How To Help Your Clients and Make More Sales Through Proper Web Writing

People don't read every word online like they do in print.

For the most part when you go to a website you have a particular task in mind and even specific words you're thinking about.

When you land on that page you are going to scan the page looking for some indication that that specific page is going to help you complete your task.

In the 8 seconds most people spend on a page, if they don't see the words that are in their head, they are going to hit the back button.

So, you need to think like your readers. 

• What words are important to your readers? 
• You need to make sure those words are on your web pages in easy to spot locations.

Jakob Nielsen has done eye tracking analysis to determine where the key locations are to catch your readers attention.

Basically it shows an F-pattern where readers look at headings and scan down the left side of the main body of text.

So, this is how your copy needs to look.

And it needs to be loaded with keywords in the headings and subheadings and at the start of paragraphs and bullet lists.

Good content doesn't need to be read. 

Tips to Help Your Readers Scan Your Pages OR 
How To Make More Sales and Get More Leads

• Relevant heading - put key terms at the top of the page, in headings
• Brief content summary or introduction
  - Use terms that your readers are familiar with and that they would use and think of, so when they’re scanning for a topic, they will see the words they’re looking for
• Focused subheadings
• Bundles of content and bulleted lists
• Reorder by importance -  keywords first in titles, subheads, bullet points
• Integrated and logical hyperlinks
• Hyperlinks stand out and distract the reader, taking them away from your page
• Put related links at the bottom of the document to move reader forward; call to action
• Don’t use underlining for headings or emphasis – underlining is reserved for hyperlinks

Learn more about the Jakob Nielsen's F-pattern: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html

What are you "working forward to?"

I drove by a car dealership today and noticed a really nice red corvette sitting in the lot. I've never driven or ridden in a corvette, but have always thought of a corvette as my dream car. I turned to my wife and said I should go take one for a test drive.

She didn't think that would be a good idea as then I would want to buy one (sooner than later).

In a bit of a tongue tied moment I said taking one for a test drive would be incentive as something "to work forward to." I had meant to say something to look forward to, but my mind mashed that together with something to work toward.

I thought that was a great new saying and had visions of trademarking it and writing a book and starting a whole motivational series; however, a quick google search showed I'm only one of over 200,000 people to come up with this saying.

Originality aside, it is still a great thing to think about. What are you working forward to?

It is so easy to get into a routine of getting up each morning, going to work and putting in your day, coming home, having supper, watching TV, going to bed, getting up in the morning, going to work...

If you don't know what you're working forward to, how are you going to move forward? You could wake up one morning and find your life has passed you by. Einstein said, "insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

Everyone has dreams and looks forward to travelling; owning a corvette (insert your dream car); spending time with your family; ...

So often we have an attitude of entitlement and "look forward" to everything being handed to us when we retire, but what action are you taking to make that happen, to get ahead in life?

What are you working forward to? Think about this so when you wake up tomorrow morning you can start working toward achieving that.

Me, I'm working forward to having the time and money to travel, to buy that red corvette (sooner than later), to provide for my family... I would like to have the financial resources to allow me to go to Japan or some other disaster relief location.

Feel free to comment and share what you are working forward to.

Ultimate Guide to Facebook And Netiquette and tips for Twitter

Here's 2 great articles I came across today that I wanted to pass on:

The Ultimate Guide to Facebook (from Gizmodo)

So I’ve set up my Twitter account: now what? Netiquette and tips for Twitter

I've already set up Twitter Feed, so (cross my fingers) you may have actually ended up here from my auto tweet.

A note on Facebook, privacy, the article is really long, but I really encourage you to take a look at your privacy settings. And the ability to set up groups for your friends so, for instance, your grandma doesn't see this weekends party photos, is a really good idea.

(Though when I tried to go into my privacy settings it hung and the page wouldn't load. I guess loading the 1300 page privacy policy was hanging things up.)

Marketing Tactic / Scam Warning

I was watching a marketing webinar the other day and it brought to mind thoughts of a shady/slimey salesman.

The idea is to register a domain name that starts with com.  Something like com-customersurvey.us. Then you can have a subdirectory like walmart or microsoft or whatever.  You would then end up with addresses like walmart.com-customersurvey.us and microsoft.com-customersurvey.us

On the webinar it even said to avoid registering something with  .com domain extension because people may notice it. And to register long, even nonsense domains, like com-11–survey11.us, to distance the com at the front from the end domain extension.

So, this whole marketing strategy is designed to trick people into thinking they're on Microsoft's or Walmart's website to gain their confidence so you can get them to fill out a survey of buy a product thinking it's from or endorsed by a reputable company.

In today's world of social media and online conversations and openness is this not bound to backfire? If/when people realised you tricked them I'm sure they would want a refund.

Not to mention the chances of this getting in the wrong hands and someone sending you an email saying your bank account may have been hacked and ask you to log into something like yourbank.com-fraudalert.us

The guy on the webinar even said to quickly register com- domains because he didn't know how long they would allow them to be registered.

Now what does everyone think of this?

If you aren't using QR Codes yet, why not?

Your magazine ad or billboard relies on your customers to take note of your phone number, email address, website or other action you want them to take and then the customer has to actually take action by phoning, emailing or visiting your website.

With a QR code in your ad they just grab their smartphone and scan the QR code and your contact information or calendar event is automaticallly added to their phone. Or they could be redirected to your website or product page.

Get a QR Code That You Can Change
Most QR code generators that you find online are one time things. You create it, you print it and your customers take the same action every time.

You can get more bang from your marketing if you subscribe to something like QR Jumps or ScanLife. These sites provide stats on the use of your QR codes and also allow you to change the action.

QRJumps is free, ScanLife is free for individual use, but there's a cost for commercial use.

The benefit of being able to change the action is that you can promote whatever contest or promotion you have on at any given time.

What is a QR code?
If you don't know what a QR code is, chances are you've likely seen them in magazines and maybe even on billboards.

QR stands for quick read and is a two dimensional image similar to a bar code and has information encoded into it.

There are various apps that can be downloaded to your smartphone to read QR codes. ScanLife has their own app available for all smartphones.