WHY WON’T MY WEBSITE WORK?

Well, I have a couple site and marketing strategies for you to look at in order to help you battle the dreaded ‘no sale.’

Let’s start off with the site that you’ve just built.

How is its loading time? If it doesn’t load within 10 – 13 seconds over 56k, then you are probably losing customers. Not everyone has the benefit of broadband yet and that is something very important to keep in mind. Users can be very impatient towards a slow site and once they get to your site, you want to do everything possible to encourage them to stay.

So, if your site takes longer than 13 seconds to load, don’t fret because it doesn’t necessarily mean that you will have to close shop and go back to working 9-5 forever.

Nope, your site just needs a little TLC. Start with your graphics, they look great, but will your site survive without 1 or 2 of them? If so, get them out of there. As for the rest of your graphics, download a nice image optimizing program and start whacking away at those bytes.

If you do not have an image optimization program, you can use a free online version here: http://www.gifworks.com/image_editor.html  (this will work on any file ending in .gif)

You’ll be surprised at the difference this alone can make in page loading times. It has been my experience that most graphic file sizes can nearly be cut down to half of their original size.

How is your color scheme? I have seen a lot of site with very unattractive or clashing color scheme and I ask the question, why? What purpose does it serve to have a clashing color scheme? It doesn’t, unless you are trying to deter visitors from coming to your site altogether.

If you’re like the rest of us and attempting to conduct business on the Internet, then you want to deter a visitor from leaving your site. So take a look at your color scheme and make sure that it doesn’t clash.

Also, try to stay away from using extra bright colors because looking at something like that can make you feel like you’re suffering from radiation poisoning.

In general, you should use lighter colors that match well together. This is not only easy on the eye, but also goes along way in giving your site a certain professional image.

Think about it, if you had a retail store would you paint it lime green, fuschia, hot pink and niteglow orange?  If not, don't do it to your website either.

Is your copywriting in the final draft stage? Even if it is, it’s always good to keep reworking it until you find something that makes a solid connection. The text on your website can be one of the most important factors that makes or breaks your site.

This is simply because people will read your text and if it doesn’t read well, then people are going to become confused.

To insure that this doesn’t happen to you, double check your spelling, grammar, and sentence structure. A single, tiny little error can cost you a customer and it can also cost you your image. People are not mind readers; they only know what you tell them. So make them understand.

Explain things clearly and make sure it all flows in such a way, should it to be read it out load or silently to yourself, it sounds good. Don’t worry if you don’t get it on the first try. This is a trial and error thing. If you don’t succeed the first time, try again until you start receiving an adequate (by your standards) response.

So now you’ve tried all that with your site and your still not making an up-to-par sales volume and you’re still wondering, why? Well, it’s time to talk about marketing.

Marketing is the hardest game the Internet has to offer and if you don’t play it right, you’re not going to win. Let’s talk about what it takes in a brick-n-mortar situation versus a click-n-mortar situation and then we’ll draw a conclusion from that.

Assume that you’ve just opened up a DVD rental shop on your local city block. You put big signs in your windows that advertise your specials, you buy up a couple local TV spots, and finally you put up a billboard in your area. So how do you get customers then?

Well, the formula is relatively simple. Have you ever heard of viral marketing, or guerilla marketing? Basically, it’s the idea of having your advertisement everywhere people look so that no matter what, everybody will hear about your business sooner or later and more importantly - tell others to come!

So, with that said, lets be a consumer in that same city block. The first thing you notice when you’re driving to work is that a new business is moving into XYZ building. You pass by it every other day and finally you notice that the store opens up to the public. Now, instead of noticing that a business is moving in, you notice the big signs in the window advertising their basic deals.

So now let’s assume that the work week is over and you take the family out to the park. While you’re driving home, you notice a billboard for that very same rental store. Making the connection, you are now starting to become curious as to what lies within that store (especially if you like movies!). Then, on Sunday, you’re just sitting back relaxing, watching some TV and then… a commercial. It’s an ad for the DVD rental store.

At that point, you will probably be half tempted to go into the store and maybe sign-up for a membership. The video store has succeeded… or have they? Nope, they haven’t "succeeded" simply they were able to successfully market to you, but success will be: 

What is going to make you keep renting DVDs there?

How are they going to draw new customers?

The answer lies within the term ‘consistency.’  In the advertising and marketing biz we call it "frequency".

That’s right; the rental store will have to keep advertising at least the same amount every month until their sales reach a high. At that time they can back down from marketing for a month or two, but then they’ll have to go full offensive again.

Well, now that we have discussed brick-n-mortars, let’s move on to click-n-mortars. The problem we face with marketing website is that they are not like brick-n-mortar stores. If you opened a DVD store within your city block, you nearest competitor might be 15 minutes away, giving you a slight advantage.

However, that isn’t true with the Internet. Your competitor is always a URL away, one click, and that gives everyone a slight disadvantage. Plus, instead of advertising to a small group of people within your city, you are now advertising to millions. So how do you do it?

You just have to apply the same principles that you applied to the DVD store and then multiple them to fit Internet capacity. The Internet is a huge place, to have one or two ads up isn’t going to help you out much.

Remember this; it takes the average Internet user seven to nine times of seeing something before they act on it. So placing one or two ads greatly strains your odds of having maximum exposure.

Instead, you have to have multiple ads and run them consistently. Also, don’t expect to make tons of sales your first time advertising either. It almost never happens this way because first you have to pass the ‘break-in period.’ The break-in period is usually the first two or three weeks of advertising in multiple spots where you won’t really make any sales.

This is because people are cycling through that seven to nine times factor and it won’t catch up for a couple weeks.

Let’s assume that we’re Internet consumers and not entrepreneurs. We go to a search engine and see a certain website come up in the results. A day later we see a banner for the same site, then a pop-under, then the search results, then a banner, a pop-under, etc... It’s all a big redundant cycle, but that’s what it takes.

Sooner or later we’re going to take a look around that site to see what it’s all about and then after making a couple more trips to it, we’ll probably end up buying something or referring it to a friend.

Sweet success! But the game isn’t over, not by any means. That redundant cyclical advertising method must to be kept in full vortex mode so that the person that just purchased from you, and others, will keep seeing your ad over and over again.

Conclusively, we can say that once your website is totally optimized to convert visitors (and it’s proven to convert) and you have your marketing cyclone up and running outside of the initial ‘break-in period,’ there shouldn’t be anything that stands in your path to success. After all, look at all the other successful websites out there.

Let me close with one final thought… People will tell you that there are intricate secrets in both marketing and business that no one else wants you to know about, and that these secrets are the key to success. Don’t be fooled. There are no secrets, unless the secrets are persistence, creativity and innovation.

P.S. I provide a service that sends GUARANTEED traffic to internet websites. 

Its very cost effective, you can get 10 guaranteed unique visitors to your website for just 1.5¢!

Check it out here www.Pop-Under-Ads.com

This article is Copyright 2003 TrafficAccount.com. All Rights Reserved. If you would like to inquire about reprint permission, please contact us.

Marketing versus Advertising

I  am often asked the difference between the two.  Unfortunately, I always give a different answer.  It is not as simple as giving the  “definition” of the words.  But I guess I can start with that so here goes:

ad·ver·tis·ing v. tr.

1. To make public announcement of, especially to proclaim the qualities or advantages of (a product or business) so as to increase sales.

mar·ket·ing  (mär k -t ng) n.

1. The act or process of buying and selling in a market.
2. The commercial functions involved in transferring goods from producer to consumer.

Notice how advertising is pretty limited, and marketing is all encompassing.  Advertising IS marketing but Marketing is NOT just advertisting.

Marketing includes many aspects of your businesss. 

It’s the way you dress, the location of your building, the way the phone is answered, the color of your logo, the style of advertising you do, the places you advertise, the language you use, the way your voicemail sounds, the way your menu trees are set up, the way you use your website…etc.

Marketing encompasses the subtle things of your business, as well as the overtly obvious.

Marketing separates competitors into “classes” and positions them in a specific rank in the eyes of a consumer.

I have heard:

“Dell has great prices, but be careful if you need customer service, their reps do not speak English well.”

To better help you understand branding and positioning in a plain language way, I recommend the book “Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide To Modern Marketing” by Harry Beckwith. You can get it from Amazon for about 15 bucks by CLICKING HERE.

Here is a great illustration:

If you paint a sign on the side of an elephant, it's  ADVERTISING.

If you parade that elephant through town, it's  PROMOTION.  

If the elephant tramples the mayor's rose garden, it's  PUBLICITY.  

If you can get the mayor to laugh about it, it's  PUBLIC RELATIONS.  

If the mayor pays you to let him kiss the elephant, it's  MARKETING.  

I am not sure where I got this, but if you are the author, let me know, so I can give you credit!

Marketing is all encompassing and is a total solution for a small business.  Advertising is necessary for a small business, but you need much more than just advertising to grow a business.

I hope this helps you understand a little bit better what the difference between marketing and advertising is, which will also hopefully help you understand the difference between a marketing consultant (like myself) and an advertising agency.

Keep GROWING your BIZ!

Maurice Evans

Ok so everyone knows the most powerful word in marketing is FREE.

Majority of americans take the view of "if its free, its for me!"

  You might be saying “But what can I offer for free? Maurice, surely you do not expect me to give away what I SELL do you?”

Well yes and no.  Why not give something that leads to the product or service you offer.

For instance what if I offered you a FREE report on: 

10 Pitfalls to AVOID before doing Direct Mail

Would you take it?  Even if you knew I owned a Printing Company?  Of course you would.  And my offer does three things.

1)     It qualifies the prospect.  People who never have and never will do a direct mail campaign have no reason to get this free report.

2)     It sets me up as an expert.  I am giving you helpful information (for free), something most likely none of my competitors offered you.

3)     Gives me their contact info and permission to follow up with them.

In the end, people go with who they feel are most qualified as someone who “gets them”.

If in my report I understand the needs of my prospect, then there is a good chance they will feel I can help them.  Which allows them to buy from me.

No one likes to be sold – but everyone loves to buy (shop).

Can you think of a report, checklist, toolbox, or other incentive that uses your expertise and knowledge that would give people a reason to contact you and allow you to contact them in the future?

If you can’t contact me and I will give you a free 15 minute consultation to help you get the creative juices going J

On 23 days until I get to open the present you bought me! (you did buy me a gift…right?) ;)

Hope you are having a Blessed Christmas Season at home and in your biz,

Maurice Evans

Most people are billed once a month for services.  But are you really getting billed once per month?

You'd better double check.

Standard practice is a new bill is generated every 30 days (or on every “x^th” day of the month)

There is a little known “trick” that died out years ago due to customer complaints.  Be sure it is completely dead for you too.

IF YOU ARE BILLED EVERY                    YOU WILL RECEIVE

30 days                                                            12 charges per year

29 days                                                            12.6 charges per year

28 days                                                            13 charges per year

The key is the 28 day billing cycle.  Companies did this and it seemed reasonable to customers because it is close to a “month”.  After all some months have 30 and some have 31 and then one even has 28 days, right?

The explanation was, “Sir/Madam, you have a monthly service, due to our accounting systems, we just produce statements every 28 days.”

Click Here to see what GOOGLE says when you search “28 Day Billing”  the #1 result for me is an article written by an owner of an answering company ENCOURAGING people to use this as a way to increase the bottom line.  It was written for connections magazine back in 2000.  Connections magazine is a trade publication for call centers and answering services.

Sadly, this gentleman is right in my home town of Tampa Bay Florida.  Google uses geo tracking to help with results, so he may not be first on your list –so just in case, here is the link:  www.connectionsmagazine.com/articles/0/116.html

I DO NOT recommend anyone attempt such practices as it is misleading.  If you do this, ask yourself, is ONE month of extra billing worth making a customer feel taken advantage of?

If you find a vendor of yours subjecting you to this type of billing, call and protest. Insist they credit you or put you on 30 day billing – of course this only works if you purchased a service based on “monthly” usage.

Blessings to you all this CHRISTMAS season,

Maurice Evans

Part 3 in a Series

All you need to know about Guaranteed Web Site Traffic and Visitors.

Here are some important things to note when doing a pop under or redirect:

Keys To A Successful Campaign

1. QUANTITY. Because you will be hitting a lot of different people, it comes down to a numbers game. How many people will you hit that are interested in your offer at the time your ad “pops” under or redirects from the site they are browsing? If they are interested at a later date and your campaign is no longer running, then you will have in a sense helped your competition who is there later, "at the right time". So if you are buying guaranteed traffic, be sure to buy as many as you can afford to.

2. LANDING PAGE. The landing page is whatever web page that people see in the actual pop-under. This can be any page, whether it’s the home page or a custom sales page. Most often advertisers use their home page as their landing page. BIG MISTAKE!

I recommend that you have a page created just for your offer. Make sure you have a great headline that stands out and can be read and understood in about 2 seconds. It amazes me how many people use their homepage as their URL. When my company offers to create a landing page for our customers, they are always pleased with both the ad and the results. Some seeing increases of up to a 67.5% response over previously run campaigns.

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[Think about it] How come Amazon.com and Orbitz don’t just show their home page in a pop under ad?  Because it wouldn’t work!  What if a department store showed all the products inside of their store, or worse, the entire strip of stores in the mall they were located at, and put it all on a billboard? Would the average driver focused on their destination have time to understand the message the advertiser is trying to convey? The answer is: No, not many of them at all. What kind of results do you think that billboard campaign would achieve?  The answer is: poor results if any.

==============================================================

Remember, your home page is used to navigate people to all the many different parts of your site. There is not usually any one specific theme or offer but, rather multiple offers, animations, buttons, and a lot of different paths to take. This is way too much for a person to comprehend in just 2 seconds.

So since most people didn’t ask to see your ad in the first place, the subconscious response is: “Since I didn’t ask to see this site and there is no distinct offer, there might as well be no offer at all.” <Click> close [x].

[==SUCCESS TIP==] Make a great landing page that directs people where you want them to go. I assure you it will increase your response.

K.I.S.S. - Keep it short and sweet.  Don’t try to close the sale, get the sign-up, etc in the first 2 seconds. Be compelling, get the viewers attention, and draw them into your offer.  Take them through a sales “process”, not a sales “slam” - you will have much better results.

3.  APPLES-TO-APPLES. One frustration common among advertisers is the difference between the response to a pop campaign and a pay per click campaign. There are many, many reasons for this difference, but a main reason is they are not the same type of advertising. One is active, the other is passive. Remember we talked about that earlier in this article?  In general pay-per-click (Overture Precision Match www.overture.com, GOOGLE ADWORDS www.Google.com, Find What www.Findwhat.com, etc) will always yield a higher conversion rate than a pop campaign.  It is also much more expensive and difficult to track to use this form of advertising.

One key reason there is better response rate in PPC (a passive form of advertising) is these are people who took the time to type in a phrase into a search engine and click a link. They are actively looking for your service. 

Conversely, pop type ads are active forms of advertising and show up on a related site, but the viewer, who is passive about your service at the moment, was in the midst of doing something else.

This is the same reason Yellow Page inquiries are more expensive, and generally will yield higher response than say Radio Advertising. This is due to the different focus of the viewers at the time of experiencing the ad.

==============================================================

KEY POINT: DO NOT compare your pop ad results to your PPC results, they will NEVER match, nor should they. That would be an apples-to-oranges comparison.  Both methods should be implemented as a part of a well-rounded marketing plan.

            ==============================================================

4. FOLLOW-UP. This is where over 97% of web sites miss it. They make an ad, they buy the traffic, but don’t tell people what to do when they arrive.  Here are some important questions webmasters should ask about any web site being advertised:

1. What happens after a visitor clicks your ad and arrives at the site?
2. Can they navigate the site easily to find EXACTLY what they are looking for?
3. Is your site compelling?
4. Does it draw them in deeper?
5. Does the site itself SELL?
6. Are People encouraged to contact you?
7. Is it EASY to contact you?
8. Is it easy to buy?

If you are buying advertising then you want something to happen. You want people to take an action. You want visitors to sign up for your newsletter, buy your CD, order your services, etc. Whatever it may be, all you want is for them to “do the thing”. SO ENCOURAGE IT! Gather as much information from visitors as you can. Offer free reports, bonuses, and/or extra services. Give a good deal, have a sale, do what it takes to increase “sales”.

            ==============================================================

KEY POINT: Remember, simply getting “traffic” or “visitors” to a site is not enough. Despite what traffic resellers, web designers and hosts will tell you. As a business person you want CONVERSION. And that is the magic word.

            ==============================================================

[==SUCCESS TIP==] Before running an ad campaign, ask yourself, “If I were looking to buy this same product/service, what would this website have to say and do to convince ‘me’ to buy”

Any site that can answer that question, is converting lots of visitors into customers. That is exactly what your site must do.

This, my friend, is the “Hit Myth”.  Hits, traffic, visitors, whatever you want to call them, do not do much for business and the internet unless you learn to convert the traffic into sales. Getting visitors to a web site is easy. Getting those visitors to actually do something is the real challenge.  

If you are going to buy traffic, make sure you deal with a company that can offer you full service and support towards making the campaign successful.

Keep an eye out as I share some simple tips to getting a better conversion rate out of your website.

Until we speak again,

Promote, Promote, Promote!
Blessings in Biz from Maurice

 ©2005 Maurice Evans. All rights reserved. You may reproduce this article only so long as this full copyright and author information is included.  Maurice Evans is the Development Director for http://www.iGROWyourBiz.com. Since 1992 he has assisted small business owners in learning how to get more bang for their advertising buck. For your Advertising and Marketing Consulting needs contact him at 727-417-6838

Part 2 in a Series

All you need to know about Guaranteed Web Site Traffic and Visitors.

Part 1 in a Series

All you need to know about Guaranteed Web Site Traffic and Visitors.

If you have a website, and are looking for cost-effective ways to promote the site, you might wish to consider “guaranteeing” that people will come to your site.

Today there are FOUR Primary types of guaranteed traffic you can purchase:

1. Pop-Up Ads
   A small window pops “up” over the webpage you are visiting with some sort of advertisement.
2. Pop-Under Ads
   A small window pops “under” the webpage you are visiting with some sort of advertisement and only becomes visible when you close the web page