As a marketing/advertising consultant for over 15 years, it is always extraordinary that internet developers do not often enough make use of the lessons learned before the internet explosion. It has been going on since the beginning of time. Since cave artists put?symbols’ to identify their paintings. A ?mark’ considered to be a branding element to identify and promote the artist in question.
There has been a great deal of marketing/advertising research done over the last century. According to the ?Advertising Age’ timeline the first newspaper advertisement was in 1704. It was, ?The first newspaper advertisement, an announcement seeking a buyer for an Oyster Bay, Long Island, estate, is published in the Boston News-Letter.?. Marketers have been looking for ways to improve conversion rates ever since.
Understanding Effective Design
So what does that have to do with web design? Everything! Virtually all websites need 2 things, traffic and conversions. The traffic part is simple. No traffic, no purpose. Unless it’s a private community or intranet, traffic is the lifeblood of any online entity. Increasing conversion rates matter if it’s a store, a newsletter, membership sign ups, a ?call to action’ is required. The website design and page layouts serve a purpose beyond an attractive ?appeal’.
Testing is at the core of perfecting your website for maximum results. Marketing is not really about guesswork. It is about constantly testing ideas against a ?base-line’ to achieve the greatest results. In one of it’s simpler forms we can categorize this with ?split testing’ or ?A/B’ testing. This merely means you run one design/advertising/copy over a predetermined period of time, monitor the results and then run a second version. The resulting stats (call to action, sales, inquiries) should establish a ?winner’. This will give you insight into other potential changes that will affect conversion rates. The refinement process continues.
Some conversion considerations; some of the most important factors affecting effective website design and development are;
Headline, Simple changes to your headline can produce up to 1,900% increase in conversion rates. Try to ask a question. If captivating enough, it will entice visitors to learn more. Curiosity is a powerful tool.
Drop Caps; Drop caps have been an effective tool for decades now, but are rarely used on the web. David Ogilvy, (whom worked on advertising for brands such as American Express, Sears, Ford, Shell, Barbie, Dove, Maxwell, IBM, and Kodak ) is quoted as saying, “The drop capital increases readership of your body copy by an average of 13%”. Certainly a healthy increase and massive ROI.
Colors; Psychologists have long researched the effects of color on people. Some research suggests that colors can account for up to 60% of a persons buying position. Many corporations use various A/B testing to establish the best colors for conversion rate profitability. It is most definitely a consideration and something to be tested.
Images; a no brainer. Images make a product tangible. From Computers to e-books, imagery creates a sense of reality to a virtual product. Even products such as downloadable software can be given ?life’ in reality with a nice product shot. Always try to use images where possible.
Bullets; As stated by Kim Roach, ?bullets are captivating, short, sweet, and pleasing to the eye. Not to mention, all of the top marketers, historic and present-day, use bullets. Clustered bullets offer a burst of benefits. ? in her dilation on conversion rates, and also added, ? In your bullets, be sure to use the words, “you,” “your,”, and “yours,” rather than “I,” “us,” “our,” or “we.” By using possessive words, you transfer ownership and allow them to visualize owning your product. ? So be sure to make full use of the ?bullet Effect’ wherever possible.
Background Color; much like the change of heading, this is a simple one that can pay dividends. Experiment with different BG colors. Each market tends to have slightly different flavors. Try and figure out which ones create the highest conversions for your site.
The tip of the Iceberg
This is truly a rudimentary and cursory review. My main goal is to make you more aware of what techniques are available to you. Do more research and find as many advantages as you can. Obviously a good web statistics (analytics/metrics) package is imperative for any ongoing marketing campaign. Be sure to get one. Working smart with your web design and development will ultimately increase conversion rates. Keep testing. The world marketplace is in constant flux so you have to be constantly identifying them and adapting.
This is the beginning to marketing through effective website design.
Source: High Quality Article Database - 365articles.com
August 9th, 2006 at 7:23 am
If you are like millions of other online businesses, you have discovered the benefits of using pay per click (PPC) advertising to boost traffic to your website. This form of advertising has become so popular on Google that it can now be difficult to find keywords that are useful and related to your content without spending a fortune. There are however, some things to keep in mind that will help you to become more profitable with pay per click advertising and to enhance your Denver PPC management.
Pay per click advertising is based on the auctioning of keywords. The more popular the keyword, the more money a company will pay to use it. For example, a dog products website might want to use the keyword “dog.” When a user goes to Google and types in the keyword “dog,” a list of paid ads will appear in the margins next to the actual search results. The dog products website would be one of the companies that randomly appears here.
When a user clicks on the website’s ad, the company has to pay Google a specified amount of money. This fee would be quite high for the word “dog,” as it is one of the most popular on the web. But for a keyword such as “dog food bowl” the company would pay less money.
The thing to keep in mind here is that not only would the dog product website pay less money for keywords like “dog food bowl,” they would also have less competition. When you go to sites like Wordtracker.com that analyze the keyword popularity on the web and the number of search results for each keyword, you see that the less popular keywords have fewer results. In the world of billions of websites all competing for eyeballs, fewer search results means the dog products website has a better chance of being seen.
A growing problem among PPC advertisers is that their competition has been known to click on their ads in order to up their bill with Google. This is not always the case, but beware of this practice. The real goal you have here is to convert the clicks to sales. So you need to focus on the site itself in addition to the PPC management, Denver market research, and other day to day duties.
To get your ad noticed, you need to have a good strategy for copywriting. Make your ad as outspoken as possible. This is not the time to be subtle. Remember that you will be competing with other companies who offer the same thing you do, and your ads will be side by side. So go for the thing that you can offer that no one else can and emphasize that.
Before you implement your PPC strategy, be sure that your site will be able to handle the traffic. Often PPC advertising generates results immediately, so don’t put off upgrading your system if necessary. Always make sure that your site is in top shape before you advertise as well. Sending someone to a site that is incomplete or not in top form will set a bad first impression and you will lose a potential sale.
Source: High Quality Article Database - 365articles.com
August 7th, 2006 at 7:23 am
What Is Organic SEO?
Put in the simplest manner possible, organic SEO is search engine optimization done manually using no black hat methods, no underhand methods and no automated scripting. It is the purest form of optimizing your website for the benefit of search engines, while still retaining interest for your site visitors, and done well it is exactly the thing that search engines are looking for in a website. Once they find it they will reward your site with better rankings and improved positions within the search engine results pages. Throughout the course of this article it will be referred to as simply SEO.
Understanding The Search Engines
Understanding Search Engines and their general concept is vital to the use of effective SEO methods. Search engines enable their visitors to enter a specific word or term, known as keywords. Once submitted, all pages containing those keywords that can be found in the search engine’s directory are listed on the search engine result pages. Each page is ?ranked? according to relevancy, popularity and a few other factors. Therefore, in theory, the more relevant a page is to a given keyword the more likely it will appear at the top of the listings.
Introducing The Search Engine Spiders
Another important factor to remember about search engines is that they don’t use real people to crawl the billions of websites and judge how relevant they are. Instead they use automated software called a ?spider? or a ?bot? that does this work much quicker. The calculations that the search engine uses to determine the ranking of a website are called algorithms and in the case of the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN these algorithms are changed on a regular basis. The changes and the specifics of the algorithms are not released to the public in order to prevent black hat SEOs from manipulating their sites to reach the top of the pile despite containing to information relevant to the search query or keyword.
Optimizing For Search Engines ? Optimizing For Visitors
Of course to some extent, all of us reading this article are probably guilty of altering our web pages to meet the whims of search engines but it must be done in a positive and organic way. We understand that optimizing a page purely for the benefit of search engines spiders may massively detract from the actual value of the site to your visitors. Search engines understand this too, hence the evolution of the algorithms. With each new algorithm created and usually patented by search engines like Google, we are getting closer to a structure whereby sites are genuinely judged on their value to visitors. It may sound like an Isaac Asimov novel but the algorithms and the spiders are basically becoming more human like.
Basic Components Of SEO
The actual methods of optimizing your website are saved for another article, but the basic components of an SEO campaign are broken down into on page and off page optimization techniques. On page SEO includes factors like keyword inclusion, content optimization, page structure etc? whereas the main contributing factor of off page optimization is inbound links. There are many different factors to each of these areas and different SEOs will give you varying information on which factors are the most relevant to gain higher rankings. These extensive differences in opinion occur because nobody is certain of the algorithm criteria.
The Benefits Of SEO
SEO is probably the most beneficial way to conduct Internet promotion. It is highly cost effective, can yield long term results and the leads it generates are opt in and targeted. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t consider trying out alternative methods of advertising your site. For many, banner advertisements, press releases (can actually be used as part of an SEO campaign as well), PPC campaigns and sponsored listings prove to highly beneficial and including these will help your site’s popularity.
To Cost Effectiveness And To Life
The cost effectiveness is easily determined when you look at the potential of an SEO campaign compared to the method that many consider to be the next best thing ? PPC. A PPC campaign will usually cost you anywhere upward of 5 cents per visitor generated. This means that for every thousand visitors you receive you will have paid $50. Some fairly basic SEO work on a web site containing ten pages will generate this kind of traffic on a monthly basis relatively quickly.
$50 doesn’t sound much but consider that you pay this in one month to receive the desired one thousand visitors. Over the space of a year you will have paid $600, and so on. Now consider that you are competing for a relatively competitive keyword and you find that you need to be paying a minimum of 50 cents per click to generate just the one thousand clicks in a month. All of a sudden you’re paying $6000 per year and you are still only getting one thousand clicks every month. $6000 will buy you an awful lot of SEO work and you should find that within a few months you are generating a lot more traffic using SEO.
Targeted Leads
Targeted leads are the best type of leads you can generate. It means that the visitors to your site are already predisposed to the basic topic of your site and are interested in what you have to say. It means that they will be more likely to purchase goods or services from your site, click on affiliate links or click Google ads to earn you revenue. Because SEO leads are physically searching for the topic that your site relates to you are guaranteed that they are interested in whatever you’re offering. First of all they search using keywords relevant to your site. They then read the description and name of your site and this further compounds their interest in the page in question and click on the link. Already they have become highly susceptible to the message of your web page.
So Remember?
SEO is a webmaster’s greatest tool but treated badly it can quickly blow up in your face. By ensuring you stick to the very letter of the law and do not use any underhand methods you should soon benefit from powerful leads that will frequent your site and earn you revenue.
About The Author
Matt Jackson is the copywriter for WebWiseWords. The WebWiseWords copywriter service provides affordable website content, new media content and other forms of copywriting. For more information visit their website at http://www.webwisewords.com or email info@webwisewords.com.
Source: High Quality Article Database - 365articles.com
