In America today, there are almost as many people making their living as bloggers as there are lawyers, writes Mark Penn. Already more Americans are making their primary income from posting their opinions than Americans working as computer programmers, firefighters or even bartenders.
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Saturday, April 25, 2009
Thursday, April 2, 2009
A few Tips for Webmasters
Make sure each page in your website has something valuable to offer. What are you offering to your visitors? Why is it worth their time to visit your site? Please focus on that before you move on to how it should look.
Include a way to get back to the home page, on every page.
Put your contact info, or a link to it, on the top and/or bottom of every page.
Include a way to get back to the home page, on every page.
Put your contact info, or a link to it, on the top and/or bottom of every page.
Tips For Webmasters -- Increasing Conversions
There are many ways to improve the take rate of a website. One of the biggest ways is to simply make it very clear to visitors, on every page of your site, what you want them to do. Whether this is to purchase, to contact, to download, to sign up, or any number of other actions, make it clear and prominent for the visitor. No matter where they are on your site when they decide they are ready to take that POA, your site should make it easy for them to do so.
Website Conversion Rate
The actual website conversion rate is the ratio equal to the number of people who actually convert on the site versus the overall number of visitors to the site for a given period. If, for example, 3 out of every 100 visitors to your B2B site filled out a contact form (and that form was your only POA) your website conversion rate would be 3%. Obviously, improving your take rate will also improve your conversion rate, since more people will be coming to the form, download page, purchase page, etc. But there are many things you can do to increase the likelihood that people will convert after they have taken the initial POA. Keeping contact forms short and only asking for the minimal information you need is one way. Having a prominent and clear privacy policy or encryption policy can also help. The important thing to recognize is that a large number of people who demonstrate an interest in your products or services by clicking on your POA may not follow thorough, and it is important to determine why and to remove those obstacles. Putting it Together
There are literally thousands of elements you can change on your website to increase both your take rate and website conversion rate. A/B testing has long been used to determine how changing certain variables affects the conversion and take rates. However, this method is limited to testing one variable at a time if you want to gather the granular metrics from each slight modification. Today, with more sophisticated testing software packages available, multivariate testing, which enables you to test many variables at the same time while still seeing granular results, is becoming more common. Common tests include changing color schemes, tweaking various aspects of navigation, copy, and POAs have all been proven to maximize the take rate, website conversion rate, and subsequently, your revenue and bottom line. Website conversion is all about your visitors - appeal to their needs and desires in a logical, concise way, and you'll see your rates improve.
Website Conversion Rate
The actual website conversion rate is the ratio equal to the number of people who actually convert on the site versus the overall number of visitors to the site for a given period. If, for example, 3 out of every 100 visitors to your B2B site filled out a contact form (and that form was your only POA) your website conversion rate would be 3%. Obviously, improving your take rate will also improve your conversion rate, since more people will be coming to the form, download page, purchase page, etc. But there are many things you can do to increase the likelihood that people will convert after they have taken the initial POA. Keeping contact forms short and only asking for the minimal information you need is one way. Having a prominent and clear privacy policy or encryption policy can also help. The important thing to recognize is that a large number of people who demonstrate an interest in your products or services by clicking on your POA may not follow thorough, and it is important to determine why and to remove those obstacles. Putting it Together
There are literally thousands of elements you can change on your website to increase both your take rate and website conversion rate. A/B testing has long been used to determine how changing certain variables affects the conversion and take rates. However, this method is limited to testing one variable at a time if you want to gather the granular metrics from each slight modification. Today, with more sophisticated testing software packages available, multivariate testing, which enables you to test many variables at the same time while still seeing granular results, is becoming more common. Common tests include changing color schemes, tweaking various aspects of navigation, copy, and POAs have all been proven to maximize the take rate, website conversion rate, and subsequently, your revenue and bottom line. Website conversion is all about your visitors - appeal to their needs and desires in a logical, concise way, and you'll see your rates improve.
Tips For Webmasters
The Importance of Prominent Contact Information
Almost every day I come across beautiful websites with rich, well-written content, but they overlook some mighty important things and therefore fall short of their potential to generate new patients. Since people who are searching on the Internet for a surgeon proceed in a "scan mode" until a website can draw their attention into more of a "reading mode," it is vital that your website include prominent displays of practice’s location, contact information (especially a phone number), as well as graphic and textual links to a main practice contact form.Getting your website to the first page of Yahoo!, Google, MSN, AOL, etc. search results is critical, and will certainly increase your practice’s exposure to people looking for an ophthalmologist. But too many practice’s websites neglect to register as high up on the page as possible the fact that their offices are in the locale that matches the consumer's search, and fail to display their phone number in the field to which the consumer's eye is initially drawn. If I need a surgeon and conduct an MSN search for "eye surgeon San Diego," and then click onto one of the first page links in the search engine results, it gets my attention to find immediately that the website on which I have landed represents a practice located near me. Having a phone number prominently displayed in the header of the landing page increases the odds that I will contact that practice.It is also important to provide graphic and textual links on every page of the website that navigate site visitors to what should be the primary target destination page of your site: the main contact form. Graphics with human images of surgeons or other office staff begin creating the bonding with site visitors that evolve into actual relationships, and if these graphics are associated with mini-contact forms or link directly to a main contact form, odds are greater that site visitors become practice contacts. Links within the text of every website page are essential. If the goal of having a website is to help generate patients for your practice, or if you are only interested in being as helpful to site visitors as possible, providing prominent location and contact information is fundamental. Prompting site visitors to your main contact form via purposeful site navigation is indispensable to getting the information and developing the relationships that will bring you new patients.
Almost every day I come across beautiful websites with rich, well-written content, but they overlook some mighty important things and therefore fall short of their potential to generate new patients. Since people who are searching on the Internet for a surgeon proceed in a "scan mode" until a website can draw their attention into more of a "reading mode," it is vital that your website include prominent displays of practice’s location, contact information (especially a phone number), as well as graphic and textual links to a main practice contact form.Getting your website to the first page of Yahoo!, Google, MSN, AOL, etc. search results is critical, and will certainly increase your practice’s exposure to people looking for an ophthalmologist. But too many practice’s websites neglect to register as high up on the page as possible the fact that their offices are in the locale that matches the consumer's search, and fail to display their phone number in the field to which the consumer's eye is initially drawn. If I need a surgeon and conduct an MSN search for "eye surgeon San Diego," and then click onto one of the first page links in the search engine results, it gets my attention to find immediately that the website on which I have landed represents a practice located near me. Having a phone number prominently displayed in the header of the landing page increases the odds that I will contact that practice.It is also important to provide graphic and textual links on every page of the website that navigate site visitors to what should be the primary target destination page of your site: the main contact form. Graphics with human images of surgeons or other office staff begin creating the bonding with site visitors that evolve into actual relationships, and if these graphics are associated with mini-contact forms or link directly to a main contact form, odds are greater that site visitors become practice contacts. Links within the text of every website page are essential. If the goal of having a website is to help generate patients for your practice, or if you are only interested in being as helpful to site visitors as possible, providing prominent location and contact information is fundamental. Prompting site visitors to your main contact form via purposeful site navigation is indispensable to getting the information and developing the relationships that will bring you new patients.
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