Posts tagged web design
Web Marketing with Neuroscience – Tip of the Day #5
Feb 26th
People’s brains can do all sorts of tricky things … keep bodies alive, create the internet , that sort of thing. And if you’re in the web marketing game, understanding how they work can be of enormous benefit to your site, and your business generally. Today we continue our ‘Web Marketing with Neuroscience’ series, looking at short term memory and how it affects our internet use.
The limitations of short term memory
Short term memory is also sometimes called working memory. If our brains were like computers (fortunately AND unfortunately, they are not), this would be our RAM. Our short term memory has been observed to be able to hold between 4 and 9 items, depending on the test and the subject. The time duration is highly variable, but averages usually run around 20 seconds. Given the amount of info that we are exposed to on the internet, it makes sense to work with our website visitors’ short term memory limitations as much as possible. So how do you do that?
Working with short term memory
This is actually easier than you might think, and you’ll probably recognise many of the best practice guidelines from other posts we’ve done on usability and web design. So, before you forget what we’re talking about (!), here’s is how you can work within the limits of human short term memory on the web:
- Make sure your pages load quickly: If it takes so long for a page to load that users forget why they clicked it, they’ll just as likely click straight off. Don’t tempt people to look at other tabs while they’re in the middle of the checkout process on your site!
- Change the colour of links that have been visited: This is a site-specific issue, not a browser or computer issue. Every site owner has the responsibility to change the colour of visited links, so users know where they’ve been and feel like they’re running in circles.
- Categorise well: Try to create narrow categories and narrow pages … although not at the expense of maintaining a manageable menu structure.
- Provide a link to the homepage on every page: That way if people forget where they are, there is an emergency link to reset their search.
- Use breadcrumbs: Although, only if appropriate. Not all sites will naturally suit breadcrumbs.
- Offer Live Help and other assistance links within the body of the page: If people have to navigate to the Help section and then back to where they were, chances are that you’ll lose either a purchase or a visitor.
We recommend you check out the rest of our Web Marketing with Neuroscience posts as well … the brain is a fascinating thing, but especially when it could be making you more money 
.
Applying The Immutable Laws of Marketing in SEO, part 1
Jan 21st
People have written classic books as recently as 1993 – amazing, eh? I thought the only worthwhile thing created that year was hypercolour t-shirts . The classic I’m referring to is a book called The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, written by Al Ries and Jack Trout. It is aimed at marketers in general, but all of the concepts contained within are applicable to internet marketing. Today we are taking a selected look at the laws in a web marketing context.
The ‘First’ Laws
Ironically, the first laws in the book are all about ‘firstness’. Laws 1 through 3 are:
1. It is better to be first than it is to be better.
2. If you can’t be first in a category, set up a new category you can be first in.
3. It is better to be first in the mind than to be first in the marketplace.
In an SEO and web marketing context, one of the most important of this set is number 3 – it is better to be first in the mind than first in the marketplace. As concrete business advice, you can take this to mean “If your competitors are lagging behind in their SEO efforts, you’d better hop on your horse quick to take advantage of that!”. You can have competitors, not be the first in your niche and still succeed – if you see that little opening.
And if you take it a little more literally, you could say that it is better to be first (in the Google rankings) than it is to be better … and you’d have a highly profitable view of business on the web!
Battle of Perceptions
The law we are talking about here, number 4, is : Marketing is not a battle of products, it’s a battle of perceptions.
In the real world, it refers to the importance of brand-building. You should have a brand that is both recognizable and respected. In web marketing this is less important, because consumers are more apt to research and choose, than blindly brand-follow.
Yet, you should always focus on maintaining good perceptions of your business, as well as maintaining good products. If your website looks a little shonky, or you link out to bad neighborhoods, or your website is listed in dodgy directories, you lose in the battle of perceptions. SEO specialists can help determine exactly how those perceptions are best ‘massaged’.
By the way, we’ll be looking at more or less all of the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing in an SEO context over the coming weeks … so stay tuned!
“Would You Like a Cup of Tea?” 4 Usability Steps to Keeping Your SEO Traffic Around
Jan 20th
It’s difficult to persuade people to do things (and even to remember things that you say) when you aren’t directly looking at them. This fact has been confirmed by neuroscientific studies across the world, but in SEO we are intimately familiar with it. Most visitors to websites leave within 8 seconds if they don’t see what they are looking for, or if the site seems like hard work, or if it doesn’t match their expectations. Today we are exploring the top 4 usability steps you can take with your website to keep all that traffic so hard-won through SEO, on your site long enough to see how great you are!
A clear visual hierarchy
Step 1: Make use of visual hierarchy rules
Things that are more important on your page should be made obvious with a combination of the following web design aspects:
- Being larger
- Being bolder
- Being more colourful
- Being closer to the top of the page
- Being surrounded by more white space
Step 2: Be conventional
This isn’t business or general marketing advice, but it makes good sense for web design. Take advantage of conventions like putting a search box in the top right of the page, naming certain parts of your site ‘About Us’ and ‘Contact’, etc. This makes you effortless to understand.
Step 3: Segment your pages
If you run Adsense, it’s tempting to make the ads look like content in order to get people to click on them. Design-wise, it isn’t optimal … it simply makes the site harder to understand, and likely to have a higher bounce rate.
Step 4: Link appearance
Make it obvious when something is clickable, either by making it blue and underlining it, or creating 3D effects on it. At the very least, put a single underline on your links. As a side note, you should always make both the picture and text related to a link clickable. If your users can’t figure out how to get round their site, they’ll click off … wasting all that precious web marketing time!
SEO: Positioning Your Site First – webmarketingexperts.com.au
Sep 18th
Your ranking is critical to your business success. This reality that hits all online businesses must be addressed or the investments on the business will be wasted. A position in the searches can provide a vantage point for your site because this is what users are looking at when they seek information. Thus, a web marketing strategy is needed to bring your site to a good rank in the search results.
Minimize your risk as you are maximizing your online visibility. In some internet advertising methods, you are required to pay larger investments than what SEO is asking. Paid advertising can bring instant results, unlike organic search engine optimization. However, it also gets your position down fast just as how your results went up. In SEO, you cannot bring your site to an instant rank but you must bide a little time to see results. But contrary to the “fast ripe, fast rotten” effect of paid advertising, natural search optimization can make your name stay in searches for a long time.
Your site must also be designed to fit the demands of search engine optimization. This is the reason why a good web design can bring more benefits to make your site become more search engine friendly. When your site shows up in the front pages of SERPs, you can now start to earn huge benefits from this exposure. Business then can be guaranteed with better traffic, and greater conversion from these visits.
If you prefer to bring big graphics and animations to your pages, there is a big chance that you will be left out by search spiders. They do not like to index sites that are hard to download. So, it is preferable to stick to simple but substantial page content. Get high return for your web marketing promotion.
For more ideas on search engine optimization that brings visible results, visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.
The Essentials of Video Marketing- webmarketingexperts.com.au
Sep 17th
The dawn of the internet has made the web the best place to promote any business. The convenience that web marketing brought about has led to the influx internet marketers as well as business professionals. And with the number of people getting into the fad of networking, video marketing is one of the best options to get things done. Aside from being inexpensive, they can also be stored on social networking sites where potential customers are flocking these days.
A video that is properly done can actually generate traffic towards your website. Each day, there are millions of people who access the internet and most of them click on the video or networking sites even if other sites have the most attractive web design. Once you submit your videos on the sites that are frequently visited then your marketing efforts can easily reach out to a desirable number of users. This is where you can get your prospects.
Before starting the video for your online promotion, the preparation of necessary details is a must. As much as possible, create the entire lay out of the video on paper to make sure that the messages you want convey to your targeted audience are clear. An effective internet marketing strategy goes directly to the point as far as promoting goods and services are concerned.
As the attention span of people is short, make sure that your video would not exceed 5 minutes. Unless it has an awesome content, people can no longer take the entire business presentation if it takes more than that. Also consider how you deliver an informative video to avoid misleading the viewers. Videos with information that is not related to your business would be pointless. Make sure that the viewers get what you are trying to convey.
In the construction of the whole video, a web cam and microphone would be enough. Expensive equipment is not necessary unless you are working for international business firms. And like any other online SEO techniques, never take for granted the keywords as well as the tags. They also play a vital factor for your online promotion.
For further queries on the essentials of video marketing, contact www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.
Effective SEO And Google- webmarketingexperts.com.au
Sep 16th
Google is considered as a giant of the search engines. Before any website can get high rankings in this internet engine, aside from having an attractive web design, it has to go through constantly evolving algorithms. Listed below are some of the techniques on how to get along with Google and get a desirable ranking that yields fast ROI.
• Create relevant titles for your web pages. As much as possible incorporate 2-3 keywords to the names of each page that provides a clear descriptive overview of its content.
• Provide Meta tag descriptions that generate sales. Think of it as the only web marketing technique that gives you the chance to get buying customers. Placing something on the Meta tag that is not enticing would mean giving away potential customers to any of your online business competitors. Know the metrics of page Meta tags.
• Have relevant content for your site. Poor quality content will lead your site to poor search engine rankings especially with Google. The goal of search engines is to deliver a suitable website to every query that a person asks from their database. If your website has that valuable content, chances are, your site will get the first recommendation.
• Create the right website address since it is considered as the most important element of an effective SEO. If possible, secure a URL that contains at least 1 or 2 keyword/s that is/are considered vital to your business.
• Provide an xml sitemap for your website. It is like having an index (like that of a book) to a search engine. This would make the job of search engine crawlers a lot easier.
• As for the major headings, it is recommended that you use the H1 tags. H2 and H3 tags are suitable for smaller headings. Make sure that keywords are included within these headings.
• Create your website’s online presence. If people find it interesting and informative then definitely they will come back for more. Not only that, since they like your site, referrals are then possible. This would mean an increase in traffic and sales generation along the way.
Generating sales for your online business can be easy if you know how to work on smart internet marketing techniques with Google.
For further queries on effective SEO techniques, visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.
Thrive Online With Web Marketing – webmarketingexperts.com.au
Sep 15th
Use web marketing strategies as the cornerstone for your business because it can drive your numbers up. Indeed, very few people would admit that this is the most viable method of getting an online business to thrive and increase in the web market. SEO is an internet marketing strategy that does not only work towards creating important links to and from your site but it is also a measurable kind of marketing process.
Your marketing methods must not rely on the paid advertisements that cost you more money. With search optimization, you can even get promoted with low investment! This is the reason why this becomes a preferred type of online advertising. If you want to attract new people to your site, optimization can bring your name to the top ranks of searches. Internet users trust search results because this is the most efficient way of getting valuable information on a certain topic or product.
When you know how to take advantage of search engines, your website can benefit from the exposure search engines give to valued sites. Search engines index sites that comply with specific standards. In addition to that search engine optimization is a campaign that knows how to bait the spiders to get your site noticed. When you have the idea on how to choose a web marketing campaign to boost your popularity, you can have quality site visits and conversion. This makes it easy for your website to multiply profit and thus, achieve the goals on target.
Your web design is the face that you provide to your visitors. So, the design must contain the right elements that will also comply with the factors that are important for search spiders. However, optimization must also go hand in hand with the right web design. It is one way of assuring the customers that you are intent in giving them the best service and products.
If you want to know more on how search engine optimization can give benefits to your online business, visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.
Getting Quality Traffic Through SEO- webmarketingexperts.com.au
Sep 14th
A website that ranks well in the major search engines has higher chances of getting quality traffic because its appearance in the SERPs allows it to be viewed instantly by searchers. Traffic building is considered as the one of the major internet marketing techniques and the foundation of your online business. Without it, your online venture will generally not succeed.
Basically, SEO considers two things- the off page and on page factors before your site receives a desirable number of potential customers.
Off Page optimization refers to the tasks that are performed off the pages of your existing website. Here are some of the off page optimization procedures.
• Getting link popularity through social networking, forum postings, link baiting, article promotions, log commenting and many other more.
• Using anchor texts in the links.
• Building quality links that includes the page rank and authority sites.
On-page optimization on the other hand refers mainly to the text and content of your web pages. The ongoing search engine optimization process depends so much on the content in order for search engine crawlers to notice your site when a search is made. Here are some of the on-page optimization processes.
• The optimization of your site’s Meta tags which includes the title tags, descriptions, keywords and the Alt tags.
• The creation of a sitemap to ensure that the web pages will be indexed by the search engines
• Creating an error-free html code.
• Production of valuable contents for your site. The bits of information that you will be providing must be original and interesting or else search engine spiders will just ignore it. Duplicate content must be avoided at all times.
• Internal linking of the pages in your site. Never use invisible or hidden links. This will give your site an undesirable ranking.
If the things mentioned above are carefully followed then your web marketing techniques will take your online business to its desired bottom line. An attractive web design alone is not sufficient in generating quality links. The proper combination of the on page and off page factors will then provide your site with qualified traffic.
For more tips on off page and on page optimization, visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.
Making Business Work Through Search Engine Optimization- webmarketingexperts.com.au
Sep 11th
Marketing has found its way in the web because people have discovered that they can get more profit when utilizing internet technology. Online businesses emerge from time to time and that there is an influx of internet marketers and business professionals who want to get the biggest shot at selling. Bu they have to deal with complicated algorithms of search engines. In the web market, in order to maximize your business profit, you have to create an effective internet marketing technique that can battle the challenges of online competition. Visibility in the major search engines is one important factor to consider.
The convenience of easy access to the internet has provided companies a better way to realize their marketing potential. This is the reason why they are taking advantage of the immense power of online advertising. But before your business can appear in the pages of the search engines, your site has to go through complicated methods in order to meet SEO requirements. A good site analysis will help you to get the most profitable approach in optimization. This is what website optimization is all about. Effective optimization will provide your site with numerous visitors which in the long run can turn into buying customers. That is where online profit originates.
Since search engines work through its spiders or crawlers, you have to feed them the right information in order for your site to get noticed. This would mean that your site must contain valuable information associated with specific keywords that matches to certain queries. The more quality content your site provides, the more relevant it becomes to search spiders.
Another thing that you have to consider is the on-page factor. Aside from having an attractive web design, proper inclusion of titles and headers to content is also necessary. In the web pages, headers that are related to targeted search terms can help bolster your site’s page ranking. And lastly, never undermine the power of quality links. Search spiders value those incoming links since these create a signal that your site holds valuable web contents that other sites find to be very beneficial.
One would say that effective web marketing is enough to maximize your online business’ profit maximization goal. But with the constant algorithm changes that occur in the search engines, there is a need for efficient search engine optimization, one that is timely and ethical as well.
For further queries about search engine optimization techniques, call www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.
Creating User-Friendly Websites For Your Online Business- webmarketingexperts.com.au
Sep 10th
In generating visitors for your site, the utmost usability of websites must not be taken for granted. Attractive designs can catch the attention of viewers but users usually prefer the easy navigable ones. Aside from generating quality traffic along the way, it makes easier for people to get through your website.
For a web marketing technique to work, you need to create user-friendly websites. Here are some ways on how to come up with attractive and effective websites for your business.
• Consider the balance of images and texts in your site. Make sure that the images are not too powerful and lead the viewers away from what they are supposed to get.
• Always bear in mind that creating interesting headlines entices the visitor to further read the given information. Just be careful in choosing a suitable text color and size.
• Consider using captions on images. Like the papers, people like captions attached to pictures.
• Your website must be designed according to user friendly interface and navigation structure. This will create an effective web design since the viewing customer gets the necessary information quickly and in a more convenient way. As much as possible, minimize the unnecessary clicks that users have to go through or else they will navigate away from your site.
• Include some interactive features because they are essential to internet marketing. Creating areas for feedbacks, blogs, surveys or forum can be a great help.
• Avoid the flashing images and when you integrate multimedia with your site, see to it that their file size is small.
• Content of your site is important and so make sure that it goes through proof reading and spell check. Avoid the copy and paste method. Plagiarism takes your website to a risk of being blacklisted in the search engines.
• Choose the right set of keywords that enhances the promotion of your products and services. As what SEO tries to convey, right frequency and prominence of such satisfies web spiders thus making your site more visible in the internet. High website visibility means greater profit for your business.
For more effective techniques in creating user-friendly websites, contact www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.