I recently got a call from a good buddy of mine.  It went something like this:

"hey, can you check out my new website and tell me what you think"

"Ok, yup here it is, um, great, well, it looks nice but it won't sell anything"

"Well, what do you mean, we just had it professionally designed"
"Well for starters, there is no headline, no call to action and no sales copy"

See, my buddy is a computer network specialist.  He has a company that operates locally in his city and provides networking solutions to other companies.  They will go in and maintain a network, set up security, set up software and so on in their clients place of business.  He has a buddy who is an advertising guy - builds websites and the likes.  So here he is with his new website all set up.

The website looks very corporate, tells a litle bit about what they do - describes some of their services.

I said, OK, right now your website looks like all the other websites out there in your field.  Why should a client do business with you above any and all other options available to them?

He couldn't answer.  See, this is the USP - the Unique Selling Proposition.  What is it that sets you apart - what makes you different, why should anyone do business here?  He never defined what he does or what he sells.

Next question, where is your call to action?

"my what?"

What is it you want people to do once they come to your site?

"Oh, well, I don't know, I thought I just had to put up a nice site"

(oh, please)

See, my buddy doesn't even have a clear, defined sales process.  I said, OK, let's work backwards here.  How do you get new business?

"Well, all I know is that if I can meet with a prospect, there is a pretty good chance I can close them"

OK, now we are getting somewhere.

"OK, so if that is the case, then your website needs to sell a meeting.  You need to irritate a problem that your client would have and then offer to solve the problem by coming in to their business and having a free consultation.  Your website needs to sell the free meeting.  Then you can close them"

Now he was starting to see the light.

See, BEFORE you get started on all of this, you need to take a minute and clearly define your sales process.  What steps do you want your prospect to take?  Make them easy steps to take, tell them what to do, hold their hand as they do it.  Guide them along.  If your business works when you have a meeting with a prospect, then any marketing you do needs to be focussed on getting that meeting.  Print advertising, website, all need to be targeted towards getting that meeting.  The first thing that the prospect should see when they come to your website should be a good headline - one that draws them in and irritates the problem.  The solution to their problem needs to be for them to invite you to a meeting, and then make it very easy for them to set up the meeting right there.

If you can sell face to face, then your website needs to set that up.

It is too bad my buddy didn't ask me for help BEFORE he set up his site.  What a waste of a website

Do you use PayPal to process your customer's payments? If not, you are one of the few people left on the planet who aren't taking advantage of this wonderful resource.

PayPal's multi-million client base is growing at the extraordinary rate of 28,000 new accounts daily, and their payment processing system is sheer perfection. Still, you may wonder why you should use PayPal to process your payments. What's in it for you? It's a fair question, and you deserve some good answers.

Versatility and Ease
PayPal is the most widely accepted payment system in the world. At the time of this writing, it is available in 38 countries, and the company has plans to continue expanding its services around the globe. That means you can do business on a global scale and get paid the same day.

The user-friendly interface makes it a breeze to sign up for a free consumer account, which allows the sending, receiving and requesting of payments. It's free and easy for all those happy potential customers to buy from you and pay you immediately for your product or service.

Upgraded PayPal accounts can even accept credit card payments without having to sign up for merchant accounts with credit card companies. Being able to accept cash or credit card payments opens you up to a wider client base.

Speed and Security
Using PayPal is a dream for buyers and sellers alike. Their checkout system allows for a quick and seamless online transaction that simply processes a payment with the click of a button. Your customers can even pay you from their mobile phone rather than waiting until they get home to their computer. No more waiting for a cheque in the mail. That alone is a good reason why you should use PayPal to process your payments.

Although much of the world now has at least some idea of how to stay safe online, many people are still nervous about the security risk of making purchases. PayPal's payment processing takes that worry away with their aggressive security measures. They use only secured servers and information is encrypted. No one ever sees the consumer's financial data, not even the person or company receiving payment. Customers can relax and feel safe using PayPal to complete a transaction with you, as their details cannot be stolen.

If a consumer has dealt with a verified seller and feels there is an issue with that seller, PayPal will step in and investigate. Their account holders are offered buyer protection and Safeweb Insurance. This is another feature that helps you to establish trust with clients, especially if they have never dealt with you before.

There are so many incredible reasons why you should use PayPal to process your payments. The ease, versatility, speed and security all make for smooth transactions that will leave both you and your customer happy.

Automate your digital product delivery and increase the security of your downloads with a unique piece of software at www.minisite-sales-system.com 

Visitors like to do things on websites, if your website allows your visitors to do something interesting or useful, there is a good chance they will bookmark your site and come back.

What you offer them to do is going to depend a bit on the type of site you have and the type of visitors you attract.

There are a number of website scripts you can get if you want to build something interesting.  There is a good resource for website scripts at www.easy-scripts.net

They offer a variety of website scripts from a unique memorial script to a yahoo answers style question and answer script to a fun joke script and a guess the stars script.  So you can get the type of script that will fit well with your site.  They are all very reasonably priced.

A good one for marketers is at www.searchengine-submission-script.com where you can purchase a script that will allow your website visitors to submit their websites to search engines for indexing.  That is the kind of thing people will come back to your site for.

Tags: internet marketing tips, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, niche marketing, article marketing

SEO or search engine optimization is a technique of taking the most appropriate targeted keyword phrases associated your web site and ensuring that this ranks your web site highly in search engines so that when somebody looks for particular phrases, it returns your site on top. It essentially involves good tuning the content of your web site along with the HTML and Meta tags and as well requires appropriate link building method.

 

Search engine optimization demands a lot of work to be fully accomplished. There are several aspects you have to modify in your web site or add also to get SEO. These will include getting tons of information about the keyword phrases that are popular in regards to your web site niche or theme.

 

With SEO you'll be able to get the benefit of returning a high traffic volume. Let’s only say you get just a turn out of victorious sales with 10 to 20 percent of your traffic. If you get a 100 hits or more a day, you get an effective turn out of sales already. If you get only 20 to 10 hits a day, you will make fewer sales.

 

You may very well have to rewrite your web site content so that you could get the right keyword phrases in your site without making it too commercial, but easy and informative. There are certain formulas and guidelines to be watched with making your web site content practical and conducive to SEO.

 

You will also need to cooperate with several additional sites so that you could have link exchanges . The more incoming and outgoing link generated by sites from one to others are among the components search engines use to rank web sites.

 

Tips, guidelines and techniques for SEO are plenty to be found here. We'll show you  how to start to getting better rank in the search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and others.

 

The more knowledge and information you gather the better. This will all help you in getting those high rankings. This could require a small time and effort in your part but the benefits will be amazing.

 

To be honest, you are able to essentially get good information on SEO anywhere in the web. But only a few truly show you how to work out an inexpensive search engine optimization effort. And those few that really inform include our site. Here you can learn the basics first steps to get a good search engine optimization. And improve your site page rank.

 

All of the time, keep in mind that search engine optimization techniques are crucial in developing your web site status. With that in mind, be sure that you write high quality, keyword valuable content and link your web site to and from a knowing class of extra sites. These things will assistant better your web site popularity and drive increased traffic through your web business.

Tags: gregg hall, internet marketing, website optimization, affiliate marketing, article marketing

You’ll have to decide whether you want to do the web site design yourself or hire it out to a professional.  I’m surprised at how many times I talk to people that tell me it will be a long time before they can make some changes to their web sites.  Most of the time, it’s because their niece had originally done their site over a spring break weekend and she’s in the middle of finals right now or some other nonsense.  Your web site is very important to your business and should not be created by somebody who will not be immediately available for updates and changes.  Make sure that your web site designer will be there for the long haul!

I recommend at least learning some of the basics about web site design so that you can make minor changes yourself without the assistance of your webmaster.   If you’re looking for a great web site design package I recommend learning Macromedia’s Dream Weaver.  You can read more about this product at http://www.macromedia.com/software/dreamweaver/

Dream Weaver is the preferred choice of professional web site designers and is far superior to FrontPage or anything else out there right now.  Not only is it the best but It’s also the easiest to learn. Another really great program that just came out recently and is used by both beginners and experts alike is XsitePro. This software program makes it easy for anyone to create a website and even helps you to optimize them for the search engines. I have had sites I built with XsitePro indexed by Google in just a couple of weeks!

Keep Your Images and Pages Small in Size!

Keeping the size of your images and web pages is very important because if it takes too long to load, people will simply leave.  Remember, a lot of people are still surfing at 56k so plan for that.  Examine all your images and make sure that if the photos are all saved as .jpgs (quality level 7 or so) for maximum space savings.  After you’ve sucked the air out of your images, you can use a tool called PrettyHTML to suck the air out of your HTML files.  You can get this program at this web site: http://mpp.at/pretty/

Pretty HTML has a “Compress” option that takes out all the spaces from an HTML file.  I use Dreamweaver a lot and while it’s a great program, I find that when I cut and paste a lot, the file size goes way up because there are lots of spaces in it.  Using PrettyHTML will take all these spaces out and make a nice small file for viewing on the web.  I’ve seen files go from 350K down to about 23K before! Also, and this is crucial make sure your images have “alt text” code. Search engine spiders can’t read pictures and this alt text code helps then read your site, so be sure to use keywords you are after.

Navigation

Good navigation means using easy to understand menus and never putting the user into a dead end page.  Search engines can send a customer to any page of your site so it’s important to make it easy to get back to your home page from any other page on the site.   You should be able to get to any page on your site from any other page on your site.  Having good page linking also helps with getting your site ranked with the search engines because if a search engine hits one of your pages, it will find ALL the pages in your site.

Build a Site Rich in Content!  

The most important thing to remember about first rate web sites is that they are always rich in content.  For example, if your site sells Widgets, then include as much relevant information as possible about widgets on the site.   Make it easy to navigate around your site, tell about all the benefits of your widgets.  Finally, make it extremely easy for somebody to buy your widgets online with a minimum of effort. We will cover how to automate content to your site later in the book.

The home page of your web site is without question the most important page of the web site.   It should contain enough information so that someone can tell immediately what you do.  Make sure that you have at least a brief paragraph or two that explains your products on this crucial page and not just pretty graphics!   Your first page should be a concise introduction about your company and products.  The details can come in the later pages.  

Another way that web site publishers are making money is by using blogs and automated content in addition to manual content to make monetize their sites with advertisers like Google and Yahoo. We will go over this method in detail in the chapter on blogging.

Tell Your Customers How To Reach You!

Make sure that your web site has some type of Contact Us link that lists your company name, email address, mailing address, phone number, and fax number.  People really like to be able to talk to somebody on the phone when they have questions.  If they can’t reach you on the phone, they will move on to a company they can reach!  I also believe in listing your phone number and email address at the bottom of your home page for easy access especially if you have a product that you sell.