After reading through the article, we realized that many of the principles driving these best practices are excellent principles for your business to follow in its online presence.

Here are a few of the best practices discussed and how they relate to an effective web presence:

Links should indicate where they will take the user.

People like to know where a road will take them before turning onto it. Think about how you would feel if you got on an interstate and followed the signs to Indianapolis, but at the end of your trip ended up in Dallas. Now, Dallas is a fine city, but it isn’t where you expected or wanted to go. That’s why it’s important to set proper expectations for your customers.

>Your website is the very first impression most people will get of your business. It’s important that what you present sets a realistic yet flattering expectation of your service or product offering.

Take a few minutes to look over your web site. Better yet, ask a few friends or colleagues to look at your site and tell you what they might expect. Then compare that to your real business offerings. Exercises like these can be invaluable to your business and the results you’re getting from your website.

Ensure Contrast – Links should stand out.

Are you truly standing out from your competition online? Ignoring colors and general layout, is your site all that different from your competition? Are you saying something different or more compelling than others?

Take a look through the lens of an outsider at a few competitors’ websites. If you aren’t sure your’s is standing out, take some steps to change that. It may be as simple as taking a look at what your company really does well and stating that boldly on your home page. Or perhaps it’s even as simple as stating exactly what it is that sets you apart. Don’t be afraid to tell your customers exactly why you’re the best!

Don’t Forget About Visited Links

Once your website has converted prospects into customers, make sure you don’t leave them out in the cold!

Many businesses think of their websites solely as a sales tool, or as a method for converting prospects. While this is a big part of an effective web presence, it isn’t all there is.

No matter how big or small, any company can benefit from offering some type of ongoing interaction with their customers. While there are many ways this ongoing interaction can positively impact your bottom line, one of the most compelling is maintaining top of mind positioning with your customers. If you can stay in touch with your best customers, you can turn satisfied patrons into raving fanatics!

Of course all of these ideas are based just around best practices in link styling on web pages. But it’s a great example of taking concepts from one arena and using them as inspiration for making a business or product better.

What inspires you to constantly improve?

So you’ve got a killer online display and paid search campaign; or maybe you’re starting to gain traction with an email marketing campaign. Congratulations, you’ve managed to create interest in your product or service and motivate prospects to do something very difficult: take action!

Your next challenge is to motivate your prospects to actually buy into your product or service. If the links in your other marketing campaigns are directing customers to the home page of your website, chances are you aren’t seeing the results you’d like from your marketing campaign.

But don’t worry! You can get the results you want through the use of a well-crafted landing page…

Click here to continue reading –

What is a landing page?

A landing page, also known as a lead capture page, is the page that appears when a potential customer clicks on an advertisement or a search-engine result link. The page will usually display content that is a logical extension of the advertisement or link, and that is optimized to feature specific keywords or phrases for indexing by search engines. Basically, it’s a web page custom-tailored to customers coming in through an advertising campaign.

3 Tips to Maximize Your Landing Pages

1. Don’t Give Users a Choice!

While you may have 5 different product options or service plans, you should focus on one option that you will push on your landing page. Studies show that if people feel there are too many choices to consider, they simple won’t choose one at all.

You can still list other options, but make sure one stands out visually from the rest. That way, customers can still choose the option that suits them. If they’re confused, you’ve provided a suggestion that will keep them from choosing none of them!

2. Lasso Eyeballs!

Usability studies and eye-tracking research shows a clear pattern in the way people scan the contents of a web page. Their attention always goes first to the boldest or most contrasting visual element of a page.

What is the one element of your landing page that you want people to focus on? Take that element and surround it in a contrasting color. If you aren’t comfortable changing the colors on your landing page draw an arrow to it, put a circle around it, or put a big check mark next to it… Do something bold to lasso those eyeballs and make sure they see what you want them to see!

3. Show the Next Step

People lose interest fast. No matter how compelling your content is, people simply lose interest after a few seconds. Now, to clarify, they aren’t necessarily losing interest in your product or service, but they quickly grow weary of all of the content on a page if they feel it isn’t leading somewhere. Many people visiting your landing page are already sold on what you have to offer and just want you to get to the point.

A great way to cater to impatient readers is to prominently display the response mechanism that allows them to take the next step in the process. This can be a contact form, a phone number, an email address or even a coupon that can be printed out. This will make users feel as though they are moving forward in a process and are not just being sold to.

These are just a few little additions/changes you can make to your landing pages that will increase conversion rates. If you’d like help crafting your landing page or want a custom landing page from the ground-up, visit our website here and click “Contact”.