Classified advertisements are usually set in solid lines of small type and are often grouped together and arranged according to the product or service offered.  They are usually between 50 and 100 words long and have been the backbone of many a small business’s advertising for years.  They are very cheap and when done well, can be extremely effective. 

Classified advertising is also on the Internet.  And, like their paper-based versions- when they’re done well, they can be extremely effective as a low-cost way of generating more website traffic.  You should note that classified ads are particularly useful for ‘testing’ your headlines and sales copy (before you take them to the ‘big-time’!). 

Another form of advertising on the Web is banner advertising.  These display as ‘small’ banners in prominent positions on web pages.  Banner advertising is a very common form of advertising on the web. 

Both forms of advertising are usually charged at a fixed rate, or they use one of the following charging models: 

• Pay-Per-Impression (PPI) - In the Pay-Per-Impression model you are charged every time one of your advertisements is ‘served’ up to a viewer.  With this model you are usually charged per 1000 impressions.  The amount you are charged per 1000 impressions is called your Cost Per Impression or CPM.  This model is the hardest for you to manage because you don’t know how many people will click on your advertisements and purchase products or services or make an enquiry. 

• Pay-Per-Click (PPC) - In this model you are charged for each click you receive on your ad listing.  The amount you pay per click is called your Cost-Per-Click or CPC.  Pay-per-click advertising is a lot more attractive than pay-per-impression advertising as you can manage your costs a lot easier- you only pay for visitors that have clicked-through to your website. 
   
• Pay-Per-Acquisition (PPA) - Pay-per-acquisition advertising is the greatest of the lot!  In this model you pay only when someone purchases something from your website.  You pay for a new customer!  The amount you pay is called your Cost Per Acquisition or CPA. 

Places to Advertise

There are almost limitless numbers of places to advertise on the Internet.  Places that accept classified ads are usually one of the following: 

• Websites - There are a number of websites that specialise in classified advertising.  Many of the websites allow you to place a free, standard-sized classified advertisement with the opportunity to pay to have your ad upgraded to a more advanced type; e.g., bold listing, priority listings etc. 
  A lot of the normal print-based newspapers and magazines also have websites that allow you to place classified ads.  Quite often, if you place a classified ad with a publication it will also be listed on their website. 

• Newsletters & Ezines - Many organisations and individuals provide quality newsletters and ezines to a loyal base of subscribers.  These newsletters and ezines are often highly targeted and have very reasonable advertising rates. 

But before you go ahead and start placing advertisements you need to think about the following: 

1. Who is my target customer and do they read the publications or visit the websites that we are looking at advertising on? 
2. How many visitors or readers does the site or publication have?  How many impressions will my ad get? 
3. Where will my advertisement be placed? 
4. What size will the advertisement be? 
5. If you are assessing a newsletter or ezine- ask to see a sample copy of the publication and check its quality.  Does it look professional?  Is the text appropriate and of high quality?  

‘Local’ Classified Advertising Websites

There is a number of very good online ‘classified advertising’ websites based in New Zealand.  A list of them is provided below: 

•    New Zealand Herald (www.nzherald.co.nz) 
•    Trade & Exchange (www.trade-exchange.co.nz) 
•    AdPost (www.adpost.com/nz) 
•    Sellit (www.sellit.co.nz) 
•    Gumtree (www.gumtree.co.nz) 

Local Ezines & Newsletters

When searching for local ezines and newsletters the best approach is to search the NZ-based directories.  Some good links are below: 

• http://www2.piperpat.co.nz/nz/magazine/a.html
• http://www.nzs.com/media/e-zines/
• http://news-media.nzpages.co.nz/news_and_media/Online_News_Services/
• http://news-media.nzpages.co.nz/news_and_media/Magazines/
• http://www.nzsearch.com/category.asp?id=871  
• http://www.nzsearch.com/category.asp?id=792 

Free Classifieds

There is a huge number of websites on the Internet that offer free classified advertising.  Many of these websites are international and will only be of use if you are marketing yourself internationally. 

The key thing with many free classified advertising websites is that the response rate is very low, so quantity is essential.  You will need to submit lots of ads to lots of websites.  The best way to do this is to use automated submission software that will automatically submit your advertisement to hundreds of websites that deal with classified advertising.  There are two pieces of software I know of: 

•    Classify PRO (http://www.trellian.com/classify/) 
•    AdBlaster (http://www.megapromoter.com/) 

But we haven’t given them a test-run, so if you see fit to use either of them please let us know how you go, because we are skeptical that these programs do in fact work for New Zealand classified advertising sites. 

Banner Advertising

Most of the ‘high traffic’ and popular websites offer banner advertising options.  Email the Webmaster and ask to see their advertising rate card. 

There are also a number of ‘banner exchange networks’.  With banner exchange networks, you sign-up to the network and set-up an area on your website to display the banner ads provided by the network. 
For every two banner ads you ‘serve up’ from the network, someone else on the network displays one of yours.  But the problem with many of the banner networks is that you do not get to target your ads at a specific market.  Your ad can be ‘served up’ to visitors who are not the slightest bit interested in what you offer. 

New Zealand has its own banner exchange network called NZADS (www.nzads.co.nz).  

There are also a number of international banner networks: 
•    http://www.bannerswap.com 
•    http://www.123banners.com 

Writing Great Ads

Writing a great classified ad is completely different to writing great sales copy for your website.  The primary objective of a classified ad is completely different!  Generally the primary objective of your website copy is to persuade your visitor to buy or enquire about your product.  The objective of your classified ad is to get the reader to click-through to your website or pick up the phone and call you. 

The type of customer that you are going to come across using a classified ad will also be different.  When a customer comes to your website they are already interested in what you are offering– they are pre-qualified.  A customer that you will find in an ezine or on a website that has classified ads is unqualified. 

The structure for a classified ad is as follows: 

• Headline
• Opening Hook
• Call to Action. 

The headline is the most important part of the whole ad.  It needs to immediately attract the reader’s attention.  It needs to YELL above the ‘din’ and cut through all the noise.  Think about your target customer.  What is your target customer’s need, problem or goal?  Write a headline around that.  Yell out their problem! 

Whenever possible use your reader’s name– some ezines give you the ability to personalise your advertisement by automatically inserting the person’s name into each separate copy of the ezine. 

The opening hook should expand on your headline.  Elaborate further on your strongest benefits and look to set the reader up for the call to action. 

Remember, your primary objective with a classified ad is to get the reader to click through to your website, or pick up the phone and call you.  Outline exactly what you want your reader to do.  Make it as easy as possible.

If your website is new and the search engines dos not know about it, you need to submit it and tell them about it so they can list it.  If the search engines already know about your website it may not be necessary to submit it. You can find out if the Search engines know about your website by doing a "site:www.yourwebsiteaddress" search. The search engine will tell you how many pages of your website that they have a record of.

Please note. you do not have to submit your sitemap. The search spiders are programmed to crawl the internet in search of new content, new websites. Sometimes it can be faster to get your website in the search results by simply getting a good link to it. 

Search engine submission can be a complicated process; fortunately there is just a few search engines to submit to these days. Many of the other search engines are "Powered" by the primary ones.

So how do you submit your website to the search engines?

Avoid using automated submission services

There are many automated search engine submission services.  The best advice we can offer you regarding them is – “Don’t use them!”.  Search engines hate automated submission services as they can be used to ‘spam’ the search engines.  Most search engine submission processes differ slightly, so after coming this far with your optimisation why risk receiving a ‘black mark’ next to your website’s domain name in the search engines.

Free organic manual submission

If search engines are a key part of your website promotion strategy then we believe it is absolutely vital that you spend time submitting your website to the search engines manually.
This method has no guarantees and it usually takes a number of weeks (up to eight) before your website is indexed.  The key search engines that offer free submission are below:

• Google (www.google.com/addurl.html) or even better Submit your sitemap to Google
• Yahoo (http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit)
• Bing (search.live.com/docs/submit.aspx)
• SearchNZ (www.searchnz.co.nz/addsite/)

Paid inclusion

Pay per click advertising (PPC) means that you pay to have your website included in a search engine.  By paying for inclusion you ensure that you are included in a search engine as a matter of priority.  Pay per inclusion programs give you no guarantee about where your website will rank on search pages. So for certain keywords or phrases, you still need to properly optimize your pages.  All that pay-per-inclusion programs guarantee is that your website will be included in their search engine’s index.

If you need your website to be included within a search engine quickly then you need to consider pay-per-inclusion. We recommend that you use both methods.

Learn more about Pay per click advertising (PPC)

Monitoring

Now that you have submitted your website to the search engines you will need to wait for the search engines to index your website.  This usually takes between two weeks and two months (unless you have paid for inclusion).  Once you have been listed it’s time to monitor your listings.  There are a number of ways you can do this:

• Simple Monitoring - The simplest method of monitoring is to go to each of the search engines that you are targeting and type in your keywords or phrases.  Take note of where your website appears in the list.  Look at who appears above you and then research what they are doing to make their website rank higher than yours.
   
• Web-based Tools - When you Submit your sitemap to Google, you create a Google Webmaster account. The Google Webmaster account provides a set of tools which help you monitor the Search engine listing and ranking process. Market Leap (www.marketleap.com/verify/default.htm) provides a number of free web-based keyword analysis tools.  These tools will allow you to check the rankings of each of your keywords and phrases.
   
• Software Packages - Web Position Gold (www.webposition.com) is the #1 solution for SEO.  It provides a whole range of tools for all aspects of SEO.  Included as part of the Web Position Gold package is the ability to monitor your rankings on target keywords and phrases.  If you are serious about your SEO, and the DIY route is for you, then you should consider purchasing Web Position Gold.  The standard edition costs US$149.

Most highly persuasive websites contain a delicate mixture of pre-sales content and sales copy.  Lets take a minute to clearly explore and  understand the difference between these.

• Pre-sales content is essentially about building trust and credibility and establishing rapport with your website visitors.   
• Sales copy is about persuading visitors to take action. 

Every website has content, but many have little or no pre-sales content.  And very few websites have any genuine sales copy.

A good website needs to have fantastic sales copy supported by great pre-sales content. 

Pre-selling your way to success!

An excellent way to establish trust and credibility is through pre-selling.  This is where you give away relevant, quality information to your visitors.  To successfully pre-sell – the information you give you visitors must be valuable to them.  It must help them achieve what they are looking to achieve.

Sometimes a website will contain pages and pages of pre-sales information.  This is a good idea – especially if you are dealing with a lot of visitors to your website that do not know your company.

In fact - the amount of pre-sales content that you will need on a website depends on how much your visitors already know you and trust you.  A ‘cold’ visitor will need a lot more pre-sales while a ‘warm’ visitor will need a lot less.   Some websites will have huge sections of the website dedicated to pre-sales information while others may simply have a paragraph or two on a single page.   As a general rule of thumb – the more pre-selling you do the more you will establish your trust and credibility. It’s almost impossible to overdo pre-sales. 

You must be extremely generous with what you give away at this stage.  The information you present needs to be of perceived value and should presented with your own unique style and flair. 

For example:  If you have articles about your industry that help to explain and clarify the easiest way to maximise the results of purchasing your type of product or service, this can be highly valuable to people looking to better understand what they may be about to invest in.  Let’s say that an accountant who specialises in working with investment property owners wants to ensure that all visitors to her website understand immediately that the depth of his or her knowledge is vast and of huge value to clients.  A well written article detailing some of the unique ways that smart accountants who know the new tax rules can be of extra benefit to this particular market segment, is a great giveaway from their website simply because it states clearly that they know their business, and here’s how we the accountants can start to prove it.  This same article can also be turned into a downloadable checklist that is useful immediately to the client, because it makes him or her think about the real issues they need to address, and conveys additional confidence in this particular accountant’s ability to understand them.

While it may appear that this is a ‘freebee’ and why would any professional service advisor give away their knowledge for nothing?  Consider this: the tiny piece of information offered up this way is only a very insignificant part of the whole value such a service provider can provide.  It’s a bit like offering up a taste test of ice-cream at the local ice-cream parlour.   You know that the tasting is really there to help you decide which flavour to buy. 

This is another vital point – the purpose which sends most people looking for your site is to gain information.  A good example of your vast knowledge about what you do and how you can best service the needs of your visitors gives you a much better chance of them taking action towards becoming a customer.

Lets start off now by looking at the first two steps in the visitor persuasion process.  “Do I trust you?”  And … “Do I believe you?”.

In order to successfully persuade your visitors to take action you must first establish your trust and credibility with your visitors.  If your website visitors don’t trust you and believe what you are telling them, they will never buy from you – no matter how amazing your products or services are.

Picture this.  As you are walking along the street a guy walks up to you.  The guy is covered in dirt and grime and is wearing tattered and heavily worn clothing.  He smells of alcohol and has the appearance of a homeless person who is living on the street. The guy introduces himself as Kyle and points to a brand new Bentley Continental parked on the side of the road.  He holds up the car keys and says, “Sir, this magnificent motor vehicle can be yours right here right now for only $1000!  But only if you pay me $1000 cash right here right now.” 

Would you pull out your wallet (or go to the bank) and pay this guy $1000 cash? 

Why not? 

The  Bentley is worth far more than $1000.  This has got to be the deal of a lifetime!

You won’t buy simply because you don’t trust the guy!  You don’t believe that he is telling the truth; in fact he might not even be the owner of the car.

If you don’t establish trust and credibility with your website visitors, you will never persuade them to take action - no matter how good a deal you are offering.

There are many different ways of establishing trust and credibility with your website visitors.  Some are influenced by the way that your website is designed and built and some involve the content that you put on your website. 

Let’s take a look at some of these factors now:

• Professional Design
  Your website must not look cheap!  First impressions are a vital part of establishing initial trust and credibility with your visitors.  Think about the story of Kyle and the brand new Bentley.  Kyle’s appearance would have greatly affected your perception of him and contributed to your lack of trust in him.
  One of the first impressions a visitor has of your website is the design – the look and the feel.  If your website screams ‘budget’ then it will seriously harm your potential results.
  Make sure your website has a sharp, professional look.  It should “look” like it has been designed and created by a person with professional website design skills.

• Website Usability
  Visitors need to be able to navigate quickly to where they want to go.  If you confuse your visitors and they get stuck and cannot figure out how to get to your ‘Order’ page, ‘Enquiry’ page or your ‘Checkout’ page then you will lose them.
  
  The online world is a lot different from the physical world.  It is significantly more competitive and does not have any geographical barriers.  If a customer is not happy with your service in the physical world your competitors are probably 20 minutes drive (or more) away.  In the online world your competitors are only two clicks of the mouse away!
  
  This is a critical point – visitors must be able to navigate quickly to where ever they want to go.  Your website needs to be very user-friendly and easy to use.
  
  Many research studies have been completed investigating the best way to layout a website for ease of use. The theory of website layout is heavily influenced by the eye-tracking studies we looked at earlier. As a result of these research studies, standards have been developed that outline exactly where on a website you should place certain information and where you should locate navigational menus and buttons and so on (see www.uie.com and www.nngroup.com).
  
  Think about this – when you go to a website, you know that the company’s logo will most likely be located in the top-left corner and that you will be able to navigate the website using either the menu at the top or down the left-hand side.
  
  So why not make it easy for your website visitors by following the same standards that are already being used by millions of other websites.  If you don’t - you will confuse your visitors and your visitors will question whether you are even a credible business given that your website is so poor.
  
  I like to use this analogy: think about what it would be like if every time you jumped in a different car the controls were in a different place.  How frustrating!  A Bentley can still be better than a Honda without putting the steering wheel in the back seat and the gear stick in the glove-box.  Don’t make your website a nightmare for your visitors – follow the standards.

• Website Loading Time
  Studies have consistently shown and it is now widely accepted that if your website takes longer than 8-10 seconds to load on a 56k modem then you run a serious risk of losing your visitor to a competitor's website and your trust and credibility is damaged.
  
  A good professional website designer should be able to create your website so that it loads quickly.  Do not compromise on this point! If they can not do this for you, then find another designer.
  
  If you website takes a long time to load it affects the trust and credibility your visitor has with you.  It is simple as that.  You can check the loading times of your website by going to http://www.zeald.com/Resources/Free+Tools/Website+Speed+Checker.html
  
  Graphics and photos will have the biggest impact on the loading time of your website.  Multimedia elements such as animations, audio and video can have a serious negative affect on your loading times.  Text usually makes little or no difference at all to loading times.
  
  Optimise your images so that they load as quickly as possible.  Most graphic’s programs allow you to do this.  If your graphics program doesn’t have the required features you can use the free tool available through the Zeald website – http://www.zeald.com/Resources/Free+Tools/Image+Optimiser.html

• Trust Building Elements
  So far we have looked at ways that your website can be setup to help you establish trust and credibility.  What we have seen so far are ways of establishing your trust and credibility passively: through the professionalism of your website design and the general way that it is setup.
  
  It is important that you proactively establish your trust and credibility– right from the minute your visitors hit your “landing page” (the page where your visitor arrives.  It is worthwhile noting that your first landing page is not necessarily always your homepage. If you have links from other sites or emails, your visitors first entry to your site may be a ‘special information’ page.
  
  Specific thinks will help you establish trust and credibility, including:
  • Guarantees
  • Testimonials
  • References
  • Partners & Affiliates (borrowed credibility)
  • Certifications
  • Awards
  • Case Studies
  • Your Company Profile/History
  • Contact Details
  • A Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Trade
  • Your Client List

Obviously not every company will be able to put all of these on their website, but from this list, ensure you take the time to strategically place some the elements outlined above on your landing pages and throughout the other pages within your website.

Links are the Internet’s form of ‘word-of-mouth’ marketing. When someone links to your website they are, in a sense, endorsing your website.

Links are currently the most important component that a search engine uses to rank a website.  Search engines assess and measure the quantity and quality of inbound links to help them judge the quality and poularity of a website.

Incoming links (links to your web page from another website), are highly valued by search engines as a ranking factor, as they are difficult for a Webmaster to control and manipulate the ‘results’. Because of this they are considered by the search engines to be genuine indicators as to the true nature of the content of your website.  There are three key things that a search engine considers when assessing your incoming links:

• Quantity or Popularity - Search engines place a lot of emphasis on high numbers of websites linking to yours (if they’re all ‘deemed’ relevant to what yours is about).
• Relevancy - How relevant is the website that is linking to your website?  Is its content in some way relevant to your website’s content?  Is it in a similar subject space, but slightly different?  Is it targeting similar keywords and about similar subjects?
• Link Text - The text that is used within the link that is linked to your website is also very important (especially to Google).  Try to include your keywords or phrases into the text that is linking to your site.  Also think about the text that surrounds the area ‘linked-to’ on your site.
• Trust - Are the websites that link to yours trustworthy? Websites such as government sites, large media sites such as CNN or BBC et

If good search engine rankings are a crucial part of your website promotion then it is well worth spending time and effort on increasing the number of links to your website.  The best way to do this is to set up a great website that attracts the interest of other website operators.

Building a large network of links that link back to your website can be an extremely powerful way of generating large amounts of traffic and improving your search engine ranking. Here are some ideas for building and managing a large network of links:

Measure your link building efforts

Before you start you need to establish a baseline and measure the success of your efforts. Some methods will be more effective than others and you want to know which ones work best for you and how to tune them. The metrics you want to measure include:

Inbound links. How popular is your website?  Do you have a lot of people with links to your site?  You can check your link popularity with each of the search engines by going to: tools.marketleap.com/publinkpop or, www.linkpopularity.com

or you can check your link popularity directly with the search engines themselves:

Yahoo: http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com Enter your website address IE. "www.zeald.com"
Google: Visit www.google.com Enter the website address with "link:" at the beginning. IE. "link:www.zeald.com"

Please note: Google will nearly always under report the number of inbound links. Google provide a more accurate report for the number of inbound links through your Webmaster tools account.

Build Reciprocal links

Build up a list of target websites that you would like to receive links from and then send an email or letter to their Webmaster or owner.  A template for this email is provided on the following page.

Expect a low response rate to these emails.  Many Webmasters are very busy and sometimes they are just not concerned with their search engine rankings.  However, the results that you can achieve from the extra links to your website can still make the effort worthwhile.

1. Research Possible Websites
   The first thing you need to do is research the possible linking websites. Think about your target customer and where they are likely to visit. Try to find places that are a hive of activity (lots of traffic!). Use the search engines to locate different websites and don’t forget the New Zealand search engines:
   • www.nzpages.co.nz
   • www.searchnz.co.nz
   • www.nzsearch.co.nz
   • www.nzs.co.nz
   Also, use a tool like Alexa (www.alexa.com) to analyse each website and to check out how much traffic each of them is getting.
2. Prepare a List
   Based on your research; prepare a short-list of websites that you would like to approach. Don’t be afraid to approach people for a link. Be courageous! You have nothing to lose. Make sure the websites that you list are complimentary and not competitive.
3. Prepare your Email
   Use an email template that has been prepared specifically for approaching websites for a link. We have provided an example email template for this purpose on the following page.
   Make sure your email focuses on ‘what’s in it for them’ (Remember, WIIFM)! They need to see what the upside is. Why should they go to the effort? Your website should offer something for their customers.
4. Follow-up
   Make sure you follow-up, because persistence does pay. Follow-up at weekly intervals and be prepared to follow-up many times if necessary

Link Request Template

Hi [Target's Name],
My name is [Insert Name] from [Insert Business Name]. I was recently browsing the Web and came across your website ([Insert Website URL here]). [Say something positive about their website here].
We have a website that [insert what your website does here].
I was hoping that you might consider linking to us and would like to invite you to review our website for the same purpose here [insert website address].
I believe that linking to each other’s website would have a number of mutual benefits:
- we can help increase each other’s website traffic
- we can help increase each other’s search engines rank (search engines currently put a lot of emphasis on links between websites).
If you believe that a link to our website would be appropriate, then please add it at your discretion- perhaps I could suggest the following link and description:
[Your site name and URL] - [Your site description]
Please let me know if you would like to proceed and I will set up a link on our website too.
Thank you for taking the time to consider this. If you have any queries please don’t hesitate to contact me.

With regards
[Insert email signature here]

When an Internet user types a domain name into a website browser a request is sent out to the local Internet Service Provider (ISP) asking where it can find that website. The ISP checks with the relevant master domain name server for the country then the server points the user to the location of the website.

Now to speed these domain name queries up, whenever the local ISP makes a query on a domain name it will store the result for a period of time so that it doesn’t have to ask again. This is a process called caching. Every now and then the ISP will update their stored cache with the information stored on the master domain name server. This period of time can range between a few minutes and 48 hours.

Whenever you want to update the information that is stored about your domain name on the master domain name server, because of caching, it can take up to 48 hours for every ISP around the world to update their records. This is a process called ‘propagation’.

Own your domain name

Every serious business website needs at least one domain name. The choice of what domain name(s) you purchase is absolutely crucial. Do not use the ‘free’ domain names that are offered by some websites. These free domain names usually come in the form of www.someothername.com/your_name. It is unprofessional and less enticing for users to follow a free domain name made up of unrelated words, in a line-up of search engine results.

Choosing a Domain Name

If your target market or your future target market is an international one, a domain name ending in ‘.com’ should be your first choice.

Unfortunately, a ‘.com’ domain name is difficult to find these days. There are now over 24 million ‘.com’ names registered so the chances of finding the name you want will be difficult.

Other international alternatives to a domain ending in ‘.com’ is a domain name ending in ‘.net’ or ‘.biz’. These domain names are not as good as a domain name ending in ‘.com’ but can be used successfully with careful marketing and branding.
 

If your target market is local or predominately local then a domain name ending in ‘.co.nz’ should be your first choice. If your audience know you as a New Zealand company they will expect you to have a ‘.co.nz’ domain.

If your target market is a combination of both international and New Zealand users you should consider using both.

Registering Multiple Domain Names

You may have multiple domain names and ‘point’ them all to your website, so users can access your website with any of the chosen names.

For many companies it is a good idea to register other secondary top level domain names such as ‘.net’ or ‘.org’ to protect your business brand. Very few people will use these domain names to access your website, but by registering them you prevent other businesses taking them and stealing website visitors or damaging your brand by displaying obscenities at their addresses.

If your domain name combines two separate words, make sure you register versions with and without hyphens. Search engines prefer domain names with hyphens and users prefer them without. If it is easy to misspell the domain name – consider registering the misspelt version of the domain name.

It is also a good idea to register the domain name of individual products, especially if these are well known brands and people have heard of them and are searching for them. This will also protect your product names.

Brainstorming ideas
Your domain name should reflect your business name and if possible portray who you are and what you do. Try to obtain a domain name that is:

• Catchy
• Easy to spell
• Easy to remember
• Easy to pronounce
• Easy to type.

Look to reflect your business name in your domain name. Zeald is our domain name and our company name. When we tell people we work for a company called Zeald, it instantly tells them that our company has something to do with the Internet and that we have a website.

Some great domain names include key words that your audience are searching for. Search engines will often credit words in the domain name as part of their ranking process. So if your domain name includes popular keywords that your target audience are searching for, your website will have that added advantage.

If you are just starting a new business, try to research popular keywords and see what domains you can register before you brand your new business.

Keep in mind that cute or non-traditional spellings may elude potential visitors.

Choosing a Domain Name for an Existing Business

For an already established business making its first step online, you may find that your original business name does not suit the web. It may be too long or too generic. It may not reflect the product or service. It may be impossible to find the appropriate domain name.

In this situation, we suggest you register the original business name so you don’t lose that traffic, but also register a name made up of popular keywords that would attract more targeted traffic, perhaps a name that focuses on the product or service as opposed to the company. You can use this keyword-rich domain name as your main address and redirect the traffic from your original ‘company name’ domain name to the same address.

If the business is completely changing to an online focus, or your brand is not well established, you may want to consider changing the business name altogether.

Don’t feel restricted by an existing business name in order to purchase a good domain. Even what may seem like a perfect keyword domain name, is not a guarantee.

Tools for Brainstorming Domain Names

• ‘Who_is Source’ (www.whois.sc)
  This is a great tool for finding available domains and brainstorming different ideas for domain names.
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• Word Tracker (www.wordtracker.com)
  Word Tracker has a free trial version of their service, which shows you detailed information about what keywords people are searching on and how many websites are competing for rankings on those keywords.
•  
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• Overture’s Term Suggestion Tool (www.overture.com)
  Overture is similar to Word Tracker and has a free version of their tool that will show you information about the keywords people are searching for on Overture.

Finding out Who Owns a Particular Domain Name

Free Parking (www.freeparking.co.nz) allows you to quickly find out who owns a specific domain name you may be interested in. Since many domain names are registered but never used, this is a great tool to track down the contact details of the owner, allowing you to make an offer to purchase it.

Infringing Trademarks

Because ‘online business’ means doing business internationally, you should make sure the domain name you choose does not infringe on any existing trademarks. Domain name disputes tend to go to the trademark holder, so even if you have the domain name you could have it taken away.

Consider establishing a trademark on your name - during this process you will discover any possible infringements. For information on establishing a New Zealand trademark go to http://www.iponz.govt.nz. You can also do a free search of US trademarks at the US Patent and Trademark office’s website at www.uspto.gov.

How to Register your Domain Names

If you would like to register a domain name contact Zeald on 0508 WEBSITE or email us info@zeald.com and we will make all the necessary arrangements for you.

Keep in mind that when you purchase your domain name, you are essentially reserving the name for your own usage, for a set period of time. You are not required to put up a website on the new domain name immediately. You also don’t need to have your website hosted by the same company that registers or hosts your domain name.

Finally make sure you keep your contact information up-to-date, as you do not want to miss being notified when your domain name is about to expire, thus letting your competition scoop it up, along with all your hard-earned website traffic.

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“Is Your Website Producing Amazing RESULTS?”

If you answer anything less than a resounding yes, then you need to learn about Zeald and the ‘Websites that Work!” program. Because results that are anything less than ‘amazing’ means you are selling yourself short!

Metadata is the information about a data source. For example, a document contains information, but there is also information about that document such as the title, author and publisher - this is the metadata, in other words, data about data. If we compare this to the web, every webpage has a number of metadata elements that can be set for the page. Standard metadata that should be displayed for every webpage is: the page title, the description and the keywords or phrases that summarize the content of that page and which appear within it.

Metadata is not visible on the site itself but is used by some search engines and directories to gain information about the website in order to index (catalogue) it correctly. Different search engines use metadata differently and some don’t use it at all.

The following is an example of effective metadata, that could be used by the site www.currypantry.com
 

Title
Welcome to Curry Pantry, suppliers of premium Malaysian Curry Pastes.
 

Description
Visit Curry Pantry for authentic, premium Malaysian Curry Pastes and sauces. For gourmet food without fuss, see our recipes for vegetable, lamb, seafood, beef or chicken curry.
 

Keywords
Curry, curries, pantry, curry pantry, sauces, pastes, recipes, Malaysia, Malaysian, cuisine, food, history, lamb, chicken, seafood, vegetable, meat, vegetable curry, seafood curry, chicken curry, lamb curry
 

 

Writing Your Metadata

Keywords / Phrases
When preparing your metadata, prepare your keywords / phrases first. This is because they should also appear in your page description and title. They should reflect the specific content of the page that you are writing for and you should consider the following:

• What are the key words / phrases that your potential customers might enter into search engines or directories to find your company, site and products?
• What keywords / phrases do your competitors use?
• How competitive is your industry (you may want to select a niche and focus upon that)
• Keywords should be limited in number (Search engines generally only permit a maximum of 25 or so, all other keywords appearing after that are ignored)
• Keywords / phrases should not be repeated too many times (Search engines ‘see’ both of these strategies as ‘spam’, false attempts to increase search engine rankings and will ignore the page / site.)

 

Compared to our example of effective keywords above, an example of a keyword /phrase list that would not be accepted by search engines because it is too repetitive / long would be;

Curry, curry, curry, curry, curry, curry pantry, curry pantry, curry pantry, curry pantry, curries, curries, curries, curries, curries, curries, Malaysia, Malaysia, Malaysia, Malaysia, Malaysian food, Malaysian food, Malaysian food, Malaysian Food, beef, lamb, chicken, seafood, vegetable, meat, beef, lamb, chicken, seafood, vegetable, meat, beef, lamb, chicken, seafood, vegetable, meat, food, food, food, food, recipes, recipes, recipes, recipes, recipes, Malaysian recipes, Malaysian recipes, Malaysian recipes, Malaysian recipes.

When entering your keywords / phrases they should all be separated by a comma. For example:
keyword1, keyword2, phrase one, phrase two

 

Page Description
Having selected your keywords, it is now time to prepare your page description. This is displayed by most search engines when returning a listing of relevant sites based on a specific search. Users search for sites by entering keywords or phrases into search engines or directories and the page description is displayed beneath the title in the list of results.

For the description, write one or at most two sentences describing the page content. Incorporate your page content / metadata keywords while writing it so as to increase the chance of the web page being found by search engines and directories.
 

Page Title
The page title is also used by search engines to gain information about the website and is the most important piece of metadata on any webpage. The page title is displayed in search result listings and also in the browser title bar whenever the page is viewed.

It is advisable to make the title no more than approximately 10 words long as anything longer than this will be truncated. Try to include keywords, rather than just the company name - preferably keywords & phrases that are also used in the page content, as well as in the metadata.
Below is an example of how our metadata example would appear when returned by Google as a hit.

Welcome to Curry Pantry, suppliers of premium Malaysian Curry Pastes
 

Visit Curry Pantry for authentic, premium Malaysian Curry Pastes and sauces. For gourmet food without fuss, see our recipes for vegetable, lamb, seafood, beef or chicken curry… http://www.currypantry.com - 15k - Cached - Similar pages
 

 

Summary

Metadata is an often overlooked component of many websites and many webpages. Every webpage that you have should have at least a ‘Page Title’ and ‘Page Description’. The ‘Keywords / Phrases’ meta-data is nowhere near as important as the other two as it is only used by one or two search engines – but it never hurts. All the best!!

 

 

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“Is Your Website Producing Amazing RESULTS?”

 

If your answer is anything less than a resounding yes, then you need to learn about Zeald and the ‘Websites that Work!” program. Because results that are anything less than ‘amazing’ means you are selling yourself short!
 

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© Zeald 2005 – All Rights Reserved

The ecommerce website designers you select and the technology you choose to build your site with will be a major influence on the success of your new website. But how do you make a good decision? This article talks through some of the key factors that you need to understand.

 

More Than Pretty Pictures

People often consider websites to simply be a more modern version of a printed brochure or business card, in practice so much more can be achieved. Websites need to be useful to the end user. On the internet the competitive environment is different - people have much more choice, and the competition is two clicks away rather than 20 minutes drive! If your website doesn’t give the user what they want quickly and easily they will go elsewhere. In particular a website needs to be fluid; it must be constantly evolving, up-to-date, and usable. Ecommerce website designers are beginning to realise that the old methods of building a website and providing an ongoing 'update service' is not good enough.

Static versus Dynamic

A static site is a collection of website documents that require website design skills to update. Users of the site can navigate and view these pages, but because they are “static” nothing will change until the original ecommerce website designers change it.
A dynamic ecommerce website is an application. The website is able to respond to the user inputs, allowing more advanced features like forms, shopping carts, forums, searches and database access. A good dynamic website will also provide tools that enable the website owner to create and update website content without any assistance from the original ecommerce website designers.
These dynamic features are very important to a serious website owner. An ecommerce website should not be thought of as a static brochure. For an ecommerce website to be effective it should be constantly evolving. It should be going through a continual process of measurement and improvement. A good dynamic website system should continually measure your ecommerce website performance and feed-back to you any problem areas that are occurring.

Why Not Flash?

Flash is a technology often used to create animation on the web. While it can create visually impressive movies and presentations, and is definitely useful for specialist purposes, it has some fundamental flaws that make it unsuitable for general purpose ecommerce websites. Below are some basic reasons for steering clear of flash unless it is used very carefully in a very specific setting.

• Flash websites tend to be created once and then left alone.
• Flash content is typically superficial, and seldom provides useful information to the customer.
• Flash typically requires an external specialist designer to create and update the content. This content can quickly become stale.

 

Ecommerce Websites

Ecommerce is defined as the process of selling and buying goods and services via the internet. When selling your goods and services online, it is important to display your products and services in a simple and logical way so that they are easy to find. It must be very simple and intuitive to navigate the website and use the buying functions. Placement of the products, sales copy, product photography, general page design and so on will all make significant differences as to whether your products sell well or poorly.
Security is a vital factor when collecting sensitive information over the internet. Your ecommerce website should use a technology called Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) to protect all sensitive information. Customers want to know that all key information is safe from theft when they shop online.
After an online payment is received, an order confirmation needs to be sent immediately to the customer letting them know that their payment was received and their shipment will be sent out as soon as possible. Remember, many customers will be a little nervous when they purchase off you for the first time. It is important that you reassure them as soon as possible.
The final part of the process the business will be alerted that an order has been placed and needs to be shipped as soon as possible.

 

Selecting an Ecommerce Website Designer

 

DIY Ecommerce Website Designers

This option involves purchase a piece of the software that will assist in the authoring of a website and taking the DIY approach. You will need to select a software package, learn the software package and create the website.
This method is used as an initial attempt by many small businesses. It is often a cheap alternative to commissioning a professional ecommerce website designer. Unfortunately the time required to learn not only the technology but also the techniques and the methods required to build a successful ecommerce website is enormous. Skilled ecommerce website designers and developers generally require a tertiary qualification and years of experience. A successful ecommerce website requires a rare combination of artistic, technical and online sales and marketing skills
Most ‘Do It Yourselvers’ end up spending a lot of time producing a ecommerce website that is a complete failure. How do we know? We are talking to people who have taken this path every day! The time and energy that you will spend learning a software package and how to design and build an ecommerce website is far better spent concentrated on the important aspects of the ecommerce website that relate directly to your business – sales copy, photography, marketing and promotional strategy, customer service policies etc.

 

Cowboy Ecommerce Website Designers

Your uncle's aunt's nephew's cousin can NOT cheaply build you a successful ecommerce website, any more than they can build you a house or fix your car. The website development industry is still a very young one - most website development companies only started to appear in the mid-nineties. So, it is perhaps not surprising that the WWW sometimes resembles the Wild Wild West.

 

Graphic Designers -> Ecommerce Website Designers

Since you already have an existing relationship with someone who designed your business cards for you; you might wonder whether they can build you an ecommerce website. Graphic designers generally have just *one* of the skills needed to produce a good ecommerce website: they have the ability to produce something that looks good.
Unfortunately graphic designers tend to focus on this to the exclusion of many other important aspects such as usability and functionality
In many cases to deal with the technology, design agencies will have a relationship with a website development company who will implement the website designs that the design agency produce. This can prove expensive and cause issues with support and communication.
For websites with limited functionality, a website design agency will produce a static site. The real problem with this method does not become apparent until you have to pay for the time and expertise of a professional ecommerce website designer to make any small changes to your ecommerce website.

 

Website Development Companies

Website development companies specialise in the construction of websites and have the required technical skills to produce an ecommerce website with all the bells and whistles. This is sometimes the downfall of such an approach, because this functionality is often at the expense of the design. If a design is not professional looking, you run the risk of not only losing customers, but more importantly degrading your company image and brand.
Most website development companies can setup a dynamic system for your ecommerce website, but it will come at a price. Because they are constantly rebuilding the wheel, designing and building websites from the ground up each time, the cost of building a dynamic ecommerce website can be very expensive. These completely custom dynamic ecommerce systems are unable to leverage off the testing and constant improvement process that occurs when many websites are built on a single ecommerce website engine (or ecommerce product). Once the initial website development is over and your ecommerce website has been launched, you are “on your own”. Further enhancements to the ecommerce website and the system come at a cost. Support is often limited as the website and the associated system becomes completely out-dated.

 

Ecommerce Website Products

Whenever a new technology is introduced everyone builds their own customised solution using the new technology. Eventually products are developed that utilise the technology. These products become the standard – or the common way to utilise the new technology. And once these standard products are developed, prices drop and the technology becomes cheaper to obtain. By reinventing the wheel each time, there is little standardisation, commonality and consistency and the cost is high. Custom-building a dynamic ecommerce system for your business will either result in a very high cost or a poor solution. Many ecommerce website products now exist that provide a high quality solution for a very reasonable cost

 

The Cookie Cutter Ecommerce Website Product

A cookie cutter ecommerce website product allows the customer to design their own website very quickly by completing a quick ‘wizard’. The ‘wizard’ will take the owner through a quick set of questions such as; website layout, colours, logo etc. Cookie cutter ecommerce websites are low-cost because the remove the consultative part of building a website. The website owner is given no assistance from a website expert and the key areas of design and planning are removed from the website development process. The result: a poorly planned website that looks highly unprofessional. (These comments may sound extreme – but if you are considering an ‘cookie cutter’ type solution try checking out the portfolio of websites that have been produced. For example – take a look at the Yellow Pages Site Builder websites (www.yellowpages.co.nz)).

 

The Zeald Ecommerce Website Product

The Zeald ecommerce website product provides the benefits of outside expertise (experienced internet consultants, website designers and developers) combined with a powerful and flexible website product. It contains a suite of tools that provide you with everything you need in order to be amazingly successful online (Find Out More About The Zeald Product >>)
Summary
There are so many different options and methods for producing an ecommerce website. Take your time, inform yourself, become aware of the pitfalls and you will be secure in the knowledge that you have made an educated choice.

 

Good Luck!

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“Is Your Website Producing Amazing RESULTS?”

Find out how Zeald can help you with your ecommerce website design

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What is UVP?

At some stage or another you might have heard of the phrase 'elevator pitch'. It's basically a short 30 second pitch about your business idea or proposition. This typically includes who your target market is, what benefit you offer your customers, a description of your products or services and most importantly what makes you unique – what's different about you compared to everyone else in the market.

Unique Value Proposition (or UVP) is exactly that. It is a clear statement that communicates to your website visitors exactly what you are offering and why you are the only business making this offer. It's not the same as having a 'tag-line' which is usually something short and memorable.

A UVP doesn't have to be memorable but it needs to be a strong, clear and concise statement about your business so that every time someone lands on your website it should be immediately obvious to them why they should be doing business with you and not with someone else. For example, Amazon's UVP is 'Low price, wide selection with added convenience anytime, anywhere.' In one sentence they have summarised what sets them apart from everyone else.

Identifying your UVP should be one of the most important aspects of your marketing strategy but surprisingly, many businesses struggle with this and often ignore this key area of their business and website.

UVP success story

The team at Future Now, like most other marketers, are passionate about establishing a strong UVP for every website. To prove the importance and effectiveness of a UVP, they used one of their clients Accepted.com as a case study. They ran a test where they drafted three different versions of UVP and tested them against the original website.

They trialed UVPs that communicated how long Accepted.com has been helping customers, how much success they have had and the kind of customer problems they can solve.

The result was a whopping 30% increase in conversion, resulting in tens of thousands of dollars in extra sales!

As you can see, by just identifying your point of difference and communicating that with your customers, you can actually impact your conversion rate.

So how can you go about establishing a UVP?

UVPs are the best way to spark the interest of someone that has landed on your website within that 3 second time frame we often talk about. A big part of establishing a clear UVP is putting yourself in the customer's shoes – what does he/she have to gain by specifically doing business with you?

Here's a few tips to get you started:

• Get input from your employees. Get a group of people in your company together – and ideally someone from every department so you get input from every area in your company. Even better if you can involve each and every one in your company through an email. You want them to answer the simple question 'what do you think we do best?' This will give you a range of answers from every part of your company.

• Ask your most faithful customers. Find out from a few of your most faithful customers why they chose you. Clearly they think you offer something that no one else does, so find out what it is and get as much detail as possible – remember, if it's a great quote you can even use this as a testimonial on your website!

• Think about why you decided to go online with your business. What made you think you needed to be online – maybe you saw an opening for a product or service that no one else is offering or maybe you can do it better, quicker or cheaper?

• Create first draft of UVP list. Once you have the list from all the three exercises above, look for points that have a common thread and separate them out as your UVP list.

• This list should be the foundation of your UVP. Now you just need someone that is a good writer within your company or someone you can hire for a few hours to write around five versions of the UVP.

• Test each of the versions compared to your website as it stands. You need to place this UVP on your homepage and any other important landing pages (if you have any PPC advertising set up, all your landing pages from these campaigns should have your UVP). Test each one of the UVPs against your website and check for conversion rate - remember not to change anything else on your website during this period because you want this test to give you the best possible indication of what the right UVP can do for your results.

• Pick the one that gives you the best conversion rate.

Once you have set up your UVP, remember that this will distinguish you from the rest of the market place and help you become a leader but to stay on top it's always good re-visit your UVP, tweak and adjust it as your business develops over time.

Images are a very important part of your website. They tell a story and help convey information but the key is to make sure that you optimise them so the user still has a great experience while browsing your website. Use the following simple tips to make sure that your images are fast loading, tidy and professional - while still conveying the information.

Understanding the different image formats

When you are dealing with images, you will find that there are often few different file formats available - meaning the file names will have different extensions. Each one has its own benefits and depending on the situation and the kind of image, it is a good idea to look into which format works best and use that file format. The two most popular file formats for images that you will come across are Jpg and Gif:

Jpg format 

The Jpg format is very commonly used and it is good for displaying photographic images, which normally contain colour blends and tones. The Jpg file format can have several million colours, but it does not support transparency. Transparency is a feature that allows you to overlay a background colour on to your image. This is a great feature when you want to include text on a graphic background - if you go with Gif file, the background will come through the text box so the text is just sitting in as part of the background. Where as a Jpg image will not support that feature.

 

Image file types - Jpg vs Gif - photographs are a lot clearer in a Jpg format when the file size is small

Gif format

Gif images are good for small images or images with a small number of colours that are just solid colours without any fading, for example, company logos typically have a few colours and they are generally flat colours that are suitable for a Gif format. The Gif file format can have up to 256 colours and supports transparency.

 

The Gif format is great for smaller size images with limited colours or tones

The Gif format also supports basic animation so you can include files with animation for extra effect like these cute kittens for example:

 

Gif file animation

Use image editing software

When you are editing images, like for example you want to add text to an image to explain its context or you want to change colours or play around with it to make it your own, you will need to use third party image editing software. Zeald image manager also gives you access to an image editing program but it is more basic so anything that requires editing of the image itself like colours, we recommend using other software.

You can look into Adobe programs like Photoshop and Illustrator or Fireworks but there are number of online applications you can use that are free and also very easy to use. So no need to download a program on your computer. And some of these free applications also allow you to store your files on the internet. We have reviewed a few of these options so you can choose from the best available.

Crop and resize images

Image files are made of pixels and every pixel of an image takes time to load. One of the most effective methods used for reducing the file size of an image is to remove pixels by reducing the dimensions. 'Cropping' and 'resizing' are two ways we can use to do this, and depending on the kind of image you have and what you would like to focus on, you could either use one of these methods or you can use a combination of both. Keep in mind that the final image should still contain all the necessary information to get the story across.

Cropping

'Cropping' is a feature that allows you to cut the unwanted edges of an image, which makes it a very effective technique for reducing the size of an image, while still keeping the most valuable part of the image intact. By cropping an image we can remove elements of the image – like unwanted background, sky, grass, crowds, office walls, etc. This method is pretty much like the zooming function, because we are highlighting the part of the image we want our visitors to look at.

 

The cropped image on the right retains the information that we are trying to convey, while the original image on the left does not tell the story

Resize

'Resizing' an image allows you to change the size of the entire image – so all the elements of your image are still present, just in a smaller size. And because we are changing the size of the image, it is important to keep the proportions of the image the same, i.e., the height and the width ratio of the image, otherwise the image will look squashed or stretched. The Zeald website image manager program allows you to 'lock' the proportions so you can just change one of the dimensions, either height or width and the other will change automatically in proportion to the original image.

Use small thumbnail images and link to large files

Another technique used to reduce the download time of a page is to move large images, audio, video and animation files to other pages. Then create a link to them on your web page using much smaller images (called thumbnails). This will reduce the download time significantly so your customers can quickly have a look at the smaller images and choose which ones they would like to see a larger image of. So instead of having all your big files download onto a page, which could be slow and lose you customers, you will be showing them a gallery of images very quickly and giving them the choice to see more of whatever they would like.

A product category page is a perfect example of this method of displaying images. The category page presents a list of thumbnails and short product descriptions, which are linked to the larger more detailed page.

Reuse images

Web browsers have special software built into them that allows them to store files once they have downloaded, so that they can be reused. This is called caching. This means that if we design pages that reuse the same images, they do not need to download again and will display faster.

So once your users have loaded the first page, the transition to loading up secondary pages will be a lot smoother.

Some examples of images we can reuse on your website include:

• Logos and branding graphics
• Background image and textures
• Stylistic images, such as dividing lines, header backgrounds
• Product images for product highlights
• Icons, for example email marketing, shopping cart
• Accent graphics, such as "New" or "Hot"
• Call to action buttons and graphics 

Increase the compression rate

'Compression' is basically reducing the size of a file, which also lowers the visual quality of the image. So if you have a 1Mb file and you reduce the size down to 100kb, you will lose some of the sharpness in the image. Therefore, reducing the file size is a bit of a balancing act. You want to reduce the size but still make sure that the image is not too blurry or unclear. Compression works really well when you use it to display a smaller image like a thumbnail and then link it to the larger file which will open in a new page (as described above).

Compression is usually done in image editing software such as 'Adobe Illustrator', 'Adobe Photoshop', 'Fireworks' or any of the free online sources like Picnik or Photoplus 6. You can also use the Zeald website manager, which includes software that can do basic image editing that will allow you to specify the file format you want to use, i.e., Jpg or Gif and also compress it by reducing the quality. Depending on the format of the image file you are working with, the reduction in quality appears different in different image formats.

With a Jpg image, compression can make the it blurry and also muddy. With Gif images, compression reduces the number of colours so they end up looking monochromatic.

 

 

When it comes to the design of your website, it's very important to have a great looking website so it gives a great first impression of your company, but it should never trade off with a slow loading website. With a slow website you run the risk of your user not even hanging around for the page to load, let alone go through your conversion goals and purchase something or enquire about your products.

Tips on how to keep your website looking great while also loading fast:

Reduce the size and number of images. One of the most common reasons for websites to load slowly is the size of images on the page. Images are very important to tell a story and break up large blocks of text. They are also a fantastic tool to display your products and services, but the trick is to use them effectively so they look tidy and professional while also not taking too long to load. The best way to do this is to make sure that all your images are well optimised. There a number of things you can do to ensure that this happens - you can crop them, resize them, use thumbnails, etc. Read our article on how to optimise your images using simple techniques.

Reduce the number of clicks on each web page. For each of your web pages, try to keep all the info you are trying to convey in the one place if possible. Unless there is a good reason why you want your user to click through to other pages, like say you have another article that might give them more info or you have your high res images on different pages, try to avoid doing so. This will reduce the number of page loads. If you are worried that there is too much information is on one page, use suitable headlines to break up long bits of text and use a headline that summarises each idea in your copy so your visitor will get an idea of what you are saying without having to read through the whole copy.

Limit the number of objects on your page - this means all the various image and text components you have on  your page should be limited to absolutely what is necessary. For every object to download on your visitor's computer, a request has to be sent to the server and it needs to be processed and the info then sent back. So if you have too many objects on your page, it could potentially take a while for the whole page to display.

On the flip side, don't have just one big object with all your text and images in it. If you have just one big object or a component with all your content in it, then the whole object will take a while to download and your visitor won't know what is going on as he or she will just a have a blank screen until the whole thing loads. That's why you still need to have separate blocks of information when you layout your page. That way the parts of your page which are smaller in size will load first (which is usually the text part of your website) and your visitor will have something to be engaged with while waiting for the whole web page to load. It's all about balance when it comes to laying out your page. 

Avoid flash animation, unless you have a very important business reason to include it, and even then we would probably advice you to reconsider. This is because most websites with flash animation increase the download time drastically. For instance Snow Planet website uses a flash banner on their website. When you test this website for download time, it shows that it takes around 151 seconds to download on a 56k modem - which is more than 10 times the recommended time! So you need to always think about the primary goal of your website - is it to generate results or do you want a website that you "feel" looks good? You can achieve great design without jeopardising your results for example Prestige Real Estate website uses an animated image gallery instead of a flash banner and their download speed at 56K modem is around 30 seconds, which is five times less time than a flash banner! In fact, their website just won the Best Real Estate Agency Website Award New Zealand in the Asia Pacific Residential Property Awards. Mama Mias website is another great example of a website that has great design and this one loads within the 10 second mark.

Do not have audio or video files that play automatically. Always give your website visitor the choice to load up a video or music file on your website. If your video loads automatically every time someone lands on your page, not only will it add to the load time of the page but it will also ruin the usability of your website. There is nothing more annoying than having to listen to the same music or video the 5th time I've landed on your page - I will start avoiding it like plague! Even big players like YouTube and Myspace now give users the choice to load up videos or music - even though the entire purpose of the sites is to provide audio or video entertainment.

Having flash and lots of animation on your website might seem like an appealing option but the reality is that it could be costing you more than you think. Not only do you have to consider higher bandwidth costs and the rent of the servers, the slow loading website could actually be effecting the number of sales you get from your website.

Why is that? It's because many studies conducted by a number of experts have shown that a fast website can persuade your users to take action better than a slow website.

How exactly can it effect your business?

Not only does a slow website mean that your visitor is not getting instant feedback, i.e., they are having to wait for things to happen so they are not as engaged, but if your website is really slow the user would have left well before it even loads.

A number of large industry players have actually quantified the effect of page loading times on their results:

• Amazon's tests in 2007 also showed that every 100 millisecond increase in load time resulted in a decrease of sales by 1%

• Facebook also found that increasing page load time decreased the number of pages the users visited during their session

• Google's tests in 2006 showed that increasing load time by 500 milliseconds resulted in 20% drop in traffic – that's just half a second!

This is one of the main reasons why Google is looking to speed up the web and encourage website owners to do everything they can to keep their page loading speeds as small as possible. Google recognises that fast loading websites provide a good user experience, and their job is to find the best and the most relevant websites and put them at the top of the search results. The way Google judges the 'best' results is based on a number of factors but website speed has become a big factor in the mix.

So what is a good response time for website loading?

Usability guru Jakob Nielsen in his article Response Times: The Three Important Limits gives advice based on studies on what is acceptable when it comes to response times:

• 0.1second delay is about the limit for the user to feel that the system is reacting instantaneously
• 1second delay is about the limit for the user's thought to stay uninterrupted, i.e., they are not thinking about any other tasks. However, even at this fast speed the user will notice the delay
• 10sec delay is about the limit for keeping the user's mind focused on the conversation that you are trying to have. Any longer, and your user will look for other things to do while waiting for the website to load. This could very well be to surf other websites.

Since the general internet speed in NZ doesn't allow for loading speeds of under 1second, the target for your web pages should be to load within 10 seconds on a 56k modem as a rough guide. We say 56k modem because if you cater for the worst case dial-up speed scenario, you will be well covered for the broadband users. So if you are over the 10 second threshold by a small amount, you should be OK as most homes in New Zealand now have broadband.

If you'd like to find out how long your website takes to download request our free Website Audit service which will tell you exactly how your website is performing.

If you have a Zeald website, learn how to lower the time it takes for your images and content to download.

Before your website visitor is persuaded to make an enquiry or buy your products or services online they need to trust you and believe that what you're saying is true. It's easy to achieve this credibility in a store where the visitor can meet your sales staff and shake his/her hand but when you are dealing with a website, you have to look at other ways to achieve the same level of trust and credibility.

Here are 10 most effective ways to build the trust and credibility of your website:

1. Fast-loading website: Studies show that all web pages should load in 10 seconds or less on a 56k modem, otherwise you will start losing your customers. 

2. User-friendly layout & clear navigation: Don’t try to be unique and quirky with the structure and layout of your website – you'll confuse your visitors. Everything needs to be as simple and obvious as possible. If you want to avoid being like every other website, get your personality across by using your branding, photography and copy. 

3. Professional website design: First impressions are extremely important - if your website looks cheap, you will destroy trust immediately. Always use an experienced website designer - don’t try and do it yourself or get your cousin’s son or even your business card designer to do it! 

4. Testimonials are great for establishing trust and credibility. The more the merrier! Keep them in their original form– don’t fix grammatical errors. Provide contact details for the people giving the testimonial. Whatever you do– NEVER fake a testimonial– it's obvious and you will destroy your credibility! 

5. Case studies are in-depth studies of the successful 'experience' a customer has had with your business. They are powerful trust and credibility builders - particularly for complex products and services.

6. Awards & certifications: Has your business won an award or achieved some sort of certification? Make sure it's displayed on your website because they can be fantastic for building your credibility. 

7. Partners: Associating yourself with a well-respected partner or affiliate is a great way of building 'borrowed credibility'. You are effectively tapping into their credibility and people will think that if you are partnered with them, then you must be credible as well.

8. Guarantees are one of the strongest trust and credibility building elements that you can have on your website. A strong guarantee shows that you have a 100% belief in your products or services. Make your guarantee big, bold and even a little brash! Many organisations have reported that the stronger they made their guarantee the fewer claims they received against it. And the increased sales or enquiries resulting from a stronger guarantee far outweighed the one or two extra claims that they received.

9. Privacy policy: With the huge increase in SPAM and many other invasions of the individual’s privacy, a clear, ‘no ifs or buts’ privacy policy is mandatory for any website.

10. A detailed 'About Us' page: This is a biggie. Websites can be very impersonal so the more you can show that there is a real business with real people behind the website the better. Use photos of your business and staff, and include where possible include a bio.

Building trust and credibility is an essential part of any sales process. Implement the above suggestions and you will be well on your way to improving the ‘persuasiveness’ of your website – and it’s ability to increase the level of enquiries or sales that you achieve.

Over the last few years, the use of Internet and other electronic media for marketing purposes has been steadily increasing, especially as marketers have realised the cost effectiveness of using online marketing compared to traditional forms of advertising.

In a recent survey, top marketers around the world were asked "In the next three years, do you think marketing's effectiveness will increase, stay the same, or decrease for each of the following?" And their predictions are as follows:

As you can see from the survey results, social media is seen by most of the marketers as being a very effective channel over the next three years, followed by online videos and search engine optimisation.

We have summarised the top eight marketing trends to watch out for this year:

1. Social media

Unless you have been hiding from the world, you would have noticed that social media is definitely on the rise. Although Facebook started as a means to share personal information, an increasing number of businesses are using it to build their brand and protect their reputation. Twitter is another example of a place where it's all about listening to what people are saying about your brand and being an active part of the community by contributing information to your followers.

This trend will continue and blogging will be on the increase. Companies will use their expertise to write articles and blog posts, and use social media to promote them. It will also be used as a way to build a community and network with other professionals.

2. Tweet votes for SEO

Google has always strived to provide the best possible information to users and display content that comes highly recommended and suggested. The search results on Google are based around this principle so Google looks ranks results from the most trusted companies higher than the rest.

The next stage in the evolution of the search rankings is using the data gathered from Twitter. So the search results would take into account the number of recommendations a company or a person is receiving on Twitter and rank the content by this person higher on search results.

Google's biggest challenge here is ascertaining whether the Twitter user making the recommendation can be trusted.

3. Personalised search

If you rank well on search engines and earn solid traffic through to your website from the rankings, it will become even harder to unseat you from this ranking. This makes it even harder for start up companies to rank higher as the well established, well performing sites will stay where they are.

To overcome this challenge, it is also predicted that there will be an increase in Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, because Google might start rewarding companies that get click-throughs from PPC campaigns.

With more people spending time online, 'online branding' will become more important - companies will invest more in online branding. Currently only 6% of branding dollars are spent online, which is very small when you take into account the proportion of time people are spending online these days compared to driving or watching TV.

4. Faster load times

Google has already talked about the importance of speed on the web, and how they want to do everything they can to make the web a faster place. So it is fair to assume that Google will begin taking the speed of a page download into account when ranking results. So if you want your page to rank higher on search results, the loading speed will also become a factor.

Loading speed is also an important factor with mobile phone browsing because users on the go will not have the time to wait for a slow loading website. Research already shows that majority of web users will leave a site if it takes longer than 8 seconds on a 56k modem. With mobile phone browsing, we can safely assume that this window will be even smaller. So doing everything you can to make your pages load faster will become the way of the future.

5. Two-Engine World

The picture explains it all really.. If you are considering an online Adwords campaign your best options are to go with Google or Yahoo.

6. More queries but less traffic

Search engines are starting to give answers to users' questions without them having to leave the search engine page to another website for answers. This makes for a better user experience and return visits because it speeds up the process of getting answers. This means that as more search engines provide instant answers without the users having to click through to the websites, the less traffic companies will see coming through to their sites. 

Inline search results

7. Conversion Rate

Improving conversion rate is the best way to ensure increase in revenue. Basically you have spent all this time and money in advertising and promotion to get people visiting your website, and if they are not taking the action you want them to take it's all going to waste. Improving conversion rate is the most under-utilised marketing activity, yet it can give you the most return on investment.

In 2010, this will become a bigger focus as coming out of recession, it is now time for companies to assess their spend and see what activities are giving them the value and also what activities are increasing awareness.

Conversion rate is not just about having a marketing activity in place and testing it once, it's about having a process in place that slowly improves your conversion over time. It about making regular and incremental changes across the board to start seeing the return on investment.

Zeald has a large focus on conversion rate and has a proven process in place to help companies improve their return on investment. Talk to one of our E-Business Consultants to find out how you can improve the conversion rate of your website.

8. Email marketing

2010 will be a year where marketers will continue to rely on this channel because everyone is becoming more aware of the importance of establishing and maintaining good relationships with customers.

Marketers will get more experimental and original with content and tone of emails in order to engage customers and compete with social media. For example, the popular publishing platform Squidoo sends out very quirky and humorous newsletters to get the attention of their customers.

Are you wondering what the web will be like in 2010? Here are the top eight predictions for the trends to look out for this year:

1. Mobile browsing

It's becoming increasingly common for people to own cell phones that offer web browsing. This trend will only become more prominent as phones with better browsing functions become available. And due to this increased usage, it is predicted that internet access through mobile phone will get faster and cheaper so users can enjoy instant gratification - they can jump on Google search to get answers or email people on the go. No need to wait till you get to a computer anymore.

The limitation with this trend is that the screen on traditional mobile phones are too small for general internet browsing. And since there are hundreds of popular websites out there, it is not plausible to expect all websites to have special 'cell phone' size screens available. So instead, companies like ASUS are already experimenting with flexible screens that can be folded open to a bigger size.

The mobile browsing phenomenon also poses a challenge for website design as the design needs to be optimised for smaller screens but also needs to keep in mind the fact that more users are browsing the web on computer screens with higher resolutions than ever before.

2. Realtime Bigtime 

We have all seen the social networking storm - with the use of sites such as Facebook & Twitter, we now expect and demand our interactions to be immediate and in realtime. We expect that when we want to talk to someone, we can instantly engage in a conversation, not in a day or two. This means that if your customers want help or information, their expectations are now altered, they want to hear from you straight away.  

Businesses will continue to increase their investment in online communities and social media like Facebook & Twitter because these communities and their voices can no longer be ignored. And not to mention if you have a disgruntled customer, gone are the days where they would tell 10 people about their experience. Bad experiences now simply get posted on sites like Facebook and Twitter for hundreds of their friends and followers to see. Therefore, it will become necessary for companies to start engaging in a discussion with their customers rather than just than one way communication like traditional advertising. And marketing will begin to drive this increased investment in social media.

Another trend to look out for is real-time collaboration through applications such as Google Wave, which a merge of instant messaging with e-mail and facebook. Wave is a platform for getting things done together so you and your colleagues can work at the same time sharing information, working on the same documents, using instant messaging services and social networking.

3. Content 'curator' 

The biggest challenge of recent times has been the large volume of content available on the web, and it is growing a lot faster than our ability to consume it. And experts predict that in the near future, the content on the web will double every 72 hours! So we are pretty much at an 'information overload' stage - which brings up the question, how can companies like Google source the right information for us?

Google Search and News currently uses complex algorithms that give the highest ranking to websites with the most relevant content and also websites that are trusted. But this falls short of personalisation, meaning it doesn't take into account our personal preferences and slants.

In 2008, the answer to this challenge revealed itself: your friends are your filter. With the launch of 'Facebook Connect' program, Facebook allows sites to offer content personalisation based on the preferences of your network. So say you have a network of friends that like cars, some of the content around your Facebook page will relate to this particular interest. 

And now Google's Social Search experiment is investigating whether web searching can be improved by using information learned from your friends on Twitter, Facebook, Digg and the rest. So when you search for a particular topic, the results on the page will include posts that your friends or family have put up on the subject. Increasingly, your friends are becoming the curators of your consumption, from the links they direct you to the web, the movies you watch, books you read and TV shows that you are into.

A Google search for 'New Zealand' shows content from your friends

4. Location Location 

Fueled by GPS in modern smartphones, location-sharing services like Foursquare, and Google Latitude are suddenly becoming popular. With these location-sharing services, people are able to use their phones to tell their friends exactly where they are and get recommendations on where to visit and what to do in the area.

These new services also open up a whole new type of usage like getting a coupon or a review from your friend for a cafe right where you are. And since you know exactly where your friends are at anytime, you can also meet them for a coffee.

It's a new layer of the Web. Soon, our whereabouts might optionally be added to every Tweet, blog comment, photo or video we post.

5. Mobile payments

Much of Asia has already embraced the mobile payment technology but other places like U.S. in particular, have lagged. In 2010, there is reason for optimism: big players like PayPal and Amazon are starting invest in the mobile payment opportunities. So users can now purchase things on the go, especially for items such as concert tickets and bidding on auctions, this service will become very popular.

Another newcomer Square, founded by the creator of Twitter, allows merchants to accept payments via Apple's iPhone. What this means is that now when you have an expo or a conference, you no longer have to worry about having an eftpos machine at hand, you can just use this new little add on to the iPhone to swipe credit cards or eftpos cards for payment.

6. Privacy Erosion 

We're all reality stars now, on Facebook, Twitter etc., where we display and maintain our personal brands. This means is that now we are voluntarily giving up our privacy through social media applications like Facebook and Twitter, where there is an option to allow all content to be public.

Likewise with location based devices such as phones with GPS, we are giving out more information to public about where we are at all times.

7. The Cloud 

Cloud will become a bigger trend this year. What this means is that you no longer need to save your files and applications onto your computer or desktop. They instead exist on servers online, which you pay per user and pay for as much space as you use  (know as "the cloud"). This makes our data accessible from anywhere in the world without having to take your computer with you. It also allows collaborative work so no need to save versions of files and applications. You and your colleagues can simultaneously work on the same data.

Next year will also see the launch of Google's Chrome OS, a free, web-based operating system that will pose a big threat to the likes of Microsoft Office. This web-based system will be free, require smaller disc space and will not have the long boot time that normal operating systems have. 

Google Docs on Cloud

8. Web 3.0

There is already talk of the future of a semantic web where computers will become learning  machines, not just calculators or machines that can understand patterns. This means that the computers can be taught to understand meanings of words.

Google is already starting to allow websites to set attributes to specific parts of the web page content, which means that the search results now have 'rich snippets' of information. Like for example if you are searching for a restaurant, you can click the 'options' button in Google search and have specific information under each result show up, for example reviews from other people, so you know exactly which one of the results is the most relevant to your search. So you can specify event dates, product ratings, prices, company contact details for you product.. it's just the beginning.