By Rick Sloboda

By Debbie Dragon

If you're a small business or just starting out, you may not feel ready for a merchant account. Obtaining a merchant account is not usually considered difficult, however, for a newly established business it isn't always feasible to run out and a merchant account immediately. Starting a business is often costly and risky to begin with- you do not need to go out and spend money on optional features (like a merchant account) until you know whether or not your business is going to succeed, and whether or not you'll have the need to accept credit cards from customers.

Did you know there are other options and alternative methods for allowing your customers to pay you with credit cards? Companies called "third party credit card processors" do not require their customers to create merchant accounts, and yet they can be used to allow small or new businesses the ability to accept credit card payments from customers.

Why Worry about Accepting Credit Cards at All?

It's important that you are able to accept credit card payments from customers, however, even if you aren't feeling up to getting a traditional merchant account right now. It's been proven that businesses that except credit cards experience higher sales than those that do not accept credit cards. In fact, some companies have reported an increase of 50 to 400% in sales once they began accepting credit cards as a payment method. It also helps to establish a professional image- and for some potential consumers, it generates a feeling of trust ("If the business is established enough to accept credit cards, they're a quality business that I should shop with!").

Home based businesses and online businesses can take advantage of a third party credit card processor instead of going directly with a merchant account if they wanted to. It allows a business to determine how many customers will make purchases with credit cards, as well as determine if more or higher sales come as a result of accepting credit cards as payments.

A third party credit card processor offers real-time processing online, online virtual terminals for entering manual transactions, no maximum limits for processing amounts in most cases, and the ability to set up recurring billing.

One of the advantages of using a third party credit card processor over establishing a merchant account is that instead of paying a transaction fee or a monthly fee, you pay a percentage of the sales (from 2% to 15%), and only when you actually make sales. Some merchant account providers require that you pay a monthly fee- even if you aren't making any credit card sales. By starting out with a third party credit card processor, you can judge how many customers might use the option to pay with credit cards before you go through the process of applying for a merchant account and getting everything set up.

How do third party payment processors work?

Once you have an account with a third party payment processor, you'll create links to your products that allow customers to order and pay with credit. The links send the customer to the
third-party processing company's server, and they handle the orders for you. Payments are processed by the company, and the sales are credited to your own business- less the third party processor's commission. You receive your money from the third party processing company at established payment intervals. Typically, money owed to you from the third party credit card
processing company is deposited automatically into a checking or savings account that you have set up for your business and linked to your account with the third party processor.

About The Author:

This article has been provided courtesy of Creditor Web, http://www.creditorweb.com .

Labels: Home Based Business, Web Site Usability

By Cherie' Davidson

Ah, there he is. What did he do, sleep all night?! We'll never get any sales if he doesn't do something with me. My navigation is awkward, the page flow...well, it doesn't, and humans keep leaving the site after a few seconds. It's no fun for me, I can tell you! I'm a Website, damn it, and I deserve some respect!

My human - he calls himself a business man...ha! - is trying to make a living from me. But what can he expect when he has no clue what my visitors are thinking? This just chaps my scripts, I can tell you.

Okay, in all fairness, he did make me look good. Actually, real good. I'm hot...my graphics are sharp and engaging, my design is striking and if I were a photograph, I'd be framed in a fancy gallery! But doesn't he know, looks are only monitor deep? Pleeeez, get a clue! My very survival depends on business, which starts with happy humans. And unfortunately, as pretty as I am, I'm not making anyone happy. Yep, my days are numbered unless he starts paying attention to my needs!

Impatiently waiting for his human to fill his coffee mug, Website sits, wondering what today will hold...

Come on, come on! We're burning pixels here! Yes! Pull out your chair, there you go. Sit... alright! Gotcha! Now we're cooking. Yep, there's the familiar tap...and...woo hoo! He's pulling some of my files. We're finally going to get something done!

Human has been reading about Web analytics...

What is this? He's adding a strange little snippet of code. Hmmm, interesting, it's nonintrusive, but...whoa, baby! I can see who is looking at me! Wow! There's one from Alaska, and Arizona, oh,ya, and that place humans call Florida. This is a rush! Look at those traffic numbers climb! I've got to look at this deal. Ok, ya, reports, good. Easy to read. My human needs to look at these closely. Oh ya!

Wait a second! Only 20% of all these people went to my sales page?! That can't continue. Hey, human! Human! Are you seeing this?!

It seems Human is seeing the numbers, and he is realizing there is a lot he has been missing by not having used traffic reporting before now...

Ok, we need to look at this more closely. I see that 10% are buying once they get there. Hmmm, that could be improved! Oh, geez, look at that product description page - everyone is leaving when they get to it. What's up with that?! Human, you need to get a copywriter on that page, like now!

This is interesting, that press release he sent brought 379 people to the site. And 214 are from Florida. What else, oh...keywords! Aha! I don't see my #1 product anywhere.

The unpleasant screeching sound issuing from the computer echoes Human's feelings about his site. This Web analytics data is shedding light on some serious issues...

Come on, Human! Take your mouse by the horns and make some changes! This is good stuff we're seeing here. Your banner ad on that sweet little site in Canada is getting great response. Do more of that, would ya? I sure wouldn't mind connecting to some other hotties like that one, and we now know that pays off!

Human, you're...making changes! You go!!! Ahhh, I'm already seeing a difference...look at that! Not so many jumpers from the description page; they're starting to move over to sales. Now you've got it. Oh ya, this is doing the trick. You're seeing what needs to be changed, what works and what flops!

No more long, lonely nights, no more feelings of cart abandonment, no more dollars surfing out of my reach! I'm all choked up...Human, you couldn't have made a better move, and you're going to see the difference I can make now! Oh ya! My virtual world is turning around, thanks to one little snippet and a human who is paying attention to the reports.

What about your Website? Don't keep it in the dark, bored, doing nothing for you. An unfulfilled Website is a tremendous opportunity lost. By using Web analytics, it can do what it was created to do...bring you business!

About the Author:

Article written by freelance writer and Website content developer, Cherie' Davidson
(http://www.cheriedavidson.com). Cherie' is also copywriter and managing content editor for VisiStat, a Web reporting service
(http://www.visistat.com), and their informative Analytics Blog
(http://www.visistat.com/wordpress/). For more information, write her at editor at visistat.com.

Labels: Internet Marketing, Web Site Design, Web Site Usability

By Tim Whiston

Current graphics technology is awesome, and I love a good video game. But market testing has proven websites that go overboard with graphic design and special effects actually convert far fewer sales than sites with clean, attractive layouts that do not interfere with the most important element - the content!

I hate it when I come to a site looking for a product or service and I can't get past the streaming video intro. I also hate it when a fat audio file loads on every page I navigate, or when the flash elements and high-tech animations make it hard to find the order button.

Believe it or not I'm saying this as a professional web designer. And guess what?

According to multiple independent studies the average Internet consumer agrees with me!

It's a fact - sites with too many bells and whistles will actually drive your customers away before they have a chance to soak up your offer or at least subscribe to your opt-in list. As a rule, I don't even recommend flash as a viable media for direct response marketing.

Look at some of the most productive retail sites in any niche and you'll find clean, appealing graphics. But these visual creatives will not overshadow the most important element of all. the site's content!

Unless you are marketing a video game, a movie, or sophisticated animation software/design service, it's the content that generates sales and not the bells and whistles that turn your site into a digital carnival.

Don't get me wrong, both audio and video elements can have a tremendous impact on your conversions; but not if these features are presented in place of quality sales copy and plenty of solid consumer information.

High-tech design solutions should be applied in a way that compliments your content. Your marketing message should never be upstaged by visual theatrics or dazzling sound effects unless you're in the business of selling such effects to site owners who don't know any better.

Regardless of how far technology advances it is highly unlikely the average consumer will ever stop demanding quality content prior to his or her purchase of your product or service. So lead with your message and let the special effects blend in and compliment your content delivery.

Keep the balance between graphic design and strong copy, and your visitors will be far more likely to stick around and give you the chance to close the deal.

About The Author:

Tim Whiston is a full-time entrepreneur who helps small businesses and individual professionals develop a profitable web presence for their ventures. Have a look at his Website Design Service to find powerful and cost-effective solutions for your business. http://www.timwhiston.com

Labels: Web Site Design, Web Site Usability

By Scott Lindsay

The early days of web development saw a relatively small handful of 'experts' and had them seeking to find ways to make a website do what their client wanted them to do. There was very little standardized methods to make website development an easy process and each site may have been designed with customized programming that may have been totally incompatible
with any other site.

When the number of programmers raised from a few hundred to more than 30,000 it became much clearer that there needed to be some cohesive way to simplify things. This process led to new partnerships and development applications that have become the standards of the day.

As new developments are unveiled they are field tested by programmers and implemented once it is clear that the methodology is workable.

In many cases these new development programs can be refined and repackaged into a form based method that allows non-tech customers to develop a website that is as functional as any
other site and at a fraction of the cost.

Certainly this was not possible in 1995, but through the trial and error of more than ten years the best features have risen to the top and the have proven very useful to both programmers
as well as online business.

With so many programs available to developers today it is becoming much easier to upgrade features and enhance website productivity.

Many programmers are very interested in making site developments self-directed by their customers. The reason is simply the sheer numbers of new sites that are being developed. If at least a portion of the site can be managed by the customer there are two benefits, 1) less need for one on one development for the programmer and, 2) more direct control by the website owner.

When the business owner has the capability of managing the functions of the website the faster the clarity of vision can be realized. This is largely viewed as one of the predominate features of self-directed programming on website developments.

The cost effective nature of self-directed site development has caused many to wonder why they didn't look into this solution before. Many new start-up ecommerce sites have discovered this method to be the quickest way to provide their potential customers with the full benefit of their services.

The future of web development has a lot to do with the expectations of website owners and the demands of the consuming public. It is a safe assumption that as new technologies are required there will be programmers who can assist in its development and then work to refine the function so that ecommerce can implement the technology in a self-directed user-friendly format.

About The Author:

Scott Lindsay is a web developer and entrepreneur. He is the founder of HighPowerSites and many other web projects. Get your own website online in just 5 minutes with HighPowerSites at: http://www.highpowersites.com. Start your own ebook business with BooksWealth at:
http://www.bookswealth.com

Labels: Web Site Design, Web Site Usability

By Alexander Thomas

An ecommerce website is fast becoming an essential piece of the modern business' success with the gradual shift in business environment to the online landscape. For the website to make any type of substantial contribution however, the business needs to have a complete understanding of its' customers wants and needs. This is perhaps the toughest aspect of the online business model.

Tools such as web analytic software can provide early guidance on how to proceed into the online business world. Designed testing to gain insight into visitor traffic patterns enables the user to monitor the site traffic in order to study the general market issues, number of visitors clicking into the pages of the sites etc. A business can use this information to design and develop the optimal solution to address these visitors / potential customers.

From the small out-of-the-basement business to the giant entities, regardless of business mode (B2B or B2C), building an ecommerce site has a terrific significance in today's market. The subject of building an ecommerce site involves certain pivotal steps that the web site developer is required to take for planning, developing and putting it into action by using applications such as Microsoft studio .NET.

One can find tons of detailed information regarding the choices of the designs the developer needs for building an ecommerce site. In this issue, it is important to discuss about the term
"Handel" since it is very much a related topic. A "Handel" is basically a set of technical modules that are used to perform certain repetitive usual actions such as adding and removing items to and from the shopping cart and other usual tasks which are related to making ecommerce software.

Building the best solution involves solving for the endgame. What is the end goal the site should accomplish? With this in mind, build the site mechanics using reverse engineering, always keeping the end result in mind. It is best to always strive to build efficiencies and ease-of-use so that the visitor avoids any type of confusion in navigation. Build it and they will come!

There are certain criterions that must be met to build up a better ecommerce site. A better ecommerce site must give a clear view of the company's actual status and should be comprehensive and substantial. It is very important to create an ecommerce site in such a way that it becomes capable to deliver within a very short window of time. If you continue to focus on the question, "why should a customer buy from me?" then your project will experience the greatest end success.

Another pivotal point regarding building a better ecommerce site is fewer the number of pages, better it is for the external world. The site should display the points of guarantee or warrantee for the products and should be built in such a way so as to assure the customer that you will always be there to help the customer if anything goes wrong.

About The Author:

Alexander Thomas is a respected author and contributor to Ecommerce-Site.org -
(http://ecommerce-site.org), a leading authority and resource directory for information on Ecommerce on the internet.

Labels: Web Site Design, Web Site Usability

By Barry Fenning

Google Adsense has provided website owners a simple way to make money online. Just copy and paste a simple piece of code into your website and you can be making money within 5 minutes. No wages for salespersons, no dealing with advertisers, no hassles. However, there is a big difference between making a couple of cents per day and retiring on your own private yacht
in the Caribbean . There is more to do than simply plugging your advertisements into any section of your website, sitting back, and hoping the cheques will start pouring through the
door.

If you are looking for a way to increase your earnings with Google Adsense with your Blog or Website then the following tips should help:

1. Blend you Adsense Advertisements with the rest of your page.

This is a very simple but not always used tip. Countless studies have shown that users are more likely to click on your Adsense advertisements if they have the same link and font colours as the rest of your page. Google makes sure that the advertisement relevancy matches the content of your web page so by blending the Adsense advertisements it will provide a consistent look to your page with relevant content as well.

2. Putting Adsense Above or Below the fold?

The "fold" is simply known as the bottom of the page. If you have to scroll down to see more information on a page, this section is known as "below the fold". Test your Adsense placement by analyzing the CTR (click through rate) that you get for advertisements that are above the fold, take them out and then put them below the fold, you'll get a better picture to see which has greater success. There is no hard-and-fast rule to what suits better but remember that success has a lot to do with location, location, location. So get testing.

3. Take the clutter out of your Website.

Like a good spring cleaning exercise look at your webpages and analyze what your visitors find useful and what gets very little clicks. This is not only good practice towards creating a more user-friendly website but it also allows you to test Adsense ads in different areas of your pages and see identify improvements on advertisement CTRs.

4. Help the Adsense robot.

A picture says a thousand words but to a robot/spider that is crawling your pages a picture says very little about what the content is about. If your site contains a lot of pictures then do yourself, your visitor, and the Adsense bot a favour and add some text to let everyone know what the image is about. This way the Adsense advertisements will be more targeted to what your site/page is all about and the user won't see unrelated advertisements within your website.

5. Increase your website traffic.

Seems like another obvious one, but so many good websites exist that aren't reaching their potential target market. By optimising your website to gain better search engine rankings,
participating in forums that are related to your website, submitting your website to industry related directories, and getting the word out there in any way that you can think of will help drive targeted visitors to your website. Remember that the internet is an amazingly powerful medium to facilitate word-of-mouth. The effort you put into promoting your site will be rewarded by satisfied visitors/customers spreading the word about your website throughout the World Wide Web. However, make sure that you have a quality website/product/service or the opposite can happen just as quick.

In conclusion by incorporating the above tips you should improve your Adsense earnings. I'm not telling you that by using the above that you'll be retiring on your yacht with your Pina Colada in hand. So don't quit your day-job. If you follow the advice above it will get you on your way to improving your CTRs, your website design, and the experience for your user. Probably the most important thing that these tips help you with is to encourage you to test and experiment with Adsense and not just assume that whatever the style you use and wherever you put it is the right place.

About The Author:

Barry Fenning is the owner of
http://www.betteririshwebsites.com A SEO Articles website that
is aimed at people new to the area of search engine
optimization and online marketing. Please include this bio for
permission to reproduce this article.

Labels: Pay Per Click Advertising, Web Site Usability

John Lenaghan

Mistakes aren't necessarily a bad thing, but if you can learn
from other people's mistakes it can save you from having to
deal with them yourself. When it comes to web hosting, there
are basically two kinds of mistakes - technical and general
business.

Technical mistakes usually come up because of a
misunderstanding of the internet and how it actually works. The
first mistake many people make when creating a website is to
cram as much information, photographs, images, etc. on each
page as possible.

This makes the site take longer to download, leading to many
visitors just moving on and never actually looking at the site.
It also makes it more difficult to find what they're looking for
if the page is unorganized.

Another common error is creating a web site that isn't search
engine friendly. If the search engines can't determine what
your site is about, they aren't going to be able to send you
people who are searching for what you offer.

A mistake that many people make when starting out is to choose
a host solely based on price. This is obviously an important
factor, especially in the beginning, but if you choose the
cheapest host you may be limited in your scalability as the
website grows in popularity and traffic.

On the business side of things, the most common mistake is
trying to be everything to everyone. You should have a plan for
your website - a purpose for its existence - and build according
to that plan.

Choose your target market and stick with it. Advertise in
places they would see. Market in ways that would be of interest
to them. Resist the urge to branch out into other areas just
because something catches your eye. A site that tries to do
everything usually ends up achieving nothing.

Another common business mistake is following the competition's
lead. You'll obviously want to keep an eye on them to see what
they're up to, but if you copy everything they do you'll always
be one step behind.

Use your creativity and come up with unique ways to stand out
from the rest of the websites in your market.

About The Author:

John Lenaghan writes about web site hosting
and other related topics for the Hosting Report website. For
more helpful web hosting information visit
http://www.hostingreport.org

Labels: Internet Marketing, Web Site Design, Web Site Usability

Heris Yunora

One main advantage of using CMS is one will be able to manage
the contents of ones websites without having to deal with
complicated technical tasks. Imagine that you are a very
talented writer but you can't show your writings online just
because you don't have any idea how to write webpages
thatconsist of HTML tags.

With CMS, a writer only needs to type her works in an editor as
if she does it with a word processor. Then the CMS itself that
will show her works online. It is a great time saver for a
webmaster to create and maintain her website. The installation
process is also very easy since many web hosting services have
offered special features such as Fantastico where a user can
install a CMS with just a few clicks of mouse. The process is
done automatically.

Basically, a web content management system consists of two main
parts, a front-end and a back-end. The back-end is a section
where you can do many administrative tasks such as inserting
and editing articles, giving privileges to some people,
managing the look and feel of your website, and so on. The
front-end refers to what visitors see. It is the face of your
website.

In choosing a CMS, you should know what is the main purpose of
using it. There are CMSs which are intended to build portals.
Other systems are mainly used to build photo gallery, forum,
personal or even corporate websites. Then you need to know what
kind of features they have. For example, Drupal, an open source
CMS, provides a feature where you can gather fresh contents
from other sites by adding the sites' feeds. You can even
filter any items so that you only show the items that contain a
specific keyword.

Usually, a CMS also offers additional modules that will enable
you to use additional features without having to put your
efforts in programming. Just download the module you need and
install it in your hosting server.

Don't forget also to know your own desires and abillities in
modifying a CMS. For instance, Mambo should be sufficient for
you who don't want to deal with some PHP coding. Mambo has
already provided many modules to accomplish specific tasks. It
also offers ready-to-use templates you can choose. On the other
hand Typo3 is the right choice for people who need a very robust
and flexible system.

It is necessary to know that there are so many commercial and
free content management system available. Vignette and FatWire
are the example of two commercial systems while PostNuke,
Drupal and Mambo.are free to use.

And, of course there are other things you should consider for
finding the right CMS. So please do a good and thorough
analysis before deciding which system to use. Choosing the
right Content Management System from the beginning is very
important. Make sure it would best fit your needs.

About The Author:

Heris Yunora
http://www.unlimitedhostingplan.com

Labels: Web Site Design, Web Site Usability

By Ray L. Edwards

What gives a website owner fuzzy feelings inside is not the
same thing that makes the site sell. In fact, it has been
proven and shown over and over again that UGLY, but functional
sites outsell fancy looking websites designed to win creative
awards.

Think about the most popular e-commerce sites online: eBay,
Amazon, MySpace and Skype, and you'll see that they are not big
on design. But they are simple, clear and very intuitive for the
visitor to use.

So skip the Flash introductions (or your visitors will!) and
all those slide show graphics because they are just distracting
at best to what you want to accomplish. When a prospect comes to
your site you don't want to try and win their attention because
you ALREADY have their attention. Instead you want to GIVE them
attention by making their task easier.

Speaking of tasks, people come to your website with a certain
aim in mind. You have to build a site that would facilitate the
accomplishment of that aim. So if you are promising a free
report then show them CLEARLY how they can get the report in
the least steps.

One characteristic that mark web surfers is that they are
impatient. If you website doesn't satisfy the advertised need,
then your competition is just one click away. No driving
required, no walking to the next closest store, but just one
mouse click and they are gone!

Here are some ways in which you can design a website that's
functional:

1. Make your navigation system as intuitive and consistent
throughout the website. Same placement, color scheme etc.

2. Watch the layout of your text to make the information
readable. Not too many dense paragraphs and use a lot of white
space.

3. Make your headline stand out by using a larger font and
attention-getting color.

4. Guide the user step-by-step in accomplishing their task.
Number these steps if possible. Do not assume too much. What's
obvious to you the owner of the site may not be obvious to a
new visitor. (Much like your home.)

5. Label action buttons appropriate, such as: "Click Here To
Buy", "Click Here To Subscribe!"

As a copywriter, I've found that 'marked up' sales letters
-yellow highlighting, underlines, bolding, etc. had a higher
response than clean looking copy. And what people SAY is often
the opposite of what they DO! (Welcome to the human family.)

So in other words, the colleagues who tell you that your
website looks "pretty" don't buy from such sites. "Does this
site look good?" is a wasted question.

"Would this site sell?"--that is the question.

Don't be flattered by the friends who tell you, "WOW, your site
looks good!" Aim for the UGLY site that fattens your bank
account.

About The Author:

Ray L. Edwards is a published author, a
copywriting coach and internet marketing consultant. You may
find more information on boosting your online sales by visiting
http://www.yourwebsiteconversion.com

Labels: Web Site Design, Web Site Usability

By: John Black

By: Adam McFarland

Every website owner has a somewhat unhealthy obsession with
driving more traffic to their site. We all want more traffic,
if for nothing else to be able to brag to others how many
unique visitors we've received. Competition among web owners
aside, actually doing something with that traffic is equally as
important as getting it. Yet for some reason, most site owners
make the mistake of focusing most of their time on getting more
traffic and rarely, if ever, focus on improving their conversion
rate.

What is a conversion?

A conversion happens whenever a visitor to your site performs a
desired action. It might be purchasing a product, signing up for
a newsletter, signing up for an account, or even clicking on an
advertisement (although I'd advise against making the goal of
your site to have someone click away from it). One way or
another, if you have a site, you've got a desired action that
you want the user to perform.

How big of a difference can it make?

Consider Company A and Company B. Both sell online
subscriptions to their news services for a one-time fee of
$100. They each attract 1000 unique visitors per day. Company A
converts 2% of their visitors whereas Company B converts 5%. Big
deal right? How much does 3% really matter? Well, Company A
sells 20 subscriptions per day, or 7,300 per year for $730,000
of revenue. Not bad. But Company B sells 50 subscriptions per
day, or 18,250 per year for $1,825,000 of revenue!

Without any variation in traffic, you can improve conversion
rate on your site and drastically increase revenue. Now, is
increasing from 2% to 5% going be a challenge? Certainly, but
it is by no means impossible and in most cases is probably
easier than you think.

What's a good conversion rate?

Some people will tell you that an "average" conversion rate is
2%-5% and an "amazing" conversion rate is 10%-15%. To me,
that's a broad statement. I'm not saying that you should
completely ignore those numbers, just that you should
understand where they are coming from. Those numbers tend to
apply to e-commerce sites selling to consumers. They also don't
factor in where traffic is coming from, product pricing, and
about a hundred other potential factors that could affect your
conversion rate.

There are times when a 2% conversion rate is phenomenal. For
example, if you are selling software licenses for $20,000,
converting 1 in 50 visitors is pretty exemplary. On the flip
side, if your goal is to have people sign up for a football
newsletter and all of your traffic is coming from an ad you
placed on NFL.com, 15% might be considered really poor.

My answer to "what's a good conversion rate" is any conversion
rate that's better than your current one.

Start by doing a self-evaluation and set a baseline

Before you can even think about trying to increase your
conversion rate, you need to have a system in place to track
your current conversions. In its simplest form, conversion rate
can be calculated by dividing the number of conversions into the
number of visitors to your site for a specified time period.
Most site owners will want more in depth statistics (such as
what page visitors came from and what pages potential customers
left their site from) so I would recommend a web analytics
program like the free Google Analytics that provides in-depth
reporting and can calculate your conversion rates for you.

How will I know if my changes worked?

In my mind, the only way to think about conversion rate is to
start at your current rate and start striving to convert 100%
of the visitors to your site. Is that ever going to happen?
Probably not, but as Les Brown said - "shoot for the moon, even
if you miss, you'll land among the stars." Shoot for 100%
conversion rate and even if you don't get there, in attempting
to do so you'll be instilling the necessary qualities for
amazing improvements.

With that in mind, you should begin the process of trying to
improve your conversion rate from your baseline. The bad news
when it comes to increasing conversion rate is that there is no
"one thing" that every site owner can do to increase it. The
good news is that there are literally thousands of things that
you can try that might increase it. Each one of those things
might help, or each might hurt.

And therein lies the key to success in increasing conversion
rate - testing, evaluating, and then testing and evaluating
some more. Each time you should be striving to "beat your
previous best." If you went from 2% to 2.2%, keep the change
and try for 2.5% with your next change. If you went from 2% to
1.5%, undo the change and try to get back over 2% with your
next change. In general, you should give a sufficient amount of
time to evaluate a change - I generally use one month as a rule
of thumb, but you should factor in how much traffic you get and
how large the change is when determining how long collect data
for before evaluating a change.

What type of changes should I make?

As I mentioned before, there are thousands of things that you
can change that can affect conversion rates. So where should
you start? Start by walking in the shoes of your customer.
Using the example of an e-commerce site, there are several
types of customers that find your site. For the customer
looking to buy immediately, is it easy to find the "buy" button
or do you have to look around for it? For the customer wanting
more information (product info, shipping info, or info about
your business), is that easy to find? And for customers just
browsing, do you have a way to entice them to buy, or at least
entice them to sign up for a newsletter so that you can try to
convert them at a later time?

Asking yourself those questions should result in several subtle
changes and probably a few not-so-subtle changes that you can
make. In addition, ask yourself whether or not the design of
your site - logo, layout, colors, and font - appeal to senses
and make it easy for people to find what they're looking for.

You should also seriously consider the content of your text. Is
it possible that some people don't understand what your product
or service does? Could international users interpret your
phrases differently than domestic users, and if so, is there a
way you could re-word your copy to avoid confusion? Ad copy is
a funny thing - a subtle word change can often drastically
affect conversion rates. The only way to know is to test.

Remember, you should only make one change at a time to be able
to properly evaluate it. Each change will help point you in the
right direction of the next change. Much like SEO, increasing
conversion rate is not a one time event, it is an improvement
process that you facilitate over the life of your site. That
said, it is not an extremely difficult process, and when used
in conjunction with sound SEO it can bring results to your site
that you could have never imagined.

About The Author: Adam McFarland owns iPrioritize
(http://www.iPrioritize.com) - simple to-do lists that can be
edited at any time from any place in the world. Email, print,
check from your mobile phone, subscribe via RSS, and share with
others.

Labels: Pay Per Click Advertising, Web Site Design, Web Site Usability

By: Kim Roach

By: James Opiko

At present, a vast majority of webmasters are designing for IE
(Internet Explorer) 6, which is not as W3C standards compliant
as is FireFox, Netscape, Safari and Opera.

In my article - "The importance of sound website design &
search spiders to Internet Marketers," I mentioned the
importance of a designer being cognizant of the fact that web
browser standards are not yet fully harmonized - a web page
that looks great in Internet Explorer (6) might look hideous in
a Mozilla based browser like FireFox or Netscape.

I also noted that with the explosion of devices with which to
serve Internet applications, compliance with W3C standards has
become critical.

When the final release for IE 7 for Windows XP, Server 2003 &
Vista is launched, hopefully before the end of 2006, the tables
will be turned, so to speak.

Internet Explorer 7 will be more standards compliant and your
HTML code will be subject to much more rigorous interpretation
than is the case with IE 6, consequently some web pages that
look fine in IE 6 might not look the same IE 7.

In IE 7 Microsoft has made a solemn effort to fix the browsers
acquiescence to W3C standards and CSS(Cascading Style Sheets)
compatibility. CSS interpretation as recommended by W3C has
been improved tremendously giving designers and developers more
leverage in functionality for cross-browser design.

Microsoft asserts that they are taking W3C compatibility issues
seriously.

Concisely what this means is that IE 7 will tend to interpret
your web page code more scrupulously than before.

Therefore, if you have been designing your pages and have not
bothered to check how they render in W3C Standards Compliant
browsers like FireFox, you may be in for a rude shock when IE 7
finally rolls out.

If you have not been incorporating W3C Web standards in your
design strategy you may need to re-design for IE 7.

How should you go about it?

Design for "strict" browsers like FireFox first. Not only is
FireFox a more standards-compliant browser but it is also the
primary competitor to Internet Explorer. A contender backed by
Google's marketing machine -- and therefore, is not likely do
"a Netscape" on designers.

Prior and up to IE 4.x, Netscape was the leading browser in the
market with almost 80% of the market, but in a bid to force the
issue culminating with proprietary goofs by AOL to whom
Netscape sold out, they screwed up big time with versions 4 up
to 6. A bitter war of attrition with Microsoft in the late
nineties did not help either.

Microsoft grabbed the opportunity and gobbled the Browser
market overnight.

With version 7+ Netscape has been revived. How well it will
compete with IE and FireFox remains to be seen.

I will be the first to admit that most the web pages I have
built in the last several years are not always standards
compliant...and so are ninety five percent of other web pages
-- as I stated in my previous article, "if strict W3C standards
were to be enforced in browsers, most websites would go out of
business."

To design for FireFox a designer needs to combine Valid CSS
(Cascading Style Sheets) for "look and feel" and W3C compliant
HTML for web page structure.

The combination of these two design strategies is powerful in
that it elicits tremendous flexibility, ease of maintenance and
opens up extensive possibilities in website design. The benefits
are rewarding, and every webmaster should attempt to utilize
this two pronged scheme in their design routine.

Making changes to and/or styling a site designed with CSS is
much easier and more elegant than messing around with a
traditional table-based design.

CSS may look intimidating to a first-timer but once you
familiarize with the basics you can progressively harness the
power of CSS to your full benefit. In addition, most web page
design tools such as Dreamweaver of FrontPage have built in
modules with which you can automatically generate CSS code,
which you can then view in a plain text editor for study
purposes.

To aid you in your CSS endeavor you need the following
developer tools: Web Developer Extension for FireFox and the
Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar. Great time-saving tools
for creating, understanding, and troubleshooting Web pages.

As a matter of fact, by installing some of the 1,500+ available
FireFox extensions you can eliminate the need for quite a chunk
of standalone desktop applications.

After designing your Web page remember to us a MarkUp
Validation Service to check whether your Web page conforms to
W3C recommendations. If there are errors, the validator will
notify you of them and suggest corrections.

Also, remember that when designing using W3C standards
guidelines a lot of code(tags) that were very valid in the
"Pre-Standards" era have completely depreciated and will be
ignored completely by browsers. If you ignore these errors
during validation, your web pages might not render correctly.

In many instances, you may never be able to achieve 100% HTML
or XHTML validation. In such cases you may want put the
following DOCTYPE declaration in your document -- at the top of
your web page before the tag:

< !DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
>

Note: remove space after " < " and before " > "

A "Document Type Definition" or DTD supplies Web browsers with
information about which (X)HTML specification your web page is
built upon, which instructs the Browser how to render the page
for viewing.

In the example captioned above a standards compliant browsers
will interpret your web page as an HTML 4.01 document, and
because it is marked as "Transitional," it will display it in
"quirks mode," meaning that the browser will forgo the strict
standards mode, and display your page like it would be
displayed in older "non-strict" browsers, while still
supporting any tags developed after IE 4, Netscape 4 and
others.

On the contrary, the following DOCTYPE declaration tells the
standards compliant browsers that your web page should be
displayed in strict compliance with the DOCTYPE declaration.

< !DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" >

A complete list of recommended DTDs can be found at the W3C
Website.

If you leave the DOCTYPE out, the browsers automatically switch
to "quirks mode," therefore, it is important to include the
DOCTYPE declaration on every web page that you build in order
for it to be rendered correctly.

If your Web pages render well in FireFox at present you
probably will not encounter any major problems in IE 7 other
than minor adjustments here and there. However, I think a
realistic designer should at least make a meaningful attempt to
follow W3C guidelines for it is the correct way forward.

Do it now so that you will ready for the future...re-designs
and total overhauls are a time consuming and painful process. A
process, which becomes much easier if your initial design
incorporated structurally clean and modular (X)HTML with CSS
compliance.

About The Author: James Opiko writes for
http://AfroArticles.com . Get free Online Coding Tools -
http://www.clubafrika.com/webmaster-tools/coding/PHP-NukeTools.shtml
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Labels: Web Site Design, Web Site Usability