* Site structure familiarity

When a person visits a website, they already have a pre-conceived perception of what that site would contain. It is important for you to be conscious of which your regular visitors are because they crave familiarity on the websites they visit. You need to view your website with the eyes of a first-time visitor because the things that may already be familiar to you might be new to them.

* Proper content application

One of the common problems that most websites have to deal with is the numerous links on their homepage. People go to websites to search for information and they want help in finding the kind of information they need. So be sure to have a targeted call to action located at your homepage. It would also be helpful if you treat each page on your website as your homepage to make the visitors feel like they reached a targeted destination.

Quality writing is another important area in a website. The content you use should not only be unique, it should also use powerful words that will have an impact on the visitors.

* Testing and tracking

After you have implemented all these measures, you need to find out if your endeavor is successful. Determine if you are attracting the right visitor to your website by finding out where the site traffic is going and developing a scientific method to use this information.

Then track the effectiveness of your efforts. Find out if your conversion rates became higher. You also need to determine which specific product or webpage provides you with the highest return on investment so you can derive the highest profit possible

The first thing you need to do when finding your perfect domain name is to
decide which top level domain you want. Top level domains (TLDs for short)
are the extensions that you see at the end of the actual domain name; in
other words, the suffixes like .com, .net, .org, .ca and others are all top
level domains. When domain names were first around, these TLD markings
were basically intended to give you a very general idea of where the company
was coming from; .edu was therefore an educational institution (and more
likely an American educational institution), .com was a commercial website,
.ca was a website that wanted to identify itself as Canadian and so forth.

With the proliferation of domain names, these lines have become blurred to a
certain extent which makes it easier for you to choose one to portray the
interests of your website in a very positive light. If you want your
website to be thought of as educational, you can even go for the .edu TLD
even if you don’t run a school, as long as you are willing to pay more money
than you could for a .com.

Once you have the TLD, it is time to decide on the actual domain name. You
want to pick something that is related to your company, but at the same time
one that is easy to remember. This can sometimes be difficult, but the
good news is that you can always go outside the .com TLD if you can’t find
one of a suitable nature..

The most important factor in persuading customers to buy from an e-commerce website is the ease of navigation. Make your site simple and easy to use and you’ll earn the sales. However if the usability is the key to a better website and better results then what specifically will improve your websites ease of use?

First Things First

Before changing anything, take a simple step to examine your site’s current level of usability. Do the following: run a user test. Find one willing test shopper and not an employee and get them in front of your site to get immediate, real-person feedback.
The best way to do this is to grab as many potential customers as possible, watch them interacting with the website and record trends as they develop. Don’t use a focus group, or a group of any kind. You want to see how users shop as if they were at home.

You should be on the lookout for potential problems in several key areas. The three major reasons why websites lose sales. Namely:

• poor merchandizing
• providing information ineptly
• not appearing credible to shoppers

On a successful website everything should be easy to find and yet many sites still fail to follow this simple rule. The problem is often a case of poor product categorization.
You need to envision what you would expect if you were a consumer, things need to be where people expect to look for them, often businesses use very odd categories that make no sense to the average consumer.

Another way to stave off user confusion is by allowing product winnowing. A site must enable customers to quickly narrow down its list of product to the desired item. A site with a sprawling product catalog can satisfy a broad range of customers. However, it can also be confusing if that list can’t be easily narrowed by searching shoppers. Don’t offer people too many choices or you are just going to confuse them and they will go away without buying.

Information Please

Assuming users can narrow down large product lists to locate products in which they’re interested, site designers must overcome a second hurdle. Assuming that the person can find what they want, do they have enough information about it to make them feel comfortable this is actually what they want?

Two classic mistakes in product descriptions are:

• the overly eager marketing person
• the overly technical person

The tech person will write one hundred basic facts down, but not in a way that the consumer who’s not highly educated can understand them and the marketing person will write in florid language about how wonderful it is, without ever getting to the specifics.

Rather, descriptions must be written in the middle ground between these two. First, describe the product in comprehensible specifics. Then, offer the ability to delve into more specific product details for those who want it.

Looking for specific reasons for your website to get re-designed? Okay, here are a few!

Turning over a new leaf: When people come to your website, they are looking for something new and exciting; something to keep them coming back. Re-designing your website gives you a chance to create this new something for them.

Maintain visitors: It has been shown through studies that the average user will decide within seconds of visiting a website whether or not they want to stay. This gives
you precious little time to make an impression and a good re-design will do just that.

Increase Efficiency: If you have been adding information to your site for a long time without are-design, chances are there are redundancies built into the system that could make finding some information difficult; a re-design would solve that problem.

Adding new things: Interactive elements that were not around when your website was first created could be integrated now and increase the experience that users will
get.

Better results: If you add things to your website that allow it to do a better job of
finding and keeping customers for you, then you will ultimately have a better bottom line. A re-design could certainly accomplish all of those tasks.

With any redesign it is a great time to do a little rethinking. Looking at the current site a question needs to be asked. What is it that people want when coming to my site? By understanding what it is people are looking for from your site you will be able to better position that information within the architecture of the entire site.

Judging by the Cover

The old adage “Never judge a book by its cover” doesn’t apply to your website. Users to your site make quick and often harsh judgment calls within seconds of viewing your homepage. By making outstanding first impression with a crisp, clean, professional look the user gets a sense of trust from the company behind the site.

Follow the Leader

Your site could have the exact information a specific user is looking for. However, if it takes too long for them to locate it chances are they will go somewhere else to find the information. By making your site as user friendly as possible you will be able to guide the user to specific areas of content. Bringing content that is hidden under multiple clicks to the forefront makes it easy for a user to locate. As well as, leads the user to other areas of your site that they might not have known about.

New Experience

New features can dramatically improve the user experience. Online calendars that allow a user to register for events are a perfect example of how a simple feature increases the value of a site. No longer does the user have to call or mail in an RSVP card. As such, the company doesn’t need a person to answer the phone for every registration.

Cheapest Employee

Your website could be your cheapest employee. It has already been mentioned that your site could make your day-to-day tasks a thing of the past. By adding features to your site that help educate your user base, enhance marketing efforts, as well as, develop a sense of who your users are you are in reality making your site work harder for you. The simple fact is that you have a site. Why not make it work harder and do more for you and your company? An offshoot of adding features like this is that your users have more interaction with your site and your company.

Your Future Customers

The whole goal of a redesign is to create a better experience for your users. Maybe it is a new look, a revised navigation scheme, or a complete overhaul. Whatever the outcome, your site should reflect the company behind the site and insure a sense of trust with you future customers.

Let’s say for example that you own a restaurant that is quite good, but for the most part doesn’t get as many customers as you know it should. Word of mouth advertising is really the only way that you have been advertising your restaurant and while the flow of customers has increased steadily, it is nowhere near the amount that you think that you should have by this time. It has however been enough that you would like to buy some other form of advertising.

Well, you could purchase an advertisement in a newspaper for a thousand dollars. The advertisement would have information regarding your restaurant, provided that you keep it within the word limit. Then, you would really have no way of tracking the effectiveness of your ad because you are paying just for the showing of the advertisement.

Instead of that, what you could do is place an advertisement online at Google. You would pay probably around twenty to twenty-five cents for each click and you could direct the click to a website created about your restaurant. That website could contain an infinite amount of information about your restaurant and you could track how many visit the website specifically from your Google advertisement. It is simply a smarter way of
doing things and as is usually the case it is also a cheaper way of doing them as well.

The first of these two concepts, the domain name, is a relatively simple concept to grasp. The idea behind the internet in general is the fact that you access different websites by locating their internet protocol number. This IP number is unique to a website and browsers primarily are able to locate this number before anything else. However, human beings have a tough time remembering numbers, especially when those numbers have periods inserted in between them. Therefore, most people will come up with an alphanumeric way of representing that IP address and this is what is known in common terms as a domain name.

However, all a domain name does is access a specific IP address. It does not allow for uploading of files, space for those files or anything else that you would associate with your website. If you want space for these types of things, then you need to purchase that space on a server. If you don’t have the money to purchase a server, then you need to rent server space and access from a company known as a web hosts. Web hosts will typically take care of all of the nitty gritty aspects of web hosting so that all you have to do is create and upload the pages that you want to your website.

While these are all important points, what most internet marketing experts will agree on is that you need to make your website functional before you look at all of the other factors. In other words, make sure your website can display and sell products first before you look at anything else. You can do this through shopping cart system software that can be obtained through a number of different online sources as well as a content management system that can be used to retrieve and display different products that are
set out in an online catalogue. These are the two main aspects of your website and make sure you have them down before you deal with anything else.

Finally, when you have all of those things down, what you then should look at is expanding your website to include more information about your company and its operations. This information is essential for establishing a good rapport with your customers and is in fact quite easy to provide in the form of things like contact pages, about pages, history pages and pages for the individual members that work for your company. This information might seem a bit useless to you, but rest assured customers are more receptive when they know who they are buying from.

Therefore the term domain name refers to a name that is entered into a computer as a website address. A domain name registrar is a company accredited by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to sell Internet domain names. A domain name registry, also called Network Information Centre (NIC), is part of the Domain Name System of the Internet which resolves domain names to IP addresses. It is an organisation which centrally manages the ownership of domain names within the top-level domains which it has been given authority of, often decides and implement the policies around domain name allocation and operates its top-level domain technically.

The Internet domain name system (DNS) consists of a directory, organized hierarchically, of all the domain names and their corresponding computers registered to particular companies and persons using the Internet. When you register a domain name, it will be associated with the computer on the Internet you designate during the period the registration is in effect. From that computer, you can create a website which will be accessible to Internet users around the world.

Domain names can be registered through many different companies, known as registrars that compete with one another. The registrar you choose will ask you to provide various contact and technical information that makes up the registration. The registrar will then keep records of the contact information and submit the technical information to a central directory known as the registry. This registry provides other computers on the Internet the information necessary to send you e-mail or to find your web site. You will also be required to enter a registration contract with the registrar, which sets forth the terms under which your registration is accepted and will be maintained.

The cost of domain registration depends on the nature of the Registry; commercial registries naturally tend to charge what the market will bear, whereas non-commercial registries tend to charge less. Each registrar has the flexibility to offer initial and renewal registrations in one-year increments, provided that the maximum remaining unexpired term shall not exceed ten years. Can I change registrars after registering a domain name? Yes, you may change the registrar sponsoring your domain name (beginning 60 days after initial registration). For details on the transfer process, contact the registrar you would like to assume sponsorship of the registration.

* Low cost. In the US, the cost of accepting credit cards is around $10-$20/month in flat fees, plus a small percentage of your sales, called a discount rate. For an offline business, the discount rate is as low as 1.69% (lower for debit cards). For an online business, discount rates are as low as 2.19%. Yes, online businesses are considered riskier and therefore are charged more. Still, 2.19% is much less than even many offline businesses were paying just five years ago. Non-US business will likely pay significantly more, but likely not more than a few hundred dollars a month and maybe a 6% discount rate. That’s still a small price to pay to build a thriving online business.

* No upfront fees. There are now merchant account providers that charge nothing upfront–no application fee, no deposit. (For US businesses only.)

* No minimum number of sales.
If you sell nothing in a given month, that’s fine. Your account won’t be cancelled so long as you pay a small minimum fee in lieu of transactions (usually around $10-$20/month).

* Low credit threshold. Believe it or not, qualifying for a merchant account to accept credit card payments is much easier than qualifying for a credit card account.
Even people who have a bankruptcy on their credit report can get a merchant account (though they’ll be in a more expensive higher-risk category). The credit check only takes a few minutes. Just give the representative your Social Security number or EIN and you’re done. For non-US businesses, the credit check might be a little more in-depth, but not impossibly so.

Why You Need to Accept Credit Cards

1. Prestige. Admit it: you can’t be a real business if you don’t take credit cards. At least, that’s how the average consumer or entrepreneur sees it.
2. Trust. Accepting credit cards means your name, address, and social security numbers are on file somewhere with a bank, so you’re a lot less likely to be a criminal. It also means that your customers can dispute the transaction if you don’t put out the goods.
3. Sales. Online customers make the vast majority of their purchases with a credit card. They are not going to change their ways for you.
4. Western Union isn’t enough. Bank wires offer very little consumer protection, so no one trusts them for paying online. Besides, most people have never used it before, and again, they’re not going to change their ways for you.
5. PayPal isn’t enough. Some people simply don’t trust it. There are entire websites devoted to horror stories with PayPal. Other prospective customers worry about having to set up a PayPal account to make payment.

Even a slight doubt is enough to send many visitors to click the back button. Don’t leave room for doubt.

Why Accepting Payments Online Is Easy

* Easy-to-use gateway websites. With most merchant accounts, you get a login on a website of a gateway which lets you manage your entire account with up-to-the-minute information. It’s very similar to online banking.

* Technical support. Most merchant account providers offer telephone and email technical support to help you figure out how to use your account, including how to integrate it with your website. Tip: choose a provider with twenty four hours seven days a week three hundred and sixty five days a year technical support over the phone and that doesn’t charge an additional fee.

* Preconfigured shopping carts and web payment forms. You won’t have to do anything to your website if you opt to use a shopping cart of payment form that’s already been set up by your payment processor. Just link to it from your website and you’re done.

Why Applying to Accept Credit Cards Is Easy

* Online and telephone applications. You don’t have to mail anything.

* Fast. You can apply for a merchant account to accept credit cards in the morning and be taking payments in the afternoon.

* No contract. Some credit card merchant account providers do not require an annual contract (for US businesses). The arrangement is strictly month-to-month. Of course, there are still companies that will try to lock you into a year-long contract, so be careful. See how easy it is to take credit card payments? Don’t wait any longer. Apply for a credit card merchant gateway today. It’s easy to do, and your business needs it. Once you’re taking credit card payments, you won’t be be just like a real business–you will be a real business.