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Web News & Tips - Issue #291 $7.00 per month Small Business web hosting from MateMedia Web News & Tips Published by MateMedia, Inc. Your Partner on the Web Providing quality Web services at affordable prices since 1995 MateMedia provides the following services: * Web Hosting (Shared & Managed Dedicated Servers) * Web Design & Development - Custom Web Applications * Database Development & Hosting * Website Maintenance & Webmaster Services * Search Engine Promotion (Optimization & Submission) * E-Commerce - Shopping Carts - Sample Shopping Cart * Domain Name Registration * Domain Name Affiliate Program * Web Hosting Affiliate Program * FREE Website when you order a web hosting account! For more information about our services email sales@matemediainc.com or call us at 877-309-7521 - Read what our clients have to say about us IN THIS ISSUE: Become a MateMedia Domain Name Affiliate Become a MateMedia Web Hosting Affiliate Free Webmaster Tools Free Scripts for Your Website 3 Simple Ways To Dramatically Improve Your Website Web News A Step by Step Guide to Getting Started on the Web Recommend this newsletter to a friend Advertise in Web News & Tips $7.00 per month Small Business web hosting from MateMedia 3 Simple Ways To Dramatically Improve Your Website By Mike Cheney Before you start worrying about marketing your website on the internet it always pays dividends to look at the website itself and get the fundamentals right before looking to shout about it from the virtual mountain-tops. You may already have thought about the following 3 ways and some of you may already have them in place on your website. If so - congratulations - you’re well on the way to having a website that will bring you more business. So here they are then - the 3 Simple Ways To Dramatically Improve Your Website.. 1. You’re Fishing For Visitors - You’ll Need This To Hook Them. Ever been surfing on a website that held your attention and then the phone rings? You take the call, take some notes, get distracted, visit another website and before you know it you’ve forgotten all about the website you were viewing. It happens all the time and if you don’t have a Bookmarking tool on your website it will be happening with the people that come to your website. A Bookmarking tool is just a simple link or logo that your visitors can click on in order to bookmark your website or add it to their favourites. It is best to have the button located on the homepage but an even better option is to have a bookmarking button on every page so a visitor can actually bookmark each specific page of your website for safe-keeping. Look to the left of this article and you will see the bookmarking button we use - click on it to see how it adds this specific page to your favourites - nifty eh? 2. ‘X’ Marks The Spot. Visitors come to your website and if you’re lucky - they like it and click beyond the homepage. Excellent. But they can’t find what they’re looking for. Uh oh, you could be in trouble. There’s a lot of information on your website and Mr. Visitor doesn’t have time to sift through it all to find what he’s looking for. You’d better hope that he’s either very patient or that you’ve provided him with a simple map to help him get to the ‘treasure’ he is looking for. A Site Map is an essential item - particularly on larger websites. There is nothing more frustrating than hunting around for something and wasting time when just a simple one pager that presents a summary of all the information on your website could be used. A Site Map should be reachable from all pages of your website in just one click and should have clickable links on it so that a visitor can zoom straight through to their desired location without having to hunt around. If you don’t give them a map your visitors may become frustrated searching around for that desired piece of information and they may leave your website never to return. 3. Don’t Make Your Visitors Have To Write An Email To Contact You If you are inviting enquiries or contact from visitors to your website you need to provide them with a way of doing this that is as easy as possible for them. Just posting your email address on the website is not the best solution. Why? Because when they click on it they need to then create an email from scratch. Do you know how busy your visitors are? They hardly have time to read the content of your homepage - never mind create an email from scratch. The solution? You need to use a simple form. A form enables you to standardise the responses that you receive and it also makes it very simple for your visitors to get in touch with you - all they need to do is pop in their name, email address and tick a few boxes and that’s it. Making it easy for your visitors to contact you isn’t the only reason that using a form is a great idea. Doing so means you can get some information back from each person that fills in the form. You can ask them how they discovered your website, which other websites they like to visit - you can ask them anything! Anything that is going to help you learn more about them, more about who they are and more about what will make them buy from you. You think they would tell you all this if they were creating an email from scratch? No - of course they wouldn’t! That’s why you need a form. E-mail: michael.cheney@magnet4web.com Author's URL: http://www.magnet4web.com You can get free access to lots more of my articles plus a FREE Special Report "How To Turn Your Website Into A Customer Magnet" worth a value of £47 ($85) here: http://www.magnet4web.com/website_services/?page=freeguide $7.00 per month web hosting from MateMedia Increase your rank in the search engines! Check out our new search engine optimization plans Become a MateMedia Web Hosting Affiliate Web News $7.00 per month web hosting from MateMedia The Olympic Games are not only good for athletes, but advertisers are benefiting as well. Dynamic Logic found that the feel-good spirit of the Olympics is overflowing to the companies and brands that are involved with sponsorship, but consumers are stopping short of visiting the sponsors' Web sites. DSL subscriptions outpaced cable modem in the second quarter of 2004, but U.S. broadband growth is slowing down from a record-breaking year, according to figures from Leichtman Research Group, Inc. The Internet has spawned a population of private investigators, as a Harris Interactive poll conducted for Microsoft found that surfers use search engines to find information about themselves or someone they know. Amongst the popular search topics such as travel, health, entertainment, current events, news, and weather, are searches for friends, acquaintances, spouses, romantic interests, colleagues, bosses, and clients. The propensity to search for one's self or others differs according to gender, age and geographic location. Copyright 2000-2004 MateMedia, Inc. |
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