Meet Google. The noun that became a verb. The world’s favorite search engine, and the company whose motto is “Don’t be evil…”
Google the hungry beast
March 12th, 20105 Ways to Keep Visitors Coming Back
March 9th, 2010A lot of successful websites depend on returning visitors to account for a major part of their traffic. Returning visitors are easier to convert into paying customers because the more often they return to a site, the more trust they have in that site. The credibility issue just melts away. Hence, keep your visitors coming back to your site with the following methods:
1) Start a forum, chatroom or shoutbox
When you start a forum, chatroom or shoutbox, you are providing your visitors a place to voice their opinions and interact with their peers — all of them are visitors of your site. As conversations build up, a sense of community will also follow and your visitors will come back to your site almost religiously every day.
2) Start a web log (blog)
Keep an online journal, or more commonly known as a blog, on your site and keep it updated with latest news about yourself. Human beings are curious creatures and they will keep their eyes glued to the monitor if you post fresh news frequently. You will also build up your credibility as you are proving to them that there is also a real life person behind the website.
3) Carry out polls or surveys
Polls and surveys are other forms of interaction that you should definitely consider adding to your site. They provide a quick way for visitors to voice their opinions and to get involved in your website. Be sure to publish polls or surveys that are strongly relevant to the target market of your website to keep them interested to find out about the results.
4) Hold puzzles, quizzes and games
Just imagine how many office workers procrastinate at work every day, and you will be able to gauge how many people will keep visiting your site if you provide a very interesting or addicting way of entertainment. You can also hold competitions to award the high score winner to keep people trying continuously to earn the prize.
5) Update frequently with fresh content
Update your site frequently with fresh content so that every time your visitors come back, they will have something to read on your site. This is the most widely known and most effective method of attracting returning visitors, but this is also the least carried out one because of the laziness of webmasters. No one will want to browse a site that looks the same over ten years, so keep your site updated with fresh bites!
Amazing Technology and Your Online Marketing Strategy
March 2nd, 2010If your online marketing strategy isn’t working, then you might need to introduce some technology to your website. If you current marketing promotions are going well, then you might be able to improve them even more with some added technology. Fancy bells and whistles on a website just for fun aren’t the type of technology that will help you increase sales and grow your business. But technology designed to do some very specific things can make quite a difference.
If you sell products, there are some website enhancements you’ll want to consider in your online marketing strategy. Of course, you must have clear pictures of your products, with more than one picture per product, ideally. You’ll want the customer to be able to click the picture and enlarge it to see the product even more clearly. There’s no real technology involved with that. But to give the customer the closest experience possible to actually being able to pick up and examine the product, look into the software that allows you to show 3D images on your website. The customer can click on the image or on a slider bar and drag to turn the image completely around so they can get a better feel for the object. This online marketing strategy is becoming more popular as companies realize how effective it is.
You could also look into the software that allows a customer to hold the mouse pointer over an image and zoom into it. This usually also allows the customer to move the mouse and see various parts of the object incredibly up close. Remember in your online marketing strategy that everything you do to bring the customer closer to the item they want to purchase will increase the likelihood of a sale. You’ll also want to ensure that your shopping cart and checkout system is as absolutely simple and easy as you can make it. Any slight hangup, delay or problem is just one more reason for the customer not to buy from you.
If you don’t sell products but services or information instead, don’t discount the addition of pictures to your website. Screen shots are particularly helpful when selling software, for instance. While adding pictures doesn’t require much technology, you’ll want to give your website more appeal by adding sound and video. When you’re selling a service, for instance, a video of someone explaining the service in a friendly, casual tone can go a long way toward giving a customer a positive impression. Even audio clips the customer can listen to that break down concepts into simple steps can be an important part of your online marketing strategy.
Video that shows screenshots and still shots as well as a person speaking or demonstrating something can be particularly effective. Get the software necessary to make these recording. Don’t forget how annoying it can be to have something suddenly start playing, though, so give the customer the option. Then add them to your website as part of your technology online marketing strategy.
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Seller: Amazon
Michael Gerber's The E-Myth Revisited should be required reading for anyone thinking about starting a business or for those who have already taken that fateful step. The title refers to the author's belief that entrepreneurs--typically brimming with good but distracting ideas--make poor businesspeople. He establishes an incredibly organised and reg[Read More]
How To Predict E-business Marketing Trends
February 12th, 2010If it is your goal to increase your business over the next year, then it is imperative that you focus on e-business marketing trends. In order to predict what the coming e-business trends will be, you need to simply listen to your customers. The first thing you need to know is who your target market is and how to reach them.
In order to predict what the e-business market has in store for the future, take a look at today;s teenagers. Here are a few things you will see: Ipods loaded with music, cell phones that seem to be used for text messages more often than calls and wireless laptops that can connect to the internet anywhere.
Of course, what you specifically are looking for are online marketing trends. Therefore, take a look at what today’s youth are doing on their computers. They are probably reading or writing blogs, watching and sending viral videos, checking out social networking sites, and even creating their own web pages.
Everything that these kids are doing is sending a message to e-business owners; it is simply up to you to listen. These kids are creating their own web experiences. They’re creating networks between people all over the world. In doing this, they are eliminating all that is irreverent to them and hanging onto only what they consider to be significant.
What are most important are the media and tools that these kids are using in order to do this. If you want to market to today’s and tomorrow’s audience, you’ve got to become a part of the network which they’ve created. This network is a web of trust which they have wrapped themselves in.
By becoming a part of it, you too can be trusted by them and open your business to them. Only by examining today’s youth can you plan for the e-business marketing trends of the future.
In order to build trust and a large customer base, you need to build trust within your target audience. People are becoming increasingly less tolerant of messages and advertisements that they are not interested in. That is why it is so important that you know your target audience and know what their interests are. In order to better know your audience, you must know the following:
- where they are coming from
- the specific web pages that they view
- the links that they click on.
In order to reach the audience of tomorrow, it is important that you take advantage of all of the tools that the internet has to offer. These include: viral content, internet video, mobile media, RSS feeds, and many others.
Viral marketing is a cheap way to increase your web traffic as it is basically getting others to do the legwork for you. RSS feeds are a great way to popularize your blog and get more visitors. You can even make videos in order to promote your business. The better you have learned about and planned for e-business marketing trends, the more successful your e-business will be.
