Internet Marketing Hints And Tips » Website Design

The Importance Of A Sitemap When Designing A Website

Gary Knox — Fri, 13 May 2011 08:53:31 +0000

A sitemap is often considered by some web designers as redundant in the process of building a website, and that is indeed the case if you make a sitemap simply for the sake of having one on your site.

By highlighting the importance of having a well constructed sitemap, you will be able to tailor your own sitemap to suit your own needs.

1) Navigation purposes

A sitemap literally represents a map of your site. If your visitors browses your site and gets confused by the thousands of pages on your site, they can always refer to your sitemap to see wherever they are, and navigate through your pages with the utmost ease.

2) Communicating your site’s theme

When your visitors load your sitemap, they’ll get the gist of your site within a very short amount of time. There is no need to acquire the “big picture” of your site by browsing through every page, and by doing that you will be saving your visitors’ time.

3) Site optimization purposes

When you create a sitemap, you are in reality producing a single page which contains links to every individual page on your site. Imagine what happens when a search engine robot hits this page — they will follow every link on your sitemap and naturally every single page of your site gets indexed by the search engine! It is also for this purpose that a link to the sitemap has to be placed conspicuously on the front page of your website.

4) Organization and relevance

A sitemap enables you to have a complete bird’s eye view of your site structure, and whenever you want to add new content or new sections, you will be able to take the existing hierarchy into consideration just by glancing at the sitemap. As a result, you’ll have a perfectly organized site with everything grouped according to their relevance.

As can be seen from the above points, it is most important to implement a sitemap for all website projects with a considerable size. By using a sitemap and the above points when designing your sitemap, you will be able to keep your website easily accesible and neatly organized for everyone. Thus hopefully ensuring that your visitors will return to your site frequently.

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Selecting the Right Product

Gary Knox — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:17:16 +0000

When you first begin your online marketing business, the first and most obvious question you will ask yourself is…what am I going to sell? Below are some of the points to consider when determining the answer to that question:

·   Is it light and easy to ship?
·   Is it a digital product that is downloaded (e-book or software)?
·   Is it perishable or fragile?
·   Does it have to be seen and held?
·   Is there adequate demand to make your venture profitable?
·   Does it have little competition from large online companies (niche products)?

The last two characteristics are most probably the hardest ones to pin down. Here is a broadly speaking acceptable method of attaining an idea of how heavy the demand and competition is for a product.

If you have a particular interest in some products that meet the above criteria, great, but do not restrict your investigation just to items you like. You are searching for a niche product with relatively good demand (enough to make it profitable), but without any heavy competition.

One method to discover what the demand is for products you are interested in is to look at search engines to see how often people search for the product you are considering.

The consequence of all this research could be that one or more products will fit into a niche market – products with some form of demand, and relatively little supply. For the best results, center on one niche product category, and offer a wide selection of products. That way, you are able to become the best online source for that particular category. For instance, instead of offering general craft supplies, offer the widest possible selection of needlepoint kits. This strategy will also allow you to rank higher in the search engines results because you are able to optimise your pages for fewer, more specific, keywords.

Who Is Your Audience? Website Design Considerations

Gary Knox — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 11:52:19 +0000

Understanding the type of people who visit your site is a very important task because armed with this information you are able to use it to enhance your website to suit them. As a result, you will gain more loyal returning visitors that will want to come back again and again for more of what you are providing.

Questions that you should consider when attempting to understand your audience. What is the age level and what kind of knowledge does your audience have? A layman might linger around a general site on gardening, but a professional botanist might turn his nose up at the very same site. Likewise, a regular person will leave a website filled with astronomy abstracts but a well educated university graduate will likely find that site interesting.

Take your audience’s emotional state into consideration when building your site. If a very irritated visitor searches for a solution to a particular problem and comes across your site, you will want to make certain you offer the solution right up front and sell or promote your product to him second. In this way, the visitor will put his trust in you for providing the solution to his problems and is more likely to purchase your product when you offer it to them after that.

When you design the layout for your website, you have to take into account the characteristics of your audience. Are they old or young people? Are they searching for trends or are they just looking for information served up without any icing on the cake? For instance, introducing a new, exciting game with a simple, straightforward black text against white background page will definitely turn prospects away. Make certain your design suits your site’s general theme.

Try to sprinkle conversational language in your sites now and again where you see fit and you will create a sense that your audience is on common ground with you. This in turn builds a trusting relationship between you and your audience, which will come in useful should you want to market a product to your audience.

Writing Articles as an Affordable Internet Marketing Method

Gary Knox — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 12:53:01 +0000

Using any keyword suggestion tool, you will discover that millions of searches are done for a certain keywords. When these keywords are typed into the search boxes of search engines, indexed websites carrying articles with those keywords will be displayed as results. It is this that leads traffic to websites with keyword-rich articles. Yes, the magic word is articles.

Content is king. You can say that again. That is why writing articles is among the most utilised Internet marketing technique today. Surfers on the the Internet just cannot get enough of information on various subjects. Supplying information through these articles is a surefire way to drive hot traffic to your web site.

Why is this so? Here are the benefits that writing articles can give your Internet business.

1. It is absolutely free.

Too good to be true? Not. Okay, you have to pay for your Internet Service Provider. That’s it. All you need is your thoughts, your computer, and your hands. If you have those, nothing can stop you from typing words that will allow you to complete an article for your website. On which aspect of that process did you really shell out any money? Maybe later when your electric bills come.

2. Your website will be discovered in a short period of time.

Submit any article of yours to article directories that get the most web traffic and in little or no time your web site will be crawled by the search engines. That is if you do not forget including your resource box or byline.

3. Obtain back links automatically.

Once you submit your articles to directories other websites will take advantage of your article too. With the copyright terms of your articles, the URL of your website will still be in tact and will subsequently direct further traffic to your website.

4. Improve your reputation.

As an Internet marketer, if you just display your products on your website, your conversion rate will not be great. Conversion is where your traffic converts to sales. You have to demonstrate that you are knowledgeable on your field. And what better method of showing that than by writing articles that will provide you with some bragging rights, right?

Just make your creative juices flow and jot down or key in those ideas quickly to jumpstart your article writing momentum. With the benefits listed above, a writer’s block is the last problem you will ever be able to overcome.

When Is the Right Time to Redesign your Website?

Gary Knox — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 12:06:33 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

If you run a website, chances are you frequently questioning whether it is the right time to do a complete redesign of the layout of your website. Here are a few points you should consider:

Are you considering a redesign merely for the sake of it? If you answered yes to that question, it is not yet the correct time to do a redesign. Remember, a design serves a particular purpose. If you are not sure whether to do an overhaul of your site, bear in mind that your current design may have a specific purpose that you might not recogniset. You will lose that function if you do a redesign.

On the other hand, if your website has had the same website design since the year dot, it is possibly high time that you do a redesign. The last thing you would ever want to happen to your site is when visitors leave your site without taking a look at your content simply because the design is old fashioned. If this is your case, here are a few points to contemplate before doing a redesign.

Redesigning your website is like performing reconstructive surgery on it. Your website loses its current identity (for the better or worse) and your regular visitors might not recognise your new design at first sight. You might risk losing them just because they believed they landed on the wrong page. Therefore, it is very important that you keep a few characteristic features from your old layout. Maybe it is the logo of your site; perhaps it is the same text style for the title for your site.

To play it safe, put an opinion poll on your site to allow your visitors do the talking. If they think it is necessary for the website to have a fresh look, give it to them! Also consider doing this after the redesign to find out what they like or dislike about the new design and any suggested improvements that could be made. Remember do not go overboard with this and cater for the whim of every visitor as this will take up a lot of your time and will likely defeat the initial object of the redesign.

Should I Create a Website? Do I Need One?

Gary Knox — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 11:32:12 +0000

People will always want to follow the latest trend, whether it be in fashion, sport, music anything really. Websites have become a prerequisite for just about everyone. Companies, businesses, individuals, even young adults have produced personal websites for their respective purposes, equally be it for profit or entertainment.

What everyone must think about however, before creating a website, are the factors which will determine the viability of having a website, such as the cost, maintenance, use, web host and so forth.

First of all, when addressing the cost element, we should always try to find an affordable host, not spending too much, nor too little. A cheap host does not exactly typify a credible dependability rating, but we must always search for value for money deals. Likewise, concerning the efficiency and server/web host reliability, there are several cases of web hosts not supplying the service they had guaranteed their clients, some had even closed down and were nowhere to be found. Keep this note in mind, because if you want a long-lasting website, this would be among the first things to look for.

Next, would employing a professional web designer be affordable? Is it the best option? For simple websites, we could always use one of the freely available templates, or even design our site using one of the web design programmes available, as it is relatively simple. However, when it comes to more complex coding, and when you require it to do a shade more than merely furnishing information, employing help in doing so would probably be the best way. Not just in terms of design, but security is also a key factor in ensuring a quality website. If the website also acts as a portal for businesses, security would definitely be the issue here.

So, having considered some of the elements to do prior to establishing a website, do we actually NEED one? If making one would boost sales or promote positive implications to oneself, then by all means you should go ahead and do what’s best. However if after considering all the factors there is no favorable outcome then you should think very carefully about it. Yet again, planning is the key to success, in everything we do.

Make It Easy To Buy From Your Site

Gary Knox — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 11:54:02 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

Convincing your prospects to buy from you is a difficult job, but have you ever considered that you are making the procedure twice as difficult for both parties if your prospects are won over but do not know how to purchase from you? Regardless of how effective you are at converting your prospects, they will not buy if they find the process cumbersome.

Firstly, you will want to assure that people can discover your order form easily and hassle-free. You can compose a clear, concise paragraph to direct your prospects to your order form so that you are able to minimize the risks of them getting lost. You can also reduce the chances of losing prospects by placing a prominent link to your order page from every other page on your site.

Also, do you provide multiple payment choices? Some people might feel comfortable paying via Paypal, some may only prefer to pay with their credit card and others may want to send a cheque. The more options you offer, the better your chances of covering your prospects’ preferred payment method. After all, it would not make any sense to sell hard to a prospect only to discover that they will not be able to pay you when they want to.

On the other hand, you will want to show that you are a credible merchant. Is your order form secured employing encryption technology? You would want to investigate SSL for this. You should also provide a money back guarantee so that people will feel confident about purchasing from you. How about after sales support? Who do they contact when they have problems after buying?

Alternatively, you could add customer testimonials, your contact information, address, and so forth to further your prospects’ confidence. Make them feel safe about purchasing something from you, a total stranger to them on the other end of the Internet.

As a conclusion, it would be very lamentable if you sold hard and sold well to a prospect and something goes awry when he or she is ready to pay. Eliminate any chances of that to maximize your profits!