Make the Most of Each Website Page

When creating each page for you website, you have the ability to greatly enhance your rankings in search engines with the page title and description. High-quality, keyword-rich writing is as crucial in these areas as much as the copy on your page.

Think about the last time you have looked for something on Google, Yahoo, MSN, or another search engine. When you enter your query, blue headings for each site display. This is the page title. Below that, the page description gives a short blurb about what the site is all about. Not only is it important to ensure that both the title and description are worded so that they match the wording in a search, but they need to appeal to the visitor who will spend seconds scanning them to determine which site to choose.

Optimize Titles and Descriptions
An ideal page title should include the most search-relevant keywords possible while still acting as a title—not just a jumble of words. Though recommendations vary, generally the title should be between 70 to 150 characters long.

An ideal page description should share what the site has to offer in a concise way. Remember, keywords are important to get the search engine's attention, but the primary purpose is to persuade people that clicking on your site is worth their time.

For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

How Much of Your Website is Being Read?

Go to any landing page. You have twenty seconds to get the information you need. Ready…go! How much of the page did you actually get to? Most visitors won’t read your content word for word (especially if the content isn’t interesting).

You may need a lot of information to be included on your landing page. If that is the case, break down the text by using headings.

You may also use bullet points or lists to help visitors at your site quickly get the information they need. If you can’t put your information in bullet points or lists, but you're not quite sure what to take out, have a friend or work associate read through the text and see what you can remove or rework. If you’re still unsure about what to cut, don't worry, the writing staff at HIT will happily write your text for you.

For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

Don't Overwhelm Visitors with Too Much Information

Imagine going to a retail store where products are not neatly organized on shelves, instead they are scattered randomly throughout the store without rhyme or reason. They have several products, and you came to the store because they have a product you want. Imagine how overwhelmed you would feel. You have to dig through hundreds of products to possibly find what you’re looking for. With that in mind, how cluttered is your landing page?

Too much information will overwhelm website visitors. Keep your landing page text somewhere between 350-500 words. Use one or two good images that help set the tone for your website.

If you use white-space, use it cautiously. While you don’t want too much information, you don’t want empty space in the wrong place. When you look at your landing page, where is the first place you look? The first place you look should be the most important piece of information on the page.

For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

Effective Website Copy is Easy to Read

No matter how much copy you have, make sure that the copy you are using on your site is easy-to-read. One good practice is to read your copy out loud. Are there places where you stumble as you read? If so, fix them! If customers don’t understand what you are attempting to tell them, they’re not going to stay on your website. Correcting spelling and grammatical mistakes will make your copy easier to read.

Another good practice is to keep your line length around 65 characters wide or shorter. That may mean splitting the pages of your website into two columns. When a column of text is too wide it becomes difficult for readers to find their place on the next line and appears too hard to read.

The content that you use on your site should lead the customer to purchase a product or service. The copy on your landing page should focus on leading your customer to make a purchase. Your other pages may contain additional information—something to educate the customer, but if your primary purpose is to sell something to the customer, focus on the product or service you are offering.

For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

Converting Visitors to Buyers

You’ve worked hard at creating your web site. It is now complete, live for everyone to see, and now you need to do some business. You want the site to pay for itself and become a benefit for your business. So you’ve worked equally hard to get people to the site, bring it into the public eye and make it visible to the world. However, all the traffic to your site means nothing if you aren’t converting those visitors to actual paying customers.

How do you accomplish this? Through a process called conversion. Conversion is the process by which you take browsers, or viewers, and turn them into a customer; someone who pays for your goods and/or services. Your conversion rate is the ratio of visitors to your site compared to how many of those visitors are actually buying. Without this all important conversion, the work and money you have spent getting those visitors to your site is wasted. So how do you change the viewer to a customer?

According to Forrester as of August 2007 the average conversion rate in e-commerce is 2.9%. Your target then is to match this or exceed it. Increasing the conversion rate of your online business makes sense in a lot of ways. You’re maximizing your efforts in marketing and making those dollars make more sense for you as well as increasing revenue without spending further marketing dollars or manpower. There are some simple ways to make sure you are doing all you can to maximize your potential in conversions.

First of all, make sure you’re providing great content in the site. I’ve talked a lot about that in earlier blog entries and can’t emphasize enough how important great written content is. Make sure your content is grabbing your visitor’s attention and that it tells them exactly what it is you want them to do immediately. Don’t make them guess. Along the way, think about ways to build customer loyalty – that way those marketing dollars not only get a onetime customer but build a future relationship that keeps bringing the customer back again and again. Some kind of reward for the customer to return usually works – maybe a coupon for a percentage off on their next visit to your site.

In short –

• Write and implement great content for your site
• Grab your visitor/buyers attention and hold it
• Make it easy for them to know exactly what you want them to do on the front page
• Find ways of building your customers loyalty

For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

Creating Quality Site Content - Avoiding Mistakes with the Search Engines

You need desperately to market your site and have a limited budget. The natural alternative for you is the search engines. If you have a high ranking in the various search engines you have a better chance of getting traffic and customers to your website. There are a number of ways to achieve this, one of which is to do what is called search engine optimization (SEO) and get what is called ‘organic’ traffic to your site – in other words, traffic from natural site ranking. This can be a tough thing to do and takes a lot of work. It takes so much work and is such a tricky process there are companies that specialize in that and nothing else. But again, we’re back to you having a limited budget, and hiring someone to do SEO can be expensive. So the natural alternative is to do it yourself, but, again this is a lot of work, though worth its weight in gold if it helps your business succeed. What you do not want to do is try to cheat the results and have your site rank high by doing what the search engines consider to be dishonest. This is commonly called ‘spamdexing’ or ‘spamming the search engines’ and get your site banned from them altogether, and that can be a disaster.

The following list is directly from Google and can be seen in its entirety by going to Google and looking up Webmaster Guidelines or by going to http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769&src=top5.

Quality guidelines - specific guidelines

• Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
• Don't use cloaking or sneaky redirects.
• Don't send automated queries to Google.
• Don't load pages with irrelevant keywords.
• Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
• Don't create pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans, or other badware.
• Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
• If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

I’ll have more tomorrow on the right way to create a user friendly as well as a site that is friendly to the search engines.

For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

What Is My Website Message and How Do I Write It?

You’ve decided your business needs a website, or possibly you have a book to announce, an event to promote or you need a web page to promote your resume…there are many reasons you need a presence on the internet and these are only a few. Regardless, at this point you know you need the website, and you’ve decided to go with a professional design company as the best option to get yourself to where you need to go. You have determined there are a lot of options out there for professional web design but you’ve sifted through all the available choices and you’ve picked a design company (hopefully you’ve picked HIT Web Design!).

Phew! You’ve done a lot…but now you’ve arrived at one of the hardest parts; written content and what message you need to convey. You need to define what your message is going to be with the web site, and how you’re going to get that across to the client/viewer. Luckily, you are the most knowledgeable person about what your message needs to be because it is your business. You know your business like no one else possibly could. That doesn’t make writing content easy, but it makes it a lot simpler than it might be trying to define a message with no knowledge at all. Many design companies such as HIT Web Design can provide professional help with writing your content, most of the time for a very reasonable, nominal fee. They need at least some guidance from you, but hopefully you have some idea at this point of the general message you want to get across. You can give the professional writer assigned to your project some guidance and a direction to go in. They will now work with you in the process of putting together a coherent, concise message to accomplish what you want with your site.

A list of criteria for your message should look something like the following –

• Your website should be custom, distinctive and innovative, something that steps out of the crowd of your competitors.
  
  
• Don't be too wordy with too much text and content. Get to the point concisely in order to hold your viewers attention.
  
  
• Your client/viewer should immediately know what they are supposed to do on your site or be able to find what they are looking for. Use bullets or outlines to make your points. They are easier to read and follow.
  
  
• You should give your customer a lot of opportunities to call you, write you, respond to you, buy from you…whatever you are trying to get them to do you need to make it obvious and easy for them to do it. This is called establishing a “call to action”.
  
  
• Once your website is live, consider how you will drive customers to it. How are you going to market it? If you don’t bring attention to your site, no one will know it exists. Unlike the Field of Dreams, if you build it, they will NOT come unless you shout it out to the world! (Use search engines, articles, advertising, yellow page listing, etc.)

If you want to write your content yourself, as stated above you know your business best. If you are unsure of your writing abilities or just don’t have time, a professional writing service such as HIT is probably going to be your best bet. They can write it for you or at least proof anything you write.

For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

Make Your Website Easy to Read

Too much content placed haphazardly throughout a web page will make it not only difficult to understand and read, but may even turn off a visitor before they have a chance to see what your site is about.

Heritage Internet Technologies has a few simple tips for you to keep in mind when creating your website.

Guide the Reader
Your site design should guide the reader to the important content. We read from the upper left of a page to the bottom right. Text should be used in a way we typically read, excessive text boxes should be avoided. Graphic elements should be used to direct the reader to the most important text on your page, your call to action.

Add Movement to Your Page
Another way to promote good page flow is through a simple animation. Using a simple animation like a Flash Element or Flash Banner can help direct a visitor to your site to important information or promotions. HIT Web Design has several options that can add that special touch to your site.

Keep it Simple
Have text that is concise and easy to read. If you have too much text on a page consider additional web pages, or Divided Files (Divided Files make it possible to hide text on a page until you select the appropriate tab). Do not overuse capitalized words or punctuation in ways it is not properly used, this can actually make your text harder to read. Use pictures and graphics that add to the concept you are trying to convey throughout your site.

By keeping the design simple and guiding the reader to the important content through proper placement of text, graphics, and simple animations, visitors to your site will find your site easier to use and pleasing to look at.