Making Your Website Work for You

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Making Your Website Work for You
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Think about how you lived less than 10 years
ago?

• Nothing has impacted society and our behavior as
  rapidly as the internet has!
• Changed entire marketing communications dynamic
• 1996 a push flow of information was the norm
• tell me everything I need to know (reactive)
• By 2000 we shifted to pull flow society
• Let me decide what I need to know(proactive)

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Five Keys to Web Success

• Plan properly for a well developed website
• Keep a user centered mindset
• Ensure clean, crisp graphics/layout
• Design site to be search engine friendly
• Implement SEO and SEM

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Web Success Key 1

• Plan for an effective site

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Web Success Key 1Plan for an Effective Site

• Websites are like any other project
• Planning will save money, time and headaches
• Hire an expert but, dont leave it all up to
  them
• Know why you need a website
• Use the Web Planning Guide provided today

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The Web Planning Process

• Think about the type of site you need
• Static or Dynamic
• Static is the typical site environment
• Dynamic allows for content management, data
  management, etc.
• Content Management Systems are popular
• The Cms section Link is
• http//centerforlearning.org/cms/

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The Web Planning Process

• Know your objectives and purpose
• - The designer should not define this for you!
• Define your web related goals
• Clearly identify what you expect visitors to
  doThis will help the design direction

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The Web Planning Process

• Account for where all content will come from
  ahead of time (biggest project killer)
• Reference other sites to gain insight
• Document everything with designer (scope)
• Clearly identify and analyze everything you can
  about your target visitor

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The Web Planning Process

• Brainstorm potential visitor movement they may
  desire to make once on your site
• Jot down your proposed site map
• Ensures smooth page flow
• Clarifies best navigation
• Identify landing pages, then sub pages

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The Web Planning Process

• List features/functions/forms for the site
• Decide up front if you will want to optimize the
  site for search engines

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Web Success Key 2

• Keep a user centered mindset.

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Keep a User-Centered Mindset
Old site
New site
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Web Success Key 2Keep a User Centered Mindset

• Ask yourself - is what I am adding to the site
  helping or hurting the user experience?
• Recognize that websites are self service tools
• Avoid making the visitor figure your site out
• Always step back and think about your targeted
  audience and how they think
• Align content and navigation to their mindsets

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Usability Will Determine Your Success

• It is often overlooked in the design process
• Effective usability is difficult to achieve
• Space limitations
• Content and graphics to merge together
• Limited font options
• Color issues, monitor and browser issues, etc.
• Avoid overdoing what we want in the site vs.
  what the visitor wants

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User Friendly Web Tips

• Have clean and easy to follow navigation
• Align your site structure with user expectations
• Avoid distracting the visitors direction
• Make sure your contact info is visible
• Visitor should always know where they are
• Test usability with peers or hire test users
• Try to keep key pages within 3 clicks

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Visitor Frustration Will Run Deeper than Just
Your Site

• A challenging or unorganized site reflects poorly
  on your organization
• Close your eyes and think about your emotions
  when you struggled to get something on a site!
• Your site should make the visitor feel okay

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Have Clean Navigation

• Keep it simple, straightforward, intuitive
• Best main navigations are clearly left, right or
  top
• Check your ability to travel back to where you
  came from using only page navigation
• Menu names (links) should be specific,
  descriptive and relative to the topic
• Make sure nav is visible from any page
• Avoid distracting sounds on links
• Icons should be easy to understand

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Align Sites Structure With User Expectations

• Think about where your visitor would expect
  certain information
• Realize that you have background knowledge of
  what you intended the navigation to be.
• The visitor has to figure out your intentions
• Think in terms of what the user wants before
  considering what you want in the site

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Avoid Distracting the Visitors Direction

• Keep links that leave your site off early pages
• Keep fringe information off the home page
• Make it clear where the core information is

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Make Sure Contact Info is Visible

• Can you remember being frustrated by this?
• Try and keep the path to finding contact info
  accessible throughout the site

SAMPLE CONTACT US NAVIGATION
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Visitor Should Always Know Where They Are

• Try and use titles on pages when possible
• Have the navigation hi-light location status

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Test, Test, Test, and Test More

• Use your peers or hire local people to test it
• Predetermine what you want to achieve (purchase,
  find key info, getting sign ups, etc)
• Sit with them - watch eye and mouse moves
• Have the tester verbalize what they see as they
  go, and their vision of move options
• Command honest feedback listen

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Keep Key Pages Within 3 Clicks

• If it takes more than 4 pages to purchase on
  ecommerce rethink your paths
• Fewer page clicks improves your conversion rates
  and makes visitors happy

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Web Success Key 3

• Clean, Crisp Clear.

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Web Success Key 3Clean, Crisp
Graphics/Content/Layout

• The goal is to balance form and function
• Visitors scan pages looking for an anchor
• Go with the flow! Most visitors eyes flow
• immediate glance to top left
• then center
• then left or the top looking for navigation
• Conversion related content is best from center to
  slightly right on the page

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Clean, Crisp Graphics/Content/Layout

• Choose web-safe colors
• Printing colors do not translate same on web
• RGB vs. CMYK
• All monitors are not created equally
• Use color to effectively manage visibility of
  content

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Clean, Crisp Graphics/Content/Layout

• Break content and text into easy to follow
  sections or blocks
• Create a clear hierarchy or path in the way
  information is positioned on the pages
• Create contrast with color and text

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Clean, Crisp Graphics/Content/Layout

• Write clear and concise copy
• Use quality images
• Design page resolution to least common
  denominator (800 x 600 screen resolution)

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Website Sample
NEW SITE
OLD SITE
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Web Success Key 4

• Use a Search-Engine Friendly Approach.

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Web Success Key 4Use Search Engine Friendly
Approach

• Amazingly, many sites are designed without search
  engine considerations
• It saves money to create an SEO friendly site up
  front compared to converting a site
• Even if SEO and web marketing are not in current
  budget, it pays to at least make the site SEO
  ready from the get go!

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Web Success Key 4Use Search Engine Friendly
Approach
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How Do Search Engines Work?
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How Do Search Engines Work?

• Wow, I cant believe I found a place just down
  the road!
• It happened long before your search
• It starts with url submission or link activity
• Then come the spiders to check it out
• Whats with these robots
• And the..the algorithms keep score!

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Want an SE Friendly Site?

• Avoid using frames hard for SEs to index
• Minimize or compress graphic file sizes
• Search engines dislike slow loading sites
• Stay more in html and text - less in graphics
• SEs like to read text and evade graphics
• Be sure your html coding is W3C compliant

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Want an SE Friendly Site?
View Source Encoding sample
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Want an SE Friendly Site?

• Carefully research keywords and phrases
• Actively update and change your content
• SEs love site updates and new content
• Make good use of keywords in top of page
• SEs begin at top and seek quick relevancy

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Want an SE Friendly Site?

• Optimize your sites title and meta tags
• Place key words in titles and tags
• Meta tags keyword and description tags.
• Each page should have its own title
• Makes it easier for SEs to index pages
• Create a back-end SE friendly site map helps
  SEs index your pages and content

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Want an SE Friendly Site?

• Place keywords in your graphics alt tags
• Make sure your navigation is html-not graphic
• SEs dont recognize flash
• If used, just make sure most of site is html

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Web Marketing Solutions

• Implement SEO and SEM

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Web Marketing Solutions

• Linking Activity
• Internet Advertising
• Affiliate Marketing
• Blogging
• Viral Marketing
• Email Marketing

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Linking Activity

• What is linking?
• Why does linking matter?
• How do I find good links
• Tools like linkpopularity.com by Google
• Do a search on your key words looking for
  complementary sites (non-competitive sites)
• Create a link request email message or call
• Best link to sites with high PR and link pop.

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Linking Activity
SAMPLE LINKEXCHANGE REQUESTLETTER
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Internet Advertising

• Paid placements
• Pay per click advertising you only pay for
  click throughs
• Creates increased exposure on SEs
• Research best words
• You see these on the right side usually
• Web optimization creates the center pg ranks.
  This is free but requires expertise.
• Can take at least six months to make progress

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Internet Advertising
Sponsored adsfor the Search on Yoga Toes
Products
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Internet Advertising

• Check out googleanalytics.com to get traffic
  potential, keyword statistics, open an acct.
• Paid advertising (PPC, etc,), is a great way to
  generate quick activity you can get results in
  days.

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Affiliate Marketing

• Great for people who do e-commerce
• Think of it as building a big referral network
• Compensate affiliates a variety of ways
• Click through
• Leads
• Sales
• Build affiliates through software or approach it
  the same way you do linking strategies

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Make Blogs Work For You!

• Rapidly growing strategy
• Two ways to use them
• Create multiple blogs for independent linkage
• Participate in industry specific external blogs
• How to approach this strategy
• Keyword searches looking for good blogs
• Participate in only relevant blogs
• Provide valuable info, and refer to your site

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Viral Marketing

• Good examples Tell a friend/refer a friend
• Helps build email contacts and avoids spam
• Use on your site or in email campaigns or in
  articles/white papers you place on web

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Email Marketing

• Tips
• Do in html minimize graphic use
• Create links back to your site
• Offer value or education
• Follow ethical practices to avoid getting
  blacklisted
• Maximize viral marketing
• Consider using an auto responder in your site

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Email Marketing
SAMPLE EMAIL SIGN UP PAGE