USA SEO Pros provides a number of different solutions for businesses who are trying to improve their Internet marketing campaigns. The company specializes in search engine optimization, but also provides Web design, blogging, press releases, and other things that can help business gain exposure online. If you'd like to learn more about what the business can do, please visit the main USASEOPros Web site to learn more.
Every week we tweet a lot of interesting stuff highlighting great content that we find on the web that can be of interest to web designers. The best way to keep track of our tweets is simply to follow us on Twitter, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of [...]
Every week we feature a set of comics created exclusively for WDD. The content revolves around web design, blogging and funny situations that we encounter in our daily lives as designers. These great cartoons are created by Jerry King, an award-winning cartoonist who’s one of the most published, prolific and versatile cartoonists in the world [...]
We have a fantastic freebie to download today from Pixeden, a one stop place for great tools for the modern design. Released first and exclusively on WDD, it’s an infographic vector kit, with the most used elements that you may need for your infographic designs. Included in this set is a world map, gender elements, [...]
It’s not uncommon for a designer in today’s world to pay little attention to how type is laid out, especially with the ever-so-convenient default settings of heading tags and web safe fonts found universally on the web. If we as interactive designers we’re able to take a little more time when it came to typography, [...]
We’re thrilled to see bring you another great giveaway of business cards from our friends at Uprinting. This time around we’ll be giving away 5 prizes of 250 die cut business cards each! What makes these cards different is their unique and attractive shapes. They are sure to get you noticed and will make your [...]
There are a whole bunch of CMSes out there ranging from lightweight micro-blogging platforms to huge enterprise packages. I don’t want to mention any names here or tell you what to use. Instead, I’m going give you some important points to consider, so that you can make an educated decision on your own. And hopefully, [...]
Firefox 10, due out January 31st (the same day Firefox 11 becomes an official Beta release), finally rounds out the browser’s growing collection of developer tools with Page and Style Inspectors. In some ways, these tools are similar to Firebug, but they’re also uniquely Mozilla-ey. Rather than try to reproduce Firebug or the WebKit developer [...]
Every week we tweet a lot of interesting stuff highlighting great content that we find on the web that can be of interest to web designers. The best way to keep track of our tweets is simply to follow us on Twitter, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of [...]
Every week we feature a set of comics created exclusively for WDD. The content revolves around web design, blogging and funny situations that we encounter in our daily lives as designers. These great cartoons are created by Jerry King, an award-winning cartoonist who’s one of the most published, prolific and versatile cartoonists in the world [...]
Managing a blog with a single author can be time-consuming enough, but adding in multiple authors can exponentially increase the amount of time and effort it takes to manage. There’s editorial workflow, scheduling, and author management to consider, among other things. Below are fifteen plugins that can make managing your multi-author blog a lot easier […]
There was a time when microsites were nothing more than flashy, push-marketing pages, usually comprised entirely of videos built in Flash. Now, however, a new generation of microsites is on the upswing. These sites help your visitors cut out the information overload of full-fledged sites while providing new opportunities and techniques for agile marketing and conversion optimization.
The new style of microsite tends to be pure HTML and usually have no Flash at all, lending them to the best practices of SEO. You can have rich and detailed content, with graphic designs that are engaging without being overwhelming. You can provide access to other pages via a simple tab navigation, with each tab focusing on a specific subtopic. The new generation of microsites can provide all these features, without any of the troubles the past microsites used to have.
Microsites can help you serve up an optimized visitor experience. Your visitors are searching for good content and instant gratification, both of which microsites can provide with their extremely targeted focus. You should have an organized collection of subtopics that can guide your visitors to the information that they want. You can deliver deeper content in bite-sized chunks using sub-topics, making it easier for your visitors to consume.
Since microsites live outside the formal framework of your main website, they often are deployed quickly. This can make it easier for you to use your favorite A/B or multivariate-testing tool to experiment with different content variations, presentations and conversion offers.
The new generation of microsites can provide conversion optimization professionals with new opportunities for targeting strategies, at the same time leveraging the practices and tools used in larger sites.
Today, many people are optimizing their websites to ensure that they reach their maximum ranking on the leading search engines. In general, this is a great idea and your website should be updated regularly. However, keep in mind that you are trying to attract consumers online, so your website should also be optimized for people and lead conversions. Optimizing your website is easy and can increase your conversion rate.
Guide Your Visitors
Before you start making any changes to your website, think about your visitors. How do your visitors view your website? You want to make sure that they are given the right information that they need to navigate through your website. Make sure that important information like contact information is visible and in front of your visitor’s face. Start making the right changes that will guide your visitors through your desired path.
Providing graphics, hyperlinks, and short forms on each of your pages can bring your visitors one step closer to where you want them to be. Make sure that any questionnaire that you place on your website is short and to the point. The less time your visitor spends providing you information, the better. Your visitors will be more likely to provide you with their name and email, than to fill out long forms that could take more than a minute.
As always, make sure that your content and imagery are interesting and compelling to your visitors. This is vital to your selling point, and it is your window of opportunity to gain your visitor’s interest long enough that they will stay longer on your website.
Compelling Landing Pages
Provide eye catching and amazing imagery that will attract your visitor. It is a proven fact that having great images and videos on websites can influence the way people feel about the website that they have just landed on.
Keep your visitors happy and entertained by providing:
Entertaining content that is short and to the point
Offering minimum choices to navigate through the website
Proper imagery that gives an idea of what you sell or provide
Most importantly, do not let your visitor get lost on your website. Think about the way you naturally navigate through a website when you are searching for a product or service. Keep in mind how you might feel if you landed on a website that provided you 30 different ways to get to the next page. Keep it simple and to the point on every page. There should be no more than 8 links to other pages, and your content should not be overwhelming. Remember, people in general do not want to spend more than 5 minutes reading and trying to figure out how to get to the next page.
Offer Trust
Most people are generally scared to purchase or provide their information online. They feel that the information that they will provide could lead to identity theft, etc. Make your visitors feel at ease when they land on your website.
Provide your visitors with visual assurances like:
Security buttons; these have been proven to increase conversion rates
Testimonials of current and past visitors
A company image or profile picture
The more your visitor feels at home, the better. Provide them with the proper security that they need and you are home free. About 1/3 of consumers will not shop online, and that is still a significant number of people. Then, you have those who only shop online at websites that they trust. Building trust for your website is a key factor to gaining more business from the people you seek.
Test Your Website
Once you make a change on your site, make sure that it works, and that it is being perceived properly. Make an A/B test and find out which changes better appeal to your targeted audience. Knowing your visitors can help you create the ideal landing page. Testing your website and its changes can be boring, but it is important, and will prove to be a worthwhile time investment.
Consciously changing and optimizing your website is very smart and an important step to make when considering maximizing your conversion rates. Having a well-optimized website for search and conversions can transform the way you do business. Get your website noticed, and create the ideal landing page with your targeted audience in mind.
After you learn the basics of how to design and code a Web site, there is still the matter of figuring out how best to design it for your specific purpose. What you think looks good, may not look good to everyone else, especially if you’re trying to get them to buy something from you.There are certain ways for you to improve the functionality of your ecommerce site in order to potentially improve your sales.
Building a successful ecommerce site requires more than just a good looking design. You have to make things easy for your customers. Never sacrifice ease of use to make things look better. The first thing you need to do is make sure things are easy to buy. Make your products visible and give people all the information they need to know before buying. Make sure not to include any excess information they could get lost in, and make sure to limit the amount of clicks in takes to get through the buying process. All the customer really needs to know is what they are buying, if it’s the right product for them, and how much it costs.
Also make sure to create several paths that customers can take to get to the purchase page. Using more than one path allows customers to find products in more than one way. If you have a directory, search and featured sections, then customers have multiple ways to find what they’re looking for. Combine that with a simple check out process, and it makes things a lot smoother.
Make sure the “buy” buttons are big enough for people to easily see, and don’t clutter up your Web sites with a bunch of unnecessary material. There are a lot of tips to turn browsers into buyers, but as long as you use some common sense and think like a buyer, you should be able to create something that will work. Focus on usability more than design aesthetics, and make sure it’s easy for people to buy what you’re selling. If they’ve found your site, you probably don’t need a whole lot of convincing, but give them enough information to feel comfortable with buying from your site.
The video below suggests six pages that ever ecommerse site should have. Those pages should be enough information for average buyers. Including more information than what is necessary could clutter your Web site up too much. Keeping things clean and simple is probably the best way to go for most sites.
