Reasoning Theorems of Success

When web content gets discussed on webmaster bulletin boards, the most common question is, “how much should I pay?” That question is both perfectly logical, and perfectly stupid:

• Logical, because the biggest expense of any website, with the possible exceptions of advertising and promotion, is the content. You only have to get web development and design once, but content needs to be added regularly for your site to be successful.
• Stupid, because the real question isn’t how much you are going to pay, but how much you are going to invest. Your content, if it’s done right, will make you money. In fact, it can easily make back its cost within a month. So the real question you should ask a web content provider is: how much will it make me?

Calculating Your Web Content’s Value

Ultimately, your web content is the one part of your site that makes you money. The code, design, and even traffic, while important, are not what ultimately get a visitor to take action. You have to tell or ask visitors to take action. Telling and asking take words.

Small changes in your web content can make big differences in the bottom line. Take a look:

Advertising/affiliate revenue

Let’s say you have a web page that averages $25/day in revenue from advertising and/or affiliate links. You have a professional writer optimize the content on the page to get more clicks. Watch what happens:

1. If just 20% more visitors click on affiliate or advertising links, your revenue will increase $5/day, $150/month, and $1825/year. If your page maintains its current level of traffic for three more years, that’s a $5475 increase, just for that one page.
2. But it gets better: the improvements to the page will easily increase traffic by 20%, as more visitors return, more visitors refer your site to friends, and more webmasters, bloggers and others link to your site. That brings a total of $6570 more revenue from that page over three years.
3. If you get the same results with 50 pages with similar traffic levels, that’s an increase of $328500. Now multiply that by however many sites you or your company owns. Can you say, “early retirement”?

Keep in mind, that’s only the additional revenue you get from the improved content compared with what you were getting already from your work. No extra work needed.

Sales/leads model

If your website is a promotional vehicle for a business, the results can be even more spectacular. If a page nets you $500/day in sales or leads, website content improvements that increase your sales or leads by 20% will pay for themselves within a month, if not a week.

In reality, if your current content is really weak, the improvement is likely to be even more spectacular. Traditionally, overhauling bad sales writing doubles or even triples the response rate.

The best part of all this is the advantage you’ll gain over the competition, with so many website owners in the dark about their content. If you are earning 20% more than the competition on the same advertising or promotion expense, you will ultimately carry the day.

Making a Content Investment

Now, back to price. What would you expect to invest to see a $6570 return?

Writer’s Market, the blue book of professional writer fees, says web content averages $300/page, which would mean a 2000+% return on investment.

But you can actually get away with paying only half that if you don’t need research or meetingsthe biggest time-sucks when it comes to creative projects. If you order content in bulk, you’ll likely get an even steeper discount.

Why not see for yourself what kind of an improvement professional writing can make on your site’s revenue? Every day you wait is another day of lost revenueand why should you be content with that?

About the author

Joel Walsh is the head content writer for UpMarket Content. Mention this article and get one trial page of website content at no charge: http://upmarketcontent.com/website-content

1. Don’t fill your web site with a lot of high-tech clutter. Your visitors will miss your whole sales message and bail.

2. Don’t use unnecessary words or phrases. Sentences should be no longer than 10 words. You only have so much time to get your visitor’s attention and interest; make every word count.

3. Don’t make the mistake that everyone will totally understand your what you have to offer. BE OBVIOUS! Use powerful words and examples to get your point across.

4. Don’t write your strongest point or benefit only once. You should repeat it at least 3 times because some people don’t get it right away. (how many times do you have to tell your kids to clean their room…5-6-7 times?)

5. Don’t push all your words together on your web site. People like to skim; use plenty of headings and sub headings. Bold key phrases to make your copy “scan-able”

6. Don’t use content your preferred audience isn’t interested in. If people are coming to your site to find info about knitting don’t include soccer content.

7. Don’t use 20 different formats all over your web site. Use the same fonts, text sizes & colors, etc. If a site looks to “complicated” to read, your prospect is sure to bail.

8. Don’t use words your visitors might not understand. People are not going to stop and look in a dictionary, they will just go to another site. (If my 11 year old daughter can’t “get” the concept of my copy, I start over)

9. Don’t let selling words and phrases go unnoticed. Highlight important words and phrases with color, bolding, italics, underlining, etc.

10. Don’t forget to use words that create emotion. (Woohoo!) People will have more interest when they are emotionally attached.

Copyright 2005 Donna Payne

Donna Payne is the Chief Web Goddess of The Web Coach.net and is known as the gal to call when you’re feeling overwhelmed by the internet. To spend some more time with Donna and to experience Web technology, Development and Marketing in the most SIMPLIFED way possible go to
http://thewebcoach.net

We caught up with MD of North East based design agency Biscuit Interactive Daniel Mcskelly for a brief insight in to running a hi-tech business outside one of the normal silicon valley type spots such as London and the Thames Valley.

When did you start your business in the North East?
Actually I didn’t. I founded the company in…the Thames Valley! Reading to be precise, which was where the company was based for it’s first three years. I moved up to Gateshead in 2006 and the company came with me.

So why did you choose Tyneside as a place to grow your business?
I’d lived in Newcastle many years ago and have always had lots of friends here. I’d spent almost a decade around the London end of the country by that point and on a personal level I was getting itchy feet and wanted a change of scene. In terms of the business most of my work is done remotely and can be carried out from anywhere I have an Internet connection, so it made sense to base myself somewhere where things like office rent and the cost of living are much lower.

The average North East business arguably has little use for a web site…do you have many local customers?
Not so much on Tyneside, though we have plenty in the North of the UK. If a web design agency wants to build a purely local client base I say good luck to them, but we’ve got the freedom to work beyond the limits of what’s a car ride or train journey away I think. I know web site design agencies that have staff members spread across three continents and clients likewise. You can make it work with some common sense and the right technology.

Salehoo: Wholesale Ripstop Nylong Fabric
You can use Google to find the traditional wholesaler out, but it always time-consuming and sometime, the result is not ideal enough. To find those traditional wholesaler out, you can check out Salehoo, which is the largest reliable wholesaler directory in the world, by which you can find wholesaler for almost everything you want to sell on eBay. And you also get 56 days money back guarantee from Salehoo, if you can not find the appropriate wholesaler from them, you can ask for 100% money refund. It should worth a try. I have seen an upsurge in people looking to start profitable businesses on Ebay and are constantly turning to drop ship directories like Salehoo to source goods and have them delivered, so learn all about Salehoo wholesalers.

The way to increase profits from wholesale is to build your own website and/or open an eBay store which is the real benefit of Salehoo dropshippers. Closeout News is a great example of a publication that is geared towards wholesale buyers and also the Salehoo Suppliers. From the outset Salehoo has been constantly adding new suppliers and verifying them to provide a comprehensive database

Salehoo Carriage Rv Wholesale:
It’s also better to have two to three Salehoo wholesale suppliers since, as Italian charms sell so quickly. Also, beware of phony Italian charms. Real Italian charms are made from 18k gold ribbon that is flattened and molded, then soldered on the back to a strip of stainless steel links. In some cases, the Italian charm is protected with enamel. Ebay powersellers trust Salehoo dropshippers and Salehoo prices.

Salehoo also had a money back guarantee so I thought this time I’d give it a go, so try to join the Salehoo forums. If you are buying products from a wholesale distributor they are making money from the products you are purchasing, which will be the Salehoo customers. See Salehoo.

A website’s navigation is one of its most important parts. Sure,
your users mostly come in through search engines now instead of
via your homepage, but how can they get from whatever page
they’re on to any other page they might want to go to? The
limited space available at the top and sides of most web pages
(at least when compared to the amount of content many contain)
makes good navigation design difficult, but vital. Here, then,
are five principles of effective navigation.

1. Don’t Be Original

What? Don’t be original? What kind of advice is that? Well, if
you spend any time visiting sites on the web, you should realise
that it’s better advice than it might sound.

Let’s say you’ve just landed at some website for a search. You
read a bit, you’re interested, but you’d like to know more about
what this website is and why it’s here - basically, can you
trust it? If you’re anything like me, you look around for a
navigation link called ‘about’, ‘about us’, or something
similar. Calling this link something else - ‘philosophy’, for
example - will only confuse your visitors, and make them less
able to find what they’re looking for. However much you might
dislike the conventions of the web, you have to accept that
we’re stuck with them at this point, at least if you want your
website to be as usable as it can be.

2. Clicking the Logo Always Goes Home

As a corollary to the above advice, it is extremely important to
make sure that clicking your website’s logo will take a visitor
back to your home page. I recently visited a website where
clicking their logo caused a pop-up window to open, describing
the logo. Do they really think that was what I wanted? Why on
earth would anyone click on the logo to learn about it? That
kind of thing is just bad navigation design.

People treat the logo-home link as a lifeline in the same way
that they do the Back button: you break it at your peril.

3. Always Include Search

Often, visitors can’t be bothered to search through your menu
systems for what they’re looking for, especially if you have a
large website. This fact makes it all the more important that
you provide a search box right there on the navigation bar. No,
not a link that says ’search’ - an actual input box where your
visitors can type, with a button next to it labelled ‘Search’.

People have been to enough websites to know what to do with a
box like that, to the point where they even get upset if they
can’t find one. Oh, and make sure that pressing the enter key
after typing in the box takes them to the search results page.

4. Highlight on Hover

When someone is hovering over part of your navigation system,
you need to highlight the option they’ve got selected, so that
they know where they are. Every non-web navigation system you’ve
ever used no doubt does this, so there’s no reason why websites
shouldn’t. You don’t want your visitors to be guessing what
their clicks are about to do - you want them to be absolutely
certain.

This principle is even more important in navigation that has
more than one level (that is, where you can follow an arrow to
get to a sub-menu). You’ve got to keep both the name of the
sub-menu and the selected item on the sub-menu highlighted: if
you don’t, visitors are likely to forget which sub-menu they
selected, or not realise that they accidentally selected the
wrong one.

5. Use Breadcrumbs

Finally, if you have pages nested deeply in a navigation
hierarchy, make sure you offer ‘breadcrumbs’ to let visitors
know where they’ve come from. For example, a set of breadcrumbs
for this article might look like this:

Articles > Web Design > Navigation > The 5 Principles of
Effective Navigation

In this case, clicking on ‘Articles’, ‘Web Design’ or
‘Navigation’ would take you to indexes for those categories,
containing sub-categories and perhaps more articles. For
examples of breadcrumb navigation in action, take a look at the
big search directories like dmoz.org and yahoo.com.

There are many various multimedia advances happening to the good
old blog. Although the blog is only a few years old, technology
has kept right up there with it. Now, you have the ability to do
a number of fascinating things with it. As the blog owner, this
can mean huge potential dollars in marketing. If you are just a
blog reader, you can now access your favorites online any time
that you feel like it.

There are several areas in which the blog has entered the
multimedia world. Here are some of them to think about.

* Text. Okay, so this isn’t anything new. It is the most
commonly thought of type of blogging. Simple writings that are
done on the blog. * Images. This takes it one step ahead. Now,
you can send images to your fellow bloggers, your family or your
friends. * Video. Even better, the blogs can now come packed
with video from your digital camera or the cell phone that is
video enabled. * Podcasts. The latest feature. It allows
individuals to receive the information that they want, when they
want it. Podscasts allow you to receive both audio and video
over the internet.

But, just because you have the ability to use these various
types of blogging, what happens to it? Does it just sit on your
website in the hopes that someone will actually want it? The
good news is that you can now send these multimedia advances to
individuals on their Ipods or their mobile phones. This means
instant notification when you update the blog and instant access
no matter where they are located. In short, it translates into
dollars through marketing.

New advances in blogging are occurring all the time. Stay
connected to your consumers, your fellow bloggers, and your
favorite blogs. The fact that you can do all of this from your
mobile phone; just makes it even better. More than likely,
you’ll have something to blog right now.

Most government Web sites are about as exciting as a Senate appropriations hearing. Besides lacking charisma, sites are difficult to navigate and a bear to search. But the possibilities of the Internet make having an effective Web site too valuable to neglect.

The “musts” of good government Web site design

There are five major “musts” to any government Website. The site must be:

• User-friendly
• Direct
• Section 508 Compliant
• Searchable
• Branded

Web sites must be designed with the user experience in mind. Every aspect of the site should make sense and follow expected patterns. For people to use it, it must be easier than picking up the phone. Options must be clearly defined and information as accessible as possible.

Running in Circles

Don’t send your users on a wild goose chase. The path to find information must be direct. In standard Web site design, users should be able to access the key function of a site within three clicks. And watch for those nasty circles. Site maps and testing are vital to keeping a site free from loops.

Every User, Everytime.

Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act demands that Web sites must be accessible to all users, regardless of impairment. Make this a chance to ensure your site resonates with everyone equally. By including such things as verbal tags and graphics identification, designers can make a site available to all the constituents.

Seek and You Will Find

Searches on government pages seem to search every government page. Instead, searches should be limited to the site from which it is made. And the search terms must be natural language. Include common words by thinking about what the audience would. Getting into the users head is key to any design endeavor.

Image is Everything

Branding gives a fresh look and feel to an otherwise boring site. In the same way commercial businesses use it, branding breeds loyalty. By presenting a consistent image, backed by a consistent experience, constituents know that a logo is more than just a picture. It’s a promise of excellence.

What now?

It’s easy to create a Web site, but making it great takes creativity and forethought. Imagine the user and what they expect and build from there. Dot gov and can be dot amazing.

Kari White is a Content Developer for Brook Group, a Web site design firm near Washington, DC. For more articles like this one, visit Usability and Branding.

When you develop a sales brochure, you have a mental checklist of what needs to be in it. You probably look at brochures from other vendors. You get advice from friends and colleagues. You probably also notice the sales flyers you get in the mail. What do you notice? What gets your attention?

A web site for your business has many of the same purposes as a sales brochure. At the same time, it is more “delicate” and requires more attention. It is technically more advanced and therefore more challenging to design as well as to keep up to date.

Below are 10 things you should consider when developing a web site. These will give you a good start. After reading them, you may be able to add more.

Know your audience. You need to know who are the people most likely to look at your site so that you can target that audience. Who are your current and potential customers? What kinds of words or pictures do they respond to? You are more likely to make sales to those who spend time at your site, so you need to make the pitch to your most likely candidates.

Learn from the best. Spend some time on the web. Look at your competitors’ sites as well as unrelated sites. Discover which presentations you like and what colors work well together. Take note of how easy or hard it is to navigate through the sites. Save the addresses you like so that you can return to them easily (this is called a “bookmark”). The better your web site looks, the more time people will spend with it and the better your chances of increased business or sales.

Plan ahead. Once you know your audience (who is most likely to be interested in your product or service) take time to lay out the content of each page and how different pages will link to each other. The more planning you do up front, the easier it will be to get up and running, and the fewer changes you will need to make down the road.

Graphics are worth 10,000 pixels. This is a play on the expression, “A picture is worth 1,000 words.” Text in different colors can highlight important information. Animation, sound, and video may be important, especially if they are business related. Be aware, however, that if graphics take more than 8 seconds to load, a potential customer may get impatient and move on. On the other hand, the effective and efficient use of graphics can provide a lot of information that will catch people’s attention. Potential customers may not take the time to read text, but they can judge quickly from a picture if the product or service will meet their needs.

Be a good neighbor. If you want to quote a source, get permission. If some of the ideas you present are not yours, give credit where credit is due. Use disclaimers or disclosures when required or appropriate. This enhances your reputation as a vendor.

Connect with the world. Provide links to other sites that sell accessories, add-ons, or related products. This will make it easier for them to do get all they need with minimal searching. Try to arrange for reciprocal links. The more ways people can get to your site, the more people will see it.

Test your site. Always check your text for errors in both spelling and grammar. Remember that a spell checker will find incorrect spellings but not incorrect usage (i.e., the difference between “its” and “it’s”). Also, what you see in one browser may not be what you get in another. You need to make sure that all the fonts, centering, and alignment work. Test uploading times and links with slow modems. While you can’t examine every possible computer hardware and software configuration that users might have, the more scenarios your site works well on, the more people will spend time with it.

Get outside opinions. Find out what people think about your site. Ask for specifics like colors, fonts, graphics, time to load, and ease of navigation. Receive both positive and negative feedback graciously. Thank people for their suggestions. Remember that you will not be able to please everyone, but the more people who like your site, the more they will recommend it to others.

Let people know where you are. Register with search engines. Tell your current and potential customers through phone calls or email. Include your web address on your business cards, letterhead, print ads, and email signature. The best web site in the world will not make money if people don’t know it’s there.

Keep it fresh. Update the content on a timely basis. Use contests and promotions. Conduct surveys and polls where people can vote. Make your web site fun and interactive. Your site should be interesting and constantly refreshed so people will keep coming back to see what’s new.

Remember that your web site is an electronic ad for your business. Make certain that it reflects your business well.

© Copyright 1999 - 2005 Alicia Smith

Permission to reproduce granted if all attribution & contact information is included.

Alicia Smith is a Coach and Trainer whose specialty is helping coaches to Make Money Now. To learn more about that course and her other products and services, please visit the following sites:

www.AliciaSmith.com
www.InternetAssessments.com
www.90DaystoaProduct.com
www.DiscNinja.com
www.CoachingBlunders.com
www.90DayMarketingMarathon.com

Just recently, I received an email from one of the twenty
hosting companies that I’m affiliated with and before I even
opened it I knew what it was going to say. Pretty much the same
thing that the last five emails from other hosting companies
have said. “Dear Affiliate, we’re happy to announce that we’ve
included more disk space to our basic hosting plans which now
offer over 20,000 Mb (mega-bytes) of disk/storage space to your
customers.” And the Hosting companies battle on!

Now don’t get me wrong, from a marketing and advertising
viewpoint, offering my customer 20,000 Mb of disk space instead
of 5 or 10 thousand is something that just “sweetens the pot.”
Why not have extra space? Sometimes more is better. But unless
you’re the only person on an island with an internet connection
and a hosting account thats going to be used by a small third
world nation, or unless you’re Ebay (TM), I don’t see where the
average company, even with a website that has 100 or more pages
with many graphics, is even going to come close to using 20,000
Mb of disk/storage space per month.

My modestly small website wbwebhosts dot com has twelve pages
that get a total of around 200 page hits a day. Last time I
checked I was averaging 2 Mb of disk/storage usage per month.
Naturally, I’m sure that if everybody who was hosted with a
certain company was somehow able to use 20,000 Mb of disk each
month, the hosting company would run out of server space.

But thats OK though! Advertising all that storage space is a
“Hook” to lure people in. Nothing wrong with that. As I said
above it’s better to have too much storage space then not
enough. But look for other things that the company offers they
may set them apart from other web hosting services. Is the
set-up and Domain free? Where are there servers located? C-panel
control (very easy control panel for beginners)? Price per
month? Transfer (monthly traffic allowed)?

Well the Host wars will continue! Maybe by this time next year
they’ll be offering 30,000 Mb to attract new customers. To most
unsuspecting people this will seem like a great deal and will be
happy and feel lucky that they have found such a hosting
company. By offering more disk/storage space, the hosting
companies will lure more customers and affiliates, affiliates in
turn will gain more customers and the customers will be happy
with the excess of space. Oh well, as long as everybody is
happy…..

As a site developer, I have experienced an odd phenomenon with some of the businesses I have worked with over the years. A website is something that should give a comprehensive overview of an organization, and should provide a detailed image of the company, as opposed to the caricature that is provided by other media. When small business owners sit down to discuss the structure of a site, and what will be included, they often realize the holes in their own business model.

In particular, family-owned businesses that have been successful for years sometimes never slow down enough to really chart out specific policies. It had always been enough for the owner to make a call on the fly when it came to return policies, or bulk pricing, or other grey areas. When they sit down to create the content of their websites, they are faced with the fact that whatever they publish to the internet will be taken as across-the-board policy, and they, in a sense, must give up that freedom to make decisions based on a gut feeling. This may be disheartening for some, but I believe it is a very positive thing for most businesses.

I usually describe the pre-internet state of these companies as having a ’subjective business model’. The turn toward a transparent, totally objective way to conduct business may be a bit painful to some, but in the end it will give customers a much stronger sense of trust and confidence in your business. Where I live, on the coast of Maine, there is a very strong sense that a personal touch is needed when conducting business. I agree with this completely, but I don’t agree that ‘personal touch’ has to mean ’subjective business model’. The owner of a company that makes contact in a personal way with his customers, yet is so organized that there is regularity and equanimity in his company’s policies, has a huge advantage over not only less developed local businesses, but also against the less personal corporate giants. The fact is, large corporations got to be large corporations because people bought what they sold. What they sold was an advancement in their product, and also the ability to operate efficiently through a sound, well-organized business model. I know plenty of high-quality product producers whose only barrier to immense success is the complete disorganization of their company structure. The country is littered with fine products that fail because they are brought to market incorrectly.

So back to web design-

When the process begins, I have always tried to take a slow tour through a client’s business, to get a feel for what the owner is doing, and particularly, what aspects of the operation bring the strongest feeling of pride to the owner. This has to be the core of the marketing piece. Through this process, I also can generally get the idea of what the challenges to the company are, and how those challenges may translate into bumps in the road on the way to getting a solid internet presence to happen.

When we sit down to talk structure, what must be included, how certain aspects of the business are to be portrayed, I see this look in the business owner’s eyes that says - ‘ Oh crap, I never thought of that’, or, ‘Hmmm, what IS our policy on that?’. What follows is a trial-and-error process of defining every aspect of the organization in painful but consistent detail, full of re-writes and tweaks and crumpled papers. But once we trudge through the anatomy of their business, I feel strongly that the company is better off than before the process started.

This is yet another unplanned benefit to bringing a business into the internet commerce world, and as time goes on, the state of the business world in general will be stronger and more effective because of it.

Lance Dutson is the owner of Maine Coast Design, a Maine web design firm and internet marketing company, specializing in search engine optimization and cutting-edge site design. Maine Coast Design- Maine web design and search engine optimization