Web’s Best Blog

That’s always the cry these days, and it’s no wonder. People login to the internet in order to streamline some of the processes in life, and to hopefully find information quickly. If your website is hard to navigate, or people can’t figure out what to do quickly, they might leave quickly and never buy.

I enjoyed this post by Gerry McGovern, who was upset with SAS’s website, because he couldn’t use the website for his purposes, but instead was forced to watch a puff piece about company history. His reaction was unenthusiastic:

I could not care less that it’s your 60thanniversary! You didn’t send me a card when it was our anniversary, so why should I care about you? If you want me to care, offer me 60 percent off, then I will gladly say: Happy anniversary.

What sort of weird and wacky drugs were SAS on when they decided to create this mega marketing muck-brained monstrosity? Did they by any chance allow an advertising agency to advise them?

Frustration begins to set in when he can’t even quickly accomplish his task, and then the key statement to web developers everywhere:

The Web customer is always, always, always in a hurry. The Web is the land of attention deficit syndrome. People are improperly impatient. They just want to book a cheap flight as quickly as possible.

Repeat after me: “We are not the center of the universe. We are not the center of the universe.” It’s a big, bad world out there, full of unkind and cruel customers who care only about themselves.

Indeed. Placing the emphasis directly on the customer may be the only surefire way to make sure your website is really well-designed. If the customers can use it, and do often, then something is definitely right.

If you spend much time online, you begin to realize the importance of carving out a niche, and communicating with your customers. No one remembers a brand name that they’ve heard once, and most people won’t remember to visit a website, even if they’ve been there before and like it. This means you need a way to communicate with people who are at your website, encouraging them to return.

Permission based email marketing is a big boost to business

Everyone hates spam, but most people enjoy receiving email followups from companies, if they’ve requested it. Contacting your current customers by email can be a great sales booster, but you you have to do it right by following the rules of permission based marketing. The rules are tough, so make sure you take the time to educate yourself. It’s probably easiest to set up an account with a company who manages newsletters.

Permission based marketing offers an improvement over asking people to Opt-Out

The term was orginally coined by Seth Godin and according to WikiPedia means:

Permission marketing is a term used in e-marketing. Marketers will ask permission before they send advertisements to prospective customers. It is used by some Internet marketers, email marketers, and telephone marketers. It requires that people first “opt-in”, rather than allowing people to “opt-out” only after the advertisements have been sent.

Once you have people’s permission to email them, it’s a more powerful marketing tool than many others. Sending a weekly newsletter gives you a chance to stay in touch with your customers, and to introduce new products or services as they’re developed. This will give a boost to sales, without you having to increase your marketing costs. That’s a win-win for any internet marketer.

I can admit I’ve been remiss in my duties concerning permission-based email marketing. I two-plus years I haven’t done nearly enough of it. Well that era is changing. I’d love to invite you to join the Sootle Internet Marketing Weekly Newsletter, which is my new Internet Marketing Newsletter which will be delivered to you once weekly.

If you’re like most people who make a living online, you earn more income if your page views go up. I’ve been concentrating on raising my page views in the last month, and I’ve had a great deal of success doing it. If you think about how people use the internet, you can add to the number of pages visitors see on your site.

1) Link to related material. Make sure that you always offer a link to related material on any of your website landing pages. If someone is at your website, and they’re interested in material you have, pointing them to more related material is a sure bet to get more views.

2) Push the visitors towards a conversion. Even if it’s for a newsletter or anything, try and get your visitor to do something that commits them to coming back.

3) Put up more interesting content. If page views are down, it’s because content has been slacking. Get interesting quick.

4) Re-design your navigation to get more views. Again, add related pages to your sidenav, etc. Make people click on as many pages as you can. Entice them.

These four things done consistently for a few weeks should easily be enough for you to see a large increase in traffic. The more page views you get, the higher the revenue you generate.

What methods do you use to generate additional page views?

On a day like today, when you check your log files, you’ll have a sudden appreciation for the effects of “Back to School”. The school kids really are the ones visiting a lot of my sites, and their absence is notable.

The same can be said about office workers. Between office workers and college students, a great bit of traffic leaves the internet for the warm months of the years. But there back now, so what can you do to keep them around? They’re like everyone else. Basically they’ll want constantly updated content. So it should be your goal to do the best editorial job as possible.

The job of Editor is probably the single biggest job going forward on the content-based internet. And this takes an eye for discovering what’s interesting to your audience. It’s never easy to do, but if you rely too heavily on waiting for customer feedback, you may never get started. So the best thing you can do is ramp up your content production during the weekdays for the month or so and really try and build your audience.

Weekends tend to see a natural downturn, depending wholly on your subject matter, but even that downslide will be offset by the rising fall traffic. It’s a great time to be offering products on the internet right now. The next few months should prove very beneficial.

Have you noticed your traffic going up today?

Websites are just like kids: some have more potential than others. It all really depends on your keywords. The popular keywords are the ones that have the most potential for traffic and revenue. If you have a low-popularity keyword, you’ll be doomed to having a low-popularity website. Sure, you can still earn good money, but expect lonely times sitting around waiting for traffic.

So the next time you think of starting a website, you have to consider how your plan fits into the big picture. If there’s a ton of traffic, you’ll also face stiff competition. That’s really no big deal, but you have to consider what you’ll do to be different. You really are just another fish in the sea online. Every day new combatants enter the arena, so the primary thing that will seperate you from the bottom of the ocean is hustle.

And is there a lot of potential out there? I say, yes, there’s more potential right now for websites than ever before, but you need to dig deep and be creative. If your website’s not interesting, you won’t be able to attract the readers. But with some enthusiasm, and a bit of planning, now’s the time to roll out even more money-making websites.

Everyone is on the internet marketing bandwagon these days. From mom and pop stores to the biggest global corporations, everyone wants a piece of the pie online. But you also find a lot of mis-information concerning internet marketing. Here’s 10 misconceptions to watch out for.

1) Internet marketing costs a lot of money.

It can, but it doesn’t have to. There’s a ton of things you can do that don’t cost a great deal of money. I built a 6 figure revenue stream in six months using a marketing campaign of nearly 0. The big boys don’t always spend money, and neither should you.

2) There’s an easy way to do it.

Sure. You can get to the top of the internet really easy, without putting in a ton of work. That’s the same type of mentality that makes men think they can enlarge their penis by taking a pill. It just doesn’t worth that way. Internet marketing is tough work.

3) You need an expert to get the job done.

An expert can help, obviously, but won’t be necessary. Most of the concepts behind internet marketing

4) It takes time.

Yes, you need to exert some patience with most internet marketing campaigns. However, there are other methods that can drive traffic much faster. Make sure you spend time working on both short term and long term methods. If you don’t generate traffic fast, you may lose hope.

5) You need “XYZ program” to succeed.

No you don’t. The person selling the program wants you to believe you need their help, but you don’t. Custom solutions are the best bet, but in reality, no special software programs are required to do internet marketing, and very few are worth the money.

6) Only “Joe Guru” can give you the knowledge you need.

If you enjoy going to seminars, fine. But if you think you’ll find the Holy Grail of marketing at one, you’re sadly mistaken. People organize trade shows to make money and the sponsors are providing the information, mostly in the form of “buy my product”.

7) Cheating is the only thing that works in internet marketing.

Oh, please. Just because it’s the only thing that worked for some people, doesn’t make it universal. There are plenty of successful websites that have played fair to get to the top. Follow your moral compass.

Always follow your own instincts, and don’t be afraid to be creative. Being creative is the one thing that can lead you to the top faster than any other method.