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A Domain Name Helps Drive Traffic But...
By Sammer Hakim
Make sure you get a professional to design your site if you can't do it yourself. Tacky graphics like MS clips with some page counter just won't cut it.
If you are going to invest in a premium domain name don't throw your hard work away by getting a mediocre site. Make the site as professional and user friendly as possible. Obviously the site will give the visitor either a strong first impression that entices them to come back or will turn them away for good. Strive for the former!
2.The popular Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS) is a good formula to follow. Don't pump fancy bells and whistles that take forever to download.
They will likely throttle a user at peak usage times. Keep large images, sounds, multimedia, etc. to a bare minimum. People aren't impressed with these anymore – they want to know how your product or service can benefit them so they can leave and find other things to do.
You don't need to try and 'warm up' visitors. If they are at your site, they are already hot!
3.Test your site before launching it. This means to go over every page and ensure spelling is correct but most importantly, the text/images are loading quickly. It shouldn't take more than 12-18 seconds to load on a 56kbps modem.
If it takes longer, users are likely to click off and go somewhere else.
4. Make navigation easy on the eye. There's no need to cram in menu list after menu list. The simpler it is, the more customers will patronize your site and you will see more sales result.
Everybody wants things to be quick and easy. Format the content correctly so readers don't have to touch the left or right scroll bars.
5.Use your headings and sub-headings wisely. Guide your customers through your site in the simplest way possible. Don't make them click endless pages just to get the piece of information they are seeking.
6. Ok now time to dispel a myth – "People don't read long copy". This is one of the most ridiculous and widely spread myths going around right now. I urge you to visit all the sites that are making a fortune online and every single one has long copy elements in it.
Why? Because it's been proven to sell. People will read what interests them. If you are in the market for a car, you will scour dozens of pages to get the information about the particular car you are looking for.
So write your copy to your target audience – if you try to please everybody, you will please nobody. If they are interested, they will buy, if not, they won't. It's that simple.
7. As annoying as some of us find pop-up windows, they have shown to increase sales, particularly among those who were on their way out of the site. A good way to use these windows is to ask the customers permission to send them future offerings about your product.
It's sometimes referred to as 'permission marketing'. The basis of this is the customer actually requests to receive your solicitations. This has two main advantages.
First, you are cleared of the 'spam' title given to anybody trying to sell online these days. Also, anybody giving you permission to send them offers is far more receptive and more likely to buy from you.
8. Use search engine *optimization (SEO) to your benefit. List the top 10 keywords your customers will most likely use to try and find you and use these words frequently throughout the site.
This can be used on the site itself or the HTML code which is known as 'meta'tags'. There are 3 basic categories, the most critical being the 'title tag' (the other 2 are keyword tag and description tag).
The title tag is the first thing people see in the search engines, so it acts like a headline for your search engine listings. You can actually measure your site's keyword density by going to: http://www.gorank.com/analyze.php.
Now enter the domain and keyword/s or phrases you wish to analyze and… Presto! It will give you a complete analysis of your website including percentages of all aspects like headlines, copy and meta-tag descriptions.
The end result you see is a certain number. The higher the number and hence the keyword density, the better.
9.Make sure you have a statistics program integrated with your site. These statistics are worth their weight in gold. And because these stats are all logged, recorded and tracked electronically, there's no work on your behalf.
Figures such as busiest days of the week, most frequently visited pages, load times, error messages, time visitors stayed and much more are logged on a daily basis and stored. You can retrieve this information anytime you like.
Most programs can then build you a report reflecting any variable/s you request. Based on this information, you can constantly fine tune your online marketing efforts. Active-Domain offers a comprehensive web stats program as part of any domain package.
10.ake a world-wide prospective when building your site. Make it easy for those outside your country to do business with you. There are many companies offering incredible rates for setting up merchant accounts that automatically process all major credit cards in real time and send the customer receipt of their order.
If you can accept credit cards you break down a lot of e-commerce barriers. Make sure to keep industry jargon to a minimum – your customers may not know what you are talking about.
About the Author
Sammer Hakim is a Dallas based copywriter who put together this site strictly to help current and new business owners with their domain names. He can be reached at www.marketing-commando.com
Article Source: http://www.simplysearch4it.com/article/24599.html
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