As an internet marketer and a webmaster for internet marketers, I get frustrated when I visit a website and end up flipping through pages of content that doesn’t lead to anything. Most people’s website content doesn’t tell me what the next steps are. And, they don’t tell me what actions I should take. So how can they expect to convert their website traffic into more customers and sales?

Every page on your website – regardless of its purpose or content – needs to guide your visitor to the next step.

Obviously, your sales page leads visitors to click to the secure shopping cart order form so they can buy from you.

Your special report download page guides visitors to enter their name and e-mail address and hit “Submit” so they can be added to your mailing list.

But what about your “About Us” page (which contains your bio), your “Media” page (which lists all the major outlets in which you’ve been featured), and your “Contact Us” page?

Here Are 3 Easy “Calls to Action” to Convert More Website Traffic into Sales on the About Us, Media and Contact Us Pages
1. On the “About Us” page, after your bio, add a powerful client testimonial praising your expertise and your measurable and specific impact on the client’s bottom line. Then add the line “Ready for these kinds of results in your organization? Click here to get started now!” (This links to the contact page).

This call to action, in fact, can be used for any page that does not have an obvious “next step.” Just make sure the testimonial ties in to the page content. If the page is a list of your keynote speaking topics, have the testimonial be about how your keynote set an awesome tone for the entire conference, not about how helpful your sales department is to your customers.

2. Your “Media” page should not just be a collage of logos. It should contain short videos of your TV appearances, audio clips of your radio interviews or featured-expert interviews on teleseminars. It should also include links to the articles where you were quoted or links to your articles that got published on the top websites. Let the world see what a sought-after, in-demand expert you really are.

With that being said, a simple, but effective call to action would be, “Sarah B. Marketer looks forward to being the featured expert on your next program. To schedule her
appearance right now click here.” (This links to the Contact page.)

3. The Contact page, by definition, is a call to action. It needs to take your visitor by the hand and lead them through the next step.

It should not just be a page that displays your mailing address, phone number, and main corporate e-mail. Rather, it should lead with a paragraph that congratulates the reader for their decision to take action. Then, it should explain the process for getting in touch with you. It should also describe what someone should expect once they contact you.

Next, guide them through a simple web form that asks specific questions. This way you can do your homework and present prospects with a specific response and action plan. Make sure to keep this form as brief as possible, and only ask questions that directly inform how you and your visitor would do business together in the near future.

Having a web form, rather than just a link to your e-mail address, guides your visitor to take a specific action. This raises their level of commitment to you and increases your chances that they will buy from you.

Bottom line: Make sure that every page on your website provides a roadmap for your visitor with a specific call to action. This is the only way your prospects will reach the destination that you prepared for them. And, it’s the only way you will increase your website sales conversions.
Need some help? Get a live website review now and have us examine your website sales funnel. Go to http://www.livewebsitereviews.com

About the Author:

The Website Surgeon, Adam Hommey, increases website sales conversions for entrepreneurs, small business owners and Internet marketers just like you who want to make more sales now. To see where you’re actually losing money on
your website, get a live website review at http://www.livewebsitereviews.com

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

How to Convert More Website Traffic into More Customers & Sales by Inviting Prospects to Take Action

Credit:
How to Convert More Website Traffic into More Customers & Sales by Inviting Prospects to Take Action

These days, most people who spend a lot of time online manage at least one blog. Blogs are the new web sites and they’re cheaper, faster and easier to build than ever before.

With all the free blog services available now, such as WordPress, Blogger and LiveJournal, you can set up a new blog in about 10 minutes and the only investment required is time and commitment.

But how exactly do you make money with a blog?

Take a look at Technorati’s Top 100 blogs and you’ll see blogging rockstars like:

• Jeremy Schoemaker (ShoeMoney)
• John Chow
• Duncan Riley
• Maki (Dosh Dosh)
• Darren Rowse (ProBlogger)

Look at their sites and you’ll see the secret formula is made up of just 2 ingredients: traffic and advertising.

So how can you apply this to your own blog? How do you get the traffic to justify selling advertising space?

Let’s take a close look at these tactics:

Traffic Tactics

The blogging heavyweights spend a LOT of time building up their subscriber base and attracting more and more eyeballs to their blogs.

You too can do this in several ways:

1) Generate valuable timely content on a daily basis

This is the time consuming part. You need to make regular posts on your blog (daily if possible) that people want to read. You can either do this yourself, hire some writers, find guest bloggers, or syndicate content from other sites, either free or purchased.

2) Make your blog appealing enough to entice visitors to return

This is an obvious one. Your blog needs to provide value or generate enough interest in your readers that they will come back regularly.

3) Encourage visitors to subscribe to your blog feed

Anyone can do this but it is surprising how often it’s overlooked. ASK your blog readers to subscribe to your feed!

4) Make it EASY for visitors to subscribe

Another easy one. Make your feed button large and stick it in an obvious place on EVERY page of your blog. Use a feed format that is readable by a wide range of readers. Services like FeedReader convert your feed into a reader-friendly format.

5) Remind visitors to bookmark your blog

Another no-brainer. ASK your readers to bookmark the blog and come back!

6) Aggressively participate in social networking and post-sharing

Apart from content, the other time-consuming part of blogging is social networking. When you write a new post on your blog, don’t just let it sit there and hope for traffic. Submit it to your favorite social networking haunts like Digg, Sphinn, StumbleUpon etc. Send a link to your friends and colleagues and ask them to send it on.

Create a profile in the major social media sites, participate in the community and support other bloggers by submitting and sharing their posts if you like them.  You’ll be amazed at the amount of support and traffic this can generate. Such is the power of social networking.

7) Encourage readers to share your posts with others

Make it easy for your blog readers to promote your content by placing icons to the most popular social media sites underneath each post. Encourage them to share the posts that they like via email. Provide the ability for your readers to comment on your posts. If you receive comments, reply in a timely and helpful fashion, making sure you thank visitors who make the effort.

Push marketing to your subscriber base via newsletters and email

Once you’ve got a subscriber list, make sure you keep in touch with them regularly. Send them links to useful articles. Ask them to comment on your latest post. Seek advice about your blog design. Offer them something for nothing. Or simply thank them for subscribing. The key here is not to overdo the contact and to remember why they subscribed in the first place.

9) Give stuff away

Shoemoney works this angle well. Got an e-book you think your readers would like? Offer it to your readers as a bonus for subscribing to your feed. Run a competition and give away Amazon vouchers or other prizes. Better still, find advertisers who are willing to donate prizes so there is no cost to you at all.

10) Have an attractive design

Another no-brainer. The lovely anime images on DoshDosh are a major factor in the blog’s appeal. People tend not to hang around places that hurt their eyes. Make your blog a pleasant visual experience and use a soothing color scheme and design.

11) Create a sense of community

Like-minded people tend to congregate in the same places. If your blog is attracting a certain niche crowd and you are interacting with them, you’ll find that word of mouth will spread. They will tell their friends and so on and so forth. Your readers will start to “hang out” at your blog for the sense of community it provides.

12) Create some controversy

Another thing that Shoemoney is good at. Jeremy likes to drop a bomb and watch the fallout. It’s a risky tactic, but a very good traffic generator.

Advertising Tactics

The most successful bloggers gain advertisers like a magnet. How can you imitate this?

1) Attract a high level of traffic

Traffic generation is your key to getting advertisers to hand over cash to you. Once you have followed the traffic tips above and your blog is pulling high numbers of subscribers and visitors, advertisers will start knocking on your door almost immediately.

2) Focus on a niche market

The most successful blogs are verticals – those that specialize in a specific vertical market e.g. SEO, politics, humor and so on. Make sure your blog is targeted at a specific niche market and feed that niche with only relevant, related content. Advertisers will pay good money for access to a highly qualified audience in their target markets. This is because you are providing access to a market that advertisers can’t get anywhere else.

3) Have an attractive, professional looking site

As mentioned already, people like soothing color schemes and professional looking web sites. This means no obvious spelling errors or tasteless graphics. Advertisers know this and would be more likely to advertise on a blog that follows these rules.

4) Provide appealing ad options

Many blogs only provide a single advertising option, usually the 125 x 125 pixel banner ad, surrounded by 3 or more ads from other advertisers. But the blog rockstars know that advertisers like to have other options such as exclusivity, text ads, peel-back ads and skyscraper banners.

You should also think about whether you want to charge for advertising based on time frame, cost per impression (CPM) or cost per click (CPC). Providing a wide range of advertising options will increase the potential number of advertisers your blog can attract.

5) Promote your advertising programs on your blog

This one sounds obvious, but take a look at 10 blogs and you’ll see that only a couple will be actively promoting their advertising programs. What a waste! Be in the minority and promote your blog advertising by sticking a big link or button marked ADVERTISE HERE which links through to your contact form or to details about advertising rates.

6) Provide value for money to advertisers

Obviously advertisers are going to expect value for their advertising dollar. Keep your ad rates low until your subscriber base reaches a reasonable level. Provide discounts for long-term advertisers. Give them something for nothing e.g. buy 2 months, get 1 month free.

7) Respond quickly to potential advertisers

Once you receive an advertising enquiry, respond quickly and get them booked in. If you have no slots available for the current month, offer them a discount to book into a future time-slot. Be willing to negotiate with advertisers and encourage loyalty.

Use the scarcity principle

The scarcity principle is a well-researched phenomenon. Scarcity indicates the lack of something. When we realize that we do not have something, we desire it. Telling someone that something is not available only makes it more desirable.

Rockstar bloggers use the scarcity principle all the time to hype up readers and advertisers with the “you don’t want to miss out” factor. You can imitate this by promoting a limited no. of advertising opportunities, promoting a time-limited offer or talking about how your ad slots sell out quickly.

9) Make it easy for advertisers to pay you

Provide a range of payment options for advertisers. Allow payments via PayPal, credit card, check or bank transfer. The more options you provide, the wider range of advertisers you are likely to attract. Remember, you can’t make money unless you give people a way to pay you.

You may not become a blogging rockstar overnight, but if you implement these tactics you’ll be well on your way!

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

How to Make Money From Your Blog

How to Make Money From Your Blog

by Stoney deGeyter

This is a continuation of a series of website marketing checklists. Check out all Web Marketing Checklists in this series.

What this is about: This list covers various aspects which are important to visitors who land on your “contact us” page, including what information they expect and how to make contacting you easy for them.

Why this is important: Those who land on this page are showing clear intent in wanting to to get in touch with you. Providing only a few ways to contact you can alienate visitors who have a particular preference. Providing robust contact options and information ensures that you capture as many would-be customers as possible.

What to look for:

• Easy to find: Make sure your visitors can find your Contact page easily. Don’t make them hunt, scroll and rollover multiple dropdowns just to find it.
• Multiple contact options: Don’t limit your contact options to your preferred method. Unless you just have too much business and don’t need the “hassle” of having customers.
  • Phone: provide local and toll free numbers.
  • Fax: Not many people will try to communicate by fax, but it’s still an essential number to provide for those that need it.
  • Email: An email contact is essential to making sure visitors can feel as if you are accessible. It provides assurances that forms can’t.
  • Form: Provide a contact form that’ll deliver messages to your email box.
  • Chat: Instant chat can allow you to quickly take care of customers needs without them having to wait hours or days for a response.
  • Customer feedback: Provide a way for customers to provide feedback regarding the site, products or services.
• Street map: Showing a map of your location can help locals know that you are truly accessible and where to find you if they want to check out your operation.
• Hours of operation: If your hours are limited then post hours of operation (for at least phone support) on this page.
• Multiple points of contact: Give your visitors options in who or what department they contact.
  • Customer service
  • Tech support
  • Inquiries
  • General info
  • Job applications
  • Billing
  • Management team
• Ad-free: Keep this page completely free of ads.
• Form requires only essential info: Make sure any web forms require only the information that is absolutely essential to helping them. Keep it easy and succinct.

Did I miss anything? Add to this list with your comments below.

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See the rest here:
The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist for the Contact Us Page

List building is one of the most vital elements of
any business – online or offline – mainly because
building a responsive customer/contact list simply
means money in the bank. It is a proven marketing
tactic that works.

List building can take on many forms and can be as
simple or as complicated as you want to make it.
Unfortunately, for most webmasters, it only means
slapping an opt-in form on their site to build a
simple subscriber list that allows them to send
out a weekly or monthly ezine/newsletter to entice
these subscribers back to their site or to buy a
recommended product.

For other webmasters and marketers, including myself,
list building can be taken to a whole new level. They
fully exploit list building for its many benefits and
rewards. For them, list building is a powerful and
effective marketing tool that simply delivers more
traffic and sales.
 

Some History

List building is close to my heart. It was the first
“serious marketing topic” I explored when I first
started marketing online. It was a very tangible
topic since my goal was to build a list of 1000
subscribers for my site’s newsletter. Just the
act of accomplishing that feat told me most of
what I needed to know about list building. And
it sparked my interest.

List building is now one of my targeted keywords;
so you know I make it a point to read and absorb
everything I can possibly get on the topic. It has
proven itself to be a very lucrative education,
as I now owe much of my online earnings directly
or indirectly to list building.

Building an Opt-in List Is Very Easy

I found building a list very easy to do. Here are
some of the most effective ways or things you can
do to build your list quickly:

1. Have an opt-in form on EVERY page of your website.
Make it double opt-in and remind subscribers that
they have to confirm their contact information.

2. Offer something FREE. Whether it be a free ebook,
ezine, tips, guides, software… just make sure you
entice your visitors to sign up or opt-in. I find
giving a visual, tangible image of your ezine or
guide will increase your conversion rate, so invest
in some good professional graphics.

3. Use simple psychology. People want to be a part
of a group; they want to be in the know… offering
secrets, private memberships and access to valuable
information will always draw in the most subscribers.

4. If you have your own product, doing joint ventures
with well-established marketers is the fastest way to
build your list. Don’t forget the squeeze page where
you collect the contact information; again offer a
special bonus to further entice people to opt-in to
your list.

5. Use pop-up or slide-in forms. I have found these
will greatly increase your sign-up rate. But don’t
rely only on gimmicks; offering useful, relevant
content on your pages will always help you garner
the most subscribers.

6. Social media sites, videos, blogs, forums… don’t
forget the new “Internet” is an excellent hunting
ground for building your list or lists. Make sure
you at least have a blog and RSS feed connected to
your site to help spread your content around the
web and gather subscribers.

7. Never forget that the web is the best “viral medium”
we have ever had. Always encourage your present subscribers
to help spread your message and content. If your ezine/content
is first rate, people will recommend it to their friends
and colleagues. Let your subscribers build your list for you.

Building a Responsive Loyal List Is the Hard Part

I have always found building a list is the easy part;
however, building a responsive list that’s loyal is
the real hard part. Keeping your subscribers interested
in your information and getting them to respond to your
“call to action” is the difficult part.

I have found only good, informative content will keep
your subscribers coming back for more. If you bombard
them with “product offers” week after week… they will
just unsubscribe from your list or simply stop reading.
So try to limit your offers to products that you have
tested and used.

Keep in mind that almost everyone is now operating a
list and your subscribers will probably be bombarded
with hundreds of offers when a major launch is done.
I personally ignore most of the major launches these
days, which takes you out of the marketing loop; but
everything has become so satiated lately with so many
well-known marketers jumping on the bandwagon, it is
turning many potential buyers off.

Instead, whenever I find any good free resource,
product or marketing tip – I pass it along to my
subscribers. Over time, this has a way of building
some good loyalty and good will, resulting in the
occasional sale when I do offer a product recommendation.

The Art of the Follow-up

Having said all the above, there is one aspect of
list building that has proven very effective and
very lucrative for me. It is a little different
from offering an ongoing ezine or newsletter and
has to do with the simple follow-up.

I call it micro-list building (for the lack of a
better word). I build hundreds of separate lists
dealing with the different niche products I market,
micro-marketing and micro-targeting to interested
prospects. These are follow-up emails (10-20 or more)
offering valuable information on the product being
promoted. These follow-up emails also usually contain
or offer special deals, bargains, bonus products and
coupons if the prospect buys from your link.

I use an unlimited Autoresponder system (Aweber),
which lets me have countless campaigns ongoing at
the same time. These follow-up campaigns do require
some “set-up” work since you have to write at least
7-10 emails for each campaign; but once they are in
place, you can forget about them.

Studies have shown that it usually takes 6 or 7
follow-ups before a prospect will buy. Having all
these lists of prospective buyers will increase your
traffic and sales. This is one major reason for you
to start building your lists today. If you’re like
me and make your living with online affiliate marketing,
list building is something you simply can’t afford not
to do. Your livelihood will depend upon it.

Cookie Your Lists

If your objective is to make money from your list
or lists – here is my number one proven strategy
for monetizing your list.

Your lists are simply a way of gathering prospective
buyers for the products you’re promoting. Your goal
is to get them to buy directly from you or thru your
affiliate link. One way of making more sales is to
“Cookie Your List” – most affiliate products will set
a cookie when a prospect arrives at their site from
your affiliate link – this means no matter when they
buy in the next couple of days or months you still
get credit for the sale.

I usually pick and promote affiliate products that
have a 90-day cookie or more. This cookie is very
important because if the prospect buys in the next
90 days… you receive credit for the sale. A special
few marketers and companies will even give you a
lifetime cookie.

One tactic I use is to promote 4 or 5 different but
related products in a niche market – pointing out
the benefits and disadvantages of each. You remain
neutral but your goal is get your list’s prospects
to visit each product’s site so that they can be
“cookied.” Then it doesn’t matter which affiliate
product they finally purchase since they are
“cookied” and you will get credit and the sale.

Let’s face it, when we’re in the right mindset to
buy a product… we usually do it within a few months
of considering the idea. That’s why the “cookie” is
so important to your overall sales. Combine this tactic
with your list building and you will greatly increase
your sales.

For me, the object of list building is to find those
prospective buyers when they’re ready to buy. Then give
them valuable, helpful information, along with bonus
gifts or special coupons/bargains to sweeten the deal.
And I make sure all the prospective buyers are “cookied”
with my affiliate IDs.

As I mentioned before, list building can be as simple
or as complex as you want to make it. The possibilities
are endless, but I would suggest anyone with a website
should have a rudimentary subscriber or membership list
just to build a sense of community and to take advantage
of repeat visitors. Anyone who is doing affiliate marketing
should definitely explore all the different avenues, like
the one above, to fully harvest all the rewards list building
will give them.

Go here to read the rest:
List Building – Proven Strategies From The Trenches

This article will show you how to run a simple promotional marketing campaign that has an unusual side effect; Top placement on Google for your most important keywords. With one quick and easy task you can:

1. Get top ranking on Google,
2. Build incredible brand or company awareness
3. Earn an additional passive income while doing it, if you wish.

The concept is pretty straightforward. You post a piece of software (along with a simple PAD file) to shareware download sites like Download.com. They provide inbound links to your site. Simple right? Definitely! But that’s only part of it. If you know a couple inside tips you can have the link to your site contain your most important keywords as anchor text, which will skyrocket ranking on Google. And you can have your links point to any page you want using that keyword rich link! By the way, there are well over 1,000 well known download sites there for the linking! (more…)

The rest is here:
SEO Triple Play; Ranking, Branding and Profit