Archive for December, 2008
Next Entries »Play the Pop-Up Game – Five Ways to Effectively Use Pop-ups as a Website Tool
Saturday, December 13th, 2008There are ways to increase your profits by using pop-ups as a website tool. More than likely, you have heard of pop-ups, but there is new software on the market that will amaze you. It has never been as easy to use pop-ups to market your website as it is today. You might be glad that you took a few free minutes to learn about pop-up marketing.
The new pop-up marketing software is not just your standard pop-up anymore. Today, you can market in a much less intrusive and irritating way to your customers. The prevalence of pop-up blockers in web browsers is huge and very affective. In the older days, it was a necessary tool because computers would literally freeze up because of pop-up. Your job as a marketer is to draw in customers and keep them. However, you do not want to drive traffic away by having huge amounts of pop-up that take over their screen. When using the software, you will need to decide which type of pop-ups you want to use. Be sure to check out several of them before making a decision.
Pressure Pop-up – These types of pop-up have a countdown button that appears after your customer is on the web site for a while. The great thing about these is that they are set to give your customer time to look over the site, and will leave the screen once the count down runs out. You can put anything on your pop-up to entice customers to buy.
Instant Opt – In Pop-up – A new software feature of pop-ups is opting in by clicking either yes or no. Using this feature is good for capturing potential customer’s email address. All business depend on lists to make future contacts about products, discount and special offers or drawings – and not just the typical tasks of order taking and receipts.
Conditional Timed Pop-ups – Timing is everything in business. With this feature, you can decide when you want a pop-up to appear. A pop-up that appears too early may not give your customer time to thoroughly taken in the site, or a pop-up appearing when they were about to order without a discount will damage your profits a lot.
Changing Pop-ups - If you want to keep your customers from being bored every time they come to your site – then use different pop-ups. The new type of software for pop-ups allows you to stage different pop-ups to appear with new information. It can be offering them a new product, information, or even close outs on certain products. You can make it to fit your customer’s needs and that spells more profit for you.
Generalized Pop-ups – This software configures pop-ups to look exactly the way you want, and timed the way you see fit.
There are numerous places online where you can order the new pop-up software. Many times, you can order them with different features separately, like the changing pop-up software. In the end, it will cost more though so you might want to consider buying a package deal with the other software included. As you can see, there are great benefits with the new pop-up software. In addition, most of the software has other features that you will like. They are fully integrated with to work with other types of web design software. You don not have to be a computer scientist to run them either. Most of it is WYSIWYG, or what you see is what you get type programming.
Other features are just as valuable with the new software of pop-ups. You can edit to your hearts content any aspect of your pop-ups. If you want the color or shape to be unique, you can change it. You can change the wording to suit any style of customer you have too. In most programs, you do not have to dispose of any past work that you have created. There are numerous save features for wording and designs. This alone saves you lots of time for the other important business aspects that you have to do. And that is the part that is important – getting down to business on the Internet.
Offline Can Pay off – Ten Ways to Increase Website Activity without Being Online
Thursday, December 11th, 2008Increasing your website activity does not mean you have to be online all of the time, ducking into chat rooms and onto bulletin boards only long enough to scream out the title and url of your website before they cyber drag you out of the room kicking and screaming. There are a number of ways you can promote your website without sitting in front of your computer all day every day.
The first way to increase your website activity while you are offline is by adding your website address to all of the printed material your business makes. This includes company letterheads, envelopes, newsletters, fax cover sheets and business cards. This is not to say you should not include your traditional company contact address, but your website address certainly deserves a place on all of your literature.
The second way to promote your website activity while you are offline is to write about your site on a regular basis in your company's newsletter. Be sure to announce it if you are re-launching (or launching for the first time) your company website. You also want to announce major site changes, like the addition of a section from your CEO. You may even want to include a regular feature that highlights changes and special sections of the website your customers should check out.
The next way to increase your website activity while you are offline is to get the best, and easiest to remember, website address for your company. This will ensure that people can remember it and find it easier to return on a regular basis. If staff members stumble over the address on a regular basis, or customers find it difficult to remember or type into the address bar of the internet service they use on a regular basis, it is unlikely to be visited as often.
Another way to increase your website activity while you are offline is to be sure your entire staff is knowledgeable about the site and its contents. Even the person who answers the main phone line should be able to answer general questions about the website. This ensures that any customer who has even the slightest question about the site will find your staff helpful and intelligent, increasing site activity.
The fifth way to promote website activity while you are offline is to add the website address to your company's voice mail. If a customer calls after hours and gets your voice mail, they are likely to want to make an immediate connection with your company. Adding the site address to the message they will hear makes it more likely they will turn to an online connection to see your company.
An additional way to promote website activity while you are offline is to be sure that your website appears in any printed media attention your company receives. Ask that it be printed with your name or with the bio section of the article.
The seventh way to promote website activity while you are offline is to be sure to mention your website address whenever you deal with any type of media. If the local news station is interviewing you about your accounting firm at tax time, it is a good time to bring up your website address.
The next way to promote website activity while you are offline is to add your website address to all press releases you make to the media. Press releases can seem a bit naked if you cannot give customers a way to directly connect with the company after the article has been printed. A website address can do just that.
The ninth way to promote website activity while you are offline is to be sure that your website address appears on all promotional materials. Most companies have promotional materials like t-shirts, jackets, duffle bags, Frisbees, and notepads, that they offer customers and their employees as free gifts. Printing the website address on these is a good way to reinforce the idea that customers should go to your site.
The final way to promote website activity while you are offline is to get a magnetic sign or bumper sticker to add to your fleet of company vehicles and add to your employee's personal vehicles advertising the site. When you are stuck in traffic on the freeway, the guy next to you or behind you might just punch up the site on his blackberry for lack of a better activity.
WordPress 2.7 “Coltrane”
Thursday, December 11th, 2008The first thing you’ll notice about 2.7 is its new interface. From the top down, we’ve listened to your feedback and thought deeply about the design and the result is a WordPress that’s just plain faster. Nearly every task you do on your blog will take fewer clicks and be faster in 2.7 than it [...]
2.7 Release Candidate Two
Wednesday, December 10th, 2008There comes a time in every WordPress release when it’s ready for the world , to come out of its cocoon and feel the light of the world on its wings for the first time.
It’s not quite that time yet, but we’re as close as we’ve ever been, hence the immediate availability of 2.7 Release [...]
Offer Free Downloadable E-books and See Increased Website Traffic
Tuesday, December 9th, 2008It is common knowledge that everyone loves to get something for free. People are often seen stuffing hundreds of forms into contest ballot boxes, sometimes filling them out for hours at a time. It is unreal what people will do for a freebie. The same is true with your website. If you are trying to target more traffic and increase your website production, then you should certainly consider adding free downloads to your site. Downloads are extremely popular with web users today, especially when they are free. With many sites charging outrageous prices for the smallest download, a freebie is always welcomed. By offering free downloads, you will see that your website traffic will increase and those who use your site will keep coming back. It is a great thing to do and can be extremely inexpensive as well.
When choosing which downloads to include on your site, you will probably find that downloadable e-books are among the easiest to work with. E-books are partial or complete books on different subjects. You can even write the content yourself if you wish. Sometimes you can find e-books that are already written and are available for anyone to use on their site. If you want to offer something fresh and interesting however, you should only use original material that has never been published on the web before. This will allow your site to be new and exciting to web users.
After deciding to use e-books as your free downloadable gift to your visitors, you will need to choose the subjects you want to work with. You can stick with one basic theme for your site if you wish. If you already have a website that is about dolls, then you may want to only include free downloadable e-books that pertain to the subject of dolls. This will allow those who come to your site initially to get more than what they expected, which is a great thing. They will likely bookmark your site and keep coming back for more information and free downloads. They may even tell their friends about the site as well.
If you are creating a site that consists of nothing but e-books, then you probably want to use e-books in a wide variety of subjects. You can group them within your site by topic or theme to make it look organized. If this is your plan, you might also want to hire professional writers to help you with this task. If your site will be nothing but e-books, you will probably find the writing to be a bit overwhelming to tackle alone. You can hire freelance writers to help you with this task, which will help you create strong writing content as well as help take the stress load off of you.
When using only one or two e-books on your existing site, be sure to offer a new e-book as often as possible. You may be able to change the e-books each week or maybe change them monthly. By offering something new to visitors however, they will be likely to come back to see if anything is new quite often. You can even make an “announcement” on your site telling visitors when a new e-book will be available. This will give them an idea of when to expect it and help them stay motivated to come back to your site. If you want, you can also allow visitors to sign up for emails that will notify them when a new e-book is available. This will guarantee they won’t forget.
Whether you write the downloadable e-books yourself or hire a professional to help you, you will certainly see increased website traffic. When you are offering a web user something for free, such as a downloadable e-book, you are making them feel appreciated and warm. You are telling them that you are inviting them into your site, not specifically to take their money, but to help them gain information as well. This is a great way to build a good reputation and a devoted group of website visitors. So, go ahead and start planning your e-books today. The sooner you get them posted on your site, the sooner you will see that increase in website traffic.
Navigate with Ease – Why Easy Website Navigation is the Key to Repeat Business
Sunday, December 7th, 2008Although there are many experts who claim to know what makes a website successful, upon researching one would find that almost every expert would agree that navigation has a large part in the formula. Easy website navigation is the key to repeat business. There are thousands of websites out there floating around. Not every one of these websites is successful and that is mainly due to the website structure itself. If you want to create a website that is structurally capable of leading to repeat business, then you should consider these tips during the creating and building processes.
Easy website navigation needs to begin with the design of your website. Before your website is published on the web, it should be finished and able to be easily navigated. Don’t wait for the problems to present themselves through use to figure out what works and what doesn’t, especially if you are running a web business. There is simply no room for needless error when it comes to your business.
The first thing to remember during initial design phases is that your website should be so simple to use that an eleven-year-old child should be able to figure it out. It is unlikely someone that young would ever be conducting business online, but many adults need the simplicity on websites. You should also keep it simple enough to run on even the slowest computer you can imagine someone owning. Not everyone has the fastest and newest computers around, so you will need to keep that in mind. If you only design for the highest forms of technology, you will likely loose quite a few potential customers.
When it comes to the actual design, try to use things that are easy to the eye. Pictures and graphics work really well, as long as they are not too large or complicated. If you are using photos, make sure you use thumbprints that can be clicked upon to reveal a larger image of the photo. The thumbprints will load quickly for those with slower connections, but also allow the option of seeing the image in larger form. Consumers would much rather gather information from pictures on the web than by reading boring text. A good rule is to offer a majority of images, with a little text mixed in.
When adding content to your site, there are a few things you should not do. First, you should not repeat common information. If you assume your audience is ignorant, they will likely be offended. Second, you should not repeat information from other websites with the same subject as yours. This will only make you look uniform and basically convince consumers you have nothing unique to offer them. If they can get the same deals at another website, they just might take their business there. Be sure you are adding valuable information and products on your website. Consumers are intelligent and want to be treated as such.
When trying to figure out how to link each page to another, you will need to keep an “obvious” state of mind. This means that any place that you feel you must type “click here” should be so obvious that even without the actual words “click here”; the consumer should feel that is what should be done next. Designing your site with predictability in mind is a great idea.
The more comfortable the consumer feels with the site, the better your business will be and the more repeat business you can expect. When the customer “knows” what will happen next, they will automatically feel comfortable. Surprising customers is not usually a great idea, so make sure everything works as it should. Place links in appropriate places so the viewer does not need to search endlessly for the link to the next page.
Lastly, remember to avoid backgrounds and colors that distract from your products and website in general. Never use anything blinking in your site design. Blinking ads and content are annoying to everyone that uses the internet and can even cause medical problems in some viewers. Repeat business will not exist if you use content that is difficult on the eyes or it annoying to viewers. To get people to come back to your website, you need to create a place that can be navigated with complete ease. Make sure that all links are checked daily to ensure that your website is running as smoothly as possible. Also, be sure to have all of the “kinks” taken care of before you even publish your site online. Do these things and you are sure to have repeat business.
Navigate More Website Activity through Email Newsletters to Visitors
Friday, December 5th, 2008When you own a business website, you may find if helpful to have a weekly or monthly newsletter full of useful information about your products. Newsletters can be a great way to navigate more website activity your way. Emailing weekly or monthly newsletters can be the best way to update or remind past visitors of your services or products. Extending special offers in those newsletters can generate more website traffic, purchases of services or products and possible referrals from the visitor’s friends and family.
Customers and prospective customers are the backbone of your business. Without customers, you would have no business. Businesses know this and they know how important it is to maintain communication with their customers in order to build a stronger relationship. Good communication and strong relationships generate loyal customers that will keep coming back to you for more.
Email newsletters are a form of email marketing. This is a great marketing tool for small businesses to operate productive websites. It is a matter of communicating with your target audience. For example, Jane has visited your website looking for a birthday gift for her husband and she decides to opt-in and sign up for your business newsletter. Even if Jane decides not to make a purchase at that time, in a week or a month when she receives your newsletter with a special offer or discount, she may be encouraged to return to your site to make a purchase. If she is satisfied with her purchase, she may become a loyal customer and refer your services or products to her friends and family.
Why send newsletters via email instead of through the postal service? Customers prefer receiving emailed newsletters over regular postal mail because it is fast and convenient. In addition, there is never that extra piece of mail that ends up clogging your mailbox. Businesses like sending newsletters via email because it is easy, fast, and more affordable than regular postal mail. It is also less paper and ink used, and no postage or printing costs. Emailed newsletters are simply more economical and no trees have to die.
When building your website, it is best to offer the opt-in newsletter as a way to maintain communication with visitors and customers through the information they provide. You can also provide special discounts or promotions to encourage visitors to sign up for your website’s newsletter. Offering appealing incentives in the subject line of your emailed newsletters will encourage the recipient to read your newsletter right away instead of sending it straight to the trash bin. This type of marketing will help you to navigate more website activity and boost sales of services and products, not to mention all the recognition your website will receive.
Writing compelling newsletters can help build trust and win the loyalty of your target audience. By sending newsletters on a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly basis, you can remind the recipients of your services how they can benefit from your business and why they need your service or product. This is also a great way to encourage them to buy your services or products with limited time offers, special discounts or extra bonuses. It would also be a good idea to include simple how-to’s in your newsletter. Many people enjoy reading how-to’s and learning how to do something new.
You can easily navigate more website activity through sending emailed newsletters to visitors. Newsletters are a great promotional way to build a stronger and better business through your website and for gaining loyal customers.
For those entrepreneurs who are skilled enough to create a newsletter on their own, this can be a very rewarding challenge. Moreover, it is a challenge that can bring you more website traffic and generate more customers that will eventually create more purchases. Alternatively, you can choose from many reputable businesses that specialize in creating email-able newsletters for you.
Many small businesses find themselves too busy to keep up with the demands of creating newsletters and if it is in your budget, you may consider hiring the professionals to take care of it for you. It takes a load off you, but you still get a great newsletter. This way you can focus on promoting your website and in all areas of customer satisfaction.
Meta Tag – You’re it! How to Use Meta Tags Effectively
Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008There are a number of online urban legends that suggest Meta tags and the use of them are dead and no longer necessary to build effective web pages. Many people believe that search engines are too smart to look for Meta tags. This, however, is completely untrue. Search engines have gotten smarter, but Meta tags are as important as ever. Search engines now compare the words in the title, the keywords, and the description of the article to help users find the best possible search engine results. Meta tags are vital to good search engine results.
For those new to the term, Meta tags are parts of HTML coding on websites that are used by search engines, like Google, Yahoo, and MSN, to index a website. Most Meta-tags are put in the header code of a website. There are a number of different possible Meta tags including the abstract Meta tag, the author Meta tag, the copyright Meta tag, the description Meta tag, the distribution Meta tag, the expires Meta tag, the keyword Meta tag, the language Meta tag, the refresh Meta tag, the revisit Meta tag, and the robots Meta tag. The most important and most popular Meta tags are the title, description, and keywords Meta tags. Different search engines offer different rules about how the Meta tags are used formatted, and how many characters they are allowed to contain.
Most search engines will use varying combinations of your Meta tags, so it is important to be patient with the entire process. The title tag should be both the name of your company and some keywords. Some search engines make use of the title as the link for your own website. That means if you don't include a title, customers won't see one. They might see something like “no title.” Few people would click on a site without a title. Having keywords with your title will help to improve your search engine rankings.
Since research shows that most people only deal with the first ten results any search engine sends them, having a better ranking can only be good for your business. It is also important to remember that many places list sites in alphabetical order. Typically these sites give symbols preference over letters. That means that, “#1 Dog Information and Product Site” would come before, “The Best Dog Site on the Internet”. There are many things to consider with Meta tags though, and there are many things to learn, so don't take a piece of information like that and focus only on it.
The description Meta tag is a good place to repeat the keywords you've used in your title Meta tag and add a few key phrases while you're at it. You not only want something that will catch the attention of a search engine, but you also need something that will be understandable for human eyes. Some search engines will use this Meta tag to describe your site to searchers, but if your tag is just garbage to catch the search engine eye, chances are good that users may not be inclined to click on a poor description.
In order to benefit the most from your Meta tag usage, follow these tips.
First, use various internet keyword tools to find the best keywords for your website. Many different sites offer a keyword tool, and some of them are business oriented for pay per click advertising, but many of them are free. It is important to note, though, that these tools can be inaccurate, so you should pay careful attention and be sure that you use more than one tool to help you find the right keywords to include in your Meta tags.
Second, be sure to submit manually to the entire available major search engines. Some companies have created software to help you do this quickly and more efficiently, and if technology is not really your cup of tea, this may help you out.
Finally, be sure that both your content and all of your pages make use of the keywords you have included in your Meta tags. Remember that search engines are smarter than they used to be. If you have put keywords in your Meta tags that do not reflect your site content, your ranking is unlikely to be as high, and customers can be just as unlikely to click on your site.
Effective use of Meta tags can really improve your website traffic. This can only mean good things are in store for you and your business.
WordPress 2.7 Release Candidate 1
Monday, December 1st, 2008With the release of RC1, we’re in the final leg of development before the release of 2.7. 280 commits since beta 3 have polished the new admin UI (including new menu icons created by the winners of our icon design contest) and fixed all known blocker bugs.
We think RC1 is ready for everyone to try [...]
Maximize Your Exposure – Write Articles that Refer to Your Website
Monday, December 1st, 2008Most serious businesses already have their website up and running, whether they have a small store location or strictly sell their products or services online. Nowadays, having a website is almost a requirement. Once you have your website, the world is not going to know you exist; you must promote your website yourself. After all, you put in all that time and effort into starting up a website, not to mention the cost, now it is up to you to make sure it all pays off. Not only do you have to steer the traffic to your website, but you also have to turn those visitors into customers. You have to have something to offer them to convert visitors into customers, and to keep them coming back. Customers can always generate more business through word of mouth and act as your own personal marketers.
One key way to keep the customers, and potential customers, coming back is to write your own articles that refer to your website for maximum exposure. There are many free websites where you can write and post articles about your website and what your website can do for others. First, if you are not an experienced writer, take the time to learn how to write articles. Collecting a few tips never hurts. If you do not have the time, but have the extra finances, you can choose to hire a writer or business to write the articles and post them for you. Although this is most convenient, it may prove to be quite costly in the end.
Here are some tips on how you can maximize your exposure by writing articles referring to your website:
1. Choose a particular product, service, or update on which you want to write an article. Keep all articles between 75 and 1200 words. Write in layman terms and avoid all the long technical and scientific mumbo jumbo. Keep the sentences short and to the point. Keep the paragraphs short and limited to one topic. You do not want to start writing about how great your peas are in one paragraph and start in on your great carrots in the same paragraph. If you are selling vegetables and want to write about your vegetables, give the peas and carrots there own paragraph.
2. It is important to upload new material. It does not take long for an article to go stale. You want to keep useful and original information coming on a regular basis. You have to prove to your customers that you are still there running and active website. If you wrote your last article in October of 2004, then your website would appear to be unreliable or abandoned. Keep your customers and all of your potential customers up-to-date and provide them with free information that they would not be able to find anywhere else.
3. Think of how your new article will benefit your customers. Try to write some “how-to” articles. Many people are most interested in how-to articles. Helping your customers find out how they would benefit from your article will earn you the respect and trust you deserve and from which you can profit. Trustworthy businesses generate loyal customers.
4. If you choose not to write an article, you can delve into articles, tips, testimonials or book excerpts written by other people on websites and e-zines and copy and paste them to your site. Keep in mind that you must have the writer’s or website owner’s permission to do so beforehand. Although this is not something to do on a regular basis, it can be nice filler for your website. Always be sure to choose the articles with the content relating to your website.
It is your job to write something your customers want to read and keep them coming back for more. Updating your website on a regular basis is a great way to let your customers know that you are there. By tending to your website on a regular basis, you let them know you have not abandoned your post. You can also keep your customers returning to your site by offering monthly specials. Try offering attractive incentives such as Free Shipping Month, Free Gift Month, Discount Month, or Buy One Get One Free Month. It is up to you to offer your customers incentives to return to your website.