What does this mean for the average business with a web presence? It means that you want to optimize your site – not just for Google and other web crawlers, but also for small screen browsers.

Although there was some talk of needing a “mobile device only” version of every website, this kind of duplication is not necessary.  In fact, a cascading style sheet, or CSS, can be written into your web page, instructing the device as it loads your page, to optimize your site for the phone or PDA that is requesting it. So writing in CSS is the first step to optimizing your page for hand held devices and smart phones.

Use a program like the Openwave Phone Simulator to test your web page and see how it will look on a “generic” cell phone type device. If you know the specific parameters of a particular type of device (say, an Apple iPhone), then you can increase the parameters and get an accurate view.

Then optimize your content. Remember that too much text is too much for a smartphone device, and keep the articles short (no more than 500 words, on average). Many small articles with relevant links are better than one long article.

Make sure that the most important elements in your page will load in the center of the phone’s screen, and are accessible without scrolling.  Make sure your pages load quickly. Cell phones and smart phones have slower internet connections than most broadband providers, and you don’t want a clunky website that gums up the works. The customer will click the “close” box after a few seconds.

Many cell phone users will block the photos on your site from loading, so be sure to have relevant and interesting ALT tags that identify your photos. You want your page to make sense to the viewer who has no photo access.

With a little planning,  you will have a great website that is optimize for both PC and smartphone use.

We’ve been using Sitecore for our own website and for client’s websites because of its incredible power and functionality. Now Sitecore has also been recognized by independent research firm Forrester Research as a top CMS.

Forrester Research points out what the experts at Webdatamation could tell you — the flexibility and power of Sitecore make it strong in areas where competitors are weak.

The system is excellent for ease in creating content and integrating the content into a site, managing the workflow, and integrating content.

Sitecore also gets high marks for its ability to effectively target sites and content, having a global approach, integrating numerous sites, and for its community controls.

Sitecore leads out in multilingual content and in providing the means for making a separation between content and the presentation. This creates a dynamic environment for delivering the message and for using graphics and text in other contexts for different purposes.

Webdatamation chose Sitecore in part because it is a powerful solution for both simple websites as well as complex, fully powered sites.

The features of Sitecore allow for a highly flexible website that can integrate all of the Web 2.0 features.  Marketing departments can add website content or sales information to a company site easily without a great deal of technical knowledge, and still maintain a professional and responsive site.

It’s simple to integrate any analytic tools  and other business software into the Sitecore system, and it’s compatible with ecommerce products so that customers and site visitors have a seamless and enjoyable experience on your site.

We also like Sitecore because of their constant updates, research and trend forecasting. We know that our customers will have all the latest tools at their fingertips as soon as they are available.

If you haven’t yet seen what Sitecore can do for you, contact us at Webdatamation and let us give you a glimpse.

If you don’t use iGoogle, you may want to consider it, particularly if this financial information is as crucial to you as it is to many in the business world.

iGoogle is the customizable homepage from Google. It has a Google search bar across the top, then you can customize the page with any of a number of Google gadgets that allow you to check your email, get news feeds you select and a variety of other tasks.

There are a number of great gadgets that provide pertinent and updated financial information as well.

Some of the best are:

Commodities Market. So many businesses are affected by the price of commodities (thinking oil, here). Catch each price change through the day with the shifting conditions by using the Commodities Market gadget.

Company Overview. Hear a bit of news about a company and want to see how that news is affecting stock prices, company officers, or financial ratios? Hear about a new company and want to get some info about company news or key management figures?

With the Company Overview Gadget, all you need to do is type in the ticker symbol for any listed company and you’ll snag all that information and more about any publicly held company. You will even find the means to join quarterly earnings calls for any company you’re interested in.

Track all your stocks right on your home page with the Google Finance Portfolios. Get summaries for all the major indexes, then add each of your own stocks to the gadget. As soon as you open your home page, the info is updated, and you get the latest ion your companies. If you want more details on any company at any time, just click on that company to go to the Google Finance page.

There are many other financial gadgets: Currency Converter if you travel often, Latest Bulls keeping you up on what’s hottest in the market, Dow Jones and Live Gold, just to name a few.

Let iGoogle make it simple for you to keep up with your finances whenever you open your browser.

About 46 percent of the mobile phones in the world operate on the Symbian platform, but most of them are in Europe and the Middle East. However, Symbian is making strides to close the gap in the U.S. and Japan.

Why this matters to you as a developer or a business interested in reaching Symbian customers is that in 2008, Nokia bought all the shares of Symbian that it didn’t already own and announced that it will become an open source platform, like other mobile platforms. This means that anyone will be able to develop applications for the Symbian-based phones.

Although you may think Symbian will be a late comer to the mobile apps market, it would be unwise to count them out. The platform has been around for years, they have a loyal customer base for the Nokia phones, and technology is a fickle thing.

When the iPhone was first released, it was perfection embodied. There was not a criticism to be had. But when Palm released the Pre, suddenly the iPhone seemed stodgy and lacking – what? No cut and paste on an iPhone? How passé.

So all it will take is for Symbian to come out with some great innovations that capture the imaginations of the population, and they can take hold of a significant portion of the market quickly.

With Symbian phones already in the hands of millions of mobile customers around the world – nearly half the mobile device users – developers and businesses would do well to watch the Symbian development as well.

As they go open source completely in the coming months, a huge potential market opens up for anyone ready to jump in and be an early adopter of the platform, the possibilities are endless.

And with a completely different philosophy governing the marketing of the soon-to-come applications, developers may find in Symbian a more open and accessible wireless application partner.

Your online presentation is an important aspect of your business, and you want the appearance and functionality of your site to reflect your philosophy and your products in a way that is accessible and easy to use.

Build Trust

Your company website projects an image and an attitude. Really, the business website should be considered a part of your overall marketing campaign. The immediate impression that a visitor gets from your website tells them about your business.

If your site is well organized, well designed, and fully functional, then customers will trust your business and the products you offer. If the website looks amateur or filled with frivolous advertising unrelated to your products, they’ll likely have a negative impression and distrust your business.

Invest in great web design to create the image you want you business to portray.

Ease of Use

Great web designs are also easy to use. Make sure that there are plenty of links that connect customers with important information, and that they can easily get back to where they want to be on your site.

Today’s customers expect high quality, professional design on a website. They do respond to good marketing and great design, and want to be able to navigate around a site easily. They want to find the information, products and services that they need quickly and logically, or they’ll soon be off to find another site.

Functionality

Your website design also needs to be functional. Links need to be active, and the code needs to be complete. Simple coding errors can lead to “broken” websites that can’t be seen by viewers. Even simple things can prompt viewing errors. Not only does this deter customers, but your Google rankings drop with non-functional links.

You want to be sure your ecommerce solution is intuitive, security and functional so that your customers feel comfortable making purchases on your site. Any ease of use functions add to customer satisfaction, and that leads to repeat purchases.

Get Design Expertise

The web designers at Webdatamation know just how to design effective and creative websites that meet customers’ needs. Our designers can add any elements for interaction, information and commerce to make your site both highly attractive and highly functional.

“I’ll add you on Facebook!”

“Hey, we are Orkut friends!”

“I’ll subscribe to your RSS feed right away!”

You will agree, these are some of the most touted phrases that we use when we “network”. However, this is not the way the journey had begun. The transformation from toys to tools was a revolution that brought out a whole new “Social Economy” in “Social Networks”.

Emotions have been replaced by emoticons, expressions have given way to smileys and the English Language has seen drastic reforms in the present era. Yes, we are using a super condensed and more “expressive” way of communication, thanks to social networking.

Facebook, Orkut, Twitter and many others took birth in the World Wide Web and primarily made their presence felt as networking toys. Little did we realize then, about the enormous networking capabilities they had. Soon, along with inviting our near ones to hang out at a party, we were “inviting” them to our online profiles on these websites. There were friends, friends of friends; can I say an online “big bang”?

Yes, the concept might be surreal, but the sheer fascination and excitement to be a part of this revolution paved way for the dynamics of theses toys to mutate into tools. It would be quite difficult to point out the exact period when this transformation took place, but you knew it was there when you were networking more online rather than calling up or e-mailing the same people. Your business cards and identities changed during this era and now included information of your online profiles or networks.

“Human networks” is the word of the hour. We have been consistent in synthesizing our conversations through these digitally woven, close environments, with a wide array of inbound and outbound hyperlinks dominating our online presence. We are scheduling meetings, hanging out, having conversations, sharing interests, making a social statement in a world of our own. All these worlds come together in the digital universe. The good news is, we are getting addicted to it every day and striving to reach its epitome.

“To err is human…” What is human? Is it an online Avatar or the one who sits behind it and controls its actions? Are our online counterparts facing an identity crisis?

The principles associated with this new social economy have brought about the tools in toys and I am now a part of it. The trick of the trade is to propel your identity towards the proper direction and your intended audience.

Welcome to the world of social networking once again…have you noticed the change?

There are a number of strategies through which one can optimize their own website. Of these, the one that is worth mentioning is the “Cloud”. Many of you might have this question in your mind as to, “what is a cloud?” and “what does a cloud has to do in SEO?” Well, let me throw some light on this. Clouds can be of many types, such as, profile clouds, link clouds, content clouds and so on. However, the most commonly, or rather the only form of cloud used or discussed in the SEO works is the tag cloud. When you are looking in some website page, you must have come across a section headed “Tags”. Under this head you will see a bunch of words, placed one after another, some appearing small in size, whereas, some big and bold. The difference in the size is dependent on the number of times each word or tag has been associated with an item. This whole section is called ‘word cloud’ or sometimes called ‘tag cloud’. In general, the tag cloud helps a visitor to have an idea about the well-liked tags that are present in that particular site. The individual word or tag is actually linked to a page where you will get contents related to the tag you clicked.

This has been a very useful tool for search engine optimization and is gaining widespread acceptance by websites who want to optimize their keywords for search engines. Actually, the whole idea behind a tag cloud is to help you “visualize” content that is most relevant to a websites based on certain keywords or the keywords you searched for.

However, I am sure, you might have come across a funny situation where you have seen a website having certain keywords in its tag cloud in the boldest forms and yet it does not contain any content related to that keyword! For those of you, who have not, watch out!

The most popular search engine spiders cannot read JavaScript or images, just as they read and process plain text. However since having a tag cloud requires some logistic optimizations on keyword history, such clouds are represented by either using JavaScript code or images. This accounts for a cloud that contains misleading tags. The answer to this problem is simple; pictures alone DO NOT best define your website. No, they are not at all friendly to search engines. They may be professional enough to attract the solitary attention of a friendly customer but they are like alien material for crawlers and spiders!

The best practice is to make good use of the “alt” and “title” tags for your images. This will allow the web spiders to crawl your web page in the most efficient manner and mine information from the content of your website. Identify your perception of the tag cloud; for example, which keywords should be bolder, and then compare it with the actual results. Modify or edit the “alt” or “title” tags accordingly.

If you spend some time on this, you will soon come up with satisfying results. Yes, “Tag” is the new SEO language that is creating waves, why shouldn’t you capitalize?

Attention and Economy may be two diverse terms but in the modern times is naturally amalgamating, with one becoming highly interdependent on the other. Let us consider an example to show you exactly how attention affects economy.

While searching for the latest book reviews or releases, how often do you navigate away from a page that does not contain the review of a book that you have been looking for? The chances are high. The fact is, with so many websites and blogs being continuously updated with information on your favorite genre(s), you do not bother to stick to a page and search for information that is not there in the first glance! It takes seconds before you decide to look for your information on a different website or a web page and navigate away from the present one if you are not satisfied with its content. In the process, have you noticed the crisis of attention?

If you observe closely, you will find that this attention deficit not only affects us, but also the organizations keen to reach out to you with their products or services. The moment you are navigating away from a page presuming that the information provided in it is not relevant, you are hurting their economics. Search engines, online retailers, blogs, and news sites are coughing up an overabundance of information for the end users or the consumers every passing hour. This can lead to a loose-loose situation where eventually, a consumer leaves a website, un-happy and a retailer looses business. The irony is, a consumer wants to spend money for a commodity, but does not have the correct retailer reaching out to him.

The entire idea behind attention economy is to create a virtual marketplace where consumers are presented with streamlined content that makes them feel happy and satisfied, in lieu of their attention. More specifically, consumers are made to consume advertisements however, in exchange of certain personalized services. For example, personalized searches, news, alerts and buying recommendations, to name a few.

You might have noticed the “sponsored links” in the Google search pages. You get to use the search feature of Google for free; however, you are being presented with some relevant advertisements based on your search keyword on the search results page. This is an excellent example that demonstrates attention economy in action.

One of the important aspects of attention economy relates to the fact that the consumer can exercise the power of his or her choice. Therefore, the consumer gets to decide where to devote their attention. Websites are also capitalizing on the “online surfing habits” of the consumer, thereby optimizing the way in which information may be sorted and presented.

One might probably argue with the usage of the word “Economy” here. Attention economy is different form its conventional counterpart in the way in which barter is established. The latter has a more explicit or direct form where goods and services may be bought or sold. However, in the former, there is no immediate buying or selling of commodity. The focus is more towards creating deterministic opportunities to sell.

A conversion rate refers to the percentage of visitors who take or complete a desired action on a company’s website. A company often uses conversion rate to measure the performance of its website. It is not standardised and it varies from company to company. It can include anything from a direct sale on website, lead, customer enquiry or online registration.  Achieving a higher conversion rate is one of the key objectives of an effective website strategy. Retaining visitors on the website for longer has a direct impact on conversion rates. The longer visitors stay on the website the greater the chances of conversion.

There are a number of factors that affect conversion rate of a website. A website’s usability is important as it ensures users remain on the website and are able to find the information they are looking for. This article discusses the important factors that can improve a website’s conversion rate.

There are many ways for a company to attract visitors to its website. Studies show that a majority of the visitors will navigate away and leave the website. Retaining visitors on a website is thus crucial for a company in order to increase conversion and generate sales or leads.

Here are some essential tips a company can use to keep visitors on its website for longer:

1. Simple Professional design of the website. A simple but professionally designed website encourages visitors to stay and read its content. The trend today is for simple, appealing & minimalist designs. Attention to detail is important to build trust among customers.  The design of the website should reflect the market it targets. Different designs may suit different situations and context.

2. Quality of content. A simple objective of a successful company website is to keep visitors on the website long enough to generate sales or leads for the business. The internet today is full of websites that offer poor content of little value to readers. In order to encourage users to remain on the site for longer, it is vital for the website to offer quality content that is well researched and presented.

A combination of mediums such as text, images, videos or podcasts can be useful to present content effectively and make it interesting for visitors. Simple issues such as spellings and grammar can be easily overlooked and have a negative impact on conversion.

3. Offer up to date & fresh information. Visitor loyalty is important for the success of any website. Very few websites rely solely on new visitors only. If you want your customers to visit the website again it is important to update the website frequently and offer new up to date content. After all a visitor will seldom find the reading the same content again and again of little value or interest. Adding new articles and content to your website will keep your existing users interested whilst attracting new ones.

4. Provide detailed information on products or services. Promoting products and services is one of the key objectives of a successful company website. Research suggests that offering detailed descriptions and images about a product tends to improve the chances of sale via the website. This especially important on the internet as customers have to decide based solely on the product information available to them. It is better to provide more information rather than provide only the important ones. If there is too much information it can easily be separated into brief and detailed descriptions for the products.

5. Offer free resources or benefits. Offering resources or other benefits for free on the website is another effective method to attract visitors and convert your prospects into online customers. Offering free tips and articles related to your business can make your company’s website more appealing to customers who can get additional information related to your products and services. Offering related tips and articles can supplement the information on your products.

6. Offer simple navigation. The navigation or menu on the website plays an important role in usability and ensuring visitors remain on the site and are able to find what they are looking for. Many studies have shown that poor or complex navigation drives visitors away to competing websites and thereby negatively impacts conversion rates.
Navigation should be clear and prominent. It is also important for navigation to be consistent across all pages so users do not have difficulty in finding it.

7. Provide pictures where appropriate. Pictures can speak a thousand words. From design point of view pictures make the site appealing to users and thereby encourage them to stay for longer. However graphics should not be overused as it can have a negative impact. If you are selling a product then offering product pictures is crucial to promote the product and encourage sale.

8. Add a blog. This is related to some of the points discussed earlier. Blogs can be beneficial for the website in more than one way. Blogs offer an easy way to add new content to your website and encourage participation from users. Blogs are very easy to add. A web design company can add a bespoke blog to your website quite easily or you can create one free within minutes using one of the many free blog platforms such as blogger or wordpress.

9. Provide Testimonials. Testimonials are effective in building customer confidence in the company. Confident customers are more likely to be retained or buy products or services.

10. Engage the customer. A successful website takes a number of steps to ensure visitors remain on the site and spend more time. There can be few better ways than to allow customers to interact with the website and the company.  Blogs, forums and other Web2 areas have proved effective. Simple techniques such as customer feedback form or guestbook are also effective in involving visitors. If you are selling a product then allowing customers to review the products is another useful method.

11. Offer Variety of Information. It has proven effective to offer a variety of information on the website and not just information about your company. As much as you may want to promote your products and services directly; your website visitors will not remain on the website to read pages and pages of information about your company and products. If you want retain visitors for long and revisit the website again, your company’s website should offer a mix of information. It is a common approach for successful company websites to offer a range of independent information related to their market. In order for a website to be successful and build a community, a company’s website should not only offer self promoting articles but also independent well balanced information that adds value for visitors.

12. Encourage opt-in email registration. Collecting email address of your website visitors can be an effective marketing tool for your company. This can be achieved easily by offering email or newsletter registration feature on in a prominent place on the website. The list can then be used for a variety of purposes including newsletters or direct marketing.

13. Allow visitors to bookmark your website. Providing a simple link or graphic ina prominent place of the website can have a surprisingly great impact on number of visitors bookmarking the website. This is very easy to do and will promote repeat visits to your website.

14.Offer something new. An average internet user comes across a wide range of information on a day to day level. There are over 40 million websites today and new ones are launched every day. Whilst it may not be possible for every aspect of your company’s website to be completely unique and innovative, there should be something new or unique on the website. Offering something new to your users can be important for conversions as it adds interested for your users and will encourage to visit again.

The internet today is full of marketing gimmicks and piles of hyped up information content to make it attractive to users but ultimately failing to deliver something of genuine value to the end user. Offering new information or services that have genuine value for users will build confidence in your customers and prove an effective branding technique even if the information is not directly selling your product or service.

15. Provide a site map. It can be quite difficult to find information on large websites. Any website can grow large with time.  Providing a sitemap clearly accessible from all pages of the website promotes usability and prevents users form getting lost. It prevents users from leaving the site due to these reasons. Sitemap also promotes better indexing of pages on search engines which can in-turn lead to improved conversion rates.

16. Respond to statistics. Many free website statistics and reporting software such as Google Analytics provide useful information on visitors but also and content on the website. This information can be used to monitor and test the effectiveness of the various website elements. The information should be used to determine what features are appealing to users and what are not.

As we have discussed in this article once our website starts receiving visitors it is important to retain visitors on the site and generate sales and leads for the business.

Remaining points to be added.

]]> http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/12/20-ways-a-company-can-retain-website-visitors/feed/ 2 http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/10/7-recession-strategies-for-b2b-seo/ http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/10/7-recession-strategies-for-b2b-seo/#comments Wed, 22 Oct 2008 19:30:56 +0000 Galen DeYoung http://searchengineland.com/?p=15185 Many people have a “set it and forget it” approach when it comes to SEO. But if you have a good site (in terms of organic search), you should be taking advantage of it—especially during these tough economic times.

SEO remains one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies, especially over the long haul. If your site and the pages on it have historically responded well to desired search terms, you should be tweaking your site to speak to the changing market. Here are seven inexpensive strategies to help you win during these challenging times.