Decrease Your Bounce Rate and Increase Your Sales

Original Article from IntelliSites, the smart choice for web design (and SEO!)
It's safe to say that traffic to your website is a good thing.  Any visitors to your web page are like people walking into your store. It's a good sign.

But what we really like to see are visitors who kick off their shoes and stay awhile.  After all, those are the visitors who are likely to go from browsing to buying.

A website's "bounce rate" helps to determine whether visitors to the site tend to poke around or leave the site right away.  It's figured out by making a little fraction with the number of visitors who don't click past the first page of a site divided by the total number of visitors to the site.  Change that fraction to a percent, and you've got bounce rate.

For example, if your site has 100 visitors and 50 left after seeing your homepage, you have a 50% bounce rate.  If that really was your bounce rate, by the way, would indicate that you have some work to do on your homepage.  Ideally, you are looking for a bounce rate of around 35-40%. Because no matter what you do, there are a lot of tire-kickers in the world.

How Low Can Your Bounce Rate Go?

What can you do to help your bounce rate shrink?  It's all about the awesomeness level of your homepage.  The more that your homepage pulls people in, the lower your bounce rate will go.  And the more sales you will ultimately make.

You can help that bounce rate shape up by making some changes to your home page, like...

• Adding Call to Action Buttons.  Get your visitors hooked right away by incorporating a tempting button that's just begging to be clicked.
• Making Your Copy Convincing. The text on your homepage has to sell.  Make sure it makes your visitors thirsty for more.
• Offering Free Stuff.  It never hurts to offer a little incentive.  If you want people to dig deeper into the site, let them know that there is a treasure in there somewhere.  (You don't have to give away the store for this to work.  We're talking about a coupon.  A free sample.  Maybe free shipping.  It doesn't have to be a million dollar prize to catch someone's attention.)
• Keeping Things Interesting With a Blog. Blogs are really getting to be a big thing.  Make sure to include a prominently displayed link to yours on your home page.  You'll be surprised how many people you can hook in just by promising the opportunity to read your thoughts.

All right, that's it for now -- time to bounce.  (Sorry.  Couldn't resist.)

Do Search Engines Hate Your Site?

Original Article from IntelliSites, the smart choice for web design (and SEO!)
Sometimes certain websites rub search engines the wrong way.  But keeping search engines happy with your website is enormously important if you want website traffic.

So...what kinds of things tick search engines off?

1. Site Structure. I talked a little bit about tables vs. DIV/CSS in a previous entry, but to reiterate, search engines aren't big fans of websites constructed in table format.  If your website is made using tables, it's probably time to rebuild.

2. Buckshot style keyword selection. In an attempt to drive traffic to their sites, some people select tons of semi-relevant keywords.  This might have helped their search engine rankings 5-7 years ago, but search engines have become wise to this overkill technique, and now having 67 keywords can actually make your search engine rankings lower.

3. Irrelevant tags. Another way some people try to slyly increase their search engine rankings is by including slightly relevant or completely irrelevant image (or other) tags.  Again, this sneaky idea might have helped them out back in the day, but in 2010, search engines will put the hurt on you for that trick.

4. Irrelevant content. From an SEO standpoint, the content of your site has to be relevant to the back end content of your site.  Among other things, making sure your relevant keywords are present in the copy is big.

5. No updates. Search engines like dynamic websites that change and grow.  If you are neglecting your site, so will Google.  Keep things interesting on your website, and the search engines will appreciate your efforts.

Not sure if your website is a culprit of a search engine faux pas?  We'll gladly check it out, and, if needed, work to patch up the relationship between the search engines and your site so you can all be friends.  That's what we do - making peace on the web, one website at a time.

E-Marketing Campaigns That Get Results, Part 1

Original Article from IntelliSites, the smart choice for web design (and SEO!)
I'm an example kind of person.  Back in high school, my math teachers could talk about polynomials and imaginary numbers all day, but I would stare at them blankly until I snuck a peek at sample problems #1 and #2 in the book.  Walking through these made everything click.

Let's look at an example of the kinds of things we've been chatting about on this blog: how a company can use web technology to set up an e-marketing campaign, start to finish.

Let's talk about Bababerino Diapers. A local (fictional) business that sells (surprise!) diapers.  The marketing folks at Bababerino have already encouraged their customers to register an e-mail address on Bababerino.com in exchange for some printable coupons. After a year of collecting, the company has collected e-mail addresses for 3,000 baby mamas and daddies.

The sales crew at Bababerino was preparing for their big holiday sales push - trying to sell 300 "Mucho Packs" of diapers online.  They set a goal of one week to complete the push, and offered the Mucho Packs at a 30% discount.

To help guarantee their success, they leveraged their database of customer emails.

They sent an e-mail to their 3000 customer mailing list.  The text of the e-mail read, "We want to let our best customers in on a little secret.  Our quality diapers are online at an unbelievably low price!  Click below to get a coupon code that will entitle you to 30% off our mucho pack.  That's a savings of almost $20!  But you have to act fast - this sale only lasts until Friday."  Under the text was a huge, brightly-colored button that read, "Click now for your money-saving coupon code!"

The Bababerino team set up a landing page where e-mail recipients would arrive when they clicked on the big tempting button.  On the landing page visitors found the code "DIAPERS4XMAS" positioned right next to a big flashy button that said "Get My Discount Now!" When clicked, visitors were directed to an online catalog where they could add as many Mucho Packs to their cart as they wanted.  To stress the limited time frame for the promotion, the Bababerino people added a clock to the page, counting down the seconds until the end of the sale.

Using persuasive language on an e-mail and a subsequent landing page, Bababerino made a pretty solid case for why their customers should purchase their mucho packs right away.  And whats more - they made it extremely easy for their customers to buy from them. Even if only one customer in ten was enticed enough to order, Bababerino would easily reach their goal.  And that means happy Bababerino employees, hundreds of satisfied customers, and just as many dry baby bums.