Tag: website

    Word of Mouth Marketing is easy and effective way to promote your business

    How Word-of-Mouth Marketing Makes You the Go-To Expert in Your Market 

    Do you want to become the go-to source of expertise for your audience in your niche? There are many marketing strategies you can employ to do this, but the most effective and efficient is word-of-mouth marketing.

    Word-of-mouth marketing (WOMM) is, at its most basic definition, free advertising that happens when a customer having a great experience with your company. The happy customer is so delighted, they can’t help singing your praises to anyone who will listen.

    lt is that new people hear about how amazing you or your company are from a trusted friend, not an advertisement. This subset of social proof is a highly powerful way to make sales. You can use word-of-mouth marketing to grow your customer base, make sales, and boost your business’s brand.

    If you can harness the power of WOMM, you can get more out of your marketing efforts and grow your reputation using the oldest method of advertising known to mankind.

    How Word-of-Mouth Marketing Works

    The reason WOMM is so powerful is that people have gotten used to advertising hype. They’re savvier than ever before and they know online marketing when they see it. As a result, they’re less likely to listen when they see your promotional content online.

    But with word of mouth, the message comes from friends who are giving an honest recommendation. According to marketing research, people are much more likely to make purchase decisions based on what their friends say, rather than advertisements.

    When was the last time you tried something because of a friend told you about it? If you think back on your own experiences, it’s easy to see how word-of-mouth marketing works.

    Organic vs. Accelerated Word of Mouth

    Word-of-mouth marketing is nothing new at all. People have been spreading information about products and services for as long as language has existed. One person tells two friends, they each in turn tell two more, and so on. It’s the pre-internet version of viral marketing.

    This is also called “organic” WOMM. It’s organic because it happens naturally, with no action taken on your part. But you don’t have to rely on the hope that people will talk about you. Instead, you can make it happen by using “accelerated” word-of-mouth marketing. This is when you launch a campaign and employ tactics specifically designed to encourage word of mouth.

    The idea behind accelerated WOMM is to create a buzz that gets people talking. Businesses create products and content with shareability in mind. They leverage influencers and brand advocates to help spread the word and may even offer incentives to their audience members for telling others.

    There are strategies you can use that are guaranteed to get people talking and give them the nudge necessary to spread the word. All it takes is a little planning and effort.

    Word-of-Mouth Marketing Examples

    There are many ways businesses are using WOMM to spread awareness.

    In our business with my husband, we don’t need to advertise or market because we get word of mouth marketing working for us for the last 15 years. Once you get good recommendations from your clients, the word of mouth spreads and grows!

    One example would be to run a contest or challenge where customers make videos highlighting original, unusual, or funny uses of your products. You choose the best ones and give them awards, sharing all the submissions with your audience.

    Another example would be a coffee company that creates content teaching its audience about its ethically sourced beans and how it supports local communities and causes. The company’s customers support the business not only for the coffee, but also for the core values they share. This gets people talking and telling others about the coffee that everyone should be drinking.

    Another simple WOMM idea is to gather reviews and comments from your customers and post them on your website.

    Best Practices for Harnessing the Power of Word-of-Mouth Marketing

    Offer Expert Advice and Information. Create and share content that helps your audience solve problems they’re facing. Offer this help free with no strings attached. If your content is unique and offers value, people will be much more likely to tell their friends about it.

    Excellent Products and Services. Offer excellent products and services with stellar customer service. If you offer the highest quality possible, people will tell others, especially if they get results from using them.

    Learn How to Build Buzz. Since WOMM works best when people are talking, take the proactive steps to get them talking. Make everything shareable. Create events that will get talked about. Take advantage of current and upcoming trends.

    Do One Thing Really Well. Don’t try to be all things to all people. Focus on one thing and do it really well. If you can do one thing better than anyone else, you’ll get to be known for that specialty. You’ll gain an edge over the competition and word will spread.

    Exceed Expectations and Wow People. Go above and beyond what people expect of you. Give them unexpected surprises that will create a wow moment. These experiences are memorable and build buzz. The easiest way to wow people is to make promises and overdeliver on them.

    Tell a Good Story. Learn to tell stories well. If you share stories that connect with your audience through the core values you share, this will build a great relationship. People will buy from you because of your story, and then they’ll spread the word.

    Create an Experience. Don’t just create a product or service. Create an experience. Think about the journey your customer takes from initial contact to becoming a repeat purchaser and brand advocate. Make each step as engaging, helpful, personal, and enjoyable for your customer as possible. Seek ways to add value at every step along the way.

    Stay in Touch with Your Audience. Good communication with your customers is the key to making WOMM work. You need to know what problems they face and why they buy from you. You should have a plan for consistently gathering both positive and negative feedback that you can take action on, continually creating an even better experience.

    Ready to Make Word-of-Mouth Marketing Work for You?

    Ready to get started? The first step is to identify some strategies you can use to get people talking about you. If you know your audience well, you can easily find some ways to build buzz over your products and services. Go ahead and pick from some of the ideas and examples in this article to start with. Then let your own creativity kick in.

    Implement and refine, and soon you’ll know exactly what you need to do to get your customers talking about you and telling others.

    For more ideas and creating a word of mouth marketing strategy , you can check out the word of mouth marketing course in The Business of At Home Business Membership.

    Categories: Run a Home Business Tags: Tags: , ,

    Recruiting New Subscribers Based on Your Reputation to Serve

    Once you start a list, it will be your job to grow the number of subscribers that you have over time. While it may seem meager at first, with subscribers only trickling in, it will pick up steam when you put more effort into it.

    Word-of-mouth is a powerful indicator of who to follow and who is trustworthy in any niche online.

    When you can generate positive word-of-mouth and recommendations as a niche leader, you will see your subscriber numbers soar.

    You do this by maintaining your ethics and showcasing a true desire to step up and help people. There are many of your competitors who are only in it for the money, and when you can set yourself apart from them as someone who truly cares, you will find that people naturally flock to you.

    You want to be open and honest about your own journey in the niche. Whether it’s online success or weight loss, telling the story of how you overcame obstacles and succeeded will resonate with your readers. They will want to share your stories with the people they care about – such as friends and family members.

    Some people try to position themselves as guru marketers who have never made a mistake. And while these individuals do develop a following of like-minded people, it’s more ethical and honest to be transparent about your journey.

    If you want to develop a reputation as someone who consistently shows up to serve your audience, then you’ll want to invite people to contact you. You can have a contact form or give out your direct email address.

    Make sure you respond to emails and contact in a timely fashion. If your audience grows to a level where you can’t handle all of the communication on your own, then you might want to host a webinar where your people can frequently interact with you or hire a virtual assistant to help you maintain communication flawlessly.

    While many marketers focus on their responsibility to provide good information to their audience, keep in mind that it’s also your responsibility to protect your followers from bad information.

    When you turn down opportunities to make fast cash by only recommending quality products as opposed to anything and everything, word will spread of your morals and subscriber numbers will increase.

    Make sure you’re strategic about growing your subscriber base. Whether you participate in giveaway events, create valuable content to be shared by others, or simply develop friendships with competitors who will sing your praises, you can’t rest on your laurels and expect people to flock to you for no reason.

     

    There is free training on setting up AWEBER and MAILCHIMP at HOME BUSINESS STARTUP TOOLKIT.

    If you want help with setting up an email subscriber service you can check out the HOME BUSINESS STARTUP TOOLKIT set of FREE Trainings here 

    Categories: blogging, Grow a Home Business Tags: Tags: , , , ,

    Writing Content for your Business

    The content of your site tells a whole lot about your website. They will basically describe what your site is about and also tell people what your site has to offer. Articles and website content makes a whole lot of difference in your site because they can catch the attention of your website visitors and keep them in there.

    With good website content you get the benefit of clearly depicting what it is you want to share with people. Also, good content and articles can lead people to your site. With more traffic, you get to earn more from your site making it profitable. A sites success, be it for profit or not, is the number of the flow of traffic in your site.

    SEO Enhanced Website

    So how does good content and great articles get you traffic? Well, many search engines rely on the keyword and keyword phrases of a site to put it in their results list. If your content contains a good number of keywords and keywords phrases, it may be chosen to be a part of the top listed sites in the search result pages.

    But before you think of just plastering your site with all the keywords and keyword phrases it could hold, search engines also filter out that abuse. You must have good well written articles that incorporate the keywords and keyword phrases properly in their content and articles.

    There are many of those who cannot afford the time to write their own website contents and articles. While writing content and articles specifically designed for the internet may take some getting used to and some researching and learning, there are many writers that can be found all over the world who could do it for you.

    Outsourcing your Web Content

    Many of us do not have the time to learn web content writing and article writing designed for the internet. There are writers who have great experience in doing this and charge only a minimal fee for such work. Writers like this can be regarded as experts in this style of writing and can greatly help your website to get that coveted spot in the search engine rankings.

    Other than getting your site in the web results page of search engines, they can also provide your site with meaningful articles and content that can impress your website visitors and entice others to view your site. Every website could use the extra traffic website visitors could invite.

    Outsourcing your Writing in Your Business

    Then there are those who need papers to be done either for their school or office work. Top writers around the world are very knowledgeable and do extreme researching to get a job done right. They are also very adept in many writing styles that are needed to best suit the client’s need.

    Many writers around the world charge a minimal fee depending on the type of writing job needed and the number of words needed in the content. Usually, a two hundred fifty worded article would cost from 4 to 8 dollars depending on the writers experience and ability. This is a small price to pay for having a content rich site or for a well researched and written paper.

    Finding a Good Writer

    There are also many sites that can offer you these services with their team of well trained and experienced writers. They offer many writing services to cover any writing needs. A writer can be based anywhere in the world and are guaranteed to offer good contents and articles. Each one are doubly checked, edited and proofread so that you would get your money’s worth.

    Finding a good writer or a site that offers these kinds of services is simply done by searching for them in search engines. Type down your keyword or keyword phrase (e.g. Content Writers, Article Writers) and you will see a long list of sites that offer these services.

    The services site include:

    Upwork.com

    Freelancer.com 

    The top sites would probably be the best since they have done a good job of keeping their content at a high quality to get them high rankings. But you may also want to shop around and read some of their sample work to get an idea of how much it will cost you.

    Writing content is a skill that can reflect well your business or not reflect well if the content is less than grammatically correct or it is not easy to read. So, make sure you get samples of someone’s work from them before you hire them to write your content. They should be able to give you a $ per page or $ per 1000 words rate so you can budget your money for outsourcing some writing.

    Categories: Content, Grow a Home Business, Outsourcing, SEO, Website Tags: Tags: , , , , , , ,

    Your Website Is Your Online Hub

    I’d like to talk about running your own business and some of the systems that you need to put in in order to have a home business whether it’s offline or on. I wanted to emphasize the importance of having a Web site for your business. So today I wanted to talk about your ONLINE HUB.

    I like to call it the ONLINE HUB which is your Web site on the Internet. It will have its own unique address. You will have it on your business cards for people to go to whether you’re offline or online.  Visitors can click on and go to your business there and your web site will be important in your business for running it. It will be the place where you can actually talk to them about your business by talking about your product or service on your blog. And if you don’t know what a blog is we’ll be talking about that later. And then also it will be the place where you can get them to subscribe. Any of your visitors who come to your Web site, they will be interested in your business and maybe they want to get a newsletter from you. You should have a place called a lead page where they can sign up for either your newsletter or your emails that you send out weekly or monthly depending on your business As well your web site can be the online hub for where you can sell to them if you wish.

    So ,for example, you can have a page on your Web site which talks about your product or your service and it gives all these details about it even if they are interested in learning more than they can read about it.

    Obviously you could put your phone number on the page or you could also give them a button to click and sign up by e-mail to contact you with information about your product or service. You can even have a sales page which you can link up to a payment button service that will actually sell to any visitors that come to your business website.

    So, the ONLINE HUB  is what I like to call the and that is your Web site has a unique location on the internet. Whether you’re an off line or an online business, you should have a Web site that is easy to navigate easy to read and simple enough that they can figure out where to go when they have a question. Also, have a place where they can search and find information if they need to have your phone number, your contact e-mail and you have a place where they can sign up for their e-mail newsletter if they wish. It could be right on your front page of your website or it could be on a separate page that you will send them to if they click on or gotten that kind of thing.

    So your ONLINE HUB is your Web site. It’s important to have in your running of your business because it can be the place that you send visitors whether it’s from a business card or from on the Internet. You send them through social media to check out your product or service on your website. It is an important part of your business and it should be running efficiently quickly and be an easy place for them to contact you for them to buy. Of course, also, to get on a list to learn more about your business and get information from you.

    So if you haven’t thought of- your offline business should have a Web site and it should be running efficiently.

    So we’ll be talking a bit more about your Web site in the next episode in some of the ways that you can make it easier for them to find you and to connect to you and to buy from you.

    Get your Web site up!

     It’s a great place now for people to check you out.

    Mobile Responsive

    A lot of people now are using their mobile phone to search for products or services. So it’s time to get your web site to be mobile responsive. You know where to find out if your Web site is mobile or responsive. All you have to do is get a phone out and find the browser that you’re going to use and use it to search for your search for your own business if you haven’t done that yet. See how it looks on mobile in order to be a mobile responsive web site.

    For mobile responsive , the look of your web site changes so that it has a navigation which is easy to use with buttons to push and to go and to sign up etc.. It actually looks a bit different from your actual Web site on the desktop.

    For a non-mobile responsive website on your phone will have all the text, all the buttons, all the pages, all menus small and very hard to access. So you need to be able to get a mobile responsive web site. At some point, we’ll be talking about how you should make sure you have the priority of having a mobile responsive web site.

    But for now, let’s just go next week have a look at some of the things you should have on your Web site that are important to your visitors, your leads and who will become your customers.

    Yes, you better get your website up there on the internet even if you are an offline business!

    Join “The Business of At Home Business” to learn more!

     

    Categories: Run a Home Business, Website Tags: Tags: , , ,

    3 Reasons to Create a Website for your Business

    No matter what type of work you choose for working from home, whether you’re employed, own a business, or work as a freelancer, having a website will:

    1. make you come across as more professional,
    2. help to build your brand, and
    3. bring in more work.

    Potential customers and employers will usually do their research before buying from you or hiring you.

    Google and Facebook will usually be the first place they look.

    If you Google your full name in quotes, what shows up in the search engine?

    Is it good, is it bad, are the results about you, or someone else with the same name?

    Creating a website with your name as the web address will put the real information about you at the top of the search results.

    Getting started

    Are you a creative person? Are you willing to put in the time to create a basic website and write some content to introduce yourself, your skills and your services? If so, then the quickest route would be just to create a website yourself. It takes hardly any time to register a domain name, and there are always excellent deals out there offering a domain name and hosting at a special price. Usually, the domain name will be free, and the hosting will cost a small fee.

    However, if you hate doing this kind of thing, are not a technical person, and you know you’re never going to get around to doing it, then it’s probably better to pay a professional web design agency to create the website for you.

    The price of web design can vary to different extremes. If you wanted something quickly, you could buy a Fiverr.com gig, and someone will upload a site within an hour, yet on the other end of the scale, a fully-fledged, professionally designed full website could cost hundreds of dollars.

    How to create your website

    First of all, we need to figure out exactly what you’re going to use your website for. If it is to be a simple “online business card” style site, with only the bare minimal information and contact info, then it would be helpful to use a website builder like Mobirise.com, Weebly.com, and Wix.com. These offer a very easy design environment, enabling you to see and edit your website in real time and edit each page like a Word document.

    If however, you are looking for something more complex, with the ability to add a myriad of different plug-ins which enable virtually anything you can think of, then WordPress is the way to go. WordPress is a free, very easy to install, super easy to use content management system (CMS) and website creator.

    WordPress is used to create nearly 30% of websites worldwide. Notable websites using WordPress includes New York Times (NYTimes.com), National Geographic (NationalGeographic.com) and People Magazine (People.com).

    Another benefit is the fact that most hosting companies will provide the resources for a one click install of WordPress. By just logging in to cPanel and clicking on the installer icon you can have a WordPress installation within minutes.

    Once installed, you can choose a WordPress theme of your choice, related to your business. There are tens of thousands of free WordPress themes out there, and some pretty amazing paid versions as well. It’s a simple matter of installing the one you choose, and your website will be transformed. From there, it is just down to you to write the relevant content and create the pages you desire from the WordPress login.

    Creating a website for your name or your business will be very beneficial.

    1. It lends you instant authority,
    2. shows you are a serious business person and
    3. inspires trust.
    Categories: Start a Home Business Tags: Tags: , , , , ,

    Eight Website Builders That Work and That Anyone Can Use

    Building a website is one of the most important marketing materials you’ll ever create for your business. You can use the website to demonstrate your skills, announce your sales, and communicate with and educate your audience. Today, a website is an essential element in getting the word out about a business. Here are eight website builders that work and that anyone can use.

    1. WAHMDrive.com – This website builder is simple to use for an e-commerce site or a regular website. It has many wonderful features, from a catalog to a shopping cart. There are limitations to it but if you’re just starting out and need a site up fast without hiring someone, this builder really does work.

    2. Wix.com – Drag and drop functionality allows you to build powerful, beautiful, and attractive websites easily. This builder is very good for anyone who wants to have a lot of images to show on their website, such as photographers. They are displayed beautifully and aren’t hard to build either.

    3. Weebly.com – This is actually a WordPress-based builder using drag and drop functionality. It looks great and works great too. That’s why so many people choose to use it. Don’t use the free version, though; always upgrade to the paid version for the best looking websites as well as the most attractive websites to your audience.

    4. Squarespace.com – This visually attractive, mobile responsive builder is very powerful and flexible for many of your website building needs. The only drawback really is whether or not you are patient enough to figure out how to create websites that are as awesome as their samples. The templates are designed for artists, designers, and people who care more about visuals than the back end in terms of search engine optimization.

    5. WordPress.org – Self-hosted WordPress is by far one of the most popular website building software that you can get. For a good reason too: it’s free, and it’s easy to understand and use. You can find a lot of people to help you in terms of contractors, and the fact is, it works very well and you can create very complex websites with it as long as you find the right plugins and themes. WP is the best builder when it comes to SEO.

    6. WordPress.com – Many people realize that this is really a blog builder, but if you upgrade to the paid version you can make quite a detailed website that does everything you need it to do without having to worry too much about the inner workings of the technology. It’s more limited than the .org version but it’s a lot easier for a novice to use, too.

    7. SBI! – This is a website builder that seeks to have all-in-one functionality so that you don’t have to know much about technology. You can learn more through their website http://www.sitesell.com, which can tell you everything you need to know about the software as well as the entire program that comes with the software that will help you build your online business from scratch.

    8. SimpleSite.com – This builder is truly for someone who has no idea how to build a site or what to do. It will lead you through step-by-step screens that tell you exactly what to do to build your website. It helps you with all types of websites. The functionality isn’t as high as some of the others, but it does work well for a brochure-type website.

    Having a website that you’re proud of promoting and that gets the job done of telling others about your business, is an important part of running a business today. These builders can help you.

    Categories: website Tags: Tags:

    How to Optimize a Squeeze Page for Search Engine Traffic

    When building a squeeze page it’s important that you understand who your audience is and what the purpose of the page is before getting started. Then, to optimize the squeeze page appropriately consider the following.

    1. Keep It Simple – Don’t go nuts with putting every last thing in every last squeeze page you make. You don’t want pop-ups and pop-unders on the same page. You don’t want too many keywords to gunk up how readers view your page either. You want the page to read well for real-life visitors, while at the same time attracting the search engines to rank you higher.

    2. Know Your Keywords – Study the keywords that your audience uses to find you. It doesn’t matter what other people think about your keywords, it only matters what your audience is using to find you. Look for high value, low competition keywords to use to attract your audience.

    3. Keywords in Titles – Not only should the titles on your page be keywords, they should also be in the proper heading style. If the search engine recognizes it as a header, it will place more importance on the words than if it’s body text.

    4. Optimize Title Tags – If you look at the top of any webpage, there is a title for the page. Take advantage of this area to define what the search engine sees about your page. If you don’t control this area, every page of your website will have the same title tag. Differentiate each page in order to get more hits from search engine.

    5. Use META Descriptions – Every page has a META description that will define how the search engine displays your search results to the reader. Make the most of this feature. If you use WordPress to build your sales pages, you can use a SEO plugin like YOAST, which allows you to control the META description and even see a preview of what it will look like before publishing the page.

    6. Keywords in Subheadings – Creating subheadings with keywords and header tags will help not only lead your user’s eye down to what you want them to read and describe the actions you want them to take, but it will also draw attention to the search engines.

    7. Keywords in Links – Make links within the squeeze page with words that are keywords and specific about the link. Don’t use words like “click here” – use words that describe what they’re clicking such as “100 Stroganoff Recipes” instead. Most people understand that underlined words are clickable now.

    8. Keywords in URL – If you can include a keyword in the URL of your squeeze page, that is a very good use of a keyword or keyword phrase. Don’t go too crazy with the keywords, though; you want the page URL to also look nice.

    9. Use Descriptive Keywords in Alt Tags – Search bots cannot read images, so it’s up to you to provide descriptions to the images that you have in your sales page. Use more than “pretty blue flower” to describe the image. Instead use words that are particular to your offer.

    10. Craft Awesome Headlines – Headlines in squeeze pages are important because people do not read horizontally online; they read vertically. Bolding a headline using headers and making sure it’s an important keyword, will not only lead the search engines to rank you higher, but it will also help your audience read your page better.

    11. Create Actionable Copy – Your squeeze page copy should include keywords that make sense. Don’t overdo it because using more than two percent keyword density in your pages will send alarms to the search engine that your site might be spam. Instead, create copy that leads your viewer to perform some sort of action.

    12. Consider Adding Video – Video is often shared, which adds an additional dimension to the sales page, but while a search engine bot can’t really watch the video, it can read the tags and notice that there is a video. And since users like video a lot, the search engine is more likely to put that page toward the top of the results.

    13. Responsive Design – People don’t exclusively use their PCs when looking at sales pages. In fact, a lot of people use their mobile devices while they’re waiting in the doctor’s office or visiting a coffee shop. The more responsive your design is, the more the search engines will like your page.

    Using these tips to create a fully optimized squeeze page to get more search engine traffic will work. Try making one or two changes at a time to make the effect even more useful for getting more search engine traffic. Search engines also like websites that are updated often – and since sales pages and squeeze pages don’t typically change much, improving your page over time is another way to garner more search engine traffic.

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    Market Your Website Offline

    When a business owner builds a website, they often forget the one way to market a website that has nothing to do with technology. Marketing the website offline is a great way to get the word out about your website and what you offer. Using business cards, brochures, t-shirts and other premiums, plus being active in your local community, you can get the word out about your business.

    * Business Cards – Don’t forget to put the URL to your website on your business card. You can even put a QR code on the back of the card to encourage them to use their smartphone to visit the website.

    * Flyers and Brochures – Don’t discount flyers, brochures and other printed materials that you can create and give out when anyone asks questions about your business. Keep some in the car, and ask people to allow you to post your flyers in their business.

    * T-Shirts and Premiums – People love wearing t-shirts with different business names on them. Why not put your business on the t-shirts you wear instead of someone else’s? This is a great way; if you can create something a little different you’ll get more questions.

    * Window Decals – That real estate on your car can be put to great use when promoting your website offline. Be sure to make the information big enough so that people can really see it. Choose a catchy URL too so that people can remember it while driving.

    * Sponsor Events – Whether local or not, you can pay to sponsor events. This means you’ll appear in the brochure, perhaps on signs at the event, and maybe be mentioned by the hosts of the event by voice during speaking parts of the program.

    * Host an Event – When you host an event, you’re a very noticeable presence. Your business name will be everywhere, you will be everywhere and people will get to know you and come to visit your website.

    * Attend Events – When you attend live events, you can draw a lot of attention to your business by handing out cards, wearing t-shirts when appropriate, even giving out premium products like pens, cups, and so forth so people remember you when the event is over.

    * Teach Locally – You don’t have to be a certified teacher to teach classes. Some areas have lifelong learning centers that enable anyone who is an expert to teach something to people who want to learn something.

    When it comes to marketing, don’t leave any stone unturned. That includes marketing your website online and offline. Don’t forget that not everyone, even today, uses search engines or means online to find information. Some people still use old-fashioned information and paper to find the information they need.

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    Page Load Speed Improvement

    Improving your page load speed can increase conversions and drastically improve the user’s experience using your website. Thankfully, there are some very simple things that you can do to improve your page load speed.

    The More You Have on a Page the Longer It Takes to Render

    These are called HTTP requests, and they bring in the components of all the things on the page – from images to style sheets and everything that makes your website look as it does. But there are ways to minimize the HTTP requests so that it doesn’t make it take longer. Even a few seconds of improvement will mean higher conversions.

    Use the Information on Google’s Webmaster

    Google Webmaster gives you all sorts of tools to use, including something called Page Speed Tools. This allows you to analyze the speed of your website, as well as gives you suggestions of what to do to fix it. You can also use Chrome to install various extensions that help you keep your site running fast.

    Be Sure to Compress Where You Can

    If you are creating very long, high quality pages, they are likely huge and require a lot to download to your visitor’s computer. When you can reduce the size of the pages, which also lowers the HTTP response, you can get the pages to load faster. There are many tools that you can use to help you compress pages, for example GNU Gzip which is open source software. However, if you’re not experienced you need to ask your web host to ensure that your server has the right settings.

    Link to Gzip – http://www.gnu.org/software/gzip/

    Ensure that Browser Caching

    If you don’t know what that is, it’s the way that a browser downloads parts of the website on the user’s computer into their temporary storage when you call up the website more than one time. This will make the page load faster each time they visit your website. It’s an important way to speed up a page.

    Format Images Properly

    On websites, the best form for an image is JPEG, which will load the fastest. Next is PNG, and finally do not use GIFs unless you must for animated gifts. Never use BMPs or TIFFs as they will not work correctly. You can change the type of image you have by using free open source software such as GIMP’s photo editing software that is a lot like Photoshop, but free.

    Link to GIMP – http://www.gimp.org/

    Optimize Your Style Sheets

    It is thought to be better to use only one external CSS style sheet. Every additional style sheet will increase the slowness of your website. The more you can combine external CSS files, the better the speed of your website will be. If you’re not sure about how to do these things, you may need to seek out an expert.

    Reduce the Number of Redirects on Your Website

    Many people use redirects for affiliate programs and other reasons to make the link look prettier or to hide the affiliate link code. However, while these are great uses for redirections, try to keep them to a minimum. Redirects take more time to send the code to the user and will slow page speed.

    Most people expect pages to load super-fast, so you want to do all you can to maximize the speed at which the page loads – especially if you’re hoping they will purchase the item you’re promoting.

    Use Fewer Plugins

    Many people use website builders like self-hosted WordPress to build their websites. These builders have little applications called “plugins” that expand the functionality of the website. These are great, but it’s important that you find or purchase themes with as much of the functionality already available as possible and use fewer plugins to accomplish what you need for your website.

    Page speed is a very important part of your web design if you want to keep people on your website long enough to make a purchase. If the site loads even seconds slower than they desire, they’ll click away and not buy.

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    Provide High Value to Visitors

    When people search for information online, they look for about the same things that a search engine does. They do the search and then evaluate whether or not the information is authentic and useful to them. If you always seek to provide high value information to your visitors, you’ll be a lot more likely to not only attract a high quality of customer to your website, but also to keep them there. Here are some great ways you can provide that high value that people are looking for.

    * Develop White Papers – A white paper is an authoritative paper that either persuades a consumer toward a particular product using facts, or describes problems and offers multiple solutions to the consumer. You can provide white papers on a variety of topics for your audience that will be seen as high value to your audience, whether they’re free or not.

    * Create Videos – A great way to provide high value to your audience is to make videos for them. You can create “how to” videos, explainer videos, and other types of demonstration videos, or even just informational videos about topics that your audience cares about. Make them short, no more than three to five minutes. The value will be perceived as very high when it’s information they want.

    * Write EBooks – Another way to provide high value to visitors is to offer eBooks about the topics they care about. In this way that they can read the information on their Kindle or other reading device away from the website.

    * Form an Inner Circle – One really great way to provide a super high value to your audience is to create a members only area, paid or free, where people have to be approved to join. You can now do this via Facebook private and secret groups. People like feeling exclusive, and this is a good way to do it.

    * Host Monthly Webinars – Offer periodic webinars or teleseminars for your website visitors. If you offer them monthly, based on various topics of importance to your audience, you’ll up your authority quotient with your audience exponentially.

    * Conduct Case Studies – Once you’ve been around long enough, you likely have some success stories that can be shared. Collect case studies about people who have used methods you describe. You can even collect studies about people who have succeeded using methods like yours. This will make the audience feel like they’re truly getting a lot of value out of the information provided.

    * Interview Experts – Your audience will absolutely love it if you interview movers and shakers within your niche. What’s more, the more you interview experts, the more people will view you as an expert. That’s how Oprah became the guru we now know today. Not only has she learned from those she’s interviewed, but her audience sees her as an expert in a variety of fields.

    Most bloggers don’t really understand the power in providing value to their visitors, so they miss out. But now you know that providing high value through the various types of content you offer can increase the traffic and even improve traffic loyalty.

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