How To Start Your Own NewsletterYour Road Plan To Email Marketing Success |
7. Target Your MarketTarget Your Market Know who your market is and make certain that your site caters to their needs. It is critical that your site reflect the values of your potential customers. You could have a separate page for each Ezine if the subject varies. Is your market for a particular type of audience that comprises mostly business professionals? If so, the page must be clean and professional. Are your newsletters and products aimed mostly at teenagers and young adults? Then your page could be more informal and relaxed. The key here is to know your market and build the site to their preferences. Content is King Good content markets any product. Ask yourself the following questions. Does your copy convey the message you wish to get across to your visitors? Is it compelling? Does it lead your visitor through the Ezine sign up process? Have others review, critique and edit your copy to ensure it is delivering the intended message. Relevant content is crucial. If your web copy is contradictory to what your newsletters portray there is a good chance that prospective customers might leave without signing up. Always double-check your spelling and grammar. Website Layout and Site Map When starting to design the layout of a site, it is often a good plan to step away from the computer and sketch a layout using good old paper and pencil. Pages should be based on a grid, with space allocated for navigation, headers and footers, body text and whatever other elements that will be repeated throughout the site. This sketch will serve as a pattern for the site's appearance and should not change very much, if at all, from page to page. Taking this approach means you can essentially have your site designed by creating a single page that can be reused, with perhaps minor modifications, as a template for all the other pages in your site. You need to consider how the various content types of different parts of the site will be accommodated within the design and be sure that it meets the needs of all sections. Consistency is at the heart of good web site design and this applies not just to layout but also to every aspect of a site. If there are major shifts in the appearance or color of any part of a site it will be assumed by the user to have a meaning. This is fine if you are using it to highlight information or to indicate that the user is in a different part of the site; it can be very confusing otherwise. Besides consistency in color, positional consistency is important. Navigation bars, navigation text, location indicators, logos, footer information and so on should be in the same place on each page. The width of margins, the positioning of images, the amount of space around text and images, the positioning and style of captions for images and so on should also be consistent. All pages should be well connected and navigation should be quick and simple. The best websites today use a single template for all the pages of a section on the website or for the entire website, if the number of pages is few. The use of ‘Frames’, however, is passé. Using a template offers the consistency to your site and helps to build a brand image of your site. The template includes the graphic design and header of your page including the main menu bars. Content is thus positioned separately from the template. Besides, it will make your work much easier if you plan on having a separate page for each Ezine. Ideally, if you promote different products through different ezines, you could have a page for each product along with information about the relevant ezine at the bottom of the page. Use of a cascading style-sheet for displaying the content is another useful mechanism to ensure consistency on all pages. The style-sheet stipulates the content layout, use of font and spaces, presentation of paragraph titles, margins on the page and other parameters. Increase Response Rates In the majority of cases your visitors want information and they want it now. How beautiful your site is will not be as relevant to them as long as it loads fast, has consistent layout and makes it easy to the user to evaluate its usefulness to them. Besides, the site should contain relevant information and a clear and well defined action plan. For instance, instructions on how to sign up for newsletters should be clearly mentioned on each page. This will improve response rates. Moreover, the page should have a strong call to action theme that induces more people to sign up for your newsletters. Design for Search Engine Optimization When you are designing the layout always ask yourself what impact anything you plan to add to your site will have on the experience of your visitors and the capacity of search engines to efficiently index your pages. Add pages in order so that navigation through the website is consistent and progressive. Make your pages easily visible to Search Engines. Always add a Site Map A site map is just a simple list of web pages on your site. It gives your visitors a quick guide to what can be found there plus it's very useful to the search engine spiders. You can also use it to keep track of all the Ezines and products on your site and see its structure and content all in one place. If your website is without a Site Map, there is every possibility that some of your visitors might leave your website within 10 seconds failing to find what they were looking for. Navigation Structure The aim of a web site's navigation is simply to allow users to get to the Ezine they require. For sites that have a large number of Ezines and products and web pages the navigation plan has to be properly researched and designed. You have to consider different types of visitors and simulate the most common steps they would take to find what they want on your site and the navigation plan has to optimize this movement. Site Usability and Convenience There is no mystery to usability. It simply involves creating a site, which is accessible to the majority of people, is easy to use and get around and delivers on its promises. You can have a site that meets the most important standards of usability by planning it well and always keeping the end user in mind. Remember that web sites should not be designed for their owners - they should be designed for their users. Problems with usability could be said to stem from just two sources: the site itself and the user. In fact the site is always at fault; if a user, however experienced or inexperienced, has problems navigating, getting information or understanding the site. While websites have become far more complex, web users have become less rather than more experienced as more and more people go online. It is a mistake to think that the majority of users will be web or even computer savvy and will understand subtle clues about content. Most will not. Building Interactivity and Personalization Make your website interactive. Add feedback forms as well as email forms that allow your prospective customers to ask you any questions they might have pertaining to a specific newsletter or product. Personalization of your website is another key element that can lead to customer delight and can increase response from visitors. A consumer survey from the Personalization Consortium found that 56 percent of respondents say they are more likely to purchase from a site that allows personalization, and 63 percent are more likely to register at a site that allows it. Personalization can lead to customer delight, increase a customer base for your newsletters and can ultimately increase your sales. In the physical world, you can distinguish a business because of its structure, window displays, or signs. You can tell that a bank is a bank, or a book store is indeed a book store. On the Internet, however, it is an entirely different story altogether. Your domain name is the only clue to your online business. You do not have visual clues: no location, no look, and no store design. Instead, users have to type in a word or a set of words to reach your site. Your prospective visitor has no way of knowing what your site is all about until he/she finds it and reads its contents. Who can ever tell that Amazon.com sells books? Or that Excite is a search engine? Your domain name can spell your success on the Internet. A good domain name is the best asset you can ever have. It can make your business stand out in the crowd, or just float aimlessly in space. For better branding results, your domain name should be memorable and easy to remember. Remember the following tips when creating a domain name. The domain name should be short The domain name should be simple It should be suggestive of your business category It should be unique It should be easy to interpret and pronounce It should be personalized It should not be difficult to spell It should not be difficult to remember Domain names can be registered through many different companies (known as "registrars") - a listing of these companies is available at ICANN: http://www.icann.org. You can register for 1 to 10 years - prices can vary anywhere from $10 to $20 per year. Most web hosting companies, will handle the registration process for you, but make sure that you are properly listed as the owner of the domain when it is registered. If you have registered a domain name for a specific period, make sure you renew it in time. You can be surprised at the number of cases, where site owners have let a domain name slip by if they have not renewed in time. Finally, whatever you do, do not go for cheap or free domain names, even if the only thing your website does is to promote free ezines. There are many sites that offer free domain names. These are generally long domain names. Besides, a surfer would instantly know whether you have your own domain name or a free one, and this can spell doom. Some investment is always essential for any business. Most people would not trust your website if you have a free domain name. There are thousands of web hosting companies that claim to be the best. Choosing a web host for your website requires a lot of research. Your aim should be to select a host that offers you good value for your money – a host that is secure, reliable, and provides a range of tools for managing and maintaining your website. The Web Hosting industry is incredibly competitive today, and they know that users are becoming increasingly sophisticated, so they have no choice but to provide their clients with better and better service, or else risk losing them to any one of the waiting pack of others. The best way to proceed, then, is to make a list of what you require. This will most likely include the following: platform, speed, accessibility, reliability, support and service, and of course, price. Before you approach any web hosting company, you need to decide on what kind of services would you require.
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Browse Site3. Invite Guest Writers to Write in Your Ezine 5. Free Resources on Writing Skills 6. Write Attractive Descriptions 8. Free Hosts – a Definite No No 10. Suggest the Change Subtly to Your Readers 11. Creating a Comprehensive Online Media Kit 13. Always Look for Opt in Ezines 14. Auto Responder Improvements |
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