visitors coming back to your site with the following methods:

1) Start a forum, chatroom or shoutbox

When you start a forum, chatroom or shoutbox, you are providing your visitors a place to voice their opinions and interact with their peers — all of them are visitors of your site. As conversations build up, a sense of community will also follow and your visitors will come back to your site almost religiously every day.

2) Start a web log (blog)

Keep an online journal, or more commonly known as a blog, on your site and keep it updated with latest news about yourself. Human beings are curious creatures and they will keep their eyes glued to the monitor if you post fresh news frequently. You will also build up your credibility as you are proving to them that there is also a real life person behind the website.

3) Carry out polls or surveys

Polls and surveys are other forms of interaction that you should definitely consider adding to your site. They provide a quick way for visitors to voice their opinions and to get involved in your website. Be sure to publish polls or surveys that are strongly relevant to the target market of your website to keep them interested to find out about the results.

4) Hold puzzles, quizzes and games

Just imagine how many office workers procrastinate at work every day, and you will be able to gauge how many people will keep visiting your site if you provide a very interesting or addicting way of entertainment. You can also hold competitions to award the high score winner to keep people trying continuously to earn the prize.

5) Update frequently with fresh content

Update your site frequently with fresh content so that every time your visitors come back, they will have something to read on your site. This is the most widely known and most effective method of attracting returning visitors, but this is also the least carried out one because of the laziness of webmasters. No one will want to browse a site that looks the same over ten years, so keep your site updated with fresh bites!

Many web design companies base all of their designs on stock templates.

Website templates are very affordable and they save you a lot of effort and time when you want to create a new layout for your website. However, a lot of people make mistakes in the process of choosing and using a web template and end up with something that was unlike the image they had in mind. Here are some guidelines to help you avoid those mistakes.

The first obvious mistake you should be aware of is using a template that is very popular. If many people use the same template, your website will not appear unique at all and your credibility as a solid, different website will be tarnished. In other words, you will appear generic just like your next-door neighbors.

To whole point of using a web template is to save time and effort. You just change the title and appropriate details and you’re done. The biggest mistake one makes is to customize the template beyond recognisation. While that may be good in the sense that you’re creating a unique graphic, you’re defying the very purpose of using a web template — saving time and effort.

However, on the opposite side, if a template you purchase is suitable but some changes must be made to suit your site’s theme, then you will have to take some time to make the changes. For example, you can find a very nice template that suits your hobby site except the original designer has put an image of stamps in the header. You can find images of garden plants and spades to replace the stamps for your gardening hobby site. However, do only make the necessary changes and don’t redesign the whole template.

In some circumstances, some people simply make the wrong choice of templates. This is a very subjective issue but you have to be careful in selecting templates to suit your audience. Do not choose templates just because they are pretty or because they are cheep, choose them because they serve your purpose.

On the other hand, if you can’t find a template that works for you, or you are a large company, consider having a custom website designed.

When it comes to your website, extra attention should be paid to every minute detail to make sure it performs optimally to serve its purpose. Here are seven important rules of thumb to observe to make sure your website performs well.

1) Do not use splash pages

Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website. They normally have a very beautiful image with words like “welcome” or “click here to enter”. In fact, they are just that — pretty vases with no real purpose. Do not let your visitors have a reason to click on the “back” button! Give them the value of your site up front without the splash page.

2) Do not use excessive banner advertisements

Even the least net savvy people have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements so you will be wasting valuable website real estate. Instead, provide more valueable content and weave relevant affiliate links into your content, and let your visitors feel that they want to buy instead of being pushed to buy.  Limit yourself to one or two well placed banners, and learn how to place links, if you are monotizing your site this way.  I recommend using banner ads in non-profit sites, mostly.

3) Have a simple and clear navigation

You have to provide a simple and very straightforward navigation menu so that even a young child will know how to use it. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered dropdown menus. If your visitors don’t know how to navigate, they will leave your site.

4) Have a clear indication of where the user is

When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. Don’t confuse your visitors because confusion means “abandon ship”!

5) Avoid using audio on your site

If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they’re not annoyed by some audio looping on and on on your website. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it — volume or muting controls would work fine.

Flash-based sites have been a craze since the past few years, and as Macromedia compiles more and more great features into Flash, we can only predict there will be more and more flash sites around the Internet. However, Flash based sites have been disputed to be bloated and unnecessary. Where exactly do we draw the line? Here’s a simple breakdown.

The good:

Interactivity

Flash’s Actionscript opens up a vast field of possibilities. Programmers and designers have used Flash to create interactve features ranging from very lively feedback forms to attractive Flash-based games. This whole new level of interactivity will always leave visitors coming back for more.  Of course, as technology catches up in other ways, much of this interactivity can be designed using other technologies, if the challenge is presented to the designer.

A standardized site

With Flash, you do not have to worry about cross-browser compatibility. No more woes over how a certain css code displays differently in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera. When you position your site elements in Flash, they will always appear as they are as long as the user has Flash Player installed.

Better expression through animation

In Flash, one can make use of its animating features to convey a message in a much more efficient and effective way. Flash is a lightweight option for animation because it is vector based (and hence smaller file sizes) as opposed to real “movie files” that are raster based and hence much larger in size.

The bad and the ugly:

The Flash player

People have to download the Flash player in advance before they can view Flash movies, so by using Flash your visitor range will decrease considerably because not everyone will be willing to download the Flash player just to view your site. You’ll also have to put in additional work in redirecting the user to the Flash download page if he or she doesn’t have the player installed.

Site optimization

If your content was presented in Flash, most search engines wouldn’t be able to index your content. Hence, you will not be able to rank well in search engines and there will be less traffic heading to your site.

Loading time

Users have to wait longer than usual to load Flash content compared to regular text and images, and some visitors might just lose their patience and click the Back button. The longer your Flash takes to load, the more you risk losing visitors.

The best way to go is to use Flash only when you absolutely need the interactivity and motion that comes with it. Otherwise, use a mixture of Flash and HTML or use pure text if your site is purely to present simple textual and graphical information.

Direct traffic is, well, direct. People go to the internet and type www.yoursite.com. Basically, your new website address should be on any piece of advertising, packaging, or paper that comes out of your business. Since your website answers all questions and is less expensive than someone answering a phone, you want it to be the first place a customer looks for anything. Here are some ideas:

• Order forms, invoices, bills
• Packaging, labels, boxes
• Business Cards
• Promotional Materials – pens, magnets, coffee mugs, calendars, stress balls
• Car Clings, Wraps or Stickers – drive around with www.mysiteiscool.com on the back of your corporate or personal vehicle. Note: I’ve been advised by someone who drives a company truck NOT to purchase magnets for your car. You WILL eventually lose them if you drive over 60 mph.
• Brochures
• Press Releases
• Advertisements in Radio, Magazines, Newspaper, Sign on your building, Flyers on telephone poles, etc. – you get the drift.

Linked traffic means that I link to you, and send you traffic. Here’s the most popular ways to get link traffic.

• Ask anyone you know with a website to link to you
• Beg random people to link to you via email – usually not very successful
• Submit to or join web directories. Some are free, some charge
• Post on forums and mention your website. Be careful – this is often considered SPAM.
• Create a myspace or facebook account and link to your site
• Buy links – proceed with caution, and only if you are willing to gamble with your money
• Have a blog or publish articles for publication

]]> http://www.webdesignyorkpa.com/2008/03/new-website-tips/ways-to-promote-your-website/feed/ 1 http://www.webdesignyorkpa.com/2008/03/web-design-tips/search-optimization-for-small-businesses/ http://www.webdesignyorkpa.com/2008/03/web-design-tips/search-optimization-for-small-businesses/#comments Wed, 26 Mar 2008 04:06:56 +0000 admin http://www.webdesignyorkpa.com/2008/03/web-design-tips/search-optimization-for-small-businesses/ Search Optimization is everyone’s favorite buzz word. SEO, SEM, page rank, google bots – lots of unchartered territory for a small business who wants to build a simple website and get found on the internet. But really, SEO just means talking to the target consumer. There are lots of high tech analytics I could recommend for you, but this is a low tech article. If you want high-tech reports and stats, feel free to leave me a comment.

But, here’s a quick guide to how google works. It looks at the text on your site and matches phrases with search terms.  So, if I go to a website and type in “hair salon york pa”, I get a list of all websites that have the words “hair, stylist, york, pa” (yes, google has rules on who gets first dibs, but that’s for a different post).

So, your goal, as a business owner who is responsible for things like choosing a domain name, and writing copy for your website, is to talk the right talk. What is the person typing on the other end going to type in and how can you best match that phrase. Some examples: are you an instructor or a teacher? An auto technician or a mechanic? Is a theater some place you go for movies or to watch a play? Is a dish a container for food or to watch satellite tv?

 These tips won’t automatically get you to the top of google, but they’ll help you think about some of the opportunities you may be missing. Here are a quick list of things every small business website can do to be “SEO” friendly: 

• Type in your name or service and see what results you get. Use this info to see if you have a good domain name (no double meanings, not a lot of other people with your name).
• Ask family, friends, customers what phrases they might search to find your business
• Make sure every paragraph of copy on the page mentions your business by name or by a business related term
• Add your company’s city and state to every page
• Have a brief description of your company in the page title – for example: Dmark Designs – a York PA web design and internet marketing company
• Sprinkle different ways to identify your product or service on each page. Example: Fluffy’s Pet Grooming Service may talk about Dog and Cat grooming, since not all people will search specifically for “Pet” grooming.
• If possible, dedicate 1 page to each product or service you provide.
• Give your web designer descriptions of any photographs for your website (Bill Smith in his blue suit)
• Find out if your web designer is writing SEO friendly alt and meta tags. These are tags that identify pages and images. Ask to view them

By establishing an email list, you can send out sales and coupons, new products, offers or announcements. A business doesn’t need to commit to a monthly or bi-weekly mailing, although many companies do.

Collecting email addresses on your website doesn’t have to be complicated. Today, most companies use a 3rd party email handler to send their promotions and newsletters via email. Your website simply transfers the email addresses to this email handler, you type your message, and hit the send button.

CAN-SPAM is the government regulations on commercial email. For the sake of CAN-SPAM alone, it’s advised that you use a 3rd party email handler for bulk email. However, there are plenty of low cost options available, with email rates as low as cents an email.

While most consumers want to read other customer reviews, that’s very low on the list of retailer “wants”.  On the other side of the coin, Top Sellers, What’s New, and Gift Suggestions aren’t nearly as popular for shoppers as they are for merchants.  So, how do you, as a business know what functionality is of value to your business and what bells and whistles are just fun extras?

Clearly, it’s hard to determine the return on investment of website functionality, but you can ask yourself these questions.  

1.  Will the new functionality add SEO content to my website (such as customer reviews, that add the content of the review itself to the page). 
2. Will the new functionality generate or collect email addresses for my mailing list? Tell a Friend functionality can also sign you up for a mailing list
3. Will the functionality sell more product or better market products? Zoom and Rotate photos is a popular request, that really does allow consumers to see products better.  Pages like gift ideas, and top sellers may not amuse customers, but it will showcase products that are otherwise buried in the background. 
4. Is this functionality something that will benefit the company, or be of use to the customer. A weekly product sales report may be available, even though it’s much more fun to see a list of the top products come up online.  
5. Do you have time to maintain functionality that requires monitoring, such as customer reviews and comments? 

Remember that website functionality, bells and whistles, and additions do not need to be added when your website is first built.  You can always go back and add them after your website is up and running.