So you’ve got a great product. Let’s say it’s meditation tapes designed to decrease stress in people’s lives. The product includes a book and four audio CDs. You invest in a professional photographer to take great photos you can use throughout your website. One image is of the book, one of the four CDs and one has the whole package.

You build a website and place these photos throughout the text, advertise your product and sit back and wait for booming sales.

• But have you used images to their best advantage?
• Does just the pictures of a book and CDs make you want to buy?
• What are your photos actually saying about your product?

When using images, you need to concentrate on what people are getting. Not physically getting, but getting as an end result of your product. Your meditation product is focusing on helping to relieve stress. Did you show your buyers what that might look like? Does a tranquil scene of a private beach do more for your message than the photo of your product? What about an image of someone smiling in traffic? Here, you’ve painted a picture of someone so stress free, that even extremely annoying life occurrences can’t break them out of their peace and stress free living. Now that will sell your product ten times more than three different photos of the book and CDs.

Yes, of course you still need to show them the product and what they’re getting, but you also need to show them an image that breaks through their barriers and really speaks to them. You’re supposed to be relieving stress.

• How does that look?
• What can you show them to help start that process now?
• Are your images putting them at ease - perhaps relaxing them?
• Are there any visual reinforcements to convince your prospects to buy?

Consider how overused a photo of someone sitting at a computer is. Do you get any clear feeling when you see it? Probably not. It’s just filler to break up text, but doesn’t say anything. In fact, it could be used for everything from online colleges or internet yellow pages to actually selling computers. Sure, it could fit on any of these sites, but does it really work? Will it help reinforce your message or get through to your clients in any way?

If you’re selling a car with reinforced door panels, which scenario actually means something?
Example 1: The image of the door cover removed to show the inside reinforcement and how the panels work.
Example 2: The image of the car after an accident compared to the damage done to another car without these reinforced panels. Make it visual. Make it meaningful.

Take a look at your website. People buy based on wants. That’s a feeling. How are you making them feel? If a picture is worth a thousand words, did you just say nothing at all?

It’s important to understand that a new site takes a while to get itself established and in a decent position on the search engines, so things don’t happen overnight.

If I’m selling ‘cat clocks’ on my site, those two keywords and others related to it and my products will need to be in my page title and meta tags. For successful sites, these tags and keywords are researched using different web tools to identify what words people are searching for and how they fit into your business. More on that in another article though. If I’m selling cat clocks, I’m obviously going to talk about and describe them somewhere on my site, so they’ll be in my text as well (another important spot).

Now, let’s say Jane is searching for a cat clock for her niece’s birthday. She’ll go to Google (or her search engine of choice) and type in ‘cat clocks’. On Google, the listings that come up at the top are on a slightly beige background and these are sponsored links. It means that the companies paid to be listed there. Below that, in the white section, are the ‘organic’ results.

• ‘Organic’ results are those that come up naturally in the search engines. They are from the information the ’spiders’ gathered when visiting your site.
• ‘Paid’ results are those that people paid for. They show up at the very top and in a line along the right. These programs are usually known as Pay Per Click (PPC). The company is charged each time someone clicks on the link and visits their site. It’s search engine advertising.

There are many levels of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), but the fact is, without even the basics done, your site will not be ‘indexed’ properly. ‘Indexed’ basically means that the search engine found information about your site and stored it in the appropriate places to be found later when a user searches for certain words. Like when Jane enters ‘cat clocks’, the search engine pulls your site from its stored data.

If your site has no page title, the search engine comes up with nothing, or may even store it as ‘untitled’. What does ‘untitled’ have to do with your business? If you’ve missed the key elements the search engines use to learn about your site, you’re showing them nothing. And nothing can’t come up in a keyword search. You wouldn’t order a package and not give them your mailing address. Just as you wouldn’t build a website and not give it the necessary info for the search engines to find you.

One last thing to understand is that search engine optimization isn’t something you do once and forget. You have to stay on top of it, at least once a quarter, though monthly is better. New companies come in, the competition gets smarter, things change, the search engines change their rules and if you were once #1, you will topple from that position without maintenance. It’s the same as having a yard. You put down sod, plant flowers and trees (build a website). To keep your yard looking nice, you have to mow, trim, pull weeds, water and rake leaves (search engine optimization and site updates). You CANNOT just build a website and leave it and expect it to work for you. It’s a myth. Don’t buy into it and shortchange yourself when it comes to success.

• What do you find yourself struggling to grasp?
• Is there something you wish you had more information or clarity on?
• Does your webmaster speak to you in Greek, leaving you feeling it’s all fairly useless to try as there’s just so much to learn?
• Do you wish someone would just draw a picture and spell it out on a certain topic?
• Perhaps you wonder how the search engines find your site?

Whatever it is, don’t be shy and ask the question. It will only help you in the long run as I answer each question in terms that make sense!
Now start writing what you want to know in the reply section below!

“More than 30 billion kilowatt-hours of energy is wasted because many of us simply forget to shut down our computers when we’re not using them. If we could just improve the efficiency of how we use our PCs, the savings in energy costs would be over $3 billion dollars! The CO2 emissions from just 15 computers are equivalent in energy terms to the gas consumption used by one car.”

“Remember, if you leave the PC on with just a screen saver on the CRT when you’re not using it, it’s STILL using up to 280 watts per hour of completely wasted power. Power that pumps out 1.5lbs of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere for every KWh. If left on for 24 hours that’s 9lbs of CO2 every day and 3,285lbs per year. That’s more than 1.6 tons of CO2 thrown up into the atmosphere just to keep your one single PC working.”

-From LocalCooling.com

When using this tool, you can adjust personal settings to whatever you wish, so you have complete control. I’ve been using this tool for a little over a week and it hasn’t interfered in any way with how my computer works, but I’m saving energy! When I’m gone for a while, my screen shuts off. If I’m gone even longer, I can set it to shut down my PC after a certain amount of time. What could be better?! It’s practically invisible to me, but helping the environment. You just can’t say no to that. I’ve been very impressed and want to spread the word since I highly recommend downloading and using this tool.

Like their home page says, “Even a small step can change the course of the future.”

Below are 7 tips to evaluate your home page to generate a far greater impact and increase consumer interest and sales.

1. Is it clear at a glance what you do or offer?
   Customers aren’t going to read through all your copy or visit two pages to find out what you sell. It must be clear to them in the first three seconds. Don’t bury it or you’ve lost them.
2. Can customers easily see where they need to go or is your site all chopped up?
   If there are boxes all over your home page with information, but no clear flow of how to use them, you’re confusing people. Boxes are fine, just be sure there’s a clear line of progression. If you intend them to start at box or point 1, then move on to 2, 3 etc., there had better be a very defined way of moving visitors that way. How confused would you be if you missed step 3; add 1 cup of corn meal when making cornbread? The result would be a disaster. Same with your customers.
3. After landing on your home page, do people need to scroll right or left, up or down?
   Scrolling right or left is a major design flaw and should never, ever be necessary. Up and down is fine as there’s no way to include everything you need in just a small space. However, everything that’s important should be visible from the moment a visitor lands on your site, without scrolling anywhere. Newspapers call it “above the fold” and websites use the same concept. Make sure everything important is above the fold on your home page.
4. Is there enough white space to break items up, or is it too busy and overwhelming?
   Yes, you have a lot to say, but no breaks or white space increases the stress levels and confusion of readers. Even though it’s tempting, everything doesn’t have to be on the home page. Identify what is most important, put it on the home page, then build and link from there to other pages with more info. Don’t muddle up your main message.
5. Keep it simple. What can you eliminate?
   Don’t, don’t, don’t say something useless like “Welcome to my site.” People use the internet to find information. Wasting their time with sentences that don’t actually help or tell them anything is a sure way to turn them off. Tell them something useful. Grab their attention. We’re all conditioned to be nice, but ‘nice’ doesn’t work when people just want information and are short on time and patience. Get to the point. Ask them a question. The human mind is forced to answer and that gets them involved.
6. Is your web copy convincing or boring?
   Be honest. Read through your home page text. Are you convinced? Would you buy your product or service? What questions or fears have you perhaps not addressed? Start by identifying a problem your customers may have. Describe it. Now describe how your product or service will help. If a major overhaul is necessary, putting it off only loses you money.
7. Is your site navigation simple, effective and consistent?
   Do your customers need to search around to find your link navigation? Is it easy for them to glance and find just what they want? If they have to put real effort into getting what they need, they’ll leave. From the home page to the ninth page they visit, your visitors should see your link navigation presented clearly, in the same place on every page, with each link named appropriately with clues as to that page’s content. Every page should be accessible from every other page on your site with legible text, colors, fonts and sizes. A home page with ‘next’ is an extremely poor way to navigate. Don’t use it.

These tips should help you begin to identify problems with your home page and understand how to fix them. Ask your friend or neighbor to look at your site and have them give their honest feedback. Ask them each of the questions above. Identify what needs to be changed and call your webmaster to do it. If your home page is mediocre, 95% of your visitors won’t go any further. They’ll close out your site and visit another. Don’t let that happen. Grab them!

P.S. If you’re interested in having your web site’s home page evaluated by an expert, you may contact me.  Cost is $55 for a written report, or $40 if you wish to call me and receive the information over the phone and ask questions.

Argh. With statistics like this, it’s clear we need to step up our game. Most of us are not writers, and many business people aren’t masters in sales and marketing. Hiring a sales copywriter can be well worth the money invested as the return in products or services sold increases tenfold. But many small businesses struggle to make ends meet and hiring a pricey copywriter can be tough. In addition, how do you KNOW you’ve just hired a master that can really do the job, versus someone who’s new to the game or has only moderate success? It’s enough to make us write our own headline and just take our chances.

But, as David Ogilvy pointed out in the quote above, headlines HAVE to sell your product or you’ve just lost money. Most business owners aren’t aware of the significant impact their website headline has. We are a skimming people. We don’t have the time or interest in reading every word. If you don’t catch people right at the start with a headline that grabs their attention, they’re moving on. You have 3 seconds to make an impression.

Is your headline doing the work for you or turning people away?

Once you have a headline, it’s a good idea to try it for a month or two, then change it to something new and see if your results change. This kind of testing gives you valuable information about what does and doesn’t work. That way, you can eliminate the duds and focus on the things that actually help your business.

Honestly, I’m not a master copywriter and I bet you and your web designer aren’t either. So I use tools I know can work and have found the affordable product below an excellent help. You’re given headlines modeled after the world’s most successful and profitable ads that you can tweak to reflect your own product or business. Now, you have a money increasing headline! Since your website is your salesperson, it will do its job far better than ever before.

Advertising Headlines That Make You Rich

Not a writer? Not a master marketer? Take proven money-making headlines and customize them for your business! It couldn’t be easier to produce the catchy headlines you’ve been looking for to attract your customers and get them interested. This quick and easy ebook makes it unnecessary to write another headline ever again, yet will increase your profits between 500%-1700%!

David Garfinkel has been described as, “the world’s greatest copywriting coach.” He’s a successful results oriented copywriter and his new ebook shows you exactly how to adapt proven profit increasing headlines to your business. Can you afford to let another day go by with your boring and/or unappealing headline doing your selling for you? I didn’t think so. When you get the affordably priced ebook now, you’ll see the difference it can make!

Substitution fonts can be tricky as most sites are laid out around photos and graphics, with the size of the text being a major factor. A 12 point font in Papyrus is a much different size than 12 point Arial in both height and width. If your computer substitutes the font, it can dramatically affect the layout of the web page, making it confusing and lacking the flow it originally had. To avoid font substitution issues, webmasters use a standard group of fonts that almost every single computer has, and even then they use a list. If your computer doesn’t have the first font, it will go to the second, or the third. All these fonts are in the same category with similar looks and sizes, so these substitutions create minimal change.

Another important reason web designers use ‘regular’ or ‘boring’ fonts is for its ease of reading. More artistic and interesting fonts are harder on the eyes and more difficult to read. There’s a reason why just about every computer comes installed with the primary fonts of Times New Roman, Arial, Verdana, Helvetica and very often, Georgia. They’re basic, easily legible and the industry standard.

So sure, you can put a neat looking font on your site, but, it won’t show up that way on everyone’s computer and layout issues will arise. If you have a tagline or heading you really want to be special and stand out, then it can be made into an image. Your designer will use PhotoShop or something similar to create the text in the font you like, then save it as an image and place it on your website. This way, no matter what fonts are installed on a viewer’s computer, they still see it exactly the way you want since it’s an image that has been uploaded to the server. You don’t want to do this too many times however, as images take longer to load than text and will increase your site’s load times. In addition, if the image file somehow gets corrupted and all your text is in that image, the viewers will see nothing but a box with an ‘x’ in it (if you’re using Internet Explorer).

Yes, most fonts are basic and ‘boring’, but boring can be good when it creates a standardization and lends legibility to your text. It is, after all, the main force behind your sales message!

Each search engine, like Google, Yahoo, Ask, etc. has different rules as to what is most important to them and how they come up with their search results. As a quick example, for some search engines, page titles count for more than anything else. Unfortunately, a trick that works great on one search engine may get you into trouble on another. As a result, since Google is the most used search engine, webmasters usually optimize sites for Google. Since you can’t optimize for every search engine out there with all their conflicting rules, it makes sense to do so for the one with the lion’s share of the market.

Let’s say you sell wood furniture in Anchorage, Alaska and there are two other competitors with websites. Neither of these other two sites have had any optimization done, but your website has. When someone goes to search for wood furniture in Anchorage, your website will come up at the top of the search engine, while your competitors will be below you or on the following pages. In the world of searches, if your site isn’t listed on the first page, you’ll get very little business from a search. If people find what they need on page one, they won’t keep looking through other pages. Their needs have been met and they have no time or interest in doing more searching. This is where the battle for top search engine ranking comes in. Every company wants to be in the top five to get the client.

Meta tags are keywords and key phrases entered into the HTML code of your website. This is one of the first and most important steps in optimizing your site. Users can’t see this code, but search engines read it, understand what your site is about, then display your site when a search for these keywords is done. An example of meta tags in your website’s code is listed below. These are some of the keywords for CNN.

<meta name=”Keywords” content=”CNN, CNN news, CNN.com, news, news online, breaking news, U.S. news, world news, weather, business, sports”>

Having the proper meta tags and key phrases are extremely important in reaching your target audience and a lot of time can be invested in researching what keywords are being searched by users. If your website is about wood furniture, you’ll obviously want those words listed in the meta tags. However, you may find that there are 500 other companies selling the same thing and your chances of getting on the first page of someone’s search are extremely low. In a case like this, it’s good to find your niche. Some research may show you that people are searching for walnut dressers and you happen to sell several. You can optimize your site using those keywords and work on getting to the top of that search result. By promoting your walnut dressers, you get people in and sell those, while also showing them the large inventory of other furniture you have as well. Not everyone can be at the top, so it’s important to find your niche. What makes you special and can be promoted in a way to bring people in where there isn’t so much competition? Think about it.

In addition to having keywords and phrases as meta tags, keywords should also be listed throughout the text on your site. This helps reinforce your message and gives the search engine even more clues about your content. When describing your product, instead of saying “our dressers…”, you’ll want to say “our walnut dressers…”, because that’s what you’re promoting.

There are many, many aspects of search engine optimization, with page titles and meta tags being at the top of the list in importance. There are entire firms and specialists dedicated solely to optimizing sites for search engines. Rules change frequently and it’s a bit like playing a game. If you try something and don’t get the results you’d hoped for, do some tweaking or try something else. Nothing about the internet is written in stone and it can all easily be changed.

While basic SEO usually falls under the duties of a webmaster initially setting up your site, they likely won’t keep tracking its success unless you’ve specified you want it done. SEO can be expensive and many small business owners don’t want to pay for it. To cut down on costs, stay involved yourself. Understand the basics, have a goal, track your results and ask your webmaster to make changes as needed. This also gives you a good idea of what’s going on with your site and knowledge is power. Use it to find success!

Oh, the spamming business has gotten smart and for years now, they’ve sent ’spam bots’ out over the internet to search web pages for email addresses. Because it’s a program, actual people don’t have to visit each of the millions of sites and gather emails, it’s all done automatically. This increases the chances that if your email is listed on your site, it will be found. Once found, your address is given to numerous different spamming companies or anyone willing to buy a list of emails from them. Now, you’ll be getting offers for Viagra, overseas partnerships, prescription drugs for cheap and a million other ‘opportunities’ or even complete nonsense emails. Once found, the only way to eliminate all the spam is to change your email address. This is tough to do as it’s the way people contact you. You wouldn’t change your business phone number one day and cutting off email is a major means of communication. If people can’t reach you, they can’t do business with you.

I’m sure you’ve seen more and more contact forms on websites and perhaps wondered why. The reason for this is that it hides your email address. People can still contact you and you’ll receive a message in your inbox, but the script that processes this action isn’t viewable by the spam bots and cannot be harvested, thus it’s safe. You can reply directly to the individual that emailed you and communicate that way.

Work-arounds like putting ‘click here‘ instead of showing your actual email address (name@mysite.com) make no difference. These bots are searching the code that your site is built from and behind the ‘click here’ words is code with your email. Many people try to fool the spam bots by writing something like ‘joe at my site dot com’. Unfortunately, as smart as we think we are, the spammers are always one step ahead of us. Think of all the ways you could disguise your email. Now, think of all the spammers out there who have already thought of this and found a way around it. It’s their job. They lie awake at night just coming up with new ways to torture us.

Aside from contact forms, some people put their email into an image (example on the left). This requires PhotoShop or something similar to create and is placed onto your website like a photo. Because there is no HTML code with your email address required to put this image up, your email is safe. However, you cannot add the option of people clicking on the image and an email box opening as this is adding your address into the code where it can be found. Additionally, any spammer visiting your site personally can add your address to their list, although the risk of this currently isn’t too high.

There are some businesses that want their email listed on their site and easily accessible or they may risk losing a sale. Real estate agents are often on this list. For many of them, it’s easier to deal with the spam than to lose a customer, so they just take the risks and deal with the consequences.

There is no right or wrong way to have people contact you, it’s simply a matter of what you’re willing to deal with. If you do use a contact form, keep it very simple with only what’s necessary. Making people fill in numerous blanks or check lots of boxes can scare them away. You can get the additional info you need after the first contact has been made.

Personally, I don’t want my email address on the web for any reason and I use a contact form. It’s also what I recommend to all my clients. So, if you’re building a site and thinking of listing your email, now you know the risks and can decide if it’s really something you want to do or not. If your email is already on your site, you may choose to remove it and offer another means of contact instead.