Revise And Re-Work Your Website For Sales
| Category: Marketing Strategy | Date: 2001-02-21 |
Has your Internet business disappointed you so far? What would you do differently if you were starting over growing your home based business. Hopefully you have learned some things since you began that would bring in more sales now.
I have some good news, no matter what you did wrong it's not too late to re-evaluate your Internet business. You don't have to start all over, you can just make a few changes. You don't have to spend a lot of money either. The Internet is starting to really heat up, we now have choices that were not available even a few months ago.
Before doing anything else, lets start by adding a visitor tracking system on every important page. Using visitor tracking we can understand who our visitors are, where they came from, and more than you would imagine about visitor purchasing history.
EXTREME TRACKER IS POWERFUL AND FREE
http://www.extreme-dm.com/tracking/?reg
Take a look at my free tracker stats, they can help you understand what kinds of useful information you can see. It helps to learn where which search engines referred them to which page and which pages are getting the most visitors. It's all free and it's it's easy.
The stats for my main page are viewable by the public. A short review will help you understand the power of visitor tracking
http://extreme-dm.com/s/?tag=rsmith45
FREE TRACKER
http://www.extreme-dm.com/tracking/?reg
1) YOU CAN SET UP FREE TIMED AUTORESPONDERS.
I think that will at least double your closing rate using your existing leads. You can write your messages for the autoresponders, it's not too difficult. Prepare and edit them ahead of time if possible before setting up your actual live auto responders. I use one follow up message the day after their request the first auto responder. I follow up again after two more days, then again after 4 more days. I send out the last auto responder after 10 days have passed. Each message should offer a few valuable topics related to your product or service. Free information is almost always welcome, and it really helps close your sales.
FREE AUTO RESPONDERS
http://www.smartbot.net/index3.html
Before you get the free auto responders you should check out the advantages a high end follow up system will do. I would suggest that you run the Demo to see how the author follows up, that's what sold me on timed responses. I close about 300% more sales from the same number of leads using this method
CHECK OUT THE DEMO HERE:
http://www.aweber.com/?884
2) DEVELOP YOUR KEYWORD LIST, META CODE & LEAD PAGES.
One of the fastest and least costly methods I know is also free. You can have a really well designed web site but if no one knows knows about you you will get very few visitors. I can't over-state the importance of targeting your pages. Keyword choice is important, the best keywords are usually nouns because most often people are searching for a person, a place, or a thing.
Start with 10-25 BEST keyword 2-three word key phrases, put the best on top. Put yourself in your ideal visitor's shoes. Write out questions and dig out the best keywords. Ask yourself which words would you use if you were looking for your product or services through a search engine.
Do actual test searches in each major search engine, test every keyword and visit several of the top pages to see how your keyword phase was used by others. Visit the top pages that came up with your best keywords. You can review the source code of any of the top web pages by choosing VIEW PAGESOURCE in your browser.
3) WRITE YOUR META CODE FOR THE MAIN PAGE.
I'm not going to go into Writing meta code here, you don't have to know that much. Visit this free meta tool.
FREE META CODE BUILDER TOOL
http://vancouver-webpages.com/META/mk-metas.html
A doorway page is just that, a separate web page that acts as a introduction to the search engines and has a link to your actual webpage.
The idea is to create several targeted invitations using keywords in the title and in the description. I create several pages answering specific questions that my ideal customer will be using to find me. The page is simple, it's a teaser, it comes up fast and contain less than 100 words total usually in one headline and one paragraph. Create as many as 5 different doorway pages. Weave many of the keywords phrases into each different doorway pages.
Each doorway page emphasizes a different keyword phrase you will have prepared earlier, and each keyword phrase is targeted to one specific demographic.
Each doorway page should contain a different keyword phrases I want the search engine to display and five descriptions.
EXAMPLE
Camp utilizing automated On-line marketing strategies
4) SUBMIT OR RE-SUBMIT YOUR WEBPAGES TO THE SEARCH ENGINES.
A) HIRE SOMEONE
Hire a skilled person to prepare automatic submission software files and run all the submissions for you. This should be done on a monthly rotation so all your important pages are submitted about one time every 4-6 weeks
B) PURCHASE AUTOMATED SUBMISSION SOFTWARE.
You can use the same keywords and phrases as well as page titles and descriptions you created for your meta code.
I have tested all the main submission software programs, I liked the submission spider best - I use the Pro version, it paid for itself after I used it to submit a couple of websites for others.
The regular version costs $50 and you save the cost of hiring someone to do it for you. I use the pro version for unattended batch processing but the regular version will submit your page to over 1000 places in from 5 - 10 minutes depending on how much bandwidth you can use and how busy the Internet is at the time
SPIDER FREE TRIAL
http://www.smithfam.com/spider/
ORDER THE SPIDER
http://www.smithfam.com/sorder.html
5) LONGER TERM PROMOTION
A) Email Opt-In lists and advertising in ezines.
ADVERTISE ON TARGETED PUBLICATIONS
http://www.newsletter-library.com/subject.htm
http://www.owt.com/dircon/mediajum.htm#Mediajump
http://www.magazine-rack.com/ibusiness.html
http://www.catalog.com/vivian/interest-group-search.html
http://www.liszt.com
http://www.dominis.com/Zines/
http://www.targ-it.com/
TARGETED MAILINGS AND LISTS
http://www.neteffectllc.com/ontarget/index.cfm
http://www.copywriter.com/lists/
http://www.neosoft.com/internet/paml/
http://www.bulletmail.com/
http://www.postmasterdirect.com/
PRESS RELEASE
http://www.newsbureau.com/
6) POSTING ON DISCUSSION LISTS & WRITING ARTICLES
Don't act like an expert, no matter what you or I know about Internet marketing there are people that will know 100 times more than we know. There is a reason we have 2 ears and only one mouth.
If you monitor several marketing discussion lists the time will come where you have something useful to add. I find lots of topics on discussion lists for articles. I also write and submit articles to other ezines when the subject matter might be useful to the e-zines and newsletters you will find above.
7) DO THE SAME THINGS OVER AND OVER
Once you know what methods work best for you - continue doing more of the same things. You can see why developing your Internet business takes time. If it wasn't for time it could happen all at once.
Target, generate, track, promote, over & over, Do the same things that worked for one service or product with the next. Use free ads, use paid ads, use autoresponders and use others to help you by giving of yourself.
8) BASIC WEB SITE CHANGES MIGHT INCLUDE WEB SITE OPTIMIZATION,
I left this for last because the website content doesn't matter until you get visitors.
Getting visitors to your pages, and getting your pages to load fast enough is especially important outside the US where Internet connections are commonly charged by the "minute". If you sell outside the US if your web page doesn't completely load in 20 seconds or less you should consider a text only version of your website.
A) Change to a real light or a real dark background. Choose small fast loading graphics that may be re-used throughout the web site. Once your graphic image is loaded it's available on your hard disk so it loads much faster every time it's used. Using the same image over & over also adds branding, your user will back up to get back to your familiar graphic.
B) Set up text based links on every major page If someone is interested in visiting a different page they will have several options to visit several of your other related pages.
C) Develop a navigation plan on paper - Plan where you want traffic to flow on your pages and set up links or even multiple links to help insure your visitors moving along to where you want them to go.
9) DIVERSIFY
If you were a successful investor you wouldn't have all your funds in one investment, it would be too risky. Nothing we have been talking about here has to cost you anything except some time and effort. You can afford to invest some time & effort, Unlike huge corporations you & I have limited resources especially limited money.
In order to assure your marketing success build from your success not from your failure. Spend your valuable time up front evaluation home business opportunities. Chances are if they are telling you it's legal - it's not, if they are telling you that you will be rich with very little effort on your part, then ask why do they need your money, if they had a sure fire program why do they need you?
I am involved in several home based businesses and the most profitable ones cost little or nothing, I choose to market using free resources because I find that behind every good free resource there is a great service or product. I will want to buy that service if the free version actually helped earn money.
If any ONE of the home businesses I'm involved with fails I'm not out of business, I have 6 others that I can shift my attention. I didn't start all the first month or even the first year. I'll have another business opportunity already researched and ready to go.
Earning residual income isn't free money - it's doing the work first and getting paid later. It's a different mindset. The key is to not jump in and not jump out, it's to build - revise -grow - re-build re-revise grow bigger. Growing your own business is a sure thing if it's worth the wait and if you are willing to invest yourself. Don't give up, you can't waste any effort unless you give up. You only waste effort and money when you use them and then give up.
About the Author
bob@smithfam.com
http://www.smithfam.com/
I have some good news, no matter what you did wrong it's not too late to re-evaluate your Internet business. You don't have to start all over, you can just make a few changes. You don't have to spend a lot of money either. The Internet is starting to really heat up, we now have choices that were not available even a few months ago.
Before doing anything else, lets start by adding a visitor tracking system on every important page. Using visitor tracking we can understand who our visitors are, where they came from, and more than you would imagine about visitor purchasing history.
EXTREME TRACKER IS POWERFUL AND FREE
http://www.extreme-dm.com/tracking/?reg
Take a look at my free tracker stats, they can help you understand what kinds of useful information you can see. It helps to learn where which search engines referred them to which page and which pages are getting the most visitors. It's all free and it's it's easy.
The stats for my main page are viewable by the public. A short review will help you understand the power of visitor tracking
http://extreme-dm.com/s/?tag=rsmith45
FREE TRACKER
http://www.extreme-dm.com/tracking/?reg
1) YOU CAN SET UP FREE TIMED AUTORESPONDERS.
I think that will at least double your closing rate using your existing leads. You can write your messages for the autoresponders, it's not too difficult. Prepare and edit them ahead of time if possible before setting up your actual live auto responders. I use one follow up message the day after their request the first auto responder. I follow up again after two more days, then again after 4 more days. I send out the last auto responder after 10 days have passed. Each message should offer a few valuable topics related to your product or service. Free information is almost always welcome, and it really helps close your sales.
FREE AUTO RESPONDERS
http://www.smartbot.net/index3.html
Before you get the free auto responders you should check out the advantages a high end follow up system will do. I would suggest that you run the Demo to see how the author follows up, that's what sold me on timed responses. I close about 300% more sales from the same number of leads using this method
CHECK OUT THE DEMO HERE:
http://www.aweber.com/?884
2) DEVELOP YOUR KEYWORD LIST, META CODE & LEAD PAGES.
One of the fastest and least costly methods I know is also free. You can have a really well designed web site but if no one knows knows about you you will get very few visitors. I can't over-state the importance of targeting your pages. Keyword choice is important, the best keywords are usually nouns because most often people are searching for a person, a place, or a thing.
Start with 10-25 BEST keyword 2-three word key phrases, put the best on top. Put yourself in your ideal visitor's shoes. Write out questions and dig out the best keywords. Ask yourself which words would you use if you were looking for your product or services through a search engine.
Do actual test searches in each major search engine, test every keyword and visit several of the top pages to see how your keyword phase was used by others. Visit the top pages that came up with your best keywords. You can review the source code of any of the top web pages by choosing VIEW PAGESOURCE in your browser.
3) WRITE YOUR META CODE FOR THE MAIN PAGE.
I'm not going to go into Writing meta code here, you don't have to know that much. Visit this free meta tool.
FREE META CODE BUILDER TOOL
http://vancouver-webpages.com/META/mk-metas.html
A doorway page is just that, a separate web page that acts as a introduction to the search engines and has a link to your actual webpage.
The idea is to create several targeted invitations using keywords in the title and in the description. I create several pages answering specific questions that my ideal customer will be using to find me. The page is simple, it's a teaser, it comes up fast and contain less than 100 words total usually in one headline and one paragraph. Create as many as 5 different doorway pages. Weave many of the keywords phrases into each different doorway pages.
Each doorway page emphasizes a different keyword phrase you will have prepared earlier, and each keyword phrase is targeted to one specific demographic.
Each doorway page should contain a different keyword phrases I want the search engine to display and five descriptions.
EXAMPLE
Camp utilizing automated On-line marketing strategies
4) SUBMIT OR RE-SUBMIT YOUR WEBPAGES TO THE SEARCH ENGINES.
A) HIRE SOMEONE
Hire a skilled person to prepare automatic submission software files and run all the submissions for you. This should be done on a monthly rotation so all your important pages are submitted about one time every 4-6 weeks
B) PURCHASE AUTOMATED SUBMISSION SOFTWARE.
You can use the same keywords and phrases as well as page titles and descriptions you created for your meta code.
I have tested all the main submission software programs, I liked the submission spider best - I use the Pro version, it paid for itself after I used it to submit a couple of websites for others.
The regular version costs $50 and you save the cost of hiring someone to do it for you. I use the pro version for unattended batch processing but the regular version will submit your page to over 1000 places in from 5 - 10 minutes depending on how much bandwidth you can use and how busy the Internet is at the time
SPIDER FREE TRIAL
http://www.smithfam.com/spider/
ORDER THE SPIDER
http://www.smithfam.com/sorder.html
5) LONGER TERM PROMOTION
A) Email Opt-In lists and advertising in ezines.
ADVERTISE ON TARGETED PUBLICATIONS
http://www.newsletter-library.com/subject.htm
http://www.owt.com/dircon/mediajum.htm#Mediajump
http://www.magazine-rack.com/ibusiness.html
http://www.catalog.com/vivian/interest-group-search.html
http://www.liszt.com
http://www.dominis.com/Zines/
http://www.targ-it.com/
TARGETED MAILINGS AND LISTS
http://www.neteffectllc.com/ontarget/index.cfm
http://www.copywriter.com/lists/
http://www.neosoft.com/internet/paml/
http://www.bulletmail.com/
http://www.postmasterdirect.com/
PRESS RELEASE
http://www.newsbureau.com/
6) POSTING ON DISCUSSION LISTS & WRITING ARTICLES
Don't act like an expert, no matter what you or I know about Internet marketing there are people that will know 100 times more than we know. There is a reason we have 2 ears and only one mouth.
If you monitor several marketing discussion lists the time will come where you have something useful to add. I find lots of topics on discussion lists for articles. I also write and submit articles to other ezines when the subject matter might be useful to the e-zines and newsletters you will find above.
7) DO THE SAME THINGS OVER AND OVER
Once you know what methods work best for you - continue doing more of the same things. You can see why developing your Internet business takes time. If it wasn't for time it could happen all at once.
Target, generate, track, promote, over & over, Do the same things that worked for one service or product with the next. Use free ads, use paid ads, use autoresponders and use others to help you by giving of yourself.
8) BASIC WEB SITE CHANGES MIGHT INCLUDE WEB SITE OPTIMIZATION,
I left this for last because the website content doesn't matter until you get visitors.
Getting visitors to your pages, and getting your pages to load fast enough is especially important outside the US where Internet connections are commonly charged by the "minute". If you sell outside the US if your web page doesn't completely load in 20 seconds or less you should consider a text only version of your website.
A) Change to a real light or a real dark background. Choose small fast loading graphics that may be re-used throughout the web site. Once your graphic image is loaded it's available on your hard disk so it loads much faster every time it's used. Using the same image over & over also adds branding, your user will back up to get back to your familiar graphic.
B) Set up text based links on every major page If someone is interested in visiting a different page they will have several options to visit several of your other related pages.
C) Develop a navigation plan on paper - Plan where you want traffic to flow on your pages and set up links or even multiple links to help insure your visitors moving along to where you want them to go.
9) DIVERSIFY
If you were a successful investor you wouldn't have all your funds in one investment, it would be too risky. Nothing we have been talking about here has to cost you anything except some time and effort. You can afford to invest some time & effort, Unlike huge corporations you & I have limited resources especially limited money.
In order to assure your marketing success build from your success not from your failure. Spend your valuable time up front evaluation home business opportunities. Chances are if they are telling you it's legal - it's not, if they are telling you that you will be rich with very little effort on your part, then ask why do they need your money, if they had a sure fire program why do they need you?
I am involved in several home based businesses and the most profitable ones cost little or nothing, I choose to market using free resources because I find that behind every good free resource there is a great service or product. I will want to buy that service if the free version actually helped earn money.
If any ONE of the home businesses I'm involved with fails I'm not out of business, I have 6 others that I can shift my attention. I didn't start all the first month or even the first year. I'll have another business opportunity already researched and ready to go.
Earning residual income isn't free money - it's doing the work first and getting paid later. It's a different mindset. The key is to not jump in and not jump out, it's to build - revise -grow - re-build re-revise grow bigger. Growing your own business is a sure thing if it's worth the wait and if you are willing to invest yourself. Don't give up, you can't waste any effort unless you give up. You only waste effort and money when you use them and then give up.
About the Author
bob@smithfam.com
http://www.smithfam.com/
Copyright © 2005-2006 Powered by Custom PHP Programming