If you expect your site to stimulate some form of action, whether it is visitors filling out a form so a representative can contact them, or purchasing a product, there are steps you can take to insure that your website is functioning at peak efficiency. One of the first indicators of how well your site is working for you is finding out the number of visitors in a given period of time. A good baseline measurement is a month in which you haven’t been doing any unusual offline promotional activities.

However, just because hoards of people have passed through your gates does not mean your site is successful. Usually, you want those visitors to actually do something there. It is equally important to monitor the number of visitors to your site who made a purchase. This figure is called the site conversion rate, and it is an essential element of the efficacy of your website.

To find the site conversion rate, take the number of visitors per month and figure out the percentage of them that actually performed the action your site is set up for. For example, if you had 2,000 hits to your site, but only 25 of them purchased your product, your site conversion rate equals 1.25%. To get this figure, take your number of visitors and divide that figure by the number of visitors who made a purchase. Then divide that result by 100 (25/2000 x 100).

If your website is set-up to get visitors to fill out a form, make sure to then figure out what the difference is between your site conversion rate and your sales conversion rate. This is because not everyone who fills out your form will actually become your customer. However, whether your site is set-up to sell a service or product, or to get the visitor to fill out a form, the site conversion rate will measure the success or failure of your website whenever you make changes to the site.

You may find that you need to implement some additional marketing strategies if you find that traffic to your site is extremely low. There are several effective methods to improve the flow of traffic to your website, particularly launching a search engine optimization campaign. This campaign is targeted at increasing your position in search engine results so that consumers can find your pages faster and easier. You can either research the steps you need to take to improve your search engine rankings, or employ a search engine optimization company to do the work for you. In either case, after your have improved your search engine positions, make sure you keep on top of them by regular monitoring and adjusting of your efforts to maintain high positions.

Another factor to examine is how easy it is for a visitor to your website to accomplish the action the site is set-up for. For example, if your goal is for the visitor to fill out a form, is this form easily accessible, or does the visitor have to go through four levels to get to it? If it’s too difficult to get to, the customer may just throw in the towel and move on to another site. Make sure your buttons are highly visible, and the path to your form or ordering page quickly accessible.

Finally, have a professional evaluate the copy on your website. The goal is, of course, to get your visitor to make a purchase or fill out your form. Website copy must be specifically geared to your online campaign and not just a cut and paste job from your company brochure. The right copy can make the difference between profit and loss in your online campaign.

A general statement to answer the above questions is that “magic numbers do not exist.” The most important thing you can understand as a search engine optimization expert is that algorithms change. Just when you think you understand what is going to make you number one for a key phrase in a search engine, something could easily change, and you might have to spend months or even years trying to figure the new algorithm.

It is better not to try to reverse engineer the algorithm, do something much easier instead… observe your top competitors. All you need to do is to understand what elements your competitors are using to make them rank in the top positions.

The main elements to getting top search engines rankings are:

- Number, quality, and relevance of inbound links pointing to your site
- Fresh, relevant, quality content (needs to be added frequently)
- Keyword density of your home page or any page you want to rank highly

LINKS, LINKS, LINKS

The first thing to observe from your competitor’s sites is their inbound links. This means the number of sites that have a link pointing to their website. You can easily measure it by going to Google and typing: “link://www.yourcompetitorssite.com”. However do not only do this on Google because they don’t show all actual links pointing to a site. Yahoo and MSN tend to show a lot more of the back links to any given website.

Part of the observation should be not only what the links say, but where the links come from. Think about what the category is that those links come from. If you start to see a recurring pattern, you should start actively searching for links coming from that category.

Some marketers use special software for robotic content creation. They generate thousands of pages with links pointing to their sites. This practice can be very dangerous, as Google will penalize unnatural linking or violations of their terms of service. And what happens is that those links do not look natural. One day one site may have 50 links and the following day have 2000 links, which all say the same thing and come from the same IP address.

If you understand how to observe, this will never happen to you. You will learn how to look at your competitors, and observe how they are getting linked to. Then, just do what they do.

FRESH QUALITY CONTENT

The second thing to observe is how much fresh content the top sites have. Search engines love quality relevant content that is added and updated frequently. You will probably notice that the top sites in your niche have many articles and other quality content, and are continuously adding new content to their sites.

People that surf the web are usually searching for information, so content is the “fuel” of internet traffic. If you want to attract many potential customers to your site, then you need to make sure that you provide enough content which is relevant to their interests. Updating it frequently with more quality content will keep visitors coming back to your website over and over again.

KEYWORD DENSITY

The third thing you need to observe is the keyword density of your competitors. How many times should you repeat your main keywords? In which part of the web page should your main keywords be mentioned? Again, there is no magic number, it’s all about observing and measuring against the top websites in your market. But what should you measure?

- Meta tags
- Alt tags
- Titles
- Names of the images on the page
- Heading tags: h1, h2, h3…
- Frequency and position of the keywords in the body text

Each one of these items should be measured independently. There are tools to run keyword density against your competitors. If you run them against the top 3 or 5 sites, you may start to understand the secrets of top rankings.

Again, your keyword density needs to look natural; otherwise you may fail in overall optimization. This is when you use keywords too often or too little. If you look unnatural, your rankings will suffer as a result.

So, what did we learn here? Basically that the key to ranking highly in the search engines is to understand what the top 5 websites in your niche are doing and to apply this to your own website optimization.

What do you do now? Get out there and start getting inbound links for your site. Add quality content to your site daily. And be sure that your on-site optimization, such as keyword density, is similar to that of your top competitors. Continue to do this every day and you will be ranking a the top of the search engines before you know it.

The one underlying thing to keep in mind whenever you use video to market a product or service is that the quality of the video will go a long way in determining what kind of results you get. A poorly made, hard to see or hear video won’t do much to make you look like a knowledgeable expert in your niche. No one expects Academy Award caliber videos, but they must be well laid out and visually appealing.

For most marketing videos the K.I.S.S. acronym works extremely well: Keep It Simple Stupid. Don’t go over the top with flashy graphics or loud music. It’s much better to just deliver a quality video that will help your target audience handle some problem or issue in the shortest amount of time possible. That’s really all they want, someone who can show them how to do the one thing they desperately want to know how to do.

It could be to potty train their Pitbull, start seedlings, or just learn how to make big bucks online. Whatever it is, if you can show them in easy to follow steps, on video, how they can do it, they’ll be your friend forever.

Don’t go hog wild and invest thousands in high tech gear to record your videos. Instead a few hundred dollars, some screen capture software and/ or a video camera, a tripod (optional) and a decent microphone is really all you need.

Once you’ve assembled the tools you need to come up with a compelling video. Again, pinpoint the one issue the people in your niche face and then teach them a way to overcome that issue.

Don’t get tongue tied or stammer throughout the video either. Make an outline of the major points you want to cover so you don’t get distracted and jump from one point to another. Don’t talk too fast or too slow. You have to make sure that you’re viewers can not only understand you but hopefully that they’ll come to trust and like you too.

That’s the huge benefit on using video online, it greatly increases the personalization of the otherwise impersonal internet. It allows you to connect with people on a much deeper level and if you use that properly, it can make a huge difference in your business.

Being able to allow your visitors to hear your voice and see your face while you give them help with a problem they’re having is taking social media marketing video to a whole new level. Remember, it takes an average of 7 contacts with people before they feel comfortable enough with you to make a purchase, by allowing people to really get to ‘know’ you through video, you can get the most out of those 7 contacts and maybe even speed up the process.

Website usability is one of the key determinants of its success in fulfilling its main goal, whether it is made for information dissemination, business or communication. Usability is all about the relationship between a website and its users. Websites should be seen as tools which will allow its users to do their tasks and help them achieve results.

The issue of website usability is very pertinent and is treated with much attention today. There have been moves (including legal ones) that aim to push web development towards usability. There are many people who are affected with some kind of disability or impairment which hinders them from fully enjoying the different aspects of life including the use of the Internet. The Internet, with its continuous development towards the better, has been a great instrument in providing people, especially those with impairments to be able to have avenues for accessing information, communicating and transacting. This is why the issue of website usability is a much talked about issue.

Website Usability is important because it can be the difference between accurately performing a task or not, between enjoying the whole process or being very frustrated. Website Usability is also important for the developers since it can be one of the key factors in determining the success of a system. It is also important for businesses which thrive in the Internet because a low level of usability will definitely drive the customers away. Most importantly, it is important for people who have impairments because they are the most vulnerable group in terms of accessing the different avenues that the Internet provide.

Components of Website Usability

Website usability is one of the key determinants of a website’s popularity. A recent survey revealed that the ease of use with regards to websites makes 74% of website visitors want to come back.

There are different components of website usability. These are:

-Efficiency
This refers to how easily the users can perform their tasks after they have had a general feeling for the website.

-Learning curve
Can the structure of the website easily be learned by the users?

-Over-all perception
Is the website pleasant to the eyes and can easily be accessed by people viewing it?

A website that is usable will be able to deliver a lot of benefits not only to the viewers but also to the developers. Here are some of the most important benefits that can be achieved by improving the usability of a website.

The Benefits of Website Usability

• user satisfaction
• productivity and success
• avoidance of long-term costs of development
• improved competitiveness of the website

Now, we go to the ways on how to the basic concepts that should be kept in mind in developing websites to achieve usability.

1) Give information about the website

Many website developers forget the importance of putting some information about the website because they assume that people will be able to figure that themselves. Many people will be giving negative feedback if they don’t get what they want (or what they think they want) from the website. A portion of the homepage can be used to relay this information or a separate section about the site can be added.

2) Provision of a site map

Many people are not very familiar on navigating through the different layers of a website and therefore they result to the sitemap to be able to find what they are looking for. Sitemaps provide a skeleton image of the whole site and cramp the pertinent sections into one single page.

3) Loading time

If people are to be asked to choose between a good-looking site which takes too much time to load and a basic site which loads quickly, most of the time, the second one will win. The use of large flash programs, graphics and the inappropriate placing of too much information should be avoided to improve the usability of a website.

4) Quality content and readability

People visit website to be able to gather information and they will leave immediately if the content are either: of poor quality or has poor readability. Make sure that the contents are written well and are structured to be easily read.

These are just some of the ways on how a developer can improve the usability of his website. The development of website usability is pushing forward to  and every single website should take this in mind.

In one word, yes! The internet is the most effective marketing tools in existence nowadays, have the capability of reaching far more people than any leaflet drop or advertisement in the local paper ever will.

Should you produce your own website design?

It all depends on your skills, if you have the ability to produce a site that looks good, then go ahead, it will save you money and will work wonders as a marketing tool. However if your skills are limited or non-existent then we’d say no. Why? No, not because we want your money (although we don’t mind if you want to give it to us…), because if your website design doesn’t have a professional look to it, then it is going to reflect badly on your company’s image.

Do you need to spend lots of money?

It really depends on the size of your website, if you’re looking simply get a presence on the internet, then you can easily get something for an affordable price if you take the time to look, if you’re really getting into the idea of being online and effectively having your shop exist in cyberspace you’re going to be looking at more money, however even then, there are many self-build options.

What content do you need?

This all depends on what you want from being online, if you want to sell online, have your products online is going to be very useful! If you’re just looking to get your company online, then there are TWO elements that we believe are imperative:

Information about your company
How to contact you

Without these two no-one is going to know who or what you are, with the former being your chance to sell yourself. Remember when people look at websites, if its well designed they won’t know if they’re dealing with a multi-national company or a one person organization, this is your chance to play alongside the big boys!!

What to do now?

So you’re convinced a website is the way to go? Excellent, this can only be of benefit to you! Now you’ve got to find a website design company (there’s one right here!!!), things to keep in mind when looking is what kind of style are you looking for, find some websites design that you like then find some designers and see if they can produce something along that line! If they can, you’re on the way to bringing into being what can be one of your best employees!!

Whether it is a chamber of commerce or a trade association, members have common problems, issues and concerns. By sharing issues and resolutions, members can benefit by the experience of others. Many small business owners participate in organizations, not only to network, but also to hopefully circumvent some of the pitfalls encountered by other small businesses–learning from others.

Networking Tips.

Many trade organizations provide forums for networking. In some cases, these might be private online newsgroups, casual meetings, or even professional events with speakers. In order to take full advantage of these networking opportunities consider these tips.

Who You Know.

It is often not who you know, but who they know. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve seen someone put-off someone who is clearly a beginner only to learn that the “beginner” is the brother or friend of a contact they’ve been trying to meet for weeks.

Honesty.

Be honest. Pretending to be something that you are not, or implying you can deliver a product or service that is outside of your abilities, will foster an environment of distrust and potentially harm your reputation. Keep in mind that networking is viral, and if promises are not kept, word will spread. Establishing yourself and firm as an honest, reputable company.

Professional.

Keep conversations to strictly business subjects. In a business environment, it is important to focus on safe non-emotional topics. The last thing you want to do is alienate or offend a potential client because of an outspoken view on a controversial topic. There is a time and a place for everything and discussing political views or cultural issues is not a generally accepted business topic. Bearing that in mind, it is also important to be aware and sensitive to cultural differences. The Internet has opened doors to a global market and respecting cultural differences is critical to establishing strong business relationships in the global marketplace.

Socialize.

Now is not the time to be a wall flower. Whether you participate in social business events, or monitor trade forums, it is critical that you participate. Participation will help you distinguish yourself in your industry. Attempt to remember individual personal details and foster introductions among others in the industry.

Positive.

Stay positive. It sounds simple, but it will really impact how others view you. If you are constantly negative and pointing out the flaws in others, it will reflect on how others view you. Presenting the best and positive business experiences will enhance your image.

Help.

Provide genuine assistance to others. Whether or not they are able to reciprocate, networking is viral and vital. Helping others will establish you as a useful member of your business community and will endear you to others. If you are unable to help an individual, attempt to refer them to someone who can.

Research.

A little research goes a long way. Be sure to research people and companies in your business community. Knowing their common goals and interests will build topics for discussions.

Acknowledging the need to connect with others to grow and expand a business may seem like common sense. Cultivating business relationships and interact with other small businesses is often mutually beneficial and should not be underestimated.

Social Networking for small business is about building relationships and mutual interaction benefiting both parties. Being proactive and following up, you can have a network of contacts that you will be able to access quickly when you need them. Whether by more traditional means, such as in person or over the Internet, personal networks are essential for furthering your business. Relationship networking is give and take, be sure to help others in your quest for help.

Which means that someone probably has a website a lot like yours? As competition for page views grows more intense, web design more technical, and the Internet more popular, good website design becomes more important than ever before. If you have a website, then you want visitors to view that it. Good website design and web marketing is the only way to make that happen.

The average Internet cruiser is more jaded these days, harder to impress. Good website design and content is the only way to get repeat visitors. There are several basic key elements to good a website design that every web designer must know how to use.

Content

Internet search engines have grown very clever about searching content on web sites these days. Good website design is centered on your website’s content. What keywords will people search to find your site? Once you know what your keywords are, you have to have plenty of content on your site that features those keywords. There are several free websites that allow you to check your keyword content. Use them. Content is what search engines look at first, so it is here that you must make your impression.

Links

Search engines love links. You want links that connect to other pages of your site, internal links, as well as external links that connect to pages outside your domain. The more links you have, the better, so use them liberally throughout your site. Links also improve the navigation of your site, which is incredibly important.

Graphics

Bright colours, pictures, and fun fonts will make or break your website. Graphics are going to fly at Internet cruisers every way they look, so you want to make an impression with the graphics on your site. Good website design is about a pleasing flow of colours, pictures, graphics, and text. Don’t over clutter your pages, but make them exciting and interesting to look at.

Good website design is about learning how to balance key elements that appeal to search engines and your viewers. Your pages should flow together, your navigation should be easy, and your site filled with content. The only way to increase traffic to your site is through good website design that is updated regularly. This will ensure repeat, and new, business to your site. The more visitors you have, the better.

Good website design is the only way to make that happen.

1. Who is your target audience?
2. How will your target audience find you?
3. How will you convert your visitors into sales?

These questions sound obvious, but it’s amazing how many people don’t bother…and then moan that “our website doesn’t bring us any business”.

1) Who is your target audience?

Give a great deal of thought to your target market. Who do you want to attract to your website? Why? The answer to that is more than likely to sell them something – a product, a service, or an idea perhaps.

Claiming that your market is anyone and everyone is far too vague, and your website will lack focus, and fail to maximize its potential. Ideally you should be aiming to create a niche.

2) How will they find you?

Creating a niche will also help you with the search engines, and drive hot leads to your site.

Consider what keywords your target market might type into a search engine to find you. Actually do the searches yourself. Who comes up in the top 30? Because that’s where you need to be. Are your competitors there? Look at their sites. Do they work? How can you improve on them? Identify something unique about your business that sets it apart from the rest.

Those keywords – or key-phrases to be more accurate – need to be incorporated into your pages of your site – in the page titles, in the headings, and in the internal links.
Be specific with your key-phrases. They will be less competitive than the more general single word searches, and will more accurately target your market. You may have to localize or specialize to get in that top 30 – and the top 30 is where you need to be to drive traffic to your site. As I am sure you are aware from your own experience, if you haven’t found what you are looking for in the first 3 results pages, you look elsewhere.

The key to achieving high search engine rankings is building inbound links to your web pages – that is pages on external websites that link to pages on your site. Crucially this link acquisition should be a natural growth – where inbound link count increases at a gradual pace. The pages that link to yours should be relevant, on-topic and ideally contain the same keywords – especially in the linking text. Search engines rank pages based upon their reputation – your ranking will be determined by what other (preferably high ranking) pages say about your page.

3) How will you convert your visitors into sales?

Don’t just tell them what you do or sell. Tell them why they want it (yes, want – not need). Offer incentives, freebies, discounts – anything to get that dialogue started.

Current research indicates that the human brain makes a judgment about a web page within a twentieth of a second! That doesn’t leave you very long to make an impression. So, make sure that you have your Unique Selling Point (USP) clearly visible on your home page – and preferably prominent on every one of your other pages. After all, it’s not a given that the home page will be the first page that the visitor sees, particularly if they have found you via a search engine.

Then make sure that you list your bullet-pointed guarantees. Visitors have to understand why you are different from the rest, and why they should deal with you and not your competitors. And as we’ve discovered, they have to understand this pretty much instantly.

Lastly, make sure that your site has a funnel-like structure. Identify your important pages – usually the “call to action” or purchase pages – and make sure all roads lead to those pages. Your internal links – like their external equivalents – should describe the target page. If you sell blue widgets, don’t call your products page “Products”, call it “blue widgets”, and make sure that the links pointing at this page also say “blue widgets”. This will not only help the search engines identify and rank the most important pages in your site, it will also lead your visitor to that all important conversion.

Here are five important rules of thumb to observe to make sure your website design performs well.

1) 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.

2) 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.

3) Have a simple website design 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 drop down menus. If your visitors don’t know how to navigate, they will leave your site.

4) 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. Don’t confuse your visitors because confusion means “abandon ship”!

5) 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’re not annoyed by some audio looping on and on on your website. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it — volume or muting controls would work fine.

So, this article will tell you how to make your business effective and thereby get business with the help of the website.

DO MARKET RESEARCH:

First, do a small market survey to find out the opinions of the potential customers as that would help you to modify and plan the website accordingly. You can do the research by making the visitors of the site fill a survey and that should be done by the web developer using ASP, PHP or CGI survey tools. To make sure that you get good responses, you can lure the viewers with a gift to one lucky survey filler.

REFRESH YOUR CONTENT:

Keeping the same content will not attract the customer to come back again to your website. Hence it should be updated continuously and should always try to exceed the expectations. This can be done by using content management system (CMS). A technical writer should be appointed to keep updating the content and also include the new trends of the business along with the recent technology and businesses.

BE CLEAR AND TRANSPARENT:

Be transparent to the customer and that will help as it would increase the trust factor about you and your business. You need not divulge the trade secrets but you can share quality standards, how you develop the product or service and your policies and goals. You can also explain what they can expect from you and announce offers etc. You can finally ask for the customer’s feedback and it should be incorporated if needed. This will help the customer to have a sense of belonging to your business.

IMPROVE NAVIGATION:

Clear navigation helps a long way in the success of the website. Clumsy websites will not attract the customer no matter how good the product is. The customer first sees the site and then the product and hence it is better to have a good first impression. Clear hyper linking and cross linking will take the website a long way.

TESTING AT DIFFERENT SPEEDS AND BROWSERS:

Once the navigation is taken care of, testing should not be neglected. Especially, the loading time. Customers will not have the patience to wait many minutes for your webpage to open. They would rather close it and look for alternatives. One thing which will help with the speed of  the website is to use limited amount of graphics and videos. Also, before launching the website,your web designer should test it in different browsers.

SELL BENEFITS RATHER THAN FEATURES:

Though the final aim of your website is to sell the products and services, it should appear to the user as if you are selling the benefits and not the features of the product. The same sentence can be written in a way for the customer to perceive better. Instead of saying “The laptop has ultra powerful battery made in the US using platinum encoded…. “, it is better to say “Up to 10 hours of battery life.” which is the benefit to the customer.

Apart from the product, it is always advisable to add value to the visitor. Allow the user to get a lot of information about the product, articles on the latest technologies related to the product. This would not just make the user spend lot of time on your website but also improves the ranking in search engines.

SITE PROMOTION:

Making a good website is the first part of the story. The next part is equally important and that is to promote the website. You can set up links or affiliates to announce your website on the global map and also you can make sure that you do small things right by keeping the website in your email signature, business cards etc. One more important way to promote your website is to submit to various search engines and send emails to the potential customers with the link to website.

ANALYSIS:

There are lots of site analysis tools; some of them are even free. Add one of the tools so that you will know which page of the website is viewed the most and hence you can modify it accordingly. You can also get the information of the visitors which you can use to convert them into a potential customer etc.