Writing by Brick Marketing on Monday, 11 of February , 2008 at 10:28 am Leave a comment
If you are in the business of website marketing, then website lead generation is probably one of your biggest focuses. A lead is a website visitor that converts to a sale. Website lead generation is the science of making website sales, but it is a rough science at best. There are plenty of different ways to go about improving website lead generation and this post is not about that, it is about analyzing your website lead generation performance and identifying areas that can be improved.
There is a range of analysis software that can be implemented and in order to really have a deep look at your site, you are going to need some. Free analytics services probably won’t give you the depth of information you require, but if you do not have much of a budget, they can help. If you do have the money, go for a professional service, you will get a great deal more information.
All websites perform differently, so it is quite difficult to give percentages in relation to website lead generation. The trick to your traffic analysis is not to compare your website to other websites but to compare pages of your website to other pages of your website. You need to identify the paths that people are taking through your site and the pages that they are stopping on when they buy. Your most popular sales pages might not necessarily be resulting in all of that great website lead generation, the path through your site is more likely responsible. You need to identify the paths that people take through your site that lead to sales and find out what pages, if any, are having that increased benefit to your website lead generation.
The next step that you need to take is to identify the paths that are not successful in generating leads. Look very carefully at the pages that are not converting to sales. What is it that makes them a dead end, why are they failing at website lead generation. If you can identify any apparent weaknesses, deal with them.
There are always plenty of new opportunities when it comes to website lead generation. You can identify these opportunities based upon the strengths and weaknesses of your own website and those of others. Check out your successful competitors and emulate what you can. If they have been in business a while, chances are that they are getting the website lead generation side of their website management down.
Affordable Internet Marketing Services, including SEO, Pay Per Click, Blog Marketing & More! For More Info Call Expert Nick Stamoulis at: 877-295-0620.
Writing by Brick Marketing on Saturday, 2 of February , 2008 at 11:15 pm Leave a comment
Website lead generation has less to do with the amount of traffic than it does with the quality of traffic that finds its way to your site. Today we are going to address some ways that we can improve website lead generation levels and hopefully make some more sales from our web marketing sites. The first thing that we need to do is to identify the methods by which traffic finds a website.
There are three types of search that a person is likely to come to your site by; text, video and image. Of these three search types, which is most likely to convert? Put yourself inside the mind of a web surfer and the answer becomes quite obvious. Text searches are most likely to convert, with video perhaps coming second. Image searchers are hit or miss. A good number of people do image searches looking for pictures, not information and not products. It pays to keep images optimized, but they fall quite far behind the other types of searches. The reason why image searches are less likely to yield website lead generation results is simple. In most cases, images do not contain information. If someone is looking for a product, an information type search is the most common. Images and video do have a part to play, but generally text searches are the front line when it comes to website lead generation. Therefore it is, in most cases, best to focus your search engine optimization efforts on text first and worry about any unoptimized images or videos later.
Search engine optimization is a great way to bring in more traffic, but where they land crucial to converting leads. If your website marketing content is slapdash, then you will find that your sales suffer. Using analytics it is possible to identify the key pages on your site and the paths that most of your visitors take. Take the time to polish the writing and presentation of these pages and your should start to see results.
Becoming a social marketer is a great way to boost your website lead generation potential. Social bookmarking sites are a great way to market your site and to get people to visit. If you are not sure what social bookmarking sites are worth using, you should probably start off with one or two and work your way up from there. Del.icio.us would probably be the best place to start.
Visit other sites and stay on top of the latest trends in website lead generation. Website lead generation is a rough science at best, and works mostly by combining numerous well established techniques.
Affordable Internet Marketing Services, including SEO, Pay Per Click, Blog Marketing & More! For More Info Call Expert Nick Stamoulis at: 877-295-0620.
Writing by Brick Marketing on Wednesday, 16 of January , 2008 at 7:38 am Leave a comment
Website lead generation is a less fine science than many people give it credit for. The trick to website lead generation, as it is with a lot of website marketing technique, is to put yourself into the mind of a customer. Don’t put yourself into the mind of just any customer, you want to step into the shoes of the most technically inept website visitor that you can imagine. Your site should be geared to the lowest common denominator when it comes to computer aptitude. The fact is, many people were born and grew up before the Internet. While a large number of those people now brave the web, skill levels are quite often very basic.
Stick to basic themes
I am not saying that you should not have a slick color scheme. By all means go for it, but make sure that your customers are able to identify the links on any given page. There is room for variation on the standard blue, but make sure that links are identified at the very least with an underline (blue is better in most cases). I have seen sites where links are pale gray or other colors and bold instead of underlined. With most people this will work, but there are some that will not identify the links.
Make a site map that people can find
A site map will allow your traffic to find its way around your site more easily. It also allows search engines to better index your site. Both have benefits in the website lead generation department. If you have a truly enormous site, then the website map makes it easy for people to find their way through it, they are relatively simple to create and there are a few website tools that can help you with the process.
Spare a thought for the visually impaired
It is always a plus to keep things optimized for screen readers. While the vast majority of visitors to your site will be able to read it with their own eyes, there are people that can’t. Screen readers allow such people to interpret what is on the page. For this reason, it is always a good idea to provide accurate descriptions of your images. You don’t need to go overboard, just enough for people to understand what is in the picture. As a bonus, this will also optimize your images for image search. Additional traffic and goodwill can provide some welcome website lead generation. It takes two minutes to optimize an image and it is well appreciated when it is done.
A common problem with websites is that webmasters forget that they are writing for people first and computers second. In chasing the top Google spots, many people overlook the fact that while search engines drive traffic, it is people that buy products. If your website search engine optimization is too obvious; if your content is too spammy, people will leave without buying. Keeping the quality up will boost website lead generation potential.
Affordable Internet Marketing Services, including SEO, Pay Per Click, Blog Marketing & More! For More Info Call Expert Nick Stamoulis at: 877-295-0620.
Writing by Brick Marketing on Wednesday, 19 of December , 2007 at 7:42 am Leave a comment
Web design projects can create time management issues. It takes a great deal of time to code a site if you are not doing it all the time. There once was a time that I would do all of my site designing myself in a bid to save a few extra bucks. It usually worked out well for me, but spending hundreds of hours in front of the computer screen designing websites is not my idea of fun. I prefer to be in the trenches making sales, promoting, producing content and that sort of thing. Time is money after all, and why not spend your time doing the things that you do best? Outsourcing website design can be a massive time saver and is not all that expensive with GetAFreelancer.com and Quote Catcher.
I use Quote Catcher for times that I want a site designed from the ground up. Quote Catcher will allow different designers to bid for your site. You will get up to five quotes, you choose the one that is the best offer from your point of view. The best offer does not have to be the cheapest one. It depends on your needs, if you want a slick looking website, then it is probably wise to go with whichever site designer has the most impressive portfolio. If it does not really matter, go with the cheapest.
When I have smaller or more technical jobs, I use GetAFreelancer.com. With GetAFreelancer.com you give a specific outline of the job that you require and freelance programmers will offer you bids. It is important to distinguish GetAFreelancer from Quote Catcher. The freelancers on GetAFreelancer.com are programmers, you use them for programming related jobs. If you need a shopping cart system, or would like to make some sort of site related improvement, this is the place to go.
Affordable Internet Marketing Services, including SEO, Pay Per Click, Blog Marketing & More! For More Info Call Expert Nick Stamoulis at: 877-295-0620.
Writing by Brick Marketing on Monday, 17 of December , 2007 at 8:04 am Leave a comment
In general, two types of people pass through your website, those that buy and those that don’t. Those that buy are called leads and those that don’t are just plain old traffic. We like to take the view that any person that visits a website is a potential lead. If they don’t buy then it is because they were not properly convinced. How can you convince more people to buy?
Optimize your site for humans not just robots
Cross sell when appropriate
Contact and recontact interested parties that do not purchase
Keep your website up to date
There is no secret behind website lead generation, it is a lot of hard work. Think like a customer and you will be on the right track to what needs to be done. With a properly geared website and the right amount of effort you can and will generate more leads.
Affordable Internet Marketing Services, including SEO, Pay Per Click, Blog Marketing & More! For More Info Call Expert Nick Stamoulis at: 877-295-0620.
Writing by Brick Marketing on Monday, 3 of December , 2007 at 8:33 am Leave a comment
By now we all know what duplicate content is capable of in terms of reducing search relevancy. It is poisonous for your search engine performance. Failing to appear in the top search results will kill your website lead generation
potential faster than anything else will. What you may not know is that some search engines are stricter on duplicate content than others. Recent changes at MSN Live Search have seen duplicate content aggressively filtered out.
For bloggers that write original material, this is a good thing, but for some affiliate marketers that rely on duplicate material this is very bad news. There are legitimate reasons for having duplicate content on a website, but the fact is that it is not feasible to change rules for exceptions. Filtering out duplicate content is designed to remove scraper sites from search results.
What can you do if you have some duplicate content on your site and want to maintain website lead generation potential? Web Marketing Pro’s Brian Turner recommends, “editing the content at the block text level to help make the content more original.”
If you are worried about how these new duplicate content rules are going to affect the performance of your site, in relation to website lead generation or other matters, contact Brick Marketing for professional advice.
Affordable Internet Marketing Services, including SEO, Pay Per Click, Blog Marketing & More! For More Info Call Expert Nick Stamoulis at: 877-295-0620.
Writing by Brick Marketing on Saturday, 17 of November , 2007 at 11:15 am Leave a comment
Better websites equal better Website Lead Generation. By now the mantra of building better websites has become ingrained in most serious webmasters. Design from the top down, avoid gimmicks like Flash pages, optimize, optimize, and optimize some more. Keep the content fresh, keep the language lively and most of all keep the site attractive to visitors.
When I suggest to people that they avoid creating Flash pages, I am not suggesting avoiding the use of Flash by any means. I am merely suggesting that they avoid creating websites that take an excessive time to start up. A long Flash intro can kill of leads in less time than it takes visitors to find the “Skip Intro” link. Skip the intro all together. If you want to include it in your site, have a link to it from a well designed HTML or PHP page. Use Flash as a highlight, an accent if you will, but don’t make it the whole thing.
Top down web design merely refers to how you build your website. We have to do away with the idea that any website is ever complete. A website is constantly growing and evolving. Start with your main pages complete, the rest of your site can be a work in progress. You can have pages that are “Coming Soon,” it encourages repeat business. Part of website lead generation is creating a site that encourages people to explore your product range. If you have a great deal of products then a content management system (CMS) makes great sense. Some of the more popular CMS scripts like Joomla are completely free. You can have them optimized and modified to your heart’s content. If you are unable to modify them, you can always call in some freelance< help. If you need a fully constructed website, then you can always get a quote on Quote Catcher.
Optimizing your content will help you drive the traffic that invariably draws leads. Not everyone that visits your site will result in sales, but the law of averages says that the more people that visit, the more customers one will have. Website lead generation is about keeping site traffic up as it is anything else. Come and visit us at Brick Marketing if you need professional assistance or advice relating to website lead generation.
Affordable Internet Marketing Services, including SEO, Pay Per Click, Blog Marketing & More! For More Info Call Expert Nick Stamoulis at: 877-295-0620.
Writing by Brick Marketing on Wednesday, 7 of November , 2007 at 6:20 am Leave a comment
Website Lead Generation is one of the most talked about aspects of website management. Unfortunately, most of the traffic that passes through our sites will not purchase our products. Leads represent a fraction of all web traffic. No matter what the quality of a site is, some people are going to be visiting a site without a shopping agenda. It is not really possible to sway those people into purchasing a product. Leads are those people that can be swayed into making a purchase or those that intend to purchase a product from the outset.
I think that it is safe to assume that leads fall primarily into two categories; those that will buy and those that might buy. For those that will buy there is not a lot more that needs to be done, perhaps some cross-selling in order to promote other products or services is in order, but they are already convinced. It is the leads that fall into the “those that might buy” category that can make or break a business. It is a fairly safe assumption that all first-time customers fall into this category. Your goal as a webmaster is to make these potential customers click buy.
In order to make your website lead generation efforts more successful, you need to start eliminating the things that turn people off. Scour your page for grammatical errors, spelling errors or anything else that looks unprofessional. Give it a streamlined, integrated look, don’t have color schemes changing from page to page. Use CSS style sheets to keep your site looking uniform. If you are advertising on your site, ensure that the advertising is tasteful. You are selling a product, advertisements can tread the grounds of bad taste. A little bit is acceptable, too much can be off putting. Don’t waste time with Flash introductions. Flash looks good, but think of it as a mediocre movie. Watching it one time is fine, but watching it again and again becomes boring. Your Flash introduction is the same. HTML or PHP is easy to navigate and can look just as good. A simple site is more conducive to repeat business.
There are so many aspects to website lead generation that it really is impossible to cover them all in a single article. The Internet is a dynamic place and opinions on website lead generation change all of the time. Come into Website Lead Generation if you ever need any advice for improving the lead generation capabilities of your site.
Affordable Internet Marketing Services, including SEO, Pay Per Click, Blog Marketing & More! For More Info Call Expert Nick Stamoulis at: 877-295-0620.
Writing by Brick Marketing on Monday, 5 of November , 2007 at 5:11 am Leave a comment
Are you familiar with the term lead generation or website lead generation? It bounces around on the Internet quite a bit but many people are unsure of exactly what it means. Sure, you will find a lot of people that will tell you what they think it means, but more often than not they will give you an explanation that is much more complicated than it needs to be. Leads are potential customers, lead generation is merely the process of driving more potential customers to your website. Leads are different from regular traffic, because leads are people that are highly likely to purchase your products. Traffic refers to people that are visiting your site. Some of your traffic will be made up of leads, the bulk of most traffic, however, will probably just pass through.
Traffic is great if you are running a commercial blog or a site that raises revenue through advertising. Such sites do not need to really think about lead generation as they are not looking for people to purchase their items, rather they are looking for people to browse their site and click on advertisements for other sites. Why am I mentioning blogs and advertisement when we are talking about generating leads? Generating leads is about finding a target audience.
Let’s take a look at a hypothetical situation in order to illustrate different methods for website lead generation.
Situation
Jon owns a website that is involved in drop shipping portable music players (PMPs). He is looking for a way that he can publicize his site. The examples below are three different courses of action that Jon could take.
Example A
Jon enlists the help of a questionable email marketing company that will send out emails to everyone of their 300,000 subscribers for $X.
Example B
Jon enlists the help of a traffic boosting company. The company claims that they will be able to generate at least X number of unique hits per day.
Example C
Jon purchases $X of credit for a targeted advertising campaign. Later that day he finds advertisements for his product on some popular technology and gadget blogs.
It is probably obvious that Example C was the best course of action out of the three examples. If you are only going to use one method for website lead generation, then targeted advertising can produce very positive results. Targeted advertising works well because it is supplying information about your business to an audience that is interested in what you are offering. Sure, not everyone that reads an advertisement for your product will buy, but if you look at a success rate per 1,000 people who click on your ads or 1,000 random people who receive an email or pass through your site, you will likely find that the targeted audience converts much more often.
Quality website lead generation depends on targeting. Traffic driving is great, if it is targeted traffic, email lists are great, if they are comprised of targeted recipients. Advertising is probably the easiest way to make sales and generate quality leads. If you are interested in website lead generation, or other ways to boost the performance of your site, contact us here at Brick Marketing. We have a great deal of experience in helping our customers boost the performance of their commercial websites. Lead generation is just one of our areas of expertise.
Affordable Internet Marketing Services, including SEO, Pay Per Click, Blog Marketing & More! For More Info Call Expert Nick Stamoulis at: 877-295-0620.
Writing by Brick Marketing on Saturday, 27 of October , 2007 at 12:19 pm Leave a comment
If you feel that your website has not been generating enough leads recently, it might be time to start rethinking your lead generation strategy. There are a number of things that you can do to improve lead generation performance.
A good place to start is your website itself. Take a long hard look at it. Does it promote your brand as well as it possibly could? Is it lacking something? Has the style of your website fallen out of fashion? If your website is attractive, ensure that it is easy to navigate. Compare your site to the sites of your most successful competitors; are they doing anything that you are not? Make sure that your site is up-to-date within your industry.
Update more frequently, it is amazing how many experienced webmasters fail to keep their sites updated. Adding new articles to your site is an easy way to boost your leads. Your site might already be optimized for search engines, but part of the search engine equation is keeping the information current. Your website lead generation potential is significantly affected by the age of the information on your site. The sites at the top of the search pile are updating daily, there is no reason why you cannot do the same. Outsourcing your writing is the easiest way to take care of your web content needs.
Blogging is a great way to add to your website’s lead generation capabilities. By blogging, you can also promote your company’s products. The great thing about blogs is that they require a minimum of effort to set up and once they are in place, they are very easy to maintain. If you struggle with writing, you can outsource your blog content just the same as with web content.
Google Adwords is a powerful website lead generation tool that often underperforms for webmasters that do not plan their campaign properly. Underfunding is a common cause of Adwords campaign failures. Your campaign needs a reasonable budget, skimping on it will only reduce your leads. Brick Marketing specializes in website marketing and promotion. We can help you to implement an effective advertising campaign with a number if Internet advertising options including Google Adwords.
Affordable Internet Marketing Services, including SEO, Pay Per Click, Blog Marketing & More! For More Info Call Expert Nick Stamoulis at: 877-295-0620.
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