Very often, web and internet marketing terminology is foreign to business owners, in order to alleviate this issue, I would like to share with you a few key terms, that you should become familiar with, because it is paramount to the success of your internet marketing initiatives. I hope you find them useful.

1. What is an Online Marketing Funnel?
An online marketing funnel is a typically shaped like a cone. Think Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs. It’s a series of step a business takes towards their target audience to get them from a prospect to a customer. It typical starts in this order

• You market to your prospects
• Prospects visits your website
• Visitors now become leads who has opt in to your mailing list, or requested additional info via an online form
• You market to them using a drip campaign, usually in the form of emails
• Then you close the sale.

2. What is a Website Impression?
A website impression is the number of times you website showed up during a search. You can have a high number of website impressions but not necessarily clicks. Your clicks will be determined by how relevant your website is to the search or how high in the ranks you appear during the search.

3. What does Click Through Rate (CTR) Mean?
Click Through Rate is the number of times an ad is clicked divided the number of impressions it received. For example, you may be running ads on Google or other search engines, someone searches for a keyword, your ad shows up 100 times, but it was only clicked on 10 times. Your click through rate will be 10%.

4. What does Conversion Rate Mean?
Your website conversion rate is determined by the number of website visitors that completed the desired goal or outcome that you have set. For example a visitor filled out a request for a quote, made a purchase, signed up for a webinar, subscribed to your newsletter. On the other hand, if someone came to your website and they did not take action, then you have failed to convert that visitor into a lead or sale.

5. What is Conversion Tracking?
Conversion tracking is identifying the number of visitors that came to your website and then determining how many took action or completed the goal that you have set.

6. What does Bounce Rate Mean?
Very important! Your website bounce rate is often and indicator of how effective your website is or how relevant the page that a visitor entered into is to that visitor. It’s when a visitor never views more than one page on your website. This can be avoided, by ensuring that the ads that are driving traffic to your website is directed to a page that is relevant to that ad or by making sure that your website content is relevant to your target market.

7. What is Lead Generation?
Lead generation is when a prospective customer shows interest into your business products or services and submits and inquiry. The inquiry is a lead. Lead generation is paramount for any business, because very often a prospective customer is not ready to buy right away, but if you generate an inquiry and you continue to stay in front of that lead you can eventually close the sale.

8. What is Website Analytics?
Website analytics provides you with data on the behavior of a website user. For e.g. How many visitors your website gets? Where your visitors are coming from? What keywords are driving your visitors? What keywords are converting better for you? The most popular analytics tool is Google Analytics and I find it to be the best. Most of all it’s free.

9. What are Unique Users?
Unique users are the number of different individuals who visit a website within a specific period of time.

10. What does abandon mean?
When a user does not complete a transaction and leaves the website.

11. What is an Auto responder?
Auto responders are a computer program, often used as an email marketing tool, to either automatically respond to an inquiry via a form with a targeted message or it can be set up to be sent out at certain intervals as a follow up to prospective customers.

12. What are Back links?
Back links is a term that refers existing hyperlinks from other websites to your own. Back links are also known as: Inbound links, in links and incoming links.

13. What are Meta Tags Descriptions?
Meta Tag Descriptions are a brief description of each individual web page. It identifies the content of a web page for the search engines as well as users. It is the text that is shown when a search is conducted and your site appears.

14. What are Organic Search Results?
The ‘organic or natural’ search results that appear on the right side of a search, below the paid listings. The results listed here have not been paid for and are ranked by the search engine (using spiders or algorithms) according to relevancy to the term searched upon. See also spider, algorithm, SEO

15. What are SERPs?
The page generated by a search engine when a search query is completed, listing relevant websites.

Getting a website design is not about you. It’s about your website visitors, and what you can do to make it easy for them to do business with you. When a visitor gets to your website, if they are not happy with what they are seeing or experiencing, they will simply abandon your website and go to the next. Your job when getting a new website design or a website redesign is to ensure that you cover all your bases to make sure that your visitors stay on your website and complete the goals you have set, which is to generate a lead or get a sale.

The following five add-ons may seem simple, but is often overlooked or not integrated into a website design, but can have a big impact on increasing your website conversion to lead or sale ratio.

1. Increase Font Size – Experts recommend that your font size be at least 12 point. But there is no way to really tell if this is viable across the board, because we all use different monitor size, quality, and settings to access the internet and its more difficult to read through a screen than read on paper due to low resolution. That’s where the option for a user to increase a font size on a website comes in. Rather than that user abandoning your site because the font size is too small or difficult to read, you offer them the option to increase or decrease the font size, so it’s easier for them to continue browsing your website. This will allow the user to adjust the size of your website text up or down for an enhanced user experience which will lead to increase conversion and a lower website abandon rate.

2. Print This Page – As previously indicated, screens are less readable than paper, but more importantly so many of us are on the go, won’t it be more convenient if a user can print out the relevant pages of your website, rather than sit in front the screen for as long as it will take to read through your information. The user will also be able to make notes, which will come in handy especially if they are comparing you to a competitor. So why not use the print the web page on your computer? Well, since the print this page on your computer is not configured to your website, very often parts of the page is cut off, this is why adding a specific print this page to your website, is more beneficial and useful.

3. Email This Page – Referrals, continues to be one of the highest source of new business for business owners, making it easy for your users to share your website with others can only help your business.

4. Bookmark This Page – Oftentimes I am surfing the internet to research a product or find a service provider, although I may not be ready to buy just yet. This is where having a bookmark this page feature on your website comes in, you’re calling out your visitors to save your information for later use.

5. Share This – Social Media has become a big part of marketing and getting the word out about your business. Using the addon”share this” especially for twitter, facebook, linkedin, stumbleupon or digg, is a great way to get your users to spread the word about your website to their entire network. Won’t it be nice to let another 1000, 2000, or even 3000 plus people become aware of your website and business, by the share gesture of your website visitor.

By making all these add on present on your website and in the face of your users, you are calling them to action which will benefit both you and them and help you increase your website visitors, conversions, lead generation and sales.
It is time to think of your small business website on a wider scale and not just as pages you add. Your website is a marketing machine that’s waiting to be exploited, take advantage of your investment; by doing all you can to make it a success.

Driving qualified traffic to your website is only piece of the internet marketing puzzle. Your website must be setup to get your visitors to take action. An effective website design fuses creative graphics with technology and strategic placement of your call to actions to communicate with your visitors. One way to entice your website visitors and turn them into a lead or a sale is to entice them with the right call to action.

Calls to action are action phrases that are used to boost lead generation and sales. When it comes to call to actions, simple is best. Keep it short and sweet. Let’s take a look at four website designs that was done right.

Salesnexus – Sales nexus has a simple, clean and yet professional design. They have three calls to actions that are within screenshot, no need to scroll. First they have a compelling headline followed by the call the action – “Take a FREE Test Drive”, which leads to a form, where they are able to capture your information, before you try their product for free. Next, they provide you with another call to action “Request a Free Demo”, where they will walk you through the use of their product; finally they engage you, by encouraging you to “Ask a Question”. These three excellent calls to actions will get their visitors engaged in the process and get them to take action. Well done Salesnexus!

Awebber – There website design is simple yet not overly enticing, but they must be doing something right with thousands of customers to date. Their call to action “Sign up for $1” is irresistible, makes me want to sign up just because it’s a dollar even though I don’t need it. If you like to shop, think about the number of items you buy just because it’s cheap not because you need it. Excellent job Awebber!

Survey Monkey – Great professional design, supported by in your face customer testimonials presented strategically and even more strategic is their call to action. It’s as if they are ushering you through a store, Get Started Today! Basic Plan Sign up for FREE. With so many satisfied customers why not try us for free. Their website instills credibility and establishes trust right from the start. Awesome Job Survey Monkey!

Captivate Web Design – Aside from the fact that Captivate Designs website is professional, clean and very easy to navigate; it has two calls to action on the homepage. The first Request a Free Quote, let’s customers know that it is risk free, no obligation to purchase. This allows Captivate Web Design to engage the visitor and get an opportunity to provide them with a quote and information on why they are the best choice. The second offers a Sign up for a Free Newsletter, everyone likes something for free, but most importantly it allows Captivate the opportunity to stay in front of the visitor who is in the market for a web design company, they can continue to market to them and nurture the lead by providing useful information and tips and highlighting their expertise in web design.

These are just four examples, feel free to send us call to actions that you think are effective, or your website to critique your call to action or sign up for a free website evaluation to see how you can turn more visitors into leads and customers.

Naturally, as the owner of a business website, your first instinct is to drive traffic to your website after your website design or website redesign. But when you have successfully driven qualified traffic to your website and those visitors don’t covert into leads or customers, it’s simply wasted effort, time, money disappointment and doubt.

Often time it’s the reason you don’t believe in internet marketing and all the benefits it offers, you might even consider giving up. But you shouldn’t, you have to take another look at your website, and how effective it is set up to take your visitors from visitors to leads to customers. Your website has to be setup to convert its visitors into leads and this can only be done if you successfully engage your visitors. There are a lot of ways to engage your visitors. I would like to share the following simple and cost effective ways to do so.

1. Give something away for Free – This could be as simple as a free consultation, a free estimate or a free report or case study that will be useful to your target market.

2. Add Video to Your website – Implementing video to your website has proven to increase your website conversion rate significantly. It must be educational or directive in nature.

3. Add Online Chat – How many times you have been to a website and you’re lost and feel overwhelmed, online chat is a great way to alleviate this problem and engage your visitors.

4. Add a Blog – A blog is a great way to educate your clients, highlight your expertise and engage them. Use it effectively and you will keep your website visitors coming back over and over again for more information.

5. Add Polls or Surveys – Who doesn’t like taking a poll? It’s a great way to get customers feedback and engage them in the sales process as well. Find out what they like, dislike and what they are looking for. This can also be done on a wider scale with surveys.

6. Add an Ask a Question Feature on your Website – People always have questions, don’t let them go unanswered, give your website visitors every opportunity to get their questions answered so that they can make an informed decision. Add a as a question feature on your website in a prominent spot. This share gesture will put you in front of the rest.

If you can convert more of your website visitors into leads and customers it means that you can increase your revenue and in some case spend less on internet advertising.

Gone are the days where you need to have a brick and mortar store in order to run a successful retail business, and welcome to the world of ecommerce.  The success of taking your retail business online starts with a solid marketing strategy and most of all an ecommerce website design, built for success.  Here are five tips for making your ecommerce website design a success.

Ecommerce Website Design Success Tip #1 – Showcase Your Products

When crafting your ecommerce website design architecture, think about your customers. The moment visitors come to your website they should know what you sell without having to look for much. Highlight some of your products with a simple flash intro. Make your specials stands out. If you offer free shipping or a money back guarantee, this should all be visible at first glance. Focus on strategically positioning your products; better yet list your product categories on the homepage. Ideally you should have a side bar with a list of all your products, as well as a product drop down menu on the main menu bar. Position your products strategically at every chance you get.

Ecommerce Website Design Success Tip #2 – Focus on Usability

Your new ecommerce website design should make it easy for your customers to get from one product category to the next. Better yet, make sure there is a continue shopping option when a product is purchased and ensure that the option to view shopping cart is available.  Also give your customers the option to add or delete items, in order to create a great and user-friendly shopping experience.

Ecommerce Website Design Success Tip #3 – Increase Your Average Sale Per Visitor by Cross Selling.

Do you have products that complement each other or might be ideal for the customer? Cross sell your other products by suggesting other items in a non-disruptive manner. For example, if you sell skin care products, perhaps if a customer purchased a night-cream, it might be wise to also suggest a cleanser once the customer have added the night-cream to their shopping cart, by using a simple pop-up or automation. A great ecommerce website design should cover all the bases by seizing opportunity to sell your products at every opportunity.

Ecommerce Website Design Success Tip #4- Provide an Option to Checkout as a Guest.

I have seen too much ecommerce website design that included only two options – create an account or sign in for the returning customer. People like options; don’t force your customers to create a user-account that stores their information if they don’t want to. It may lead to you losing the sale. Add an option for your customers to check-out as a guest, you can still capture their email information to send offers, order confirmation and a thank you during the checkout so there is no need to force your customers to create an online account.

Ecommerce Website Design Success Tip #5- Give Your Customers Peace of Mind – Use a Recognizable Secure Sockets Layer or SSL for Website Security .

A great ecommerce website design makes it easy for your website visitor to do business with you. In this day an age where identity theft is so rampant it is important to highlight to your customers that you are taking steps to secure their personal and sensitive information.  Add a SSL certificate to your website and publish that it is protected by a credible company such as Verisign or GeoTrust, which are companies that are recognizable by most online shoppers.

Achieving a successful website presence that deliver the results you seek, is never just about how “pretty” your website looks, it’s also about how well it performs and how useful your website is to your visitors. In order to achieve success with your website redesign here are five steps to follow.

Website Redesign Step 1.   Evaluate Where Your Website Currently Is.

First consider the main reason you want to get a website redesign. Perhaps it’s because it has an outdated look, or perhaps it’s because it’s not performing as well as you had hoped. Identifying what works on your existing website design will help you build upon what already works and identify what doesn’t work and what needs to be fixed so that your website redesign can pay off in the future.

Website Redesign Step 2.   Define Where You Would Like to Go.

Technology is always changing and there are always new innovations and tools to implement to make your website design more effective. Optimizing your website for search engines, making your website more user-friendly, increasing your website visitors conversion rate, making your website more interactive are all goals that business owners set for themselves when considering a website redesign. Perhaps you need to achieve one or all of these goals. Establishing where you would like to go will help you avoid some of the past mistakes and unnecessary expenses you have experienced in the past.

Website Redesign Step 3.   Craft a Plan to Get to Your Destination.

Establishing a successful website redesign requires more than just contacting a website designer and paying the web design cost. It requires conducting research to see what will work best for you, based upon the goals you have defined for yourself. During your research you may come across several solutions, identifying the best solutions for you will help you get to your destination in a timely and cost effective manner, when contemplating a website redesign.

Website Redesign Step 4.   Protect The Positive You Already Have.

Commissioning a website redesign can actually have a negative impact, if you have not done a good job in step number one. You may already have pages that are optimized for search engines that are performing very well for you, destroying these pages will result in a drop in traffic and in rankings.  A great way to protect your web pages that are already performing well is to redirect them during your website redesign using a 301 redirect for each page.

Website Redesign Step 5.   Work with a Web Design Company That’s Specializes in Website Redesign.

Working with a website design company that specializes in website redesign, will help you protect what’s already working for you. The web design company that you choose to work with  should also be able to help you in identifying what you need to do in order to achieve your goals. They should be able to perform a full website evaluation, and provide you with a report with their findings and recommendations, they shouldn’t just re-build your website without identifying the problems and defining a strategy.

I just checked my email and lo and behold, I have an email ad from a tax firm. Technically, the tax season for personal filing doesn’t really pick up until January. But this firm is doing something right. They have already begun to promote their services so that when the time rolls around they are present in mind. Whether you are a tax firm, a dentist, or a plumber, now is a great time to start analyzing your past year pros and cons and start putting a plan into place to meet your revenue goals in the New Year. A few things you can start working on to make sure 2010 is a much more successful year than 2009 are:

1. Set Your Revenue Goals
2. Create a Plan For Meeting Your Goals
3. Identify Where Your Past Customers Came From
4. Identify How You Will Reach New Customers
5. Put a Plan Into Place to Reach Out to Existing Customers

Are you using Twitter to capture new clients?  If not, there is no better time to start than now!  Recent stats show that Twitter‘s monthly growth is 1,382 percent (Nielsen.com) with over six (6) million unique visitors per month.  Can you believe that?  That means that you have the potential to expose your business to over 6 million unique twitter users each month and because Twitter is Viral, that number can continue to multiply as others tell their friends and family members about your business, product or service or pass on your website address.

If you already have set up your Twitter page, remember to pay close attention to the text on your profile bio that describes who you are and what you do. Ensure that there is a link to your website and make sure that your website is attractive and provide valuable information. For example Captivate Designs provide web design services, so it’s highlighted in my bio.  It is important to remember that when potential customers take the time to read your bio, they want information that is interesting and helpful that will prompt them to visit your website or learn more about you.

One of the most valuable tools that Twitter has is the search tool.  To find new customers, search for keywords that represent your customers.  This can provide you with a list of potential customers that might be interested in your business or products.  Start following them and you will find that several of them will start following you in return. There are also websites where twitter users list themselves, the most popular website is wefollow.com and it allows you to search for users based on keywords. It is also suggested that you list yourself with your twitter ID on this website as well; it will ask you to select several keywords that describes you or your business when you create a listing, which will make it easy for others who are looking for people like you to find you.  Now that you have followers, you can start posting information about your products and/or services. 

Just like forums or blogs, you need to demonstrate that you are the expert, but you also don’t want to be too promotional. Provide expert opinions, directions and suggestions but also add in non business related tweets that’s not just all about you.  Review tweets, or use the search engine to find tweets and be willing to offer bits of information or advice for free.  By doing this, most users will recognize that you know what you are talking about which will generate an interest for them to follow you as well as do business with you or refer you to someone. The key to increasing and maintaining followers is ensuring that you always tweet something useful and interesting, if you don’t your followers will un-follow you.

You need to post and post often.  It may sound time consuming, but it really only take literally minutes to post a message or an update or even a link to your website.  If you are going to be out of town or unavailable to do routine tweets, there are several websites on the Internet that will allow you to schedule your tweets in advance.  Also, don’t forget if you are traveling and have a BlackBerry or iPhone, there are applications for that as well and you can integrate twitter with your cell phone and post directly from it – just like texting.

You can also do what is called re-tweeting.  Re-tweeting is where you can repost a tweet from someone else.  If you find a tweet that you consider to be of value to your followers, you can simply re-tweet this information on your page.  The accepted way of re-tweeting is to type ‘RT’ followed by @ and the tweeter’s username. It’s always recommended, to RT because it shows that you are committed to sharing valuable information, but also you show good faith to the user you re-tweet who in turn may re-tweet one of your tweets to his/her followers, which will give you credibility and help you to earn more followers (aka ) potential customers and evangelist.

All in all, Twitter is a great tool that can expand your reach to customers and potential customers.  It allows you to stay in touch and connect with people instantly.  It can help drive your brand and communicate with customers in a way that you have never done before. Think about it? Never before have you been able to reach American Consumers by Millions in such a personal and one on one basis until the phenomenon of the twitter website.

Now start building your following!

Given the state of the economy, it is more challenging now than ever before to increase sales and revenues. To keep your business growing you need to   keep your pipeline of leads flowing. A great way to acquire new leads is through your website. One thing you know for sure is that these visitors are already   interested in your products or services, perhaps they are not ready to buy, and they are still in the research phase. Won’t it be nice to capture these visitors information, rather than having them leave your website without knowing who they are? After all, you have already spent time and money to drive these visitors to your website, don’t let your efforts and resources go to waste, capitalize on it by ensuring you are able to capture your visitors information in more ways than one, utilizing every opportunity that you have.

Here are six tips for capturing your website visitors’ information through your newsletter signup in order to help you generate more leads, win new customers, accelerate growth and increase sales.

1.      Give Your Newsletter a Title. Increase interest and entice your visitors to sign up for your newsletter, start with a killer title that exemplifies value to your visitors or implies the benefit. For example Captivate’s newsletter title is “Turn Your Website Into a Lead Generation Machine”.

2.      Make Your Newsletter Stand Out. Very often you will visit a website and the newsletter signup box is hardly visible or the design is poor or generic. Add an image of your newsletter to the signup box so subscribers can see what they are getting. Make the design captivating and outstanding so that it captivates your visitors’ attention.

3.      Position Your Newsletter Strategically. Pay attention to where your newsletter is positioned on your website. Would it be easy for others to see it? Can it be accessed on all pages easily? Perhaps adding a non intrusive pop-up to your website as visitors go from page to page is a good idea.

4.      Keep your fields short. When asking for information in a newsletter, it’s best to keep it simple, by just adding fields for the first name and email address. You want the first name, because it would appear more personal when sending out the newsletter. If you must capture additional information for the purpose of acquiring visitor statistics then create a second page so that once the name and email address is captured they can continue to fill out additional information.

5.      Add a value to your newsletter. Indicate a dollar amount for your newsletter or offer a free gift for subscribing. Perhaps it could be a free report, a discount, or some other promotional item that’s of value to your target audience.

6.      Add a Link to Your Privacy Policy On Your Newsletter Signup Form. Instill trust to your visitors, by letting them know that you would not sell their information or spam them. Include a link to your privacy policy with a short phrase “View our Privacy Policy”. This will make the visitor more comfortable in subscribing to your newsletter.