(Computer geeks) 5 Ways To Drive Traffic To Your Website
No commentsBy anil vij
Every site owner and Webmaster wants a steady stream of traffic to their website, but many of the commonly used tools or techniques either cost too much money or take to long to implement to truly be effective. You do not need a lot of money or expensive scripts to help you drive more visitors to your site. All you need is some creativity and patients.
1. Ask for referrals. Asking for referrals can be one of the easiest ways to gain more traffic to your site. You can add a “mail to link” on your website that says something like “Recommend this site to a friend”. If your site has a newsletter or emailing list you may create a simple question form asking your existing customers or visitors once a month for referrals. The best approach is to be friendly and don’t over do it.
2. Create a newsletter. Having a newsletter for your site is an awesome way to personalize your site and to offer important tips and information about your site’s products and services. If your site has sales or support representatives then you can highlight them and how they are there to help your customers and site visitors. There are a variety of ways to run your newsletter, either from a subscription based email list or only web type. Make your newsletter special by including your readers or site visitors. One way is to have an question and answer section that offers information for commonly asked questions.
3. Set up site surveys and polls. Involve your site visitors by adding site surveys and polls. Asking for your visitor’s and customer’s opinions about relevant site topics is a powerful method in developing both trust and involvement in your website. You can also publish the results of your surveys and polls in your newsletter or email them to your mailing list.
4. Create a site contest or giveaway. Another way to generate excitement and interest in your website is to create a contest or giveaway. The prize can be a discount on goods or services or just about anything that will add value to your current site offerings.
5. Website testimonials. Ask your customers to write a simple testimonial about your site’s goods and services, and add them to your home page. Testimonials add importance and reinforce your site’s reputation by letting other site visitors and potential customers see what others have to say about your products and services. You may want to also consider adding a thumbnail picture of your customer with their testimonial. This will add a human element to your site’s reputation.
Anil Vij is an Expert Author and an Online Marketing Specialist. Visit http://www.onewaylinkexchange.net for more information.
A 900% Return on Your Investments
By Justin Lukasavige
With all of the economic news lately, many investors are pulling out of the stock market. I have personally seen clients that are in bad investments anyways and thus do need to take a close look at their allocations. Many of these same clients should have done this months, and even years, ago because their investments simply have not been a good fit for them.
Is the current market scaring you? The closer you are to retirement usually plays in to your level of emotion right now. Many people are panicking and selling their investments to limit their exposure to the stock market. Where many people have become affected by fear, I see opportunity. In fact, so does the most successful investor of all time, Warren Buffet, who has thought the stock market over-priced for the past few years. Now that it is on sale however, Warren has been buying stocks like crazy.
Many of us are familiar with the crashes of 1929 (The Great Depression) and even the crash of 1987 where the market fell over 20% in a single day. What about the other crashes during the late and early 1970s? What about the slumps of 1962 and even 1946? Most of us have also forgotten about the downturn during 2000 2003.
While many investors are fleeing, I prefer to look at what has happened throughout history before I make any rash judgments. For instance, during The Great Depression, stock prices fell about 90%. Investors that saw opportunity and invested during that time easily doubled their money over the next 20 years.
Investors that saw opportunity after Black Friday in 1987 were able to earn a 900% rate of return in the next twenty years after the stock market recouped! If you follow that math, that time period also includes the downturn that happened between 2000 -2003.
When investing your money, do not be tempted to follow the crowd. Keep your cool and maintain a bit a common sense.
For more information, check out this article by the Wall Street Journal.
Justin Visit www.lukascoaching.com/resources.htm
For more free columns and articles, visit www.lukascoaching.com/articles.htm
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Three Ways to Increase Newsletter Signups on Your Winery Website
By Mitch Tarr
There is no question that having a longer list of email addresses in your newsletter list should be a top goal of any direct to consumer marketing initiative.
I’ve noticed one mistake that is common on most winery websites. That is, they don’t make much of an effort to invite people to sign up for their newsletter list.
You may not know it but making it easy for your website visitors to do something can have a 2, 4, or 10 times effect.
Many winery websites feel that if they have a contact page or a dedicated newsletter signup page that may be enough to get people to join the list. The assumption is that if they want to join up badly enough, they’ll find a way. If you make it super easy for them to sign up, it stands to reason that more of them will do so. Signing up for a newsletter is more of an impulse and as such is a bit more unpredictable as to when that impulse will strike. One thing is for certain, if you don’t sign them up on this visit, you probably won’t see them again on your website.
Right now you might be collecting one newsletter signup per day–works out to 365 new subscribers per year–all done automatically by your software.
However if you were to increase that number to 10 per day, (which I have done) you are talking about 3,650 per year. It doesn’t take too long before you have a formidable list to send out offers to join your club, buy your wine, or visit your tasting room.
Here are three things you can immediately do to accelerate your subscriber list growth.
1. Put a signup form on your home page. Many wineries don’t offer a chance to sign up for the newsletter on the home page. And by sign up, I mean place a form requesting First Name and Email Address right on the page. More people will take you up on your offer because it is convenient for them. Most of your traffic is through your home page anyway isn’t it?
2. Put a ‘Newsletter Signup’ link in your navigation bar. In addition to having a signup form on the home page, put a link in your navigation bar to a signup page. Make sure this link is on every page in your site. Just because your visitor didn’t sign up on your home page doesn’t mean they won’t if they are somewhere else in your site reading about your wine.
3. Add in a hover ad. A hover ad is a box that appears on your screen at some point between 5 and 60 seconds after a visitor arrives on your webpage. Many people don’t like to use a hover ad on their site and in fact I have only seen one after reviewing over 1,000 winery websites. The argument is that the hover ad annoys visitors and sends the wrong impression. In actual fact this effect is so small as not to exist. But I have seen hover ads increase signups by a factor of 10 times!
Finally, it doesn’t hurt to make more of an effort than to say ‘Newsletter’. One of the strongest offers I saw on a winery site stated ‘Please Join Our Mailing List and Receive a $25 Coupon!’ You can be sure that small incentive encouraged more people to join the list (and generated a few extra orders too!)
So take some time to evaluate your website and ensure you are building your list as aggressively as possible.
Mitch Tarr is an email marketing guru and CEO of ZinMarketing Inc. Learn how to use email to cement winery-client relationships and create a buzz that sells wine and supports winery brands. For information and free reports visit Mitch’s exclusive website - http://www.zinmarketing.com
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Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 at 1:40 pm and is filed under news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
