Designing your eCommerce site
November 12, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment
In a recent article I talked about Google AdSense placement based on eye-tracking research. However, research by The Poynter Institute, Eye tools and the Estlow Center for Journalism and New Media has a lot to say about more than where to put an AdSense block.
Designing an eCommerce site is more than making it pretty. You have certain desired actions you’re looking for from your visitors. You have specific things you want to be sure they see and hopefully act on. Now, there’s some research that can guide your design. Certainly you want your site to look professional, but you want it to do its job as effectively as possible too.
People are surprisingly alike in some of their basic visual behavior. It’s been argued that our evolution as hunter-gatherers has shaped much of our ingrained visual patterns. Whether you buy that particular argument or not there are still important commonalities.
Typical behavior on initially viewing a site is to do a fast scan of the entire visible screen with short focusing periods around the areas that attract attention. First pass tends to include headlines, the page logo, photo captions, subheads, links and menu items. And the big hot spot is the upper left corner of the screen. I haven’t seen any definitive research on whether these patterns also hold for users with native languages that read any way except left to right, but I’m assuming most of you are building sites for left-to-right readers.
The clear message is that your most important real estate is in that upper left area and that the lower right (particularly if it’s below the fold) is the least likely to receive much attention.
How you use your words in a headline, paragraph or link can make a huge difference in your success at capturing a visitor’s attention. The concept is called frontloading. Wherever you can make sure your critical terms appear at the very beginning of headlines, links and other text. It’s still got to make sense, but the first few words are far more likely to be at least scanned then the middle or end of a headline or link or the inside of a paragraph.
The exact same words can have drastically different capture rates depending on their order. You want to maximize the probability that the visitor will read a whole headline or link and then act on it. So put the most significant, enticing words first – the ones that are the best grabbers and convey the subject immediately.
You don’t have a lot of time to mess about. It’s been reported that a typical surfer may be off your page in well under 14 seconds unless something grabs his or her attention fast. Remember the upper-left? You want to do an especially good job with headlines, link and text in that area.
Dropcaps (where the first capitalized letter in a line is in a different, often unusual, font and extends below the normal text base-line), bolding, font changes and color changes can also serve as strong eye-attractors. If you try these techniques you need to be careful that you don’t overuse them (your page will look like a mess), and it’s extremely important that you test whether or not they’re actually doing what you want. Annoying as it may be, running tests is the only way to make sure it’s an improvement.
Do you use lists? Have you made sure that they’re in-line and as close to the left margin as possible? Don’t ever use an outline format with multiple indents. People scan down, not across and they tend to scan close to the left margin. Indent too much and it might as well be invisible.
An interesting testing result that I read somewhere said that somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of site visitors don’t even see centered headlines. Sure they look nice and a lot of sites use them, but if they’re totally missed by even 3 percent of your visitors, you’re paying a major price to look good. Suggestion? Put those headlines up against your left margin.
This also applies to links. Put those links up against the left margin, not inside a paragraph, centered or off to the right. And if you want any clicks on a link, never put it in that nearly unseen lower right area. Might as well just leave it off your page.
How about indented paragraphs? Now there’s a great way to start an argument. Some argue that it attracts the eye, it’s different, few sites use it so you stand out. Others insist that you’re far better off staying left justified and frontloading each paragraph. There’s only one way to resolve it for yourself, yeah, run some tests and see what works with your visitors on your site.
The bottom line is that once you get beyond the basics of placement, frontloading, and left-justified links and headlines, you need to test if you want to fully maximize the effectiveness of your website design. I wish there were a simpler answer too, but in the end only testing will tell you what works best for your site
In a recent article I talked about Google AdSense placement based on eye-tracking research. However, research by The Poynter Institute, Eye tools and the Estlow Center for Journalism and New Media has a lot to say about more than where to put an AdSense block.
Attract the people across the world
November 10, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment
Importantly, outbound marketing is considered as less effective for promoting the website in the search engine. To attract the people across the world, e-commerce websites are looking forward for new inbound marketing techniques. Therein, landing page optimization or LPO is gaining popularity over other inbound techniques. It gives the first impression when potential customers or respondents click on advertisements, links, emails, affiliate promotions and banners. Furthermore, provides a logical extension to the page content and appearance that makes the page look attractive to the target audiences.
To define the target site, one can say that he has a page on a particular site, where improving the traffic at certain action or due to external source such as a pay-per-click or PPC or SEO. The Landing Page Optimization is the best option for the optimization of large Web site refers to products as it takes into account many different issues, ie, young and old. It is important that not a single site to increase traffic for each topic or sign up ups encouraged. A customer can consider several steps, the maximum optimization of your landing page as implanting tracking measures to ensure, with the appropriate copy and design for site and building user-friendly navigation.
The company can improve their landing pages, without having a large sum of money. This is easily achieved through the following ways:
* Eliminate guess work in a landing page design
* Improve a new visitor engagement
* Provide better customer experience
Notes for the optimization of the site, the customer is experiment-based landing page optimization, multivariate A / B testing, LPO has been reached, and total-experience testing. A / B test will be when the existing resources and tools used economically. Compared with other methods, it is easier, since no complex statistical analysis is essential. In contrast, multivariate LPO is in the provision of a reliable and scientifically-based approach helpful in understanding potential customer preferences. In addition, this method is an easy-to-use approach where IT investment is not required.
Finally, the landing page optimization is one of the specified web page is designed to achieve specific objectives, not only limited to products, lead, or a newsletter sign-up the sales process.
Put The Welcome Mat Out On All Your Website Pages
August 6, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment
Writing ezine articles and submitting them to article directories is without doubt one of the most effective free methods of getting traffic to your website. Writing your own articles also means you can easily add content to your website so as to entertain human visitors and to attract the search engine robots. If your human visitors enjoy what they read, they are quite likely to make return visits. If the search engine bots find interesting content, they will award you a place in the organic search results.
There is a further way in which posting your articles on your website can help increase your profits: your article pages can be used as additional sales pages, but I see many new webmasters missing out on this opportunity to earn some extra cash. They put in the effort to write original ezine articles, they submit the articles to directories, they offer the articles to webmasters of high ranking websites and they post the articles on their own websites. All that is fine except that what may of them do is just post the article on a blank page, and this is where they are missing out on a money making opportunity.
Novice webmasters tend to think of their website in terms of a magazine where the home page is the index and the article pages are, well, article pages. They assume that their visitors will all land on their index page and that some of them will venture further to read articles if they see something of interest listed in the index. Although visitors often do follow that path, many visitors will land directly on an article page through finding it in a search result.
If a visitor’s first experience of your website comes via an article page, what do they see? If your answer to that is “just an article”, it’s time to rethink your article marketing strategy. This is where webmasters can learn from magazine publishers. What do magazines have on their pages in addition to articles? One word answer: advertisements. Having successfully attracted visitors to your website, you should be giving them more to do than just reading an interesting article.
Some visitors will arrive at your article page by accident when they are intent on making a purchase rather than reading up on a topic. You need to give these visitors some options otherwise they will leave your website immediately. Have some advertisements to help them towards finding what they really want. If you write an article about the newest gadget on the market, have your affiliate link prominently displayed in text and/or banner form as well as embedding it in the article text. In short, do everything you can think of to make it easy for your visitors to indulge their desire to make a purchase without them leaving your website.
I have visited websites by entering through an article page where there is no clue as to what products the website might be promoting and no obvious way of finding the home page. That is fine for any visitor who just wants to read an article but it does nothing to help the webmaster’s sales.
If you are handed a magazine folded open to an article, it is an easy matter to flip to the front page, but it’s not that easy when a search engine hands you a website open to an internal page. Make sure every page on your website has a virtual welcome mat for visitors and some help to find their way around.
47 Simple Ways to Build Trust in Your Website or Blog
June 13, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment
If your website does not create a sense of trust in your visitors, all your efforts will be in vain. Your online business will never succeed. That’s the bad news. The good news is that it is very easy to create and build trust in your online visitors. Below, I have listed all the techniques used by the hundreds of websites I have helped launch. If you have additional techniques, please add them to the list.
As the old saying goes, you have only one chance to make a first impression. Building trust cannot be achieved by one single action. Trust is achieved by hundreds of little things you do throughout your website that, when taken together, give readers a sense of honesty, legitimacy and stability.
The other bit of good news is that few website owners focus on building trust in the minds of their visitors. If you do it well, it can become a real and sustainable competitive advantage.
Here are 47 simple actions you can take to get started.
1. Trust is built by lots of small actions on every page of your website.
2. Your website design is the first impression. Make sure it is professional and relevant to the subject matter.
3. Navigation must be intuitive. If visitors can’t find what they are looking for easily, they will question your competence in providing what they want.
4. Make the website personal by giving it its own tone and voice. People buy people.
5. Follow the HEART rule of creating online content. (Reminder: HEART stands for Honest, Exclusive, Accurate, Relevant and Timely.)
6. Use language that is appropriate to the audience. It will build empathy.
7. Regularly add new content to your site. It shows that the business is alive and kicking.
8. Check all links. Doubts will quickly form in your visitors’ minds if links don’t work or, worse still, take them to error pages.
9. Good grammar and spelling matter. Errors give the impression of sloppiness and carelessness.
10. Never make outrageous and unbelievable claims, like “Read this blog and you’ll be a millionaire by the end of the week.” People are used to scams, get-rich-quick schemes and rip-offs.
11. Publish REAL testimonials and third-party endorsements. Try to always use real names and link to websites where possible. Some sites show images of letters sent by happy customers.
12. Publish case studies about customers you have helped, who use your product, etc.
13. Don’t put down, curse or insult competitors. It’s unprofessional. It is better to offer an objective comparison of competitive services or products.
14. Focus on building your long-term reputation, not on making quick sales.
15. Write articles for humans, not search engines.
16. Make your ?About Us’ page personal and comprehensive. It plays an important part in making visitors feel comfortable that real people are behind the site.
17. Publish your photo or the photos of the key people involved with the site. Again, this reinforces the fact that there are real people behind the screenshots.
18. Clearly identify who is behind the site. Nothing creates more suspicion than a site that tries to hide the identity of its publishers.
19. On the ?Contact Us’ page, provide an email form, phone number, fax and address of the company. In Europe, it is a legal requirement for sites taking money, but even sites driven by advertising will benefit from openness.
20. Provide a telephone number that people can call and talk to a person.
21. Provide Web addresses linked to the website domain, not addresses from free webmail services such as Hotmail and Gmail.
22. Never lie to make money. The most common way is to write a glowing report about a product or service to earn affiliate revenues. It is very short-sighted to lie to visitors to sell them rubbish. They’ll never come back or, worse still, they’ll actively condemn your site on forums and blogs.
23. Think carefully about reciprocal links. If your site is about organic food and you have links to Party Poker, people are going to question your integrity.
24. Think carefully about the adverts you display on your site. Ensure that they are relevant to your subject and audience.
25. Be explicit when you are being paid to endorse a product or service. An advertorial is fine as long as it is transparent. Paid-to-post is corrupting the Web and will experience a user backlash. I never read websites that accept payment for posting.
26. Write and publish your privacy policy. Be clear about what you will and will not do with any personal data you collect. State that you adhere to all data protection laws. Make it easy to read and don’t use legal gobbledygook.
27. Write and publish a security policy. State what measures you take to ensure that all transactions are secure.
28. Ensure that you have a security and privacy policy which is linked from the footer on every page. Make the link more prominent on all the order pages.
29. Clearly publish your guarantee. I would recommend making it a 100% money-back guarantee if possible.
30. Clearly state your refund and returns policy.
31. Piggyback off reputable brands. If you use PayPal, put the PayPal logo on your site. If you have a merchant services account with a major bank like Citibank or HSBC, put its logo on your site.
32. Use Google search on your site for two reasons. First, it is a great search solution which will help your visitors find what they are looking for. Second, having the Google name on your site instills trust.
33. If there are well-known industry associations for your subject, join up and put their logos on your site.
34. Have a forum on your site and respond quickly to questions. Have the attitude that you are happy to help others without receiving immediate reward. As the old saying goes, ?Givers always gain.’
35. Allow people to comment on articles. Interactivity and an exchange of views build community and a sense of involvement.
36. If people provide constructive criticism or comments in the forum, don’t delete them, but respond with your point of view.
37. Put photos on the website of the owners, publishers and/or team. Let visitors know there are real people behind the business.
38. Put images of the credit cards you accept on every page of the order process.
39. Use the words ?secure website’ whenever you try to get any information from visitors, including newsletter sign-ups, forum input and payment.
40. On every page, state, “We take your privacy and security very seriously.” Link the statement to the security and privacy policy.
41. Remember, reputations take years to build and seconds to destroy.
42. If you are selling a subscription, offer a low-cost, entry-level option. This could be a one-day taster, ?a week before billing starts’ or a monthly trial.
43. Use a high level of security when processing credit cards. Make sure you make your clients aware of all the steps you are taking.
44. Never send credit card information or personal details over the Internet unencrypted. Tell your customers that their data will be encrypted.
45. Only ask for information from customers that you really need. For example, for an email newsletter sign-up, the only information you REALLY need is an email address, so that is all you should ask for
46. If you have pricing on your website, make it transparent. I recently went to buy a book which was advertised for $10. When I checked out, they added tax, post and packaging, and the final bill was $19.50. I didn’t buy it as I felt they had deliberately tried to mislead me.
47. Keep your SSL certificate up to date. Let people know you are using SSL encryption and who the provider is.
You can never do too much to build trust. Most of it comes down to common sense and good business practice. To ensure that you are continually improving your trustworthiness, every time you go to a website, ask yourself whether you trust it or not. Then ask yourself why you have formed the opinion you have. Continually try to learn what makes a site trustworthy or untrustworthy and implement the relevant changes to your site.
If people trust you, the money will follow!