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Remove Anonymity to Boost Credibility Does your site offer an e-mail address or a contact form? Does it offer a phone number and a P.O. box? There's nothing wrong with having those things, but having them and 'embodying' them are two very different Mohicans. Website conversion suffers drastically from excessive anonymity. Exactly what are you hiding from? Better yet, why? According to Stanford Web Credibility Research: "Make it easy to contact you. A simple way to boost your site's credibility is by making your contact information clear: phone number, physical address and e-mail address." Hint: Solopreneurs can use a service like Mail Boxes Etc. for a physical address. Remember, most customers in most industries don't want that "big business" feel; they want to be able to associate a face and a name with the company to which they're about to give their money. my motto is "Keep it simple" and ...

Use Font to Convey Credibility. and Personality Font choices add character to webpages and logos. They play a very important role in your audience's perception of your business - and of you. Don't think something as silly as the appearance of words on a page would have any effect on website conversion? Think again. "Research has shown that the typeface (i.e., font) that is chosen for a website conveys mood, attitude and tone; and can impact the perception of a company's credibility." "Web pages presented in either a neutral or inappropriate typeface resulted in lower ratings for trust, professionalism and believability." [Source: S. Furman, Usability.gov - "Credibility"] Unless marketing directly to children, avoid using kiddy-style fonts like the dreaded Comic Sans (good heavens!). Even when marketing to children it is not the best choice. my motto is "Keep it simple" and "don't leave an...

Choose a Website Size and Layout Suitable for Your Audience You don't want your visitors to say your website doesn't suit them, do you? Analyze your website's stats. Find the most common screen size and use that information to make design and layout decisions. No website just yet? For a simple site with seldom-changing content, try a resolution of 1024×768 to accommodate the narrower screen widths of those running a little behind the times. Don't feel pressured to use "responsive design" if all you have is a simple three-page website for a service-based business, with content that never changes. A fluid-width website with a companion mobile site can be more than sufficient. Likewise, if you have a blog or frequently changing news section on your website and want this information reflected across all media channels - desktop and mobile - it may then be in your best interest to take your "fluid width" website a step...

Use Colors to Influence Action in Your Website Color plays a critically important subliminal role on your website. For example, green is often referred to as a "concentration" or "harmony" color. On long-copy sales pages that feature a lot of text (where website conversion increases the longer they read), use of a green border, highlights, or background could be a very good move. However, take care to note the nuances between meanings in different shades of the same color. For instance, in some sources, dark green is seen as a money color, while only the standard Kelly green would be the concentration color. Sometimes, the effects you want can be interchangeable between color shades, but not always. You can use color to your advantage, to make your website visitors feel energized, relaxed, focused, scared, angry, more prepared to buy - almost any effect you can think of. The important thing to note when attempting to increase website c...

Search Engine Optimization Tips 1. Use Alt tags for EVERY photo and image on ALL pages on your site. Often website creators and "SEO experts" will only focus on the home page. This leaves numerous chances to improve your PageRank untouched. 2. When writing Alt tags, use keywords and creative, unique descriptions. 3. Title each page with a unique descriptive title which includes long-tail keywords at the beginning. 4. Use internal links when appropriate & possible. 5. When linking, attempt to use appropriate keywords instead of, or at least in addition to, '(Click Here)." 6. Link to your Social platform accounts (when possible, not just at the top & bottom of articles but also within. For example, in an article about 'bee keeping', you might want to link to a collection of photos on your Pinterest account showing urban bee hives). 7. For links that you do not want to pass PageRank value to (thereby passing higher Pa...

Honesty in Social Marketing People hate being "marketed at." We turn the TV volume down during commercials and most of us don't notice the advertisements on the side of Google search. We even have a morning ritual of deleting nearly all the daily e-mails we signed up to receive from various sites. There's a lesson here for social media marketing and commercial activity. Whether you use Google+ or Google Places for your specific niche advertising or just blast everything out across your linked social media accounts, you have to tell people something they are interested in. It has to be real and authentic. It's easy to find articles online talking about how "honesty is everything" in social media marketing. These articles are common and popular, partly because they're accurate and partly because people are happy to discover even pros think this is true. But why? What is it about marketing and interacting with partners...

Businesses Should be Using Social Media According to marketing experts, "the social aspect of marketing is unique in any given stratum because it involves human elements, namely, the behavioral pattern of consumers and the given characteristics of a society such as customs, attitudes, values, etc." But, the behavioral patterns and the customs, attitudes, values and so on of consumers keep changing constantly. As the Chairman of a famous company explained in his company's annual address, "this surge of change has profound consequence for that bundle of hopes and fears, the untidy bundle of attitudes and commitments called our management policy. In an increasingly fluid world, one cannot organize the hope of order around the protection of status quo." From this, it is quite clear that the constantly changing attitudes and values of consumers should necessarily be considered for planning marketing strategies of any company including your...