Getting Results from Your Website

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With more than 77% of all American adults now online, and more than 175 million Americans using the Internet regularly, the argument that a website is an essential business tool is resolved before the debate begins. If your company isn’t taking steps and making a continuing effort to maximize its website it is leaving customers and revenue behind (for competitors to pick up). Some of the hesitancy in developing and maintaining a good website is derived from misunderstandings of what it takes to make a website productive.

This article shares 8 things you can do with relative ease to enable your website to deliver better results. They are: 1. Make Sure Your Website is User Friendly Whether in an offline or online environment, your target market can’t be expected to buy your product if you do not make it easy to find and purchase. Your website can enhance the ease with which information and specs about your products/services can be found, thereby making the decision to buy them easier. Your website needs to (a) open quickly, (b) be easy to navigate and find information, and (c) provide a painless checkout process. If you can meet these three criteria, visitors will enjoy being on your site, and your sales through the site will increase. 2. Give in to Speed According to some sources, you have about 30 seconds to convince a visitor to your website to stay there and look for what they came to purchase. If your website takes these same 30 seconds to upload, or you have a 30 second flash that is well prepared but devoid of any message (loved by the graphic design folks and marketing people for its creativity and hated by visitors because it takes time and says nothing), then you will lose visitors even before you have a chance to present your benefits and offer. The key to speed is a well designed site hosted on servers that deliver high speed. 3. Know Who Your Site is Targeting The better you understand your target market the better your website will perform. Keeping in mind that the website is a marketing tool, and that knowing your market is a fundamental of good marketing, it makes sense that your website should be developed with your market in mind. You need to understand how you market behaves not only in terms of buying habits and spending patterns, but also, in the case of effective web development, online. The online behavior of your market will help you construct the site to meet their expectations, needs and preferences. In most cases the market will demand (a) that your site be updates and provide the latest relevant information, (b) that the site enable their inquiries through the latest online technologies, and (c) that the website be convenient to navigate.

4. Know Your Goals Just as with offline business, «getting more sales» is not a useful goal in that it is vague, overly apparent, and devoid of any market based elements. You need to approach your website with goals and objectives in mind, not only so that the site can be constructed consistent with them, but also so that the maintenance of the site can be executed to support them. For example, the goals of your website could be «present products in an attractive manner that allows prospective buyers to visual their use and benefits». Another legitimate objective could be «to present information on products and the company so as to educate consumers and broaden our customer base». In both instances, the goals are clearly defined, and the websites constructed around them will be designed in architecture and appearance to maximize the success of the stated objectives. 5. Develop a Smart Web Architecture When it comes to the architecture of your website – where the information is placed and the paths visitors take to get to it – the most critical tool you can deploy is common sense. Most people will look for information in the place where it is most logical for it to be. If you get creative, or want to make a point with your navigation (or the names you give to the information links you have) you will find that most people will leave your site rather than try to unravel the brilliance you are showing through your very clever structure. In other words, people are on your site to get to something, the easier you make it for them to get there, the better your website is. Period. 6. Operate According to a Plan Like any marketing tool, your website needs to be tied into your overall marketing strategy and needs to be reflective of your company, its products, and the message and image it seeks to communicate to the market.

Your website needs to have a plan of operation that detail, through a process and in accordance with steps, timelines, and accountability elements, the milestones for measuring performance and success. The plan needs to include (a) processes and timetables for updates and announcements, (b) your web marketing campaign, and (c) how your site will compete against similar sites. 7. Market Your Website Like every other aspect of your business, if you do not market what you are doing nobody will know about it or why what you are selling is something they should buy. There are many ways to market a website and, as with Tudog’s approach to traditional marketing, we recommend a basket of tactics. These include (a) organic embedding of metatags and other keywords into the content of your website so as to secure a higher natural listing on the search engines, (b) the purchase of select keywords to ensure high search results when these words are punched in, (c) affiliate sites and appearances on other sites, and (d) targeted web ads. These marketing tactics will assist you in driving traffic to your site, as well as serve to raise general awareness for your company.

8.

Monitor Your Activities The Internet offers excellent opportunities to monitor and analyze your activities so that you can be certain that what you are doing is not only working, but maximizing your potential. The web can help you determine how many people are coming to your site, where they are going inside the site, where they came from into your site, and whether or not they made a purchase. You can use this information to determine the efficacy of your navigation, architecture, content, graphics, message and marketing. Your website, like all other aspects of your marketing, is a window into your company and a reflection of not only how much respect you have in what you do, but also how much respect and commitment you have toward your customers. A professional website demonstrates a professional attitude. Anything less is…well, less.

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Market Your Website For The Real World

Although it is clear that most website users of the internet use search a engines to find their destination, is there a better alternative? I recently had a look at the stats of a website I have been working on. To my amazement only 5% of the visitors came from other websites or search engines, the rest were direct requests. This website is only 3 months old, so it is fairly new with barely any link popularity, but for such a new website an average of 150 visitors a day, is not too bad. I asked the owner how he was promoting his website, and to my amazement he was using none other than flyers. The website is advertising his adventure tourism business, as you may have noticed when you visit a tourist destination there are plenty of flyers on the counter. Advertising all sorts of accommodation or locations to visit. He employed a very smart Graphical Designer to create a flyer that is very eye catching. These flyers are so catchy that he has told me that he never has enough. You may be thinking that this is expensive because you have to pay for the printing, but in actual fact it is much cheaper than some internet advertising. For instance to even have his website listed optimally on Googl’s Adwords he would be paying in excess of 50c a click. Whereas printing flyers that can be passed on for years only cost 23c each. On the other hand some people choose to spend thousands on optimising their websites, gambling to be in the top of the results. Or you could choose to use paid advertising, but targeting your potential customers can be difficult and costly. I am certain that the old fashioned flyer advertising is here to stay. The benefits of flyers are astronomical; targeting your audience is the key to success.

Travel destinations, travel agents and rental agencies are all targeting his potenshal customers. Since he first began his business, he has always used flyer advertising, and with the amalgamation with the website business is soaring. This indicates to me that with the synergy of the real world and the internet we can create very powerful advertising campaigns.

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Creating the Web 2.0 Buzz – Beyond Search Engine Optimization

VIRAL MARKETING Any discussion of viral marketing brings up two authors – Malcom Gladwell, «The Tipping Point» and Seth Godin, «Unleasing the Idea Virus». Really, these authors are incredible thinkers – you should seek out and buy their books, read them for yourself to get the most out of them.

But I’m not so in love with their books that I let them go on all points Let’s take Tipping Point first. Gladwell is talking about social epidemics. While some of this is applicable to marketing, his book is mostly applicable to the society and social interactions. Viruses all go past a point of no return. This is where they have gotten a large enough base where the majority become infected. This is the point of critical mass, the threshold, the tipping point. Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do. We are living in a philosopher’s paradise. Ideas can now be spread and influence people without physical limits. And the best ideas act like mercury – very hard to corral and control. The finest ideas are the universal solvant – unable to be held in any container except itself. The tipping point is when an illness of a few becomes the epidemic of the many, the moment of change where a minor occurance becomes a major trend. Epidemics have an exponential (bell curve) life span. This is the same life span of trends and fads. «The Tipping Point» studies the upslope of that Bell Curve progression. THE LAW OF THE FEW Word of mouth is still the most important form of human communication. Rumors are the most contagious of all social messages. A tiny minority of people create the surge which tips the epidemic. Gladwell names three necessary types: Connectors are people specialists. They know lots of people, have an extraordinary knack of making friends and acquaintances, of making social connections. They have mastered the «weak tie»; a friendly, yet casual social connection. They manage to occupy many different cultures and subcultures and niches. They spread the message Mavens are information specialists. Once they figure out how to get that great deal, they want to tell you about it too.

They solve their own problems, or emotional needs, by solving other people’s problems. They provide the message. Salespeople have the skills to persuade when we are unconvinced of what we are hearing. They translate and communicate via the nonverbal and are practically more charismatic than those around them. Emotion is contagious. «Senders» are very good at expressing emotions and feelings. They are far more emotionally contagious than the rest of us. Another point, which gives us all hope as marketers, is that any of us are connected to the rest of us by six or fewer other people. So any of us could create the next «big thing» which goes epidemic. THE STICKINESS FACTOR Messages have to be packaged and translated into a way that fits into our emotional makeup. Those we adopt into our lifestyle are «sticky». The multiplicity of messages through the Internet is both a blessing and a curse. But it only works if you surround yourself with your own niche. For everyone is a niche unto themselves. Now they may have and be part of greater and lesser networks – replete with mavens, connectors, and salesmen – but you really still have to be true to yourself.

That being said, you are free to adopt any new message that comes along which improves your quality of life.

Now, from the reverse view, in marketing you are trying to get out your message that you have a widely applicable solution to a fairly (or very) common problem. And that this solution is readily available. There is a simple way to package information that, under the right circumstances, can make it irresistible/sticky and compels a person into action. All you have to do is find it. In order to be capable of sparking epidemics, ideas have to be memorable and move us into action. Content of the message matters too. The key point where a new message «sticks» with us is where it is translated into an emotionally useful tool. A message is converted to a package which is then translated by a «salesman» so that we can emotionally «grok» what is coming our way, accept it, and use it. (Note: The word «grok» comes from a viral product, Heinlein’s «Stranger In a Strange Land». Worth looking up.) A very few individuals can control their emotional states. This takes quite a bit of personal training (which anyone, actually, can master on their own). We respond to the emotions of people around us. Practically, studies have been done which show what we hear and say are a small percentage of the communications we actually recieve. Gladwell’s book mentions several examples and studies of this area.

When you get a point across emotionally, you can appeal to the subconscious and activate patterns and habits the individual may not even know are there. This is what Madison Avenue has paid psychologists to study for years. They want to (hopefully, but in vain) find key push-buttons which will make selling easier. Push-button societies went out with the Internet’s rise. There are really only a handful of «buttons» which work in very general terms. Ciladini and Maslov have working observations along this line – as I’ve covered elsewhere in this book. Otherwise, our emotions are like our politics. (And just review the elections of 2000 and 2004 to see how similarly unlike we are to each other – it’s been an even split in elections on our emotional values.) We have assigned our loves, hates, fears, exhilerations, sympathies, et al. to many and varied associations. In the Americas, you cannot find two or more people who have exactly the same responses to anything – even being faced with sudden death. You do find that people will more or less react in similar fashions. But the differences are broad enough that it is impossible to actually «fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time.» As the Internet and its choices become more pervasive, we will see more and more fragmentation and realignment of our emotions with our various attitudes. CONCLUSION Starting epidemics requires concentrating resources on a few key areas. Your resources ought to be solely concentrated on the Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen. Or at least getting your idea in front of them. You have to define your niche and the people who move in it. You need to study what is out there, what solutions are being proposed. You have to find ways for people to get this data. You have to find connectors (specialized article directories, online radio shows, key forums and blogs) within that niche. The Mavens and Salesmen will take your concept from there. But be very willing to give out free samples for people and to reach out to many, many, many sub-niches (nichettes?) in an emotional way they will understand.

«Those who are successful at creating social epidemics do not just do what they think is right. They deliberately test their intuitions.»

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The Only Way To Sell A Product

As a internet marketer most of us have a lot of products we sell on the internet. We use the best copyright on our sales letters and put all our ducks in a row right down to getting the visitors to our page to buy. We think we have thought everything out to the last nut and bolt, but have we really?…What about the product itself. Is there a demand for the product?…Is the market saturated with the product?..Is there special group of people who want this product that will benefit?…and where are they? Any good marketer who is out to make money should know the answers to these questions before you even consider investing time and money into the promoting the product…Unless you like losing money! Getting a product ready to sell is the easy part. If I had a dollar for every product sales letter I had with a marketing campaign in mind I would be a millionaire without even batting an eye . The fact is that the final, most important goal a marketer has, is to get people to buy the product. Before you start your niche, nurture the idea and know who wants your product…How do you do that you say? Simple as pie…just ask! Start a survey, run a poll, check in forums or where people group that need this product. Forums is really a good way to find out what people want and will solve there problems. Start by finding a forum related to your niche, read previous posts, then bring up the topic of your product without trying to sell to the forum members, to see what response you get and try to keep the topic alive.

One way to get positive feedback is to offer people something to try for free. Say you have an information ebook you could offer members a free report, sample or even the entire ebook to see what they think of the product. The feedback you get will benefit you and tell you whether your product is something people are interested in and let you know of thing that may need to be added or modified to make it saleable. If your getting positive response you can assume you have a product that will sell….Then and only then should you create a terrific sales letter, marketing campaign and invest your hard earned money and time. Keep in mind that just because you think you have a great product it is the people that have the final say and are the ones that will buy your product….So ask and listen before putting the cart before the horse and you might just profit!

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How to Use Simple Tag and Ping Marketing Techniques(To Boost Your Site’s Ranking, Traffic and Sales)

Titus Hoskins If you’re just heard the phrase ‘Tag and Ping’ and scratching your head in puzzlement – this article may be worth your time. Not that Tag and Ping is some magic marketing formula that will deliver untold riches. It won’t. It is just one more marketing tool professional online marketers are using to give their site or sites a competitive edge over their competition.

It will help put your site on the Internet map and if done right, Tag and Ping will deliver plenty of very targeted traffic to your sales pages. It will boost your rankings and increase your sales. Tag and Ping is one of those simple, yet relatively unknown marketing techniques savvy Internet Marketers have been using and trying to keep quiet for years. To truly understand how Tag and Ping works, you will have to know some basic background information on keywords, blogging, tags, and how all these can work in sync to deliver traffic, links and sales to your site.  What are Blogs? Most web users will know a blog is an online journal where bloggers post their daily or hourly entries (their opinions, views, info, links) on any subject that interests them. The most popular blogging systems are Blogger.com (owned by Google) Bloglines (owned by Ask Jeeves), LiveJournal, and many professional marketers use the free WordPress software which they can host on their own websites. Each blog has its own RSS feed – RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication although its original acronym stood for Rich Site Summary. These RSS feeds broadcasts the information in the blog posts to all concerned parties – those who have subscribed and use an RSS reader or aggregator. Or more commonly, subscribers use the FireFox browser, Google Desktop, or MyYahoo to access their favorite RSS feeds. The next version of Windows will have RSS embedded into its operating system.  What are Tags? Tags are really another name for keywords. Most surfers will know keywords are the exact words Internet users type into search engines to find what they’re looking on the world wide web. Tags work in the same way and are a form of social bookmarking, a way of classifying and accessing all that content in all those countless blogs. Many major blogging directories such as Technorati use tags to serve up the information to its patrons. One simple technique to create a tag in Technocrati:   (remove asterisks in actual code) Or if your blogging software supports categories; this will be recognized by Technorati as a tag.

What the heck is a Ping? A ping is a simple way to notify the different search engines to let them know that your blog has been updated. You call up or ping your blog post. You bookmark or place an entry in any one of the countless blogging sites such as Technorati, Furl, del.icio.us, Blinklist, Flickr — you go to these sites and click your blog or tag to inform them you have updated your blog. Many blogging systems will automatically ping your blog updates. Or you can do this manually, for example Technorati’s ping form is here: http://www.technorati.com/ping  Simple Way to Ping If this is still confusing to you, one simple way to ping your tags/blogs is to use a site like: http://pingomatic.com/ and it will automatically ping your blog in many of the most popular blogging services.  Enter The Online Professional Marketers and It All Hits the Fan Of course, online marketers have long discovered that the whole blogging system – blogs, rss, tags, pinging – is an excellent marketing vehicle. One great marketing system delivering targeted traffic to their products and services. It really is a corruption or commercialization of blogging and this surely wasn’t the idea the original designers of blogs had in mind. But the whole blogging system is so lucrative, many professional marketers (the author is pleading the fifth!) are using blogging systems like WordPress to create mainly marketing sites that may have little resemblance to a real blog. It just uses the backbone structure of blogs, RSS, Tags to give their sites a slight competitive edge in a very competitive world. As we saw with the ‘comment spam’ there is a great likelihood that Tag and Ping will be misused and further antagonize the blogging purists. So if you are going to use Tag and Ping make sure you’re creating valuable, usable content – then most sites will want to link to your site anyway.

Content is still king no matter what tricks the professional marketers want to use. Always will be!  Using a Simple Tag and Ping Marketing Technique With Technorati To explain further the whole idea of Tag and Ping. Lets just walk through a marketing system you can quickly create using Technorati – one of the most popular blogging services. First, sign your blog up with Technorati. This is quite a simple procedure. Just upload a photo, doesn’t have to be of you – your site’s logo will do. Register your profile with your 20 or so tags relating to your blog. Make sure these are keywords you’re marketing with your blog. Then you have to place the Technorati code on your blog for a link back. Next, you must understand that Technorati creates a landing page for each tag in their system. This page is made up of four parts: – Flickr Photos – Recent blog posts tagged with that keyword or phrase – Who’s Blogging About sidebar which links to any profiles of blogs that those same keywords or phrase in their profile – Links from Furl for the same tag So to take full advantage and to use this marketing technique you have to sign up with both Flickr and Furl.

Your aim is to get your links in all four spots on this Technorati landing page for your tag or keyword.

When signing up for Flickr, many marketers use their site’s name for their Flickr username – just use a dash instead of a dot in your site’s url. You can use a photo of the product they’re promoting to get a link from Flickr in the top spot on the Technorati landing page. Pick your tags and description for the product. Set up a Furl account and download the Toolbar – bookmark a few sites to get the hang of how its done.  Now You’re Really To Put Everything Together To Tag and Ping 1 – You can start with the Flickr photos at top of the Technorati page. Just post a photo or cover image into your Flickr account, making sure you tag it and use a catchy headline in your description. Link it to your landing or affiliate page url. Example:   remove asterisks in actual code 2 – Next, make the first of your blog posts on your particular subject or product to your blog, making sure you tag it with your keywords and then ping Technorati. Make all your posts good content, reviews, product information or free downloads. Your entry will appear on the top of the list for that tag shortly in Technorati. 3 – Furl your blog post and your landing/affiliate page with your tags to make sure your entry/post is listed the bottom section of the Technorati page for your tag. To work this system, add another blog post every few hours, Tag and Ping, plus Furl your posts.

For better results you can sign up for countless other social bookmarking sites and bookmark your pages. Here are just a few good ones: del.icio.us, blinklist, moreover, icerocket, weblogs… Flickr, Blog, Tag, Ping, Furl This is just one Tag and Ping method – professional marketers have countless systems and sites working many variations on this relatively new marketing technique. But the information given above should get you started on your own Tag and Ping marketing system. Remember, blogging and RSS are the wave of the future, make sure you’re geared up to take advantage of all they have to offer. You must have at least one blog on your site. Use WordPress if you can – Blogger will do in a pinch! Just make sure you’re using some Ping and Tag marketing techniques to harvest all those links, traffic and sales for your site. This is one marketing technique you should now be using. Just remember to Flickr, Blog, Tag, Ping, Furl – Rinse and
Repeat!

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