Archive for March, 2010
The Buying Process: What Is A Landing Page?
As a website owner dont you secretly hope that all visitors who arrive at your website become customers? Of course you do. We all do dont we?
Statistically not everyone who visits your site will become a customer though; less than 2 in fact. The only thing we can do is increase the chances that they will by creating landing pages designed specifically to convince those visitors to become customers.
Landing pages typically are engineered to persuade the visitor to perform a very specific and desired action known as a Conversion These include submitting a request for information subscribing to a newsletter making a purchase downloading a file such as trial software or viewing a specific page.In most cases landing pages are created whenever a company buys advertising which directs the visitor to a specific page on the website corresponding to the ad.
Focusing development only on these paid advertising pages usually results in many other pages on the website and the traffic they receive being neglected or poorly optimized to convert traffic.
However any page that a visitor lands on either by searching on a search engine or arriving there by some other means such as directory listings referring websites and email newsletters should be given the same development priority as a paid landing page.
Every page on your website should always make the best attempt possible to convert your visitors on every visit. Not just the paid landing pages.
6 Tips That Convert Visitors to Clients
- Develop a single focused goal for each landing page
- Arrange elements such as text images and response forms as effectively as possible
- Develop trust at every opportunity
- Reduce or eliminate distractions such as ads navigation and popups
- Minimize the number of steps required for a visitor to complete the desired action
Have a very clear understandable and highly visible call to action
Landing pages should always have a single goal. Every additional goal you add to a landing page dilutes the chances of conversion among all the goals on the page and reduces the chances youll achieve one of them.
Arranging elements on a web page effectively means placing the most important points to your message high up on the page in a brief scannable format. Plan your layout carefully and use headings sub headings and paragraphs to break up lengthy text.
Build trust with visitors every chance you get by placing trust icons such as privacy certifications business certifications testimonials from clients and more near the call to action where a visitor is most likely to hesitate and turn back.
Reduce clickaway distractions to keep the visitor focused only on the conversion. Popups banner ads and even your navigation menu can all give them an opportunity to go elsewhere on your website where the chances theyll convert fall to almost zero.
Minimize the number of steps to complete the desired action or conversion by placing response forms and phone numbers directly on the landing page. Ideally you would place this as high up on the page as possible as the majority of visitors no matter how engaging the content will never scroll past the first screen.
Finally have a very clear call to action and if possible indicate the benefit for completing the action as well. Download 14Day Free Trial Now or Start Using SystemX Today Avoid vaguecalls to action like “Go” or”Submit
About the writer: Michael Dela Cruz is the Web Marketing Consultant for Canada’s Web Shop A Winnipeg Web Design Company located in Winnipeg Manitoba Canada specializing in Custom Web Design Content Management Systems and ECommerce.
The Basics Of Cms
Before CMS… the task of uploading files and images to a website and updating the content was a tedious process. You either had to transfer everything manually using a browserbased uploading tool or an FTP program or you could download the file you need to edit update it and then reupload it to your server.
Its hardly an efficient method for handling website content and all the files you work with tend to take up a lot of storage space. Thats why a content management system CMS is sometimes called the best friend of Web developers.
Wikipedia defines a web content management system as a software system used to manage and control a large dynamic collection of web material.
Content management systems for websites make site management easier because it allows you to perform updates without having to upload or reupload your files.
They also allow nontechnical individuals to manipulate the contents by using WYSIWYG what you see is what you get editors that are usually installed in many content management systems. Using it is fairly simple.
Once it has been set up and is fully functioning all thats left to do is for the content editors to upload the necessary documents and thats basically it.
Making use of a CMS also saves you a lot of space on your server and allows you to display dynamic content on your website. Apart from allowing people to easily organize the files and images in a website content management systems are also used for streamlining business processes and enabling safe and secure file sharing within a company.
Features of content management systems
A CMS makes content organization and publishing very simple thanks to several features. With a CMS you can easily schedule when your content will be published online set permissions for each file in order to control access and allow you to edit webpages using rich text editors even if you dont have any knowledge of HTML.
An important feature of a content management system is usability and how you can quickly integrate it in your system to work well with your existing website and its layout. Most content management systems have plugins that you can install in order to improve your sites functionality.
You will also find that some available systems can already create an editable template for your website and others also go as far as allowing you to build your site structure and layout.
The interface also tends to be simple and userfriendly with a lot of simple tools that make it easy for everyone to work with website content.
How to choose the right CMS
Before buying downloading or creating your content management system think about why you need one and what kind of website you intend to set up.
Do you plan to set it up for your business?
Is it for a webzine that would require you to publish articles regularly?
Maybe you want to set up an online store or a forum or perhaps youre simply setting up a website as a hobby.
Whatever kind of website you need you have to select the CMS that will be capable of handling your needs. You also need to determine if your server supports databases such as MySQL or Oracle which are needed for your CMS to function and other hosting requirements.
Presently there is a lot of CMS software available. Some of them are used for commercial purposes and retail for thousands of dollars. But there are also many others that are available online. There are open source software providing a powerful set of features and capabilities but which are free to use and can be easily installed on your server. The downside to using open source is that everything is basically helter skelter and trying to put all the pieces together to run your business can cost you weeks or even months of wasted time and resources.
It might require a little extra knowledge about how to set up a database and how it will work with your CMS platform so it would be best to enlist the help of a programmer. If you have already tested various content management systems and found them lacking in the features you are looking for you can also hire a programmer to create a system that is fully customized according to your specifications and your sites requirements. Be prepared to spend thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars with this route though.
In choosing the right content management system you have to determine your needs as well as consider several factors. If you want regular software updates and good solid tech support you might want to shell out more for a commercial CMS.
The downside of commercial CMS is usually the cost which really works against companies with a budget. Open source CMS while usually reliable provide a bit of a challenge when it comes to product support; product stability and security can be uncertain especially since this kind of CMS doesnt usually have a regular team of developers devoted solely to its development.
A custom CMS meanwhile scores big on the fact that it was built to accommodate your specifications; but developing and improving its features as well as installing additional updates in the future may use up your resources and take a lot of time to implement.
Its always best to choose a content management system that is customizable from your admin panels and can be readily updated.
That way your website can freely develop and expand and have a good working CMS that will be able to accommodate and manage all possible changes.
If you cant decide which content management system will best suit your needs its always wise to run one from a test site and check its functionalities.
That way you would be able to fully explore its features before attempting to integrate it with your website.
About the writer: Jeremy Gislason is a leading expert on membership sites marketing and online business. Do you want to market and sell all of your products faster? Take a FREE Test Drive of the MemberSpeed CMS Software here: http://www.MemberSpeed.com
Tags Hags Other Things That Go Bump In The Night
Two years ago I wrote in my blog about tagging and the future of folksonomy.
I knew then that social tags would change the face of the internet as we knew it.
For the internet marketer it is imperative that we continue to adapt and make use of
Web 2.0.
Technorati: There may be 100M blogs by January:
If it seems like everyone has a blog that is not quite true.
It is only a stillhefty 51.2 million people.
That is according to a new study by Technorati the site that has been tracking blogs bloggers and the socalled blogosphere for several years.
According to new numbers issued by the site last week the blogosphere has increased 100fold over the past three years and could reach 100 million by February 2007.
Technorati claims that the blogosphere now doubles every five to seven months.
Some 1.6 million blog posts are monitored every day and about 175000 new blogs per day pop up.
About 39 percent of those are in English while 31 percent are in Japanese and 12 percent are in Chinese languages.
Big growth for Yahoo’s del.icio.us web site:
Del.icio.us may not be mainstream yet but the social bookmarking site is getting increasingly popular among a very desirable crowd for advertisers
young readers with sixfigure household incomes. According to data released Friday by Hitwise the web site market share was up 122 percent from January to July of this year
although that still ranked just No. 6793 in internetwide visits.
During the four weeks that ended Aug. 5 59 percent of visitors were male and 41 percent of those men were ages 2534.
Thirtysix percent of web site membership are from households with incomes ranging from 100000 to 150000 a year versus 13 percent for the average internet population.
Del.icio.us allows users to share links to their favorite music reviews blogs and more with some 50 categories to choose from. It was launched in 2003 and purchased by Yahoo two years later.
Tags 38; Folksonomy: Latest Internet Trend
There is a new branch of the Web growing like a well organized storm cloud.
This recent trend on the Web can be used to strengthen your presence with major search engines and reach an active audience that is highly interested in your content.
Welcome to the world of “folksonomy” and “tagging.”
What is Folksonomy and Tagging?
Folksonomy is a combination of the words folks and taxonomy meaning “people classification management.”
This allows users some level of control over how the web is organized. One of the most popular tools of the folksonomy concept is tags.
Tagging in the context of this article is the process of labeling a piece data with metadata.
Using Tagging 38; Folksonomy to Advertise:
Three of the most effective sites currently using tags and/or folksonomy are: Del.icio.us digg.com and technorati. Each of these sites is a major player in the folksonomy world.
Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking web application that is growing very fast in popularity. With a free account del.icio.us users can submit and access all of their bookmarks from any computer with Internet access.
By submitting and tagging your own web pages you instantly give access to thousands of other users with interests in the same tags.
Encouraging site visitors to submit your selected webpages to their own del.icio.us bookmark page is a very good way to get more exposure to del.icio.us users.
Submitting to del.icio.us is instant and it creates meaningful relevant links important to the major search engines.
Digg.com is mostly a technical news site. If you are familiar with the Web phenomenon Slashdot then digg will remind you of that geek culture.
The difference is that ALL of digg’s content is created submitted and judged by its audience. If your page blog or online article is good enough to be “dug” by digg users you could receive literally hundreds of unique visitors immediately.
Virtually any participation comments submissions links in your profile can get your site traffic from digg.
The beauty of digg is that it is so popular that many submissions to digg can instantly dominate some keywords on search engines such as google.com.
Technorati.com is a power house in the world of tagging. If you have a blog Technorati should become one of your favorite search engines on the World Live Web.
Many Technorati Tags are beginning to dominate the Web by having constantly updated fresh blog content on highly focused subjects.
The beauty of Technorati is that blog application such as blogware and others are completely integrated with it allowing blog categories to be instantly tagged and syndicated into the blog search engine. Any blog can be manually added as well to technorati’s very open tagging system. Like digg
even if you only happen to get a trickle of traffic from technorati itself many times the link value alone will sky rocket the speed in which your site rank in the search engines.
There are many other folksonomy sites that can help you with “tag syndication.”
With its encouragement to get users to submit their own RSS feeds as content My Yahoo! is a great way to increase traffic and links. Web applications like TagCloud integrates RSS and tagging while wikipedia.org is method of allowing social webpage and content development.
All these methods and many more have two great things in common 1 they are free as of this writing and 2 they give the power to reshape and categorize the Web to the people. If content is King then content management is the the kingdom.
About the writer:nbsp;nbsp;
