Web Design & SEO For Small Businesses

There are million of web pages offering useful information, products and services. But a majority of them are difficult for the user to use and ultimately doesn’t attract the your to stick with the website. As a professional web designer you should take a visitors interests and need while designing the website.

This blog posts presents 10 important common usability mistakes by a web designer.

1) Formatting linking text – An anchor text link is format with an underline which makes the user it is a clickable text. The current trend among web designers to make the remove the underline text decoration can make unnecessary confusion with the end user.

2) High contrast text on a light background – Another design trend which I have noticed lately among the designers to present a light text color like grey on a white background, this practice make vast majority of the users won’t be able to read what it is displayed.

3) Cluttered text – Another common mistake what I see in some websites are how the text is presented within the layout of the site with cluttering of the text. Remember the amount of time your get the visitor to impress is limited if the text is cluttered and make it difficult for the users. The best practice should be to have a fine balance of white space and text which increase readability and message mentioned on the website is easy to scan.

4) Confused navigation – It seems that many designers try to make new method of site navigation. Navigation should be clear and consistent through the all the pages. If you are using image and DHTML navigation make sure that you have a text link at the footer of the page.

5) Logo Consistency – Often this part is neglected most of the designers. The logo should be consistent through out the page and should have a hyper link to the home page.

6) Browsers – The layout of the website should be compatible with all version and different kind of browsers. Most of the web surfers have lower version of different browsers so make it compatible with all of them.

7) Online Order – Make the ordering process simple and faster, don’t make the visitor frustrated asking to do so many steps before they buy the product. If you can reduce the steps in the buying process it will increase the conversion of the site as well.

8 ) Bread Crumbs – Is a very type of navigation which will tell the users where they are currently located on the website architecture. Some sites ignore this accessibility issue and make the users lost inside a website without knowing where to go.

9) Loading time – Due to the over use of big graphics and other programs and multimedia like applets, flash files and videos elements can reduce the loading time of the website which make the visitor to leave immediately and your site will have a higher bounce rate.

10) Surprising the visitor – Most of the users are not comfortable with unexpected things occurring while they surf the web page like automated downloads and video and audio without the permission of the user.

The bottom-line is many, many sites are neglect the basic principles of a website design which mean the user is wasting time as they are looking inside the site trying to make some sense of its purpose.

No PPC campaign is perfect it needs constant monitoring and tweaking and testing to get the results through Pay Per Click. Often some of the following ways are ignored while managing a PPC campaign. I often came across these kinds of problem with each new PPC Account I get to manage. Managing with these weird ways can cost your Campaign a pretty good fortune.

1) Add 10000 keywords in one ad group.
2) Use your company name as the title of the AD.
3) Use Keywords like Best, Cheap inside the AD.
4) Always use your Home page as the destination URL.
5) Use one AD copy for the entire campaign.
6) Bid on Broad Phrase Keywords.
7) Having Privacy Policy, Terms and Condition, about us and Contact us links on the landing pages are a waste of time.
8 ) Target the whole World to get more traffic.
9) Use Positive Keywords instead of Negative Keywords.
10) Always Bid High to be on top.
11) Run your PPC campaign on the search engines.

12) Don’t Turn on the Time Schedule on your campaign or your might loose traffic.
13) Turn On the Search Network and Content Network.
14) Click on your own Ad to increase CTR.
15) Add the conversion Code on the Landing Page, Product page and all pages but not on the success page or thank you page.
16) Writing an Boring Heading on the landing page.
17) Adding keywords to your Ad copy will reduce the Quality Score.
18) Use generic keywords like loans, homes & cars.
19) Get into a bidding battle with your competitor.
20) Create the Adwords and Analytics accounts separate for tracking purposes.
21) Put Contextual Ads like Google Adsense on the landing page to cover the PPC expenses.

If you think there are more ways you can mess up your Pay Per Click Campaign please post that on the comments.

If you have a website, you need that to convert what ever your conversion goal is right, so understanding what the wants and meeting those expectation on your website should be your first decision when you build a website that converts.  No wonder people get frustrated when they find no conversion on their website after wracking their brains and mind to find a unique website address and spend thousands of dollars on web development and trying to get compelling content and finally trying to get top ranking and traffic to their site and what nada no sales. Here I have put forth 10 relevant tips to make an impact on your website to make a sale or lead.

1) Understand your visitors what they are looking for when they stumble upon your website. Meeting their expectation when they reach your website should be the first and the fundamental goal while your develop a website. Make the visitors find the product and service they are looking for. Ensure your website format meets expectations like navigation links, web content and goal process.

2) Clear website usability when a visitor comes to your website they have some idea where the links usually on a website like top navigation, left navigation and footer. If you try to alter those common standard navigation techniques you are making the visitor frustrate and make them to leave as fast as they came. It is like how you drive your car on the road and the rules changes in each city that makes the driver frustrate, because they are not used to those kind of rules where they came from. So having a providing a clear navigation standards and other elements on your website is key to  improve conversion.

3) Useful Content about the products and services you offer, don’t make the user struggle to find the details necessary to make a purchase or lead. Always try to make few clicks for the users to find the necessary information.

4) Avoid distraction to the user cluttering with graphics can distract the user mind and leave without a purchase. All you gain from a user is few seconds to make them to take a decision so make it right without unwanted offers and confusion to the user. If you are selling a products the page should only contains content and graphics related to that product only. The rest of non related offers or graphics and go to the most non prominent part of the web page.

5) Scan key feature of your products and services through bulleted points and highlight it to the user. As I said on the earlier tip that users are very impatient and don’t want to spend too much time on a website because their are several choices online. So within those few sections make the user to make the purchase. The user have the habit of scanning the main features of a product or service quickly and allow them to drill down to that for more details easily and fast.

6) Provide transparency of the users information collected through your website like lead and request a free quote forms. Adding a privacy policy or return policy if you are running a ecommerce site will increase conversion because of the transparency you provide to the users and make the comfortable to give you the information.

7) Don’t make the visitor lost or users location, tell the users where are they on your website by providing appropriate breadcrumbs so that they can navigate back to the pages where they came from. Breadcrumbs is an very important website usability which every website owner should keep in mind when they build their website.

Compelling relevant Sales Heading makes the visitors and the search engine bots to know what the page is all about. Also provide the same consistency in your pay per click campaigns as well so that when the users arrives they can find the right message from what the PPC advertisement was talking about which will improve website, conversion.

9) Cut short your conversion process any delay or more steps in your purchase or lead form increases the possibility of site abandonment. Try to reduce the form fields ask only what is mandatory, try to get your checkout process not more than 2 steps. Also create a simple registration form will help returning visitors make the checkout process fast, thus reduce shopping cart abandonment.

10) Testing and adding useful elements can improve your conversion too, Test your website for browser compatibility, ask couple of friends to do a test drive of your website conversion process and ask for their feedback and incorporate those recommendation if you think is useful into your website. Also adding elements like search box for visitors to find products that they can’t find also increases in conversion rate.

Understanding who your site users are and knowing what they are looking and focusing on and also please your website visitors with a good user experience can maximize both your user retention and also you final conversion rate.

Web metrics is key to understand who your customers are, where the web traffic is coming from and what kind of traffic is converting and increase sales of your products and services of your website. Without Analytics you would be wasting your high value marketing dollars into water after all your efforts to optimize your website and increasing traffic to your website.

There are several benefits a web analytics installed to your website:

1) Analytics will give you a detailed metrics of your website of each visitor so that you can focus on certain areas of your website which needs improvements.
2) It will allow you to track conversion rate and possibly increase that after analysis the metrics of your website.
3) Allow you to track all your marketing effort weather it is email marketing or search engine marketing based on data you receive from the analytics you can plan your marketing efforts.
4) Business decision can be made using the stats of your website to focus on which area of the business needs attention.
5) Allows you to see which area of the world you are getting traffic and the reason for that and improve that traffic to convert more.
6) Understand the kind of browsers and operating system the visitors are using to reach your website which allows you to create the website compatible with all these browsers and OS platforms.
7) Click path tracking of your website which is more likely to convert into a sale, membership or subscribers.
Determine the upwards and downwards trends of the products you are selling and divert the attention when it needs it.
9) Analytics allows you to identify referring sources of traffic from other websites and which one converts better and keep that traffic coming from those profitable referrals.
10) Website metrics allows you to measure do all sorts of traffic weather it is paid advertisements, free, directories and also offline marketing efforts.

The bottom-line is analytics will allow you to real time analysis of visitors interaction on your website can make changes to increase profits and sales.

Call to action is text/button/banner which will tell visitors to take an action on the website. Call to action comes in different forms it may be a heading, a button which stands out, a text link or a banner all of these will communicate your value proposition. Have you wondered why some of the best brands achieve the best conversion? That’s because they use call to action on day to day basis to grab the attention of the visitor online.

Creating urgency through call to action phrase is an important and effective method to increase conversion since the time frame in the call to action makes the visitors to respond quickly, since it will benefit the visitors if they respond to the action in a timely manner.

Below I have come up with Top 20 call to action which can be used either on a website or on a PPC ad which will increase the conversion rate.

1) Click Here – The most common and widely used phrase and the most effective in terms of conversion.

2) Call Now – Converts better if you have made your website telephone number prominently on your website next to the CALL NOW phrase.

3) Buy today – This Call to action phrases increases urgency on the part of the visitor to take action.

4) Register now – Converts better if you have kind of membership site or a newsletter.

5) Free shipping – Ideal for e-commerce web sites also works great during the holiday online sales.

6) Contact now – This call to action phrase works well with a contact us form or email.

7) Get a free trial – If you have a Free Trial like 14 day or a 30 day it is better to highlight to the visitors on the website. Most probably the free trial version can be a full subscriber if you have this offer.

Buy now – Buy Now works well with a button also can be phrased out as order now.

9) Sign-up now – Works better membership sites and newsletter sign-ups.

10) Offer expires – This call to action needs immediate action on the part of the visitors. Also it works better if you add actually date to the offer.

11) Satisfaction guaranteed – Tell about the quality of the product also this call to action works well inside the heading of the AD of the Web page.

12) Best value – A “top rated” or “best value” label would be very effective in your Ad description.

13) Limited Availability/Limited Time Only – This call to action again generates urgency on the part of the customers to take action soon.

14) Free Consultation – Often if you have free in your call to action is to contact you for an assessment, this is a great opportunity to convert the free consultation into buying your services.

15) Reserve Now – This works well with travel and hotel industry because it creates the urgency to reserve when it is available.

16) Request for Free Quote – Free quote or Free Estimate phrase is a perfect all to action for insurance, home improvement kind of websites.

17) Money Back – “Money Back Guarantee” is a common phrase among car and vehicle dealers. This work better if you add like 90-Day Money Back Guarantee in your call to action phrase.

18)Talk to an Expert – If you are using a web chat “Talk to an Expert”.

19) Immediate Download – A perfect call to action for software related website. Customers are looking to get immediately after their purchase.

20) Easy to use – Is a call to action most used for software interface kind of applications. Like where application doesn’t any extra skill sets to use it.

I have added few more other phrases which if used properly can see awesome conversion results on your website.

26) Join Now

27) 5 days only

28) No Experience Necessary

29) Start Now

30) No fees

31) Free guide

32) Certified Expert

The bottom line that I have found that being creative in your call to action and staying one step ahead of the competition is crucial to increase your website conversion.

If you think any other call to action phrases is missing in this list, please feel free to put that on the comment.