Increase Sales Tag

26 Apr

Posted at 14:37h in Business, Websites
0 Likes

No matter how brilliant your website design is, if it is hard to reach the content of your site then your website is no good to anyone. 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 some tips to improve the usability of your website to ensure it serves its functions optimally. 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. 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. 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. Do not confuse your visitors because confusion means they will eventually leave your website. Website Typography The first thing to consider is to make sure that the typography of your content is suitable. If you have large blocks of text, make sure to use CSS to space out the lines accordingly. The longer a single line of text is, the greater the line-height of each line should be. Also, make sure the font size of your text is big enough to read easily. Some sites have 10-pixel-tall text in Verdana font; while that may look neat and tidy, you have to really strain your eyes to read the actual text. Categorise Your Articles Make it easy for visitors to find content that they want on your site. If you have many articles on your website and a visitor wants to find one single article of interest from your website blog, you have to provide a feasible means to enable visitors to do that without hassle. Provide an index of articles that you have, providing such a feature will make sure your visitors can use your site with ease. Website Speed Ensure that your site loads fast if you do not want to lose visitors. Most internet users will leave a website if it does not load completely within 10 seconds, so make sure your website is delivered to the visitors as soon as possible to retain their attention. 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 valuable 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. 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 are not annoyed by some audio looping on and on your website. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it - volume or muting controls would work fine. Links Last of all, test each and every link on your site before it goes online. There is nothing more effective in tarnishing your professional image than broken links....

26 Feb

Posted at 18:20h in Business, Websites
0 Likes

There is one hard and fast rule in generating income for your website: A steady flow of website traffic. If no one goes to your site, it hardly bares a chance of generating an income. Many sites have tried and failed in doing so, and these results to the sites demise. It takes money to maintain an income generating site; it also takes money to make money. However, it does not take a whole lot of cash to generate website traffic for your site. Ever wonder how does big hit sites drive traffic top their site? Most of them are spending tons of money to drive the traffic to their sites, investing in many advertising campaigns and different forms of marketing schemes and gimmicks. This is all worthwhile because they are what they are now, high earning, big hitting websites. You cannot do this if you do not have their resources. There are many ways to generate low cost website traffic without having to spend what you do not have or cannot afford. Many people have banked on high cost methods and have ended up losing their business over it. Here are ways to generate low cost website traffic that could help you Exchange Links This is a sure and proven method to generate low cost website traffic. Rarely would you see a site where there is no link to another site. Many webmasters are willing to exchange links with one another so that they could produce more public awareness about their sites. You will soon see and feel the sudden upsurge of the traffic coming in to your site from other sites. A major prerequisite in exchanging links with other sites is having the same niche or content as the other site. They should share a common subject so that there is continuity in the providing of service and information to what interests your target traffic. Exchanging links also boosts your chances of getting a high ranking in search engine results. It is common knowledge that search engines ranks high sites that have inbound and outbound theme-related links. With a good ranking position in the search engines, you will generate more traffic in your website without the high costs. Write and Submit Articles There are many e-zines and online encyclopaedias in the internet which provides free space for articles to be submitted. If you want to save costs, you can do the articles yourself. There are many freelance writers who are willing to write for you for a small fee, but to save money, it is wise to do those articles yourself. Write articles that are themed along with the niche of your site. Write something that you have expertise on so that when they read it, they can feel your knowledge about the subject and will be eager to go to your site. Write articles that produce tips and guidelines to the subject or niche your site has. Include a resource box at the end of your article that can link them to your site. Write a little about yourself and your site. If you provide a light, information-laden and interesting article, they will go to your site for more. Make a Newsletter This may sound like hard work because of all the articles you may need to use to build a newsletter but on the contrary, this is not so. There are many writers and sites that are willing to provide free articles as long as they can get their name in on your newsletter. This will also provide free advertising for them as well. As your newsletter gets pass around, you can widen your public awareness and build an opt-in list that can regularly visit your site. Join Online Communities and Forums This only requires your time and nothing else. You can share your knowledge and expertise with many online communities as well as your website. You can get free advertising when you go to forums that have the same subject or niche with your site. Share your opinion and let them see how knowledgeable you are with the subject. As you build your reputation, you also build the reputation of your site, making it a reputable and honest business that could be frequented and trusted by many people....

26 Feb

Posted at 13:32h in Business
0 Likes

Increase Sales Through Your Website Anyone who has been marketing online knows that the lifeblood of a business is the traffic of a website. More visitors equal more sales. However, here are some ways that you can tweak your sites with to improve sales without the need to get more visitors. The first method is to weave in your personal touch in your sales message. Nobody wants to be sold to by a total stranger, but many people will buy what their close friends recommend to them. If you can convince your audience that you are a personal friend who has their best interest at heart, they will be convinced to buy your products. Remember to speak to an individual in your newsletter, not to your whole audience. The second method is to publish testimonials and comments from your customers. A good idea would be to publish both good and bad comments; that way prospects will be really convinced that these testimonials are real. When prospects see testimonials on your website, they will have the confidence to buy from you because human beings follow the herd mentality; when others have bought and proven it authentic, they will jump on the bandwagon and buy too. Use visual representations for the problems and solutions that your product offers. Not everyone will read your text copy from the head to the tail, but most people will pay attention to images on your website. Offer quality bonuses to accompany the product. When you offer bonuses that complement your product, your prospects will feel it's a very good deal and it would be stupid to miss it. Be sure to state the monetary value of your bonuses so that people will be even more compelled to grab your good bargain. Lastly, ask for the sale! Many people entice their prospects with the benefits of their product, sell to them with stories of how it has solved many problems, even offered killer bonuses but forget to ask for the sale. Give a clear instruction on how to buy your product (e.g. "click the button to buy now!"). ...

26 Dec

Posted at 18:36h in Business, Design, Marketing, Websites
0 Likes

Convincing your prospects to purchase from you is a hard job, but have you ever thought that you are making the process twice as difficult for both parties if your prospects are convinced but do not know how to buy from you? No matter how good you are at convincing your prospective customers, they will not buy if they find the process cumbersome. First, to make it easy to buy, 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 minimise 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 will not 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 maximise your profits....

26 Feb

Posted at 13:49h in Business, Websites
0 Likes

Your business website is like the headquarters of an offline company. Hence, it is important to practice good design principles to make sure your site reaches out to the maximum number of visitors and sells to as many people as possible. There are a number of good Website Design Practices that can help you achieve this: Navigation 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. Short Paragraphs Keep your text paragraphs at a reasonable length. If a paragraph is too long, you should split it into separate 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. Fewer Images Reduce the number of images on your website. They make your site load very slowly and more often than not they are unnecessary. If you think any image is essential on your site, make sure you optimise them using image editing programs so that they have a minimum file size. Browser-friendly Make sure your website complies to web standards and make sure they are cross-browser compatible. If your website looks great in Chrome but breaks horribly in Firefox you will lose out on a lot of prospective visitors....

07 Apr

Posted at 17:49h in Business, Websites
0 Likes

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. Quite simply, they trust you. You can keep your visitors coming back to your site with the following methods. 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 Start a web blog Keep an online journal, or more commonly known as a blog, on your website and keep it updated with latest news about yourself and/ or business. 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. 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 coming back to 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. Carry out polls or surveys Polls and surveys are other forms of interaction that you should definitely consider adding to your website to keep visitors coming back 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....

03 May

Posted at 13:19h in Business, Websites
0 Likes

First of all, what is RSS? It stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary; syndicating means republishing an article that comes from another source such as a website. An RSS is a means of publicising updates about websites. It may or may not include a summary and photos of the latest posting. But those that provide summaries (thus Rich Site Summary) allow users to skim through the article so that they can decide later on if they want to access the website source. The RSS feed usually contains the title of the update originating from the website. It is also usually the link to the website source. The Pros RSS gives benefits to both readers (users) and web publishers. It gives you the latest updates, whether it is about the weather, new music, software upgrade, local news, or a new posting from a rarely-updated site as soon as it comes out. Since an RSS feed provides a summary of the related article, it saves the user’s time by helping s/he decide on which items to prioritise when reading or browsing the net. It gives the power of subscription to the user. Users are given a free-hand on which websites to subscribe in their RSS aggregators which they can change at any time they decide differently. It lessens the clutter in your inbox. Although your email address will be required to enjoy the services of online RSS aggregators, RSS does not use your email address to send the updates. It is spam free. Unlike email subscriptions, RSS does not make use of your email address to send updates thus your privacy is kept safe from spam mails. Unsubscribing is hassle-free. Unlike email subscriptions where the user is asked questions on why s/he is unsubscribing and then the user would be asked to confirm unsubscribing, all you have to do is to delete the RSS feed from your aggregator. It can be used as an advertising or marketing tool. Users who subscribe or syndicate product websites receive the latest news on products and services without the website sending spam mail. This is advantageous to both the web user and the website owner since advertising becomes targeted; those who are actually interested in their products are kept posted. The Cons Some users prefer receiving email updates over an RSS feed. Graphics and photos do not appear in all feeds. For conciseness and ease of publication, feeds do not display the photos from the original site in announcing the update except for some web-based aggregators The identity of the source website can be confusing. Since RSS feeds do not display the actual URL or name of the website, it can sometimes get confusing on what feed a user is actually reading. Publishers cannot determine how many users are subscribed to their feed and the frequency of their visits. Moreover, they would not know the reasons why users unsubscribe which could be important in improving their advertising. The feeds create higher traffic and demands on the server. Most readers still prefer the whole update over a brief summary of the entry, thus they still access the site. ...