Creating A Landing Page That Wont Tank part 1
Building your website is a an ongoing process, one of the elements of your website should be the landing page. The landing page is a more compact version of your website less navigation tabs. Each landing page is said to be a doorway for visitors and prospective clients towards your website. The landing page is the one page you would have to direct your links and ads to.
To get people interested in you would depend on how you design, present and fix the landing page. Like a nicely designed home, the door would have to match the design and what the home features are. Just like your website, there are elements to an effective landing page. Any landing page could be good to look at, but not all are effective enough to get conversions.
Research
The research you need to do is about the people you would want to reach, the people who would need your product or the ones who have loved ones and friends who need your product and the ones who are interested in what your product is.
Who Are Your Visitors
Never start at the drawing board. When website owners start at the design and landing page structure, they base it on better judgment with no consideration or thought about the customer. A deeper understanding about your visitors and future customers is the keystone of every web page. There are a lot of speculations and suggested formulas on how to get to know your visitors and clients. Keep it simple, think of who needs your product and put yourself in their place and situation. Routine questions about trust, assurance and intangible things aside, focus on what you wold want to see if you were a customer or site visitor. They’ve said it before, we’ll say it again :
Focus on them and not yourself. Picture the ideal client from their state and appearance and their circumstance.
What drives them
A good deal is what keep people hook, to get them to bite on the hook is knowing they need your product. This is easier said than done since there have been numerous articles about it but rarely are they making conversion through landing pages themselves.
How much are you promising them?
In terminology this would be called Value Proposal. This is the element where you would have to work out the value of your product and the add-on value you would do for clients. Be committed as you write down that proposal, they are not just words but a trust that you solicit from someone over the Internet.
Design
Once you have a better understanding on who the landing page is being made for, you are now ready to incorporate design to the landing page’s visitor data. Some things to keep in mind when it comes to design, there are 3 things that are constant: Company logo, company name, and company colors. People are big on consistency and keeping the basic design of your website helps you maintain your identity. Use images that visitors can connect or identify themselves with. A product and user match should show positivism. Happy and images of contentment convey the outcome and promise of their purchase.
Content
Have useful information but keep what you have to say short and simple. The landing is limited by the space to combine all the elements of your landing page. Go for shorter copy and leave the rest of the space for another aspect of design.
Testing
Once the structure and template of your landing page is complete, you have to test its technical functions. You would have to go with this on a test site or do it live. Do the links work? Is the back button enabled? Are you linking to the pages that are helpful to your visitors? Is the shopping cart link functioning well? Auto-responder messages well written? Is there harmony? Did you leave out something important? Become your visitor and try going through the landing page and take it all in.
By the way, to be able to continue actual visitor profiling and trending, put in a tracking code which shows you the results of the landing page you have created. As you look into the trend of your visitor, you get to know what effectively keeps them coming back.
Logos Are Important Too
Some do it old school. Pessimism aside, most companies started without any logo or brand ID. Fancy type or a mix-match of fonts with simple effects like : bold, underlined or italic.
Some companies went for putting meaningful symbols to the company name, the catch was the image didn’t match the company at all or is way too obvious.
A logo as defined by a favorite design guru “Identifies a business in its simplest form via the use of a mark or icon”. Though a logo is not considered as a company’s branding, it is defined as how people feel or perceive about a product. A logo is still vital in any company or product since it acts as a trigger that makes people recall the brand a company has. A logo fully connect to a certain brand via its logo.
A logo importance can also be likened to a signature. A love letter loses some of the fluttery feeling if you don not know who it came from. Good service and amazing products will never be forgotten but will just be anonymous. In a business, the services and the goods are what people come back for- why not give them more than a clue to who you are?
In advertising, space whether it be billboards or air-time or ad space or banner is equal to money out. To be able to explain what a company brand is all about or even spread the word on its identity will take a lot of space and time. With a logo, your brand is easily associated with the image. Millions of people will be able to see it because you have enough logistics to do it.
Just like a signature a logo is a long-term commitment to the image as a mark associated with the company. One of the well known logos of all times is the Nike Swoosh of which the owner said “I don’t love it, but I think it will grow on me.” This logo was done by his student, Carolyn Davidson for $35 in 1973. Over 10 years later, the Nike company owner presented her with a diamond swoosh ring and shares to the company. This account on the effect of the logo when it represented the brand is testament enough to how company logo is important.
With this in mind, it is not encouraged to speed up the process of a logo design. Logo designers put a lot of thought to what will appropriately represent your product or company. The logo designer reads over your company profile, the products you produce and the story behind your product. Bear in mind that a uninspired logo is like having a bad hair cut- you wouldn’t know that it’s bad until it’s cut and it would take a long time outgrow.
How I Update My Website Effectively
Perhaps every site owner understands how important website updating is but not all can really do it. Many need to focus on their core business – they don’t have enough time to do updating as this can be a laborious and time-consuming task for them. However with simple tips to follow, updating a website can be made easier.
I am sharing you some ideas on how I update my website that I have proven effective not just to keep my clients and readers but for SEO as well. Every time I update my website I work primarily on the following areas:
Content
Contents are the building blocks of websites. It should always be updated not just for SEO purposes but, more than that, to keep its relevance to readers. The Internet is a fast-paced arena of information. Your content might be relevant today but as what many people say, tomorrow is another day- your content, when not updated, could be just a garbage later on. Make your website content current- text, images, videos, etc.
Links
Links (inbound or outbound) should also be updated. I keep on checking my website back links as often as I can. Broken links are a BIG NO NO. Studies show that website visitors are easily get irritated when directed to 404 (error) or ‘page cannot be found’. In other words, broken links can demerit your website’s reputation not just in the eyes of search engines but in the eyes of website visitors as well. Why is that your website can possibly have broken links? One possible reason is that your website is linked to certain related websites that are previously active but become inactive for reasons like – hosting renewal issue.
Meta tags, descriptions
There are some who says working on metas are not practical today because it’s not part of search engines’ requirement anymore. But I disagree to this claim. Metas make your website more easy to crawl by search engine spiders. Most of my promoted websites are indexed with the help of meta keywords and meta descriptions. So keep your metas updated, used competitive keywords in your meta keywords, and in meta descriptions.
Graphics and navigation
Your website graphics can certainly enhance your website physical appearance – and yes, it can contribute a lot as ‘first impression lasts’ adage is also applicable to website promotion. Make your website images timely.
By just doing updates on the areas above, I have maintained my website’s good performance in terms of traffic and conversions. How about yours?
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P.S. David Troy has been a writer and search engine optimizer for more than 3 years. He is not only interested in sharing ideas on SEO and website design but he is also an active member of website designing and updating team that is currently running an online resource @ http://updatemywebsite.org
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=David_Troy
Shopping Cart System – Its Value for Online Business
When you plan to establish a business on the Internet particularly an online store, one important thing that you must understand is the concept of online shopping cart system. A shopping cart system is a software used in e-commerce to help people in making online purchases. It allows online shoppers to virtually accumulate and sort a list of items or products to buy. Upon checkout, the software calculates the total cost of items as well as the charges associated with shipping and taxes.
You can have a successful online store by using an online shopping cart software without the need for web design and development expertise. This is because you can just integrate an e-commerce system ( from a 3rd party) to your website. Most, if not all, of the shopping cart software available online have features like on-the-web administration, calculation and integration of shipping charges, real-time payments, and a lot more.
It is quite easy to have a shopping cart system integrated to your web store. All you need to do is to find an e-commerce system provider – you can do it by simply googling terms like ‘online shopping cart’. You don’t need to worry about the compatibility thing as shopping cart providers have designed particular systems which work best for large and small stores. When you subscribe, you are given tutorials ( usually in a form of video presentations) to help you fully understand the system and its applications. Also, these providers have a 24/7 online support – you can ask help, anytime.
Before you care to subscribe for an e-commerce system, it is important that you compare shopping cart software from different providers. Yes, it is going to be a challenging task in your part as there are so many vendors of online shopping cart software on the web that can be puzzling. Comparing is certainly beneficial. But of course, since we are certain that none of them can give a perfect solution, we can determine the most ideal by considering the following points when evaluating shopping cart packages.
- Hosting – you need to see to it that the hosting company you and your shopping cart system provider provides reliability and security. Downtime errors should be minimal. Online stores should be available 24/7. Few minutes of downtime can lose opportunities.
- Flexibility of Design – shopping cart system must be flexible enough to match the design you have in your web store. Compatibility is essential. You need to find a package that is able to do smooth transition from the old online shopping cart software to the new software with a full uploading of your database. This will save you a lot time.
- Shipping – a good shopping cart system with the capacity to calculate shipping particularly a software that is capable of calculating item weight variations.
- Taxes – a good shopping cart system is also capable of doing calculation of taxes on purchases. Product prices are dynamic – some with fluctuating prices, others are taxable and others are not. As complex as the calculation or algorithm may be, a good shopping cart should be able to manage this task.
- Reporting – a good e-commerce system is also capable of returning comprehensive reports on subscriptions or purchases. Reports on buying trends such as returning visits, demographic details, and conversion rates are examples of data that you must be able to trace. Such data are significant to improving your selling strategies.
- Back-end Functionality – a good e-commerce system provides easy management of products. This include easy item addition when the system is out of stocks, inventory, easy image uploads, etc.
- Cross-selling – is the system capable of generating product suggestion? A customer may subscribe a new CD player but he may also want to have a new headphone. A good shopping cart is able to generate product suggestions that a customer may also buy.
- Merchant Account Flexibility – a good shopping cart must be flexible enough to accommodate various forms of payment and it must be easy for customers to do online payment transactions. It must be accurate. It must be reliable.
- Additional Features – a good shopping cart must also be able to provide various additional features, options for upgrades. After your shopping cart is established to your web store, you may want upgrades for more sales.
Establishing an online store can be complex but with the help of effective, reliable online shopping cart system, your business can run smoothly.
How to Perform Effective Website Updates
Many understand the importance of scheduled website updates; however, there are few who know the right strategy on how to effectively do it. Some choose to do the updates by themselves; others prefer hiring from website update service providers.
Which strategy do you think is more effective?
Well, both can be an effective way. It is just about knowing the necessary elements for effective updating regardless on whether you hire somebody or you do it yourself. As a website owner, you should understand these elements to be able to achieve more success in Internet business .
To be able to do effective website updates, consider the following questions for assessment:
1. Am I knowledgeable in web designing?
Website Updating includes intensive knowledge on web designs since there is a need for graphics and images updates most especially for a business website.
2. Are my programming skills enough?
To be able to do website updates in an efficient and effective way, you should have intensive knowledge in programming since website updating includes several programming and coding tasks.
3. Are my skills in website optimization enough?
One important purpose of website updating is to upgrade website for search engine optimization. Therefore, you should understand how to optimize your website in the eyes of major search engines. Take note, 60-80% of website visitors come from search engines like Google, Yahoo and this matters most for your return-on-investment.
4. Do I have the resources (tools) for website updating?
Website updating not only requires skills but the necessary tools as well. You might be good enough but when you lack the needed tools, you might fail. Your tools can include the right software, e.g., web graphics and design tools, a software for substantial content, keyword research tools.
5. Do I have enough time to do the updates?
You might have the skills and the needed resources to do website updates but when time is your constraint, you definitely will not succeed to do the tasks as website updating requires ideal time.
If you think you passed the requirements to do website updating by yourself ( based on the questions above) then you do the updates. Else, better hire a third party to do it for you. But of course, hire only from a company that is proven to be reliable. And how to check if a company is reliable? Checking their website—designs, website traffic, and testimonials–should be enough.
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