Marketing
10 Tips for Web Success
The webmaster’s biggest job is to get their traffic up and keep customers/visitors coming back. Building the site is one thing, but simply building and posting a website does not guarantee traffic. In fact, a website could be beautiful and an example of all the latest technology and still not attract a single visitor if not promoted correctly. Here are 10 tips to guide you to success with your website.
(1) The internet is a new medium.
At least compared to print, it is. A website is a waste if it simply re-hashes something which could easily be put into print. Don’t have the site be just an online brochure. Put up features which take advantage of the internet as a medium of communication. Filter information for them. Provide search capability. Provide interactivity with features like forums, quizzes and tools. Web visitors like to interact. Click Here To Continue Reading »
Website Automation – Getting More Done
Many of us who work on the internet these days are one-man shows. Speaking for myself, I have people doing work for me throughout the country, but locally in my office I am currently the only person. As any sole business owner can attest to, running a business this way makes you a true jack of all trades. In any given day, I am responding to emails, shipping orders, doing client development work, handling issues on the website, doing statistics, etc etc etc. Now, I am in the process of finding an assistant, but there are ways which you can use technology to assist yourself in performing the work of more than one worker.
I am speaking of automation, and there is nothing better than putting your web server and computer to work for you. Make your website actually perform some work for you rather than you working for the website all the time. Let’s look at some ways you could automate tasks. Click Here To Continue Reading »
Stop Annoying Your Visitors
It’s one thing to get traffic to your website. You do search engine optimization, create a nice design, form a bunch of link exchange partnerships or even do a marketing campaign. It is quite another feat altogether to KEEP your visitors. The internet is no longer a novelty. It is part of daily life for many, many people and today most consumers are willing to put up with even less annoyances from the sites they frequent. Leave it to today’s consumer to demand more and tolerate less. Its just a fact, though.
I recently came across a press release from Hostway, a Chicago-based hosting company. The title: Survey Says…Internet Pet Peeves: What Drives Consumers Away From Your E-Business. They commissioned this study to come up with those things that do the best job of driving people away from a website. Among the top contenders are pop-up ads (93% dislike them) , registration log-on pages (requiring registration and login in order to view content) and Flash introductions. 89% of consumers said they are put off by requiring extra software to be installed to use a website. A full 70% of consumers said they’re not likely to purchase from, or even return to, a website after encountering one of these pet peeves. Only 25% of consumers said they would bring it up to the company, so that means 75% of those who get annoyed will just leave and you’ll never know about it. As to how consumers react to these pet peeves: Click Here To Continue Reading »
Publishing a Newsletter
Today, many websites offer a free newsletter. Newsletters, from the receiving end, can be a great source for information that is delivered to your in-box. You can simply save the newsletter for future reference, something many people do. From the publisher’s standpoint, though, a newsletter is a fantastic idea as it gives you a database of people who are interested in what you have to offer. Marketers know the value of this. But, aside from the potential financial benefit of such a mailing list, a newsletter is also a great way to keep in touch with users who may have only surfed across your website once. They may, on a whim, sign up for your newsletter and, thus, you have a way to keep in touch with them at a later date. You can also use your mailing list as a source for demographics information or opinions. Want to start a new feature on your site and want to know whether it will work or not? Survey the members of your mailing list. Click Here To Continue Reading »
Use of Web Analytics in Marketing
Every website owner absolutely needs to be routinely collecting web analytics and using them to perfect the site and engage in marketing campaigns. Almost all web servers provide a raw log file, usually generated nightly. You can use a web log analyzer to analyze those logs and provide you reports. Some web hosts provide web-based reports on traffic. Still other services provide web-based analytics and they collect their data from a small segment of javascript code which you embed into all of your pages. Google Analytics is my current favorite such service.
These services provide a LOT of information and much of it you might not know how you can use. Most people who are not into internet marketing usually browse these reports for the pertinent data: page views, visits, referrers, and leave much of the rest of it alone because you don’t really know what use it could be. But, in general, let’s look at how you can use these traffic reports to your benefit. Click Here To Continue Reading »
Integrating a Website With Your Business
It has been one of my continual themes when talking with clients about their websites that their site needs to serve their business. When I work with a client, I look at their website as an extension of their business model. I take a look at their overall business and evaluate:
- How do they make their money?
- Who is their public or target audience?
- How can their public be promoted to?
- How can the web be used to help automate their business?
I’ll listen to what they want to achieve with their website and then recommend options to help that website achieve the points above: making money, automate and promote to their target audience. Click Here To Continue Reading »
Really Communicate To Your Visitors
This article might be a bit different than you’ve come to expect from a webmaster-related article. The reason is that, in my opinion, it is a facet of the internet many people don’t really think about. And that is communication. But, by communication I mean more than just talking or writing. Read on…
What is Communication?
Communication is defined simply as the transferring of an idea or concept from one point to another with full duplication on the receiving side. This last component is one often forgotten. So, a full one-way communication would be Fred has an idea about a widget. He propels that idea across space to Ted. Ted receives the communication, understands it, and has full duplication on his end of the exact concept Fred was thinking about that widget. Now, a full two-way communication would be the above process, but with the addendum that Ted thereby acknowledge Fred for his communication, sending the acknowledgment across space to Fred, at which point Fred receives the acknowledgment and fully duplicates and understands the acknowledgment. Fred would then thank Ted for this acknowledgment. Click Here To Continue Reading »
Using Content Hubs to Promote
We’ve all heard it before: content is king. And it is true. If you own a site, you need to post something interesting that people want to read before you can expect people to stop by. If your site is a content-based website, then you’ve already taken a huge step. However, if your website is a business website whose only purpose is to talk about your services, then you really should make an effort to post some content onto your website which is helpful to readers, free, and relevant to your services or website. If you do this, your site will attract traffic from people looking for information, not just to purchase something. And with increased traffic in general, you will get increased attention. And this increases your statistics.
Writing content for your own website is only half the battle, though. You have got to get people to read it. Just posting a website is not going to get people to come to it. It would be like building a business in the middle of the mountains. Nobody knows its there and you won’t get any customers. If you get your articles out there for people to read and the articles are written correctly, you can position yourself as an expert in your field and promote your own website. One way to do this is by publishing on content hubs rather than limiting it to your own website. Click Here To Continue Reading »
The Use of Landing Pages
Landing pages are a great way to not only get the most bang for your advertising buck, but also more accurately track the effectiveness of ads or ad copy. Landing pages are essentially a web page to which people click from an outside link. It is the page they land on when they arrive on your site. Obviously, your site homepage is probably your most popular landing page. However, you can create customized landing pages and then point external links to different landings in order to more accurately track where your visitors are coming from. By tracking page views on your different landing pages, you can tell where your traffic is coming from. So, let’s say you have active advertising on Google Adwords, Yahoo, and maybe you’re running a campaign with Tribal Fusion. You want to know which option is working the best and use that information to better balance your advertising dollars to get the most bang. You also want to know which specific keywords and banners with Google Adwords are producing the most results. Set up each banner to link to a different landing page. Click Here To Continue Reading »
Is There a Use for MySpace in Business?
Most of us who are not living under a rock have heard something about the Myspace buzz. It seems to be another internet revolution. The business side of this behemoth is something to behold. It was purchased by Rupert Murdoch (of Fox News fame) for $580 million in July of last year. At the time, people almost wrote it off, saying it was Murdoch’s attempt to play catch-up in the new media of the internet. Today, experts say the site is probably worth 10X what Murdoch paid for it. They have 100 million member profiles – almost a third of the US population in terms of numbers. And, as of this writing, Myspace has just sealed a deal with Google to provide AdWords space on Myspace, thereby guaranteeing a new flood of revenue to both Myspace and Google.
If you’re anything like me, you have all but written off Myspace as another internet social experiment, attractive only to social butterflies, high school students, and other “punks” with little to do in their real life. Personally, I am too busy running a real business to worry about posting pictures of my dog on Myspace. But, then again, am I being short sighted? Click Here To Continue Reading »
I'm David Risley. I've been making my living as a blogger for over a decade. Blogging is my business and how I support my family. With this blog, I'm just gettin' REAL and telling you how this business works. 
