In my recent book “50 Biggest Website Mistakes” that I’ve just launched with Bret Ridgway, we talk about problems with website images one of them being website images being the wrong size and taking forever to load.
If you’ve run into that issue you’ll appreciate this video. If you’d like to find out more about the book visit http://50BiggestWebsiteMistakes.com
In this video I show you how to use Shrink-O-Matic which is a free application you can download obviously I receive no commission for promoting it I simple think it is a good application you’ll find useful.
All the best and much success in everything you do!
Frank Deardurff III - That One Web Guy!
After a lot of writing, many revisions, and lots of updates my book that I have with my good friend Bret Ridgway is FINALLY complete. Our book is the “50 Biggest Website Mistakes we see online business owners make”, this book is my first in this series and Bret’s second.
Bret has a book title 50 Biggest Marketing Mistakes. I thought that was such a great book that we discussed creating the follow up to it and with being a direct response webmaster and web geek and both of us being online marketers I figured this would be an easy task.
Talk about over estimating easy, trying to determine what should be included was way more difficult than I imagined, and once I really got writing that part came fairly easy. I think the biggest difficulty for Bret was improving my grammatical mistakes and adding polish to the segments, IMHO I think he did an awesome job.
We’ve gotten some good reviews so far from the book from people just getting started with a business online to some pretty savvy marketers, Bret and I cover some things we all know we should do and several things we just don’t even think about that many people leave money on the table because they’re not doing this techniques.
To find out more about the book just visit http://www.50biggestwebsitemistakes.com and pick up the first 7 mistakes that we talk about in the book. I’d love to hear your feedback!
All the best and much success in everything you do!
Frank Deardurff III - That One Web Guy!
I see this mistake quite a bit or maybe I don’t! So many times I see order buttons and form submit buttons that don’t appear to be buttons.
Many web designers will make great looking graphical buttons to “match” the design of the rest of the site. While these buttons might look nice they aren’t always effective.
There has been a lot of debate about the fact whether graphical buttons are as effective as regular “HTML” style buttons. I suggest you test on what’s best for your market but I’ll make the comment I’ve made time after time if it looks like a button, acts like a button it must be a button.
Why would you want to chance the possibility of lost sales by “hoping” the website visitors realize that the graphic button you have in place is perceived is a button. This goes the same for your opt-in form buttons, you should be consistent with the buttons so the visitor knows what is and isn’t a button.
There are a few things you can do to “enhance” the regular “HTML” button to increase you can see an example of some these effects by visiting http://www.50biggestwebsitemistakes.com. You can see that I’ve increased the size of the button and text as well as adding a red border around the button to help draw attention to the button. This increases action to the button.
Just as is true with many components of marketing copy is king even on something as small as a button. By default the text on a HTML button says simply “submit” which really doesn’t say much. You want to change the text or copy on the button to have some sort of instruction or action so that there is no question what is going to happen when they push the button.
Some examples of Copy to use on an order button would be “Click Here To Order Now”; “Order Now for Only $29.95″; A few examples for the opt-in button would be “Claim Your Report Today!” or “Get A Free Chapter!”.
By applying several of these strategies just with the button it’s self you will be surprised how much you will improve conversion of opt-ins and orders. Of course be sure that you test everything and monitor by using your stats programs.
“If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.” Lord Kelvin
All the best and much success in everything you do!
Frank Deardurff III - That One Web Guy!
“Page Not Found” This is something just about everyone has seen at one time or another if you’ve spent anytime online at all. The “web” term for these pages are called 404-pages.
Now you are probably thinking why is a “page not found” or a 404 error page a website mistake, and that would be a fair question to be asking, so let me explain what this mistake is, how you can benefit from it and how to correct it.
First we’ve already mentioned “what” it is but let me explain how “people” get there. 404′s are usually found either from a broken link on your website some where; or someone has tried to type in a url to a specific page on your site and has either mistyped it or the page is no longer there. It is possible that you will see in your stats that there have been requests for your robot.txt fie which is a common file that search engine spiders look for, and if you don’t have one then a 404 page would be triggered.
Now to explain how 404 pages can “help” you. There is a lot of discussion about what should or shouldn’t be displayed on your 404 page or if you should even display the error page. My personal opinion is to display the page but have key elements on the page, such as a logo or look and feel of your website, along with a message saying that the page they are looking for was not found but click here to go to the home page of your website.
Another option is if the visitor hits your 404 page, automatically redirect them to the home page of your website. This option works really well, but in discussions I’ve heard people say that the visitor is a little confused as to what just happened.
By utilizing the custom 404 page, you don’t miss out on the opportunity to connect with that visitor. With out any information on that page the visitor would just enter something else into the web address bar and go else where.
The easiest way to remedy this issue is to log in to your control panel (cpanel) and look for the icon that says “Error Pages”. This will list all of them, be sure to click the 404 and enter your information there. If you are unsure what to put there you can search Google to see some examples.
If you are uncomfortable doing this you can easily hire a programmer from rent-a-coder.com or getafreelancer.com to quickly do this for you. It is a quick project and once you have a template you can copy and paste it into your other sites.
To find more articles like this one visit 50 biggest website mistakes
All the best and much success in everything you do!
Frank Deardurff III - That One Web Guy!
This is a common mistake on many websites and that is either a non-existant or weak guarantee.
There are many misconceptions about using a guarantee on the website. I’ve heard some discussion about the fact that if they add a guarantee to their website they are afraid that brings to light the possibility that the buyer can return the product.
I think that’s the furthest thing from the truth. In fact by not having a guarantee on your website makes the buyer think that the product is either, a possible scam, OR you do not have enough faith in the product to warrant a guarantee.
Of course there is always the possibility you simply forgot to add the guarantee to your website. Here are some things to consider when creating or updating the guarantee you have.
Most merchant accounts and payment processors want or require you to have a guarantee policy easily displayed on your website, be sure to check out what they require and adjust accordingly.
Be sure to make your guarantee “look” like a guarantee policy. Many times I see this section look like the normal sales copy on the page or if there is a box around it, it resembles the other boxes on the page.
What I’ve found to work well is add an image that resembles a certificate as a background image or create (or have created) the whole thing as a graphic to easily place all of the elements you want in that area.
Also what is appealing is to add an official seal to that area. You can easily find these at either istockphoto.com or fotolia.com both of these stock photo websites will allow you to purchase at a very reasonable price both the certificate and seal images to use on your website.
Finally, don’t leave any doubt about what your policy is, explain the details and be sure that it fits the offer. You wouldn’t use the same policy for a live event, teleseminar or webinar that you would for say an ebook, physical product, or services rendered. Simply do a little research what others may be doing and then modify to meet your needs and of course test to see what gets you the best conversions.
Feel free to check out any of my websites as an example.
All the best and much success in everything you do!
Frank Deardurff III - That One Web Guy!
