Getting traffic and sales to "happen" on your website
| Category: Online Promotion | Date: 2003-03-19 |
The Internet is one of the best mediums available for marketing your product or service to a global audience, and it doesn't have to cost the earth. One of the biggest spends that webmasters have is website development and promotion.
However, as a happeneur, and member of happeneurs.com, webmasters can save money and headaches and get maximum impact from their website presence.
Here are some tips on how to do just that:
Plan your site and detail your key objectives. Make a list of the things about your product that make it special and then write why it will benefit your customers to be able to access you via the web. Ask yourself why your visitors would use your website instead of a traditional shop/brochure, etc. You'll also need to be prepared to set up procedures to fulfil orders, handle customer enquiries and deliver on your promises.
Once you've decided on the purpose and objectives of your website, you can research the marketplace, your competitors and your customers or you can pay a provider to do your research for you.
For example, www.happeneurs.com provide their members with discounted Personalised Promotion Plans which include a market intelligence report on your three online competitors, including details of who links to them and so on.
2. Make usability a key focus, so your website is quick and simple to use, has clear navigation, good readability and quick load speed. Remember, on the internet, a better offer is only a click away. For that reason internet browsers expect instant satisfaction and fast service online. Therefore your site must load in under 15 seconds, have a site map if possible, plus a clear basic navigation system (down the left hand side, with additional links at the top or bottom). White or light backgrounds are most effective with regards to readability and, by including plenty of bullet points, short summaries of text and highlighting key words of text in bold, you can make your web copy more readable.
3. Give visitors a reason to revisit or stay longer by including 'sticky' content on your site, including articles written by yourself. Sticky content can maximize your sites commercial value, as the longer a visitor stays on your site, the more likely they are to buy. Plus content that pulls them in and keeps them there will furthermore retain customer loyalty.
You can either write and prepare sticky content of your own, such as articles and free reports or e-zines (see benefits below), or you can gather free content from www.happeneurs.com. For example,
www.happeneurs.com allows you to select three article topics and then post a simple code on your website. These article feeds are automatically updated every day, to provide your site with fresh daily sticky content. The site also recognises that a visitors mood is important in helping them to make purchasing decisions, so provides members (with audio and video streaming content. Happeneurs.com's main strength and stickiness comes from it's daily changing dynamic content..
By having sticky content on your site that is useful, you'll also benefit from word of mouth and will be seen as a trustworthy source, building the loyalty of your visitors and customers.
You can also write useful and informative articles about your business or products and make them available to online publications and webmasters.
There are numerous sites that will allow you to offer original informational articles for others to publish. All articles that you send out that are published will be done with a hyperlink back to your site. This boosts your link popularity, improves your credibility by positioning you as an expert on a particular subject area and gives you longevity (articles and web links stay up for a lot longer than any other medium).
4. Make your copy effective and compelling, with plenty of calls to action and 'what's in it for me' detail. Each page on your site must focus on getting your visitors to take an action. Whether this is buying a product or service, filling out an enquiry or contact form, or contacting you by email or phone, you need to guide them through your site and guide their buying decision with the words that you use.
Phrases such as, click here for a free demo/tour, and click here for Frequently Asked Questions, are common on the web, because they guide visitors towards the next step. Your visitors are only interested in what's in it for them. They want to hear the benefits not how long you've been trading. Put about us information on an 'about us' page. Make your text customer-centric to achieve your own objectives.
Get a good domain name. This is essential to ensure you get maximum press coverage and attract visitors to your site easily. The business of registering domains has grown from the original www.internic.net site operated by Network Solutions into a small industry with many competing companies. The domain-naming process has become so difficult that there are now web wizards that take a few keywords and produce a large list of potential domain names. Online, your site is your brand, and your domain name is the one way that people are going to find you. And with dot-clutter of 60,000 new domains registered each day, owning the right domain name can mean the difference between life and death for a struggling online business.
So use easy to spell words, your own company name, or something easy to remember,as these make the best domain names. Make your domain a single word or combination of two or three words.
Set up a links page on your own site in preparation for a link strategy. Having a links page adds value to your own site by providing visitors with additional related resources to click to (just make all links open in a new window so your users remain on your site while they browse). In addition, once you have a links page you can request reciprocal links from non-competing sites that share a similar target audience. Visitors that enter your site via a link will do so because they think they'll find something useful there, so will be good potential customers. In addition, the more sites that link to you, the better your link popularity, which is becoming a primary factor in the way search engines and directories rank websites.
Provide a pleasing interface and brand image. Make sure your 'store' is uncluttered, organised and gives a good impression of your business. Position a logo in the top left hand corner, ensure all links are working properly and that there are no silly typos. Also make sure your site is viewable in a variety of screen resolutions and in various browsers (netscape, internet explorer and aol, primarily). Remember first impressions count, especially on the web.
Optimise your site for search engines. Approximately 79% of all web traffic comes from search engines, so you need to make sure you register on them and that your site is optimised for them. So, make sure your site pages have descriptive titles (which will appear in the title bar). Also, make keyword density on your home page high (ie, if your search terms are likely to be music, CDs and mp3, make sure your home page includes these words quite often, wherever possible.
Also, work on your link popularity, and most important of all, make sure your site has meta tags (Description and Keywords). You will then need to register by hand on the top search engines and those targeted to your audience. Alternatively you can let someone else do all the work: www.happeneurs.com provides a Guaranteed Page 1 Service.
Measure your web traffic effectively. Make sure you know where your visitors are coming from, where they are spending the most time, the least time, where they enter and exit and where they go afterwards. All this will help you to tailor marketing and focus on what is working. Good web metrics software can be found when you can sign up as a h@ppeneur and access an Automated Internet Marketing Manager at www.happeneurs.com.
Give visitors plenty of choices and options. Give them a variety of communication choices, via fax, mail, phone or e-mail or via a web-based form, and always state your business hours. In addition, let them download brochures as word documents of pdf files, or e-mail pages of interest to themselves, and set up an autoresponder so that business mails are answered instantly if you are away from your desk. Also, create an FAQ page to answer any common questions your customers are likely to ask. Also consider using a live instant messenger tool like elive2u on happeneurs.com, so you can chat to visitors live if they so request.
Build a prospect list via your website. Include an opt-in strategy on several pages of your site. This allows you to collect e-mail addresses of potential customers who are already showing their interest in what you offer. You can then build your relationship and trust with them by sending them a monthly or weekly e-newsletter, article, tip or free report: anything that makes you more of an expert in their eyes that they find useful. These people are giving you permission to contact them, an ideal mechanism to promote your web products and services.
12. Get help from the experts. Join a group, such as www.happeneurs.com to access thousands of articles, interviews with successful webmasters, customisable powerpoints and ebooks, streaming content, training courses and service discounts.
About the Author
Fraser J. Hay is founder and CEO of www.happeneurs.com, an online marketing resource centre (OMRC®) for entrepreneurs, which combines key online survival tools and promotional services with a comprehensive knowledge bank. With over 12 years extensive background in technology and database marketing across both the public and private sectors, Fraser's popular 7 day e-marketing course "h@ppenetics" has subscribers in more than 70 countries worldwide, and is available free of charge via the site.
fraser@happeneurs.com
http://www.happeneurs.com
However, as a happeneur, and member of happeneurs.com, webmasters can save money and headaches and get maximum impact from their website presence.
Here are some tips on how to do just that:
Plan your site and detail your key objectives. Make a list of the things about your product that make it special and then write why it will benefit your customers to be able to access you via the web. Ask yourself why your visitors would use your website instead of a traditional shop/brochure, etc. You'll also need to be prepared to set up procedures to fulfil orders, handle customer enquiries and deliver on your promises.
Once you've decided on the purpose and objectives of your website, you can research the marketplace, your competitors and your customers or you can pay a provider to do your research for you.
For example, www.happeneurs.com provide their members with discounted Personalised Promotion Plans which include a market intelligence report on your three online competitors, including details of who links to them and so on.
2. Make usability a key focus, so your website is quick and simple to use, has clear navigation, good readability and quick load speed. Remember, on the internet, a better offer is only a click away. For that reason internet browsers expect instant satisfaction and fast service online. Therefore your site must load in under 15 seconds, have a site map if possible, plus a clear basic navigation system (down the left hand side, with additional links at the top or bottom). White or light backgrounds are most effective with regards to readability and, by including plenty of bullet points, short summaries of text and highlighting key words of text in bold, you can make your web copy more readable.
3. Give visitors a reason to revisit or stay longer by including 'sticky' content on your site, including articles written by yourself. Sticky content can maximize your sites commercial value, as the longer a visitor stays on your site, the more likely they are to buy. Plus content that pulls them in and keeps them there will furthermore retain customer loyalty.
You can either write and prepare sticky content of your own, such as articles and free reports or e-zines (see benefits below), or you can gather free content from www.happeneurs.com. For example,
www.happeneurs.com allows you to select three article topics and then post a simple code on your website. These article feeds are automatically updated every day, to provide your site with fresh daily sticky content. The site also recognises that a visitors mood is important in helping them to make purchasing decisions, so provides members (with audio and video streaming content. Happeneurs.com's main strength and stickiness comes from it's daily changing dynamic content..
By having sticky content on your site that is useful, you'll also benefit from word of mouth and will be seen as a trustworthy source, building the loyalty of your visitors and customers.
You can also write useful and informative articles about your business or products and make them available to online publications and webmasters.
There are numerous sites that will allow you to offer original informational articles for others to publish. All articles that you send out that are published will be done with a hyperlink back to your site. This boosts your link popularity, improves your credibility by positioning you as an expert on a particular subject area and gives you longevity (articles and web links stay up for a lot longer than any other medium).
4. Make your copy effective and compelling, with plenty of calls to action and 'what's in it for me' detail. Each page on your site must focus on getting your visitors to take an action. Whether this is buying a product or service, filling out an enquiry or contact form, or contacting you by email or phone, you need to guide them through your site and guide their buying decision with the words that you use.
Phrases such as, click here for a free demo/tour, and click here for Frequently Asked Questions, are common on the web, because they guide visitors towards the next step. Your visitors are only interested in what's in it for them. They want to hear the benefits not how long you've been trading. Put about us information on an 'about us' page. Make your text customer-centric to achieve your own objectives.
Get a good domain name. This is essential to ensure you get maximum press coverage and attract visitors to your site easily. The business of registering domains has grown from the original www.internic.net site operated by Network Solutions into a small industry with many competing companies. The domain-naming process has become so difficult that there are now web wizards that take a few keywords and produce a large list of potential domain names. Online, your site is your brand, and your domain name is the one way that people are going to find you. And with dot-clutter of 60,000 new domains registered each day, owning the right domain name can mean the difference between life and death for a struggling online business.
So use easy to spell words, your own company name, or something easy to remember,as these make the best domain names. Make your domain a single word or combination of two or three words.
Set up a links page on your own site in preparation for a link strategy. Having a links page adds value to your own site by providing visitors with additional related resources to click to (just make all links open in a new window so your users remain on your site while they browse). In addition, once you have a links page you can request reciprocal links from non-competing sites that share a similar target audience. Visitors that enter your site via a link will do so because they think they'll find something useful there, so will be good potential customers. In addition, the more sites that link to you, the better your link popularity, which is becoming a primary factor in the way search engines and directories rank websites.
Provide a pleasing interface and brand image. Make sure your 'store' is uncluttered, organised and gives a good impression of your business. Position a logo in the top left hand corner, ensure all links are working properly and that there are no silly typos. Also make sure your site is viewable in a variety of screen resolutions and in various browsers (netscape, internet explorer and aol, primarily). Remember first impressions count, especially on the web.
Optimise your site for search engines. Approximately 79% of all web traffic comes from search engines, so you need to make sure you register on them and that your site is optimised for them. So, make sure your site pages have descriptive titles (which will appear in the title bar). Also, make keyword density on your home page high (ie, if your search terms are likely to be music, CDs and mp3, make sure your home page includes these words quite often, wherever possible.
Also, work on your link popularity, and most important of all, make sure your site has meta tags (Description and Keywords). You will then need to register by hand on the top search engines and those targeted to your audience. Alternatively you can let someone else do all the work: www.happeneurs.com provides a Guaranteed Page 1 Service.
Measure your web traffic effectively. Make sure you know where your visitors are coming from, where they are spending the most time, the least time, where they enter and exit and where they go afterwards. All this will help you to tailor marketing and focus on what is working. Good web metrics software can be found when you can sign up as a h@ppeneur and access an Automated Internet Marketing Manager at www.happeneurs.com.
Give visitors plenty of choices and options. Give them a variety of communication choices, via fax, mail, phone or e-mail or via a web-based form, and always state your business hours. In addition, let them download brochures as word documents of pdf files, or e-mail pages of interest to themselves, and set up an autoresponder so that business mails are answered instantly if you are away from your desk. Also, create an FAQ page to answer any common questions your customers are likely to ask. Also consider using a live instant messenger tool like elive2u on happeneurs.com, so you can chat to visitors live if they so request.
Build a prospect list via your website. Include an opt-in strategy on several pages of your site. This allows you to collect e-mail addresses of potential customers who are already showing their interest in what you offer. You can then build your relationship and trust with them by sending them a monthly or weekly e-newsletter, article, tip or free report: anything that makes you more of an expert in their eyes that they find useful. These people are giving you permission to contact them, an ideal mechanism to promote your web products and services.
12. Get help from the experts. Join a group, such as www.happeneurs.com to access thousands of articles, interviews with successful webmasters, customisable powerpoints and ebooks, streaming content, training courses and service discounts.
About the Author
Fraser J. Hay is founder and CEO of www.happeneurs.com, an online marketing resource centre (OMRC®) for entrepreneurs, which combines key online survival tools and promotional services with a comprehensive knowledge bank. With over 12 years extensive background in technology and database marketing across both the public and private sectors, Fraser's popular 7 day e-marketing course "h@ppenetics" has subscribers in more than 70 countries worldwide, and is available free of charge via the site.
fraser@happeneurs.com
http://www.happeneurs.com
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