Increasing Profits by using Marketing Tactics

Giving Your Visitors What They Want

Too many times a web master will create a site that has meaningless information about their business. The problem is, web traffic cares less about your business and more about the what they want. Don’t appeal to their interests, and you’ve lost them.

So how do you appeal to these visitors?  The easy answer, “Give them what they want.” The more important question you should ask is, “What do my visitors want?” To answer this question, you need to research three imperatives

1. Who are your visitors?
2. What attracted them to your site originally?
3. What do they want when they come to your site? Once you know who your visitors are, what attracted them and what they are interested in, it becomes very simple to attract and retain them.

The next question, “How do I find this out about my visitors?” There are plenty of tools you can use to do this. First, ask them. Open up a dialogue with your visitor and find out more about them point blank.  A second way way to learn more about your customers is by using traffic analysis software such as Google Analytics. Not only will this software track the number of customers and the number of pages accessed, but it will also show pinpoint locations where your visitors reside, how long visitors spend on your site, how often they return to your site, as well as the amount of visitors who come to your page and immediately exit it.  With this valuable information it becomes much easier to provide unique and quality content that your customers will love.

Bring in More Traffic

Once you have created a reason for your visitors to stay on your site you need to learn how to attract more visitors to your unique content.  You have many options to build a constant flow of traffic to your site. We discuss two of the most important tactics to build traffic in this section.

If you want immediate traffic now, Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is the way to go. I offer a fair warning though, carelessness and lack of expertise can lead to a waste of your money.  If you are new to PPC advertising we recommended to use a budget of $5 or less a day and use one of the most popular PPC systems: Google Adwords. One great benefit of using Google Adwords is that it connects directly to Google Analytics for extra detailed reporting. If done right, you’ll find PPC advertising as a very valuable tool in bringing in new sales every month.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is another must in traffic building for those who are serious about maximizing their profits. SEO is a way in which you can have your website ranked higher within search engines, thus creating more traffic to your website. SEO is done in two parts: First, your website must be search engine friendly. Second, there must be other websites linking to your site.

Gear your website to make money

While you want to provide your web traffic with the content that they want, you also need to make it easy for them to make you more money. Does your website make it difficult for your visitors to sign up for a membership or make a purchase? Why? Make it easy for them, and your visitors will respond appropriately.

You can make it difficult for your visitors to make you money in many ways. Give them too many options to nonprofitable actions, making your navigation confusing and cluttering your web pages with random text and graphics.  Get your customers attention to a profitable action by using varying degrees of contrast, color and font choice.  When in doubt use different approaches on different pages and measure the results.

Don’t stop there, there are other ways to increase your online sales.  From branding, and benefit centered marketing to cross promotions and improving “Call to Action” you will see a major bump in website revenues.

Hire an Expert

Like trying to do your own plumbing, Trying to do web design and marketing by yourself can lead to more bad than good.  Sure, if your dedicated and take time to get the proper experience you can do fine.  But if your serious about turning a higher profit for your website right now, you’ll be better off hiring a professional.

Web Marketing Association Announces WebAwards

The Web Marketing Association released the results of the 2008 WebAwards, honoring the best websites in 96 categories ranging from advertising, computers, and consulting, to media, manufacturing, and television. Trailer Park won the “Pick of the Show” award for their website for the Harry Potter movie, built in Adobe Flash, with music, animation, and a billboard like quality that replicates the atmosphere of the film. The Risdall Advertising Agency won the “Top Agency” award, bringing home 29 WebAwards, the most ever garnered in a single year by a design firm. To take a look at these two top sites, visit:

Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix:
http://web.trailerpark.com/capabilities/sites/HarryPotter/

The Risdall Advertising Agency:
http://www.risdall.com/

To review some of the other sites that won WebAwards:

Sharpe Partners won the award for “Best Advertising Agency” website for their work on the Burns Group NYC domain. Another Flash site with animated navigation, background effects, and slick page transitions, it can be viewed online here:
http://www.burnsgroupnyc.com/

The “Best Application Service Provider” website award went to Vertical Response, for a simple homepage design with three screenshots highlighted in a compact layout.
https://app.verticalresponse.com/app/login

The “Best Architecture” website award went to Michelle Kaufmann’s blog, built on WordPress and using widgets as well as YouTube video thumbnails.
http://blog.michellekaufmann.com/

The “Best Arts” website went to Situation Marketing for their “Connect: The Dot Project” concept with a bold green on green design and a collaborative, multi-media pointillist painting that recreates Georges Seurat’s “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.”
http://www.sundaydots.com/

The “Best Blog” website award was given to Web Associates for Site LA, an interesting blog about the exhibitions, events, and activities occurring in the life of a group of six women living in a loft space in Los Angeles.
http://sitela.org/

The “Best Computer Software” website award went to the FINE Design Group for their work on Norton Today, a Symantec sub portal with blogs, development information, and news.
http://nortontoday.symantec.com/

The “Best Design” website award was garnered by Azavar Technologies Corporation for their work on the Justyna Collections Catalog, a Flash site selling designer faucets for kitchens and bathrooms.
http://www.justynacollections.com/

The “Best Education” website award was won by Tribal DDB Worldwide for “Start a Chain Reaction,” a site designed for Phillips to educate on simple techniques people can do to save electricity and improve the environment.
http://66.245.160.26/philips/asimpleswitch/

Microsoft won “Best Employment” website for their Diversity portal designed by Worktank, a great site that takes the popular Polaroid and post-up note design theme to a new level.
http://www.youatmicrosoft.com/

The “Best Games” website award went to 7Seas Technologies Limited for Online Real Games, a kid’s site with Flash games set in various categories.
http://www.onlinerealgames.com/

One EMC won the “Best Internet Services” website award for their portal providing integrated hardware, software, & IT services worldwide.
http://www.emc.com/

The “Best Internet Service Provider” website award went to PiXEL iNK MEDiA Pty Ltd. For SSI Micro, a Drupal site with a nice gradient and tabbed, drop-down menu design.
http://www.ssimicro.com/

Newseum won the “Best Media” website award for their homepage, dedicated to highlighting their collection in Washington D.C. of great moments in journalism.
http://www.newseum.org/

NBC News took the top award for “Best News” website for their iCue site, a multimedia portal for learning about current events and history, with a great design and video content.
http://www.icue.com/

The “Best TV” website award went to Psych, from the USA Network, and a portal all about the comedy series, its characters, and community.
http://www.usanetwork.com/series/psych/

For the full list of winners and more information, visit the Web Marketing Association’s WebAward listings at:
http://www.webaward.org/

Vector Magic - Online Conversion of Bitmaps to Vector Images

If you are looking for a quick and easy way to add vector images to your website or blog, it is recommended to take a look at vectormagic.com. The site offers auto tracing capabilities that turn bitmap images into vector based drawings. The interface is extremely simple to use, consisting of just a few configuration steps after uploading an image, but the results are professional and add a great effect to your pages. Vector Magic can also be used when you want to convert a photograph into an avatar image. The site processes graphics for logos with two configuration options, and includes a custom setting specially designed for image conversion. After looking around the web for similar services and trying out a number of sites and applications, Vector Magic provided exactly what I wanted for this graphic design task, and provided high quality .png output as a free download.

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