Kids - Not like adults

1. Kids are not necessarily masters of the technological universe

There’s a general perception that kids can work out any computer problem set before them, in half the speed of Mum or Dad. They do learn fast … but they also lack the tools to research solutions to problems when they run up against them.

2. Kids are not patient

Kids are even less patient than adults. If your site or download is slow, they might try to download something multiple times in an effort to make things go faster. Chaos results.

3. Use sound for pre-readers

Even tiny amounts of text will completely foil pre-readers. Mum or Dad will have to be sitting there with them the whole time … and your site will end up being passed over in favour of an ‘easier’ one. Use sounds upon mouse-over for pre-readers.

4. Use small words for readers

You can have your text assessed according to the Flesch-Kincaid reading ease scale to help determine if it is actually age-appropriate.

5. Use simulated environments

Kids are not really designed for extensive abstraction. Pictures of rooms, towns, maps etc are actually a great ‘navigational’ aid, tacky as it sounds!

6. Kids don’t mind reading instructions

Adults will almost always use the trial and error method first … and if that doesn’t work, will then go back to the instructions. Kids are more pragmatic. They actually like reading instructions – so use them!

7. Kids will click off the site through advertising much more often

It’s in your internet marketing interests not to have too much advertising on your site, because kids can’t distinguish between ads and site content. They often click ads believing that they are just another part of your site. You might make a few cents on an ad-click … but your little visitor may also not know how to get back to your website!

8. Know the gender of your audience

The differences in what girls and boys prefer to see on websites when they are young is much more pronounced than when they are adults. Boys hate to see too much text. Girls hate it when there isn’t enough instruction. If you have a clearly defined gender audience, make sure you design your website for them.

1. Because you can usually get the same company to do both!

A great number of excellent internet marketing firms today have the capability both to do professional, creative, highly functional website designs, and then get the things to rank highly in Google. Dealing with just one company will make it much easier all round for you.

2. Because there are technical ways to ensure you don’t lose your Google ranking when you re-design

Those ways are a little involved (and truthfully, a little boring!) to be going into at the moment. Suffice it to say that Google’s little bots can make some mean assumptions, and SEO firms know how to placate the presumptive beast.

3. Because website design is about more than good looks

Sometimes, website designers have a keen eye for design … but are completely blind to both search-engine friendliness and website usability guidelines. Both of these factors are part of the discipline of SEO, which is why it is valuable to either use the same company, or have your two firms collaborating for your site redesign.

4. Because Flash can be tricky in terms of SEO

Sooooo many website redesigns include Flash elements. That’s because Flash is a wonderful invention and a blessing to the web (despite Jakob Nielsen’s protestations to the contrary!). However, it does need to be handled carefully in an SEO context. It is tempting to have the most important information about your site – headings, taglines etc – within a Flash element, because it is so visible to visitors. However, Flash is invisible to search engines, so you need to be careful what you do with it.

5. Because a redesign is the perfect time to add or change content

And your content is one of the most important on-site aspects of your Google ranking, and because having an internet marketing firm go over it can make a huge difference to your Google positioning!

I know that budget-wise, optimising in conjunction with a redesign can be hard. But there is so much evidence that doing so is best practice for online businesses, that I would always recommend leaving the old site up there a bit longer, and saving up enough cash to do both. Or at least, talk to your internet marketing firm about payment terms!

Who’s Roxy?

Roxy is the women’s clothing brand owned by the Quiksilver company. They make swimwear, clothing and accessories for surf, snow and skating situations, as well as general purpose wear. They are a fairly high end brand.

Roxy internet marketing implementation

Roxy has developed a ‘Style Squad’ – a group of around 900 girls nationwide between the ages of 13 and 23. Each of these girls was handpicked in stores across the country,, and each of them gets benefits for being a part of the Style Squad:

• Welcome pack with the latest clothing designs
• Free access to new items
• Discounts in store

The Panel Manager of the Style Squad posts questions on message boards when there is a business issue such as thoughts on a new design, how the girls respond to advertising, etc. It can be used for both qualitative and quantitative market research.

How you can follow Roxy’s internet marketing example

• Create your own community of brand ambassadors, asking people to become part of the community in your physical stores, and offering significant benefits for doing so.
• Make sure there are ongoing benefits for remaining part of the community
• Create an online forum – social media like a Facebook page, Myspace account, or Twitter account that your members should add.
• Whenever you are wondering what your customers think about a change in your business – a new idea, a new promotion, a competition, a new page on the website … ask them! When people feel valued, they are happy to give their opinion.
• Use the information to improve your brand in the eyes of your customers.

The keys to success for Roxy’s web marketing strategy are offering significant benefits to the members, and them implementing enough new strategies and changes to make the effort worthwhile! Don;t forget that this sort of marketing has a direct effect on your SEO, by encouraging backlinks and pushing your traffic (and therefore your Google rank), skyward.

Text Speak in Domain Names

Using the number 2 instead of the word ‘to’, the number 4 instead of the word ‘for’, etc is a great way to create a snappy-looking domain. In reality, though, they’re a pain in the backside. Every time you spell your domain out for somebody, you’ll have to say ‘number-4′, or ‘letter-U’. It’s very clunky.

An additional problem is that to experienced web users, these domains look a little sleazy … and often akin to virus-laden or spam-creating sites. Not very professional.

The hyphen – hot or not?

Last week we teased you with a few funny domain name examples that could easily have been saved with hyphens … Pen Island could have rescued their site www.penisland.net with nothing but a little dash, and so could www.expertsexchange.com. Hyphens are sometimes strongly recommended!

However, when you have a full business name in your URL, hyphens just add to the length. Also, they aren’t part of many computer users’ ‘defaults’ – if someone can’t remember your website, they are unlikely to try with hyphens between the words. Only use in cases of hilarious misunderstanding.

Should I use a business acronym?

Many businesses are known both by their staff and clients as an acronym of their proper name – for example, NAB for the National Australia Bank. Should you use the acronym as your domain name, though?

It all depends on how commonly you use your full name, or your acronym. Full names may have a little advantage in terms of SEO (giving the search engines keywords to feed off), but if your customers are more likely to search for ‘www.nab.com.au’ than ‘www.nationalaustraliabank.com.au’, you should make things easier for the humans whenever possible.

Buying an existing domain

Sometimes you’ll have the opportunity to buy an existing domain name that fits your business. They cost A LOT compared to getting a new domain, but sometimes have quite a bit of money invested in them, in terms of SEO. Have a web marketing expert check on the domain’s Google performance – if it has a good SEO basis, it might be worth the extra expense.

Selecting your domain extension

The most recognizable extension is the dot com, although most users will also try your country code extension if they can’t find your site immediately. It is always worth registering a dot com, and a dot com dot AU, or CA, or TH, or whatever the case may be… even if you intend to use .org or .net as your primary website. Otherwise, people who don’t remember your address properly might land at a competitor’s website at the .com, instead of yours.

If you will be serving international visitors on your site, a simple .com extension makes the most sense – having a country code could scare away some visitors who believe that you don’t deliver or serve global customers. If you purchase both, you can direct interntional visitors to your .com, and local visitors to your .com.au site. You can be a global business, but still inspire local confidence.

Using your business name

Using nothing other than your business name as your URL is simple, and will help people that are trying to find you for the first time. However, it is not always the best SEO strategy. If your business name contains no indication of what you actually do, you are missing out on the most valuable element in the Google algorithm.

Using your keywords as your URL

While using your keywords as your URL is ideal for SEO, it carries its own set of problems. Users often expect businesses to be named after their URLs (or the other way round!), and may mistrust a site where this doesn’t ‘add up’.

Solving the dilemma – three strategies

Obviously, there is a dilemma to deal with when deciding whether to go with your business name or keywords for your URL. Here are a few possible solutions:

• Use your business name PLUS your keywords, if it doesn’t make the URL too long
• Use your keywords and your businesses initials only
• Change your business name to include your keywords, if you’ll be primarily web-based

Next week we’ll look at some of the less pressing, but still common problems in domain name selection!

Demographics - power of the (knowledge of) the people

How Crowd Science works

Crowd Science delivers short surveys to visitors who are already on your site. It will pop up a survey invitation at a set point – perhaps after somebody has viewed three pages. They remain on your website while taking the survey, and might answer questions about:

• Their demographics – sex, age, family status, geographic location, etc
• What they think of the site currently
• What they think the site needs
• How easy they found a particular task on site

Not sleazy!

So often, market research on the internet is a very low-brow activity. Animated banners, ‘Free iPod!’ links and automatic sound abound. Crowd Science is a little classier than that. A simple pop-up appears in the middle of the screen, not much different to the email newsletter sign-up forms that you quite often come across on websites nowadays.

Personalizable features of Crowd Science

You can customize the Crowd Science experience for your own site, with features like:

• Personalizable colours, invitations and text
• Personalizable reporting
• Tracking across multiple sites can be integrated

Non-intrusive

Use of cookies and scheduling ensures that your visitors shouldn’t be asked to do a survey more than once, and that only a small portion of visitors are asked to participate.

We do not make money from your use of Crowd Science, but do believe that their demographics information is one of the building blocks of a good web marketing campaign. Remember, knowledge is power!

Succeeding is possible when you know how to get things started. You can get through the tough competition of internet marketing and the best way to start promoting your goods and services online is through the acquisition of proper knowledge and training. There are plenty of online programs that promote effective marketing methods that every internet marketer must know. In choosing a suitable program, consider these tips and benefit from it along the way.

First, make sure that the site offers video training. These days, visual presentations are more preferred than written materials. Following something that is being done is easier to remember and that there is the benefit of restarting the whole video.

Second, the website must provide you with bits of information about article marketing. It is considered as one of the best means of online promotion. The site must also come up with valuable techniques on how to write efficient articles that entice potential buying customers.

Third, there must be information about affiliate marketing. See to it that the website guides you on how to find the best affiliate programs suitable for promotion.

Fourth, the site must provide good insights about social networking and its importance on your site’s online visibility with effective SEO.

Fifth, it must give you valuable information regarding pay per click marketing. It is one way of making money online. But once you jump on it right away, it can cost a lot of money.

And lastly, the program must give you ideas on what niches are making money. Promoting something that you are not knowledgeable about can lead to ineffective selling strategies.

Effective online promotion is more than just creating a unique web design. If you follow what the program teaches, then most probably you can end up as a good internet marketer. One thing to consider, persistence with patience is the key to mastery.

For more effective online marketing programs, visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.

•    Consider a good web design that speaks about your online business. Make sure that it embodies your company’s overall marketing collateral. In designing your site, always bear in mind that it must not look heavy and that it should load within 12 seconds-it’s the rule of thumb for web pages. As not everybody owning personal computers has the luxury of convenient broadband connections. So, pages with low speed load can never take their chance. Every viewer counts if it concerns your online business.

•    Create a good website content. It must include relevant and interesting information that are unique and original. As much as possible avoid the copy and paste technique as this will put your efforts into waste. Search engines hate plagiarism so most likely, by doing such, search engine spiders will just ignore your site. The chances of getting quality traffic may not be possible if that happens. In the business sense, you will experience loss instead of generating profits.

•    Optimize effective keywords in your pages but never overdo them. Keyword density also plays a vital role in the optimization process. Properly integrate the specific keywords that are relevant for your business only or else there is a chance that you will be misleading the viewers. Effective internet marketing creates trust with customers.

•    When things are done well with your design and content, it is now time to make your presence known over the internet. Your site’s online visibility can contribute a lot in the profit generation of your business through getting high search engine rankings. The more your online business is recognized by people and the search engines, the higher chances of getting that online success.

These things can be quite easy if you know the SEO techniques. However, if your time is limited, it is better that you consult the expert SEO. It is the best way to get things done.

For further queries about web marketing techniques, visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.

Yes, it is very possible. In order to have the desired returns on investment, having an attractive web design would not be sufficient. You need to think of effective means on how to keep the business sales move up and not remain stagnant.

The advent of the internet has paved way to the more convenient means of doing online business. One way of making sales over the web market is through your website’s online visibility. In order to achieve your business’ bottom line, a well-designed website can be a good start. It is a fact that people buy the things that they can see. So by placing relevant information along with your offered products and services, possible sales can already take place.

However, in some cases, despite having the good looks, internet marketing does not seem to work. It is either that your website is not effective or you lack the necessary tactics in firing-off your business. In making your online business successful, it is suggested that you check its online visibility. If you are not satisfied with your site’s ranking then have your pages updated regularly. Make sure that it provides an interesting topic with good content that can catch the attention of the viewing public. Then, if possible, offer free trials for your product. People always look for more once they start to like something.

Another to thing to consider is having a subscription page. In the traditional way of selling products, the person doing the sales talk does not immediately jump into grabbing the customers’ neck in making them avail of the offered products or services. That is also how things are done with online advertising. As much as possible, create a positive impression so that people will get to like your products. And lastly, mode of payment must be made easy in order to provide convenience to your buying customers.

In order to appear in the search engines, you may need the assistance of an experienced SEO. They are more familiar with the means of getting you your targeted audience. When the business momentum is ignited, the potentials of your venture are then maximized.

For more ideas on how you can make profit from an optimized site, visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.

As start-up entrepreneurs, it is implied that you should not only sell your products but satisfy your customers. After all, it is satisfaction that produces patronization. Now satisfaction, on this end, entails servicing every aspect of your customer’s need even before they solicit anything from your site. This means answering their questions right before they ask it. It would be most advantageous if you could properly address their dependency and present to them their options in relation to their concerns. In internet marketing, vigilance is profitable. Though there are many ways to go about it, aggressiveness and consistency is what improves your business performance in the worldwide market. Promotion is what increases your popularity and generates bigger income. So with regards to this matter, you must wisely choose what marketing approach you will use.

Search engine optimization, as a web marketing strategy, actively pulls online searchers into visiting your website. Unlike traditional advertising that seeks out customers to the point of being a nuisance, SEO subtly presents your online business to searchers as a viable choice in relation to their purchasing intent. With SEO, entrepreneurs need not spend too much to rally their products and services. It actually gives them chance to position their sites in a place where it can be readily seen and accessed. This leads to more click-throughs and most likely, more business transactions, at a much lesser expense.

Search engines typically furnish a pre arranged listing of online businesses that are connected to the item that’s being queried. These sites are ranked according to their relevance and credibility, with their web design, keyword use, links and content as some of the parameters considered. SEO works around the indexing activities of search engine spiders to elicit higher page ranking results, as well as greater traffic, through the proper application of the said parameters. The byproducts, which are, a competitive page ranking and an abundant supply of web traffic, in turn, positively influences the standing of the site on the SERPs.

Your business is in the running for success, no doubt! But that all depends on the SEO company you contact. If you are curious of it, make sure that you avail of quality, measurable SEO services at reasonable rates. This is very important especially for online businesses that are just starting out and are in need of some promotional leverage. With a more long-standing business impact and greater returns for investment, SEO truly proves to be a more reliable and cost-effective internet marketing approach for the modern business arena.

For more information on how you can make you site profitable through a cost-effective advertising scheme, visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.