Did you know that the color of your buttons and links can effect how many people click them? It’s true. Just by changing the color of a button on your site, you can either get more clicks or less clicks, depending on the color. But, how do we know which colors work best? What can we do to make sure that we get the most conversions out of our site as possible? In this article, I’ll show you how to test different site layouts and color schemes to determine what works best for your site. After all, more conversions equals more users which ultimately equals more money.
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A question I get asked a lot, mostly from new website owners and beginner-internet marketers, is how do I lower my bounce rate? Let me begin to answer that question by first explaining what your bounce rate is. The bounce rate is a measurement of how many people visit your site, read one page, and then leave your site without visiting any other pages on your site. Obviously, this is something you don’t want to have a lot of. Instead, your whole intent should be how to get users to your site and how to keep them there. In this article, I will list a few different techniques you can use to help keep your bounce rate at a minimum. I say minimum because it’s inevitable that you will still receive some visitors that “bounce” from your site after the first page. The sooner you realize this, the sooner you’ll be able to overcome it.
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Have you noticed how lately more and more websites are going overboard with their advertisements? Being one myself, I understand that a website owner would like to make some extra money, possibly a living, by placing ads on their sites. But, when does a webmaster know when to say enough is enough?
I’ve been seeing a lot more sites do the whole-page advertisements which I find extremely annoying! In fact, I have stopped visiting some sites because I hate having to either wait for the advertisement to play out or have to click to close an advertisement I wasn’t interested in in the first place. For example, I use to enjoy reading articles on the Popular Science website. But, I stopped visiting their site a long time ago because they decide to display a full page advertisement when you first arrive at their site. Sure they have a timer that counts down and yes, they have a link you can click to skip the ad. But, why I should I have to do that? By forcing me to view your ads, that makes me want to click them even less than I did before. I find this as “force feeding” the reader. If that isn’t bad enough, the PopSci site is chalked full of advertisements anyways once you finally do get past the initial advertisement.
Another advertisement method that irritates me is the whole sliding page ad. This is when you arrive at a site, see the content for a brief second, and then the entire page slides out of the way while another huge advertisement slides into its place. Again, these ads have timers and “close” buttons. But, I still think that these are overkill and should never be used. There are lots of sites that I no longer visit because they use this technique and it frustrates me because I used to enjoy visiting those sites.
As a website owner, I know that it can be costly to run a website and I completely understand needing a way to subsidize those costs. But, there are much better ways of doing it. By using proper ad placement on your site, you can avoid using these annoying ad techniques and chances are, you’ll piss off a lot less people. The only way you’ll ever see any kind of annoying ads like that on this site is if I’m offered at minimum of $20,000 from the advertiser. That’s the only way I could ever justify annoying any of my readers so bad that they leave and never come back. So, save yourself some trouble and don’t be a full-page ad douche bag!
Update: I’m not sure if Popular Science read this article or not. But, they did remove the annoying full page advertisement that you were presented with when you first arrive at their site. Good job PopSci! Nevermind! PopSci has now reverted back to showing the full page advertisement when you first arrive at their site. Also, Wired.com is once again using their full-page cover ad. When are these guys gonna get a clue?
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In a previous article, I showed you how to create your own URL shortening website and service. But, have you stopped to consider the pros and cons of using a URL shortening service? Have you taken into account the effects that URL shorteners can have on your SEO performance? I’m sure for most of you, these questions haven’t even crossed your minds. For the rest of us, these questions have plagued us since the boom of Twitter and their 140 character limitation. Let’s take a minute to discuss a few of the pros and cons of using a URL shortening service.
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I want to take a minute to introduce you to another cool way of generating traffic to your blog. It’s called a “ping”. In blogging, ping is an XML-RPC based push mechanism by which a blog notifies a server that its content has been updated. An XML-RPC signal is sent to one or more ping servers, which then generate a list of blogs that have new material. If you’re using WordPress as your blogging tool, then you already have the ability to send pings using the built-in “update services” found on the “Writing” page located in the “Settings” area. You can read more about update services here. But, what about blogs that don’t have built-in ping services or users looking for a way to manually submit pings? Well, I want to introduce you to a few sites that can help you.
