Web Design & SEO For Small Businesses

Content is the king and it plays a very important role in the success of a website. If you didn’t do it right you it hard to get visitors and convert them. There are some elements in website content which needs to be consistent, organized and easy for the user to skim though.

1. Clear and Descriptive Heading – As every one know that most people online just scan the text than read the entire content. So the heading or title of the page plays a major part in the content structure. What heading ( h1tag ) does is it allow the visitor to know what the content of the page is all about. So make it clear and descriptive. Also using a heading tags has SEO benefits.

2. Content above the Fold – You most important content or the content that you want your users to read should be above the fold because it where the screen cuts of the web page. The chance of the reading the content below the fold is very less. The most commonly used screen resolution these days are 1024X768, so if you call to action and most important element of your website is below the fold it might not convert very well.

3. Consistency of the Font and color – All major content element of your website like heading, sub heading and content should have similar font and color if you try to use different variation in the content style you might confuse the user and make them leave. If you have too many color in your fonts and links on the screen, it will look cheesy and low quality website, plus your marketing message will be hard to read and will send your prospects away.

4. Goal of your content – What is the point of your web page content? Do you have a goal that needs an action from the user. Every web page has its own goal weather it is an article, blog post or a product page. The content you’re writing must have a specific goal, something you want the site visitor to do. Decide whether the goal of a web page is to inform the visitor, or to persuade them to take some action, then make sure you achieve that goal.

5. Using of Emphasis and Bold – This should be used very carefully. Bolding and Emphasis a text is to attract attention to the user but overdoing this can kill your content and turn the visitors away. Also try to avoid different characters like too many exclamation Marks!!!!

6. Readability of the content – Readability make the page easy to read and inviting and pleasurable to the eye. Spacing(padding) of the text is very important usability issue of a website.
Spacing should be large and distinct enough that a reader is able to discriminate each individual word and letters. The important factors affecting readability relate to the relative proportions of horizontal to vertical space: line width, type size, and spaces between lines, words, and letters.

7. Title of Web page – A title of the web page is what the search engine visitors see first. The page title or the HTML page title should be explanatory and unique but not stuffed with keywords. Any title which a bunch of keywords doesn’t make sense to the user and would look spam.

8. Too Much Content – Don’t put too much of content in one page Online visitors don’t read too much of content they want to know who you are, what you can do for them and finally how to contact you for their requirements. If you have too much of content on your web page to find the information they need they will leave your site and go elsewhere. Also breaking up the content into bullet points like features and benefits will help the visitor to read.

9. Alignment of text – Alignment provides the structural framework of a content design. The best and the common practice is to align the content text to the left. Since the content alignment can affect the mood of the page as well as how effective it is at getting its message across.

10. Increase Text Contrast – Always stick to the high-contrast text while you adding content to a webpage. If you adding black text on a gray background it is hard to read. Research studies has shown that dark text on a plain background is fast to scan the content and imporve the reading performance than on a textured background.

The whole purpose of a content on a web page is to help the user and take an action based on that content. If you don’t follow the above said content usability issues, you might loose your visitor to elsewhere and also reduces the chances of increasing your website conversion.

If there is any other content issues you think I have missed out here please leave you comments.

Getting a better conversion from your website is very important. Why? Because your conversion rate is measured by the number potential visitors who are going to buy your products or services. Many website owners focus solely on to bring a lot of visitors to the site but they hardly focus on making that visitors to buyers. This problem can be solved by making some simple changes to their existing site or layout which will have a huge impact on overall conversion rate of the website.

Below is 10 techniques to improve your sites conversion with minimal expense.

1. Make it easy for Users – Make it easy for the user to use the site. It sounds pretty simple but there several elements in the design which make the visitors difficult to use the website, like for example, accessibility of your website, browser compatibility and finally the usability of the site. A potential visitors always look for more information about the products and services before they make a purchasing decision. Things like these can reduce the chance reduced sales from your website.

2. Value your Users Time – Time is important for everyone. If you website have too many complicated questions and hard to find things what the visitors is looking for is making the visitor to waste their time. This means scaring your visitors away. Some of the common mistake are asking too much information which is not required, having several steps to take action, important information are not able to find it easily etc.

3. Be honest to the user – Most people are very cautious about online transactions and giving out information online. So you need to keep them honest to increase your conversion for example having physical address, a valid phone number and some online trust certificates will increase the credibility of your website in the eyes of the user and increase your conversion rate.

4. Have a clear Return Policy/Privacy Policy – As I said above online customers always need to trust you so make clear everything in your return policy if you are having a e-commerce kind of site or privacy policy if you are collecting a lead. Online visitors don’t like their personal information being distributed to others. Also make these link to these pages easily accessible for example on a product page you can find return policy easily it can increase conversion as well as on the contact us form if you have privacy policy prominently placed can increase the conversion rate.

5. Multiple ways to reach you – All online visitors are not alike they are different in their approach as well as the online behavior is different too. They user different ways to reach you or find information on your website. Some online buyers like to talk before they buy other prefer email communication etc. So user multiple ways like live chat, phone number in all pages, contact us page easily accessible, forums if they want to discuss about your products and a blog as well to community with the user. Offering multiple ways to communicate increase your conversion rate.

6. User Reviews – This technique applies to ecommerce sites if users can provide honest opinion about your products through user review it will help the new users to read these opinions and make a decision. As testimonials increase your credibility users review will increase the chances of increasing your conversion rate. Provide a place for users to give their feedback about your products.

7. Discount Codes and Coupons – Discount coupons are not a new concept, shopper offline has always been enthusiastic about discount coupons because it helps them to have a substantial saving on their budget. Recently online discount coupons and promo codes has gain rapid importance. Today most of the ecommerce sites uses promo codes to increase their sales. Also there are several places online where you can promote your online discount codes. If you use Google local listing they also allow you have promo code for your business. These extra steps with online discount codes can increase your conversion as well.

8. Pricing Strategy – Again this is more relevant to ecommerce related sites because most of the online buyers are not aware of their shipping and handing cost until they reach the check out stage. If you could offer shipping calculators or a page specifically for shipping with all the cost details the customers would have a clear idea how much it is going to cost them before they buy. A good pricing strategy will always increase the conversion rate of your ecommerce site.

9. Tracking with Analytics – Imagine a football team coach, coaching a team without keeping a track of which strategies worked and didn’t work to beat the competition. This is the same with if you didn’t use a web analytic tool to track the activities on a website. Several website owners loose many opportunities to increase leads and sales because they fail to track and have a strategy to increase their ROI. In addition tracking the site through analytics will also tell why they are buy and why they are not. Web Analytics are also the key to reducing shopping cart abandonment rate. Use web analytics to measure the drop off in the sales funnel or buying process.

10. Website Testing – Not all websites are perfect it takes time and effort to make a website work. Now a days there are tools to test your website to find which one works and which didn’t work. Using tools like Google website optimizer you can test each every page of your website and see which layout or changes in design element got your the maximum sales. You can test anything on a website using these tools and see which one work better for you and increase your ROI.

There is no better way to increase your conversion of your website than doing nothing. Start right now, the more you experiment with your website the more you will learn and more opportunity to improve the conversion of your website. Testing these techniques on your website and constantly tracking them will see improvement and increase in your ROI.

Which conversion techniques worked for your websites? Please feel free to leave that in the comments.

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Internal Links for a website is very important as inbound links from other website this one of the most important aspect often people forget. Because internal links with right anchor text gives relevant to your business. The other important value to internal links from the users point of view is they can navigate the page to find more information to the anchor text you have linked.

The process of internal link building is called link sculpting which help search engine bots to find which are the most relevant pages of your website.

Here are some of the do and don’t of creating internal links

Do’s

1. Do including your most relevant key phrases while adding internal links
2. Target long tail keywords of your business in the anchor text
3. Deep Link to pages try to link to pages which are hidden deeper inside the site.
4. Add no follow to link which are less important on your site like privacy policy, contact us page and Terms of conditions.

Don’ts
1. Using a non-relevant anchor text
2. All internal link to the homepage instead of spreading out linking to all the pages.
3. Over use of on page links don’t use more than 3 contextual links on one web page.
4. Using bold text to each inbound links
5. Opening the links in a new window which will annoy the users
6. Using the same color of the text for the hyperlinks which is also not a good usability for the user.

Also just adding a lot of links just for the sake of internal link doesn’t help. You need to measure or analysis the effort you have done with your internal link structure by check with analytic of your site.

Implement these Internal link building strategies to increase your ranking in search engines.

Please Leave your experience with internal link structure in the comments.

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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.

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.