PERCEPTION IS REALITY ON THE W3: YOU'RE AS GOOD AS YOU LOOK

Got Something To Say?

How About a Webinar?

The growing popularity of webinars in recent months indicates two things: (1) they work and (2) you should be holding them regularly.

Webinar, the word,  is a back formation of web-based seminar. It’s broadcast over the web, and webinars come with lots of different looks, varying production values and information that generates leads and sales. A webinar can be a one-person presentation, a lecture, a work shop, discussion group or seminar, and available topics are limitless.

What’s On Your Mind?

Webinars differ from webcasts. Webcasts are one-way streets. The webcast runs, the viewer watches. The end. With a webinar you add the element of interaction. Your viewers can comment and ask questions, they can bring up new topics and bring a lively energy to even the dullest topics.

These “give-and-takes” are a great way to build a site community and brand recognition.

Preparing Your Webinar

First, decide on the topic. It can be a narrow focus or once-over-lightly discussion on the area of your expertise. If you’re a stock broker, you can produce a webinar on the basics of investing, Investing 101, or you can discuss the advantages of moving existing assets into cash flow instruments. Just remember, know your audience and know your stuff.

Now, who to invite? You can limit the number of invitees or throw the doors open to the world. Webinars that actually provide useful information are often broadcast from subscriber-based sites. Sign up for $499 and talk to your industry leader for an hour a month.

Other webinars are open to anyone who wants to log on and participate. As the leader of the group, it’s up to you to keep order. Fortunately, webinar software allows you to toss out malcontents and keep things moving smoothly.

Whether your webinar is invite only or wide open, make sure attendees have access to pre-webinar information. You can email invitees directly or provide a download from your site about an upcoming webinar. Obviously, you want to include the date and time the webinar will take place but also provide an agenda – the topic or topics that’ll be covered. This way, attendees have a context for your presentation and they can prepare questions for you to answer.

Remember, those in attendance will be able to talk to you in real time so a lot of hemming and hawing won’t deliver the knowledgeable, confident persona you want to project. So prepare notes. Have some facts and stats to back up your key points and think about questions that might come your way.

The fact is, you’re the teacher the viewers are your students. So have a lesson plan or topic list to keep the flow flowing.

Production Values

Production values are simply how good the webinar looks and sounds. They include everything from lighting to quality sound (use a good mike) to the backdrop behind you. These things may or may not count depending on your audience.

For example, if you’re an 18-year-old stock picking whiz,  a computer-mounted camera showing your dorm room is acceptable. However, if you’re talking to potential business associates or partners in the corporate sphere, the production values should be much higher.

In this case, hire a video shooter with a hi-res cam. Use a lapel mike to cut down on “room tone” (that echo-y sound you hear when a live mike goes dead) and use an attractive office setting – even if you have to rent studio space. Your audience will have certain expectations whether you’re broadcasting from the spare room or a spacious office conference room. Know what those expectations are and exceed them. If someone has paid $999 to participate in your webinar, they aren’t going to be overly impressed when you appear in a stained, seedy bathrobe.

Who Should Use Webinars and Why?

Webinars are low- to no-cost productions, guaranteeing a positive return on your investment. Your prep time will be your biggest “expense.” So, low costs make webinars attractive to site owners on tight budgets.

A picture is worth a thousand words and a webinar is worth more than that amount of verbiage. Webinars are ideal for training and explaining complex tasks or systems. For example, if your business model is complex, it’s simple to prepare a PowerPoint presentation that explains these complexities visually with charts, graphs and other illustrations. This makes webinars the perfect solution for distance learning.

In many cases, workers are required to earn a certain number of continuing education units or CEUs. For example, private detectives and security guards must accumulate a certain number of CEUs each year. So, there are lots of websites that offer webinars that can be applied toward the participant’s annual CEU count. In fact, there are many CEU-based sites that charge for webinar access on a class by class basis. This provides the flexibility workers prefer when selecting which webinars to view and which have no relevance to their work.

In today’s world economy, many companies have employees around the world. Webinars are a great way to get some face time with employees working 10 time zones away. This is a great morale booster and a terrific way to illustrate new products and procedures in house. The fact is, webinars are a great way to keep in touch, disseminate new information and to close a sale.

One recommendation: Participate in a few webinars before you plan one for your own subscribers. Once you see how effective these tools can be, you’ll find new and better ways to make them work for you.

Later,

Webwordslinger

MAKE EVERY SITE PAGE A SELL PAGE: USE WHAT YA GOT.

Web Site Pages: Wasted Opportunities

Even the simplest web sites have a number of pages in common. Every web site has a home page, an About Us page, a products page, a Contact Us page and so on. Now, most of us expect to see a sales copy on a web site homepage and complete product descriptions on the products page. However, virtually every page of your web site can and should sell your products, your company, your trustworthiness and your great terms of service. Sound like a lot of hype?

It doesn’t have to be if you structure the text of each page to deliver the information visitors expect to find, along with a little sizzle –something that sells visitors on you, your products or services.

The Home Page

The home page has to be a grabber. No news, there. Otherwise, you can anticipate more bounces than you should. A bounce is simply a visitor who accesses your site but never gets past the home page. They bounce off in another direction. Why? Because the home page is boring, confusing, unattractive or maybe just “been there done that.” Visitors expect some sales copy on the homepage. In fact they expect a lot of it. It’s your first opportunity to present your wares. It’s also your first opportunity to get a bounce, i.e. lose a potential buyer.

That’s why home page text must be tight, specific and totally engaging. In many cases, this text should identify a problem the visitor is experiencing and list the solutions that your products or services deliver. People want answers. They want solutions. List those answers and solutions on the homepage above the fold and you’ll quickly see your site’s bounce rate shrink.

If you’re selling a product, be sure to include a clear, sharp image of at least one of your best selling products in use if possible. Pictures attract attention so use them on the home page. But what about the other pages of your site? How do you use them to sell?

The Products Page

Of course people expect to see sales copy on the products page. This is where the bulk of your sales copy will appear. For each product or service you sell, be sure to provide sales text clearly identified and associated with a picture of that product.

In each case make sure you describe the user benefits of the product or service to the site visitor. People want more than a list of features. They want solutions. They want to know what’s in it for them. How will this product or service make their lives easier or better? How will it solve a specific problem?

Be sure to include a complete description of the product, including technical specifications, sizes, and anything else the buyer might need to know in order to make a purchase. This text description does a couple of things. First, it makes the sale so be sure to highlight all of the product’s benefits. Second, a complete product description will cut down on customer returns and customer care telephone calls because buyers will know what to expect when they place an order.

Don’t be afraid to put a little sizzle in each picture’s copy. After all, you’re selling something! However, remember that search engine spiders can’t read text that appears within an image, so be sure you don’t include critical information within the product picture itself.

The About Us Page

If you do a little web surfing, you’ll quickly discover that the About Us page on many web sites is simply a lost opportunity. You might get the company’s philosophy or mission statement, a brief history of the company, and maybe contact information. Important message coming up: if the visitor takes the time to click on the About Us tab, use that action to sell the company to the visitor who is already genuinely interested.

“ At the XYZ company, we put our clients first. We know that without exceptional service, clients won’t come back. In fact, most of our clients have been with us for years because they recognize the quality of service we provide. Many customers have become friends, and we hope you’ll become part of the XYZ family.”

Now that’s an About Us page. In a short body of text, you’ve highlighted the importance of client satisfaction, the quality of the services you deliver and the friendliness of your company. Who cares when the company was founded, or who founded it? Who cares what the company’s stated mission is? The IRS might be interested, but visitors are there to make a purchase, not conduct a tax audit. So don’t miss the opportunity to sell yourself, your business and your terms of service on the About Us page.

The Contact Us Page

This is one of the most crucial pages of any web site, though few site owners recognize its true value. It’s the place where your customers can interact with you, hopefully in a positive way. Once again, if a site visitor has taken the initiative to click on the Contact Us link, you have another opportunity to sell.

“ We want to hear from you – good, bad or indifferent. We want you to tell us how we can improve our services to you. If you’ve encountered a problem with one of our products, or with our website, don’t tell others –tell us!

Are there new products you’d like to see available on our web site? Is there a way we can make your on-site experience a better one? Drop us a line. We read every e-mail and respond to every one of our friends who has taken the time to contact us.”

Interactivity Sells

The web has become much more interactive and site visitors expect to have the option to interact with your site. Don’t believe it? Visit Amazon.com to see how the professionals have created a fully-interactive web site. Buyers are encouraged to write product reviews for posting on-line. In fact, some Amazon reviewers have developed their own followings. With a click of the mouse, visitors can see all reviews written by an Amazon customer.

Another way to add interactivity to your site is to welcome visitors by name and to recommend products based on the visitor’s past buying history. Now that’s interactive!

Maximize What You’ve Got

You’re paying a web host to maintain your presence on the World Wide Web. It’s simply part of the cost of doing business on-line. It’s also one of the best reasons to take advantage of every page on your web site to do a little selling. It doesn’t have to scream at the visitor. It doesn’t have to be hype –just a friendly one-to-one with the visitor.

Subtlety counts. There’s enough overstatement on the web as it is so play it straight with site visitors. But don’t miss a single opportunity to sell.

We all know the importance of the home page and landing pages within a site. Visitors are used to sales copy on these pages. However, way too many site owners fail to recognize the sales value of the “back” pages of their sites.

Use the About Us page, the Contact Us page, the Terms of Service page, the Checkout and every other zone within your site to monetize every pixel you’re paying for.

Ready to boost your conversion ratios with a better, more subtle approach to sales. Nobody likes hype. Boycott content spam. Drop me a line. In the realm of W3, content quality counts.

Why Sell Yourself? Let Your Customers Do It For You!

User Reviews:

Let Your Buyers Sell Your Products

Mom always said don’t accept candy from strangers, but what about advice? How reliable is it? Well, when it comes to product reviews, advice from previous buyers helps a lot – assuming the product (and services you provide) live up to expectations.

Amazon has been encouraging reviews from buyers for years and it’s apparently been working fine for them – even if the product is trashed, which it often is. But, consider what Amazon gets. Happier buyers (even if they grumble, they aren’t grumbling about Amazon, they’re trashing the product), fewer returns from buyers warned off one product over another, invaluable marketing data straight from buyers who bought the product and, the cherry on top – it’s user generated content, meaning it doesn’t cost anything to produce. That’s a big plus.

Stats and Facts

Site owners eat stats and facts for breakfast. We want that empirical proof that numbers provide so here are a few to catch your attention from the nice folks over at emarketer.com

Question: Do you use customer reviews before making a purchase?

Always: 22%

Most of the time: 43%

Some of the time: 24%

Occasionally: 9%

Never: 2%

Get that? 65% of online buyers use consumer-generated reviews in making a buying decision. That should get you to sit up and take notice. It’s some pretty powerful evidence that consumer reviews are useful in (1) making the right sale and (2) identifying products the buyer doesn’t want. Either way, as a site owner, you’re ahead – ahead on sales motivated by user reviews and ahead with fewer returns from dissatisfied consumers who bought a different product or brand based on customer reviews. Either way, you win.

How many reviews do you read before making a purchase?

Just 1% relied on a single review. It took two or three reviews for 28% of buyers to make a decision, four to seven reviews for 46% of buyers to make a buying decisions and eight to 15 reviews to convince exceedingly cautious buyers to make a purchase.

The number of reviews required to make a purchase is correlated to the price of the item. A buyer will purchase a $49 off-brand MP3 player after reading a single review but it’ll probably take five to 10 positive reviews to convince that same buyer to purchase his or her next car. The cost factor plays a big role.

Now, how do user reviews stack up against other promotional efforts. Quite well, according to emarketer. In fact, user reviews influence the buying decisions of a whopping 64% of online shoppers. That’s two-thirds of all buyers – all buying based on the reviews of previous buyers.

Compare that to other promos:

• Special offers and coupons: 61%

• Product and price comparison tools: 59%

• Consumer testimonials: 49% (these testimonials have lost any credibility since many are fabrications of some copywriter’s not-so-vivid imagination)

• Product videos: 44% (usually demonstrating the benefits of the product)

• RSS alerts: 39%

• Blogs and forums: 39%

• Questionnaires: 29%

Web Research

More and more web users turn to product reviews to find the perfect fit – but not all reviews are given equal credence. User reviews are believed by 55% of comparison shoppers. And, when skimming through consumer reviews, it’s easy to tell the psychopathic malcontent from the thoughtful reviewer who’s actually trying to help.

Comparison charts are another useful sales tool. 21% of online window shoppers use these list-formatted tools to compare apples to apples, features to features. This format is a terrific means of delivering a lot of useful information in a simple-to-evaluate format.

Expert reviews – the kind you often see in specialty periodicals – carry less weight than reviews written by actual buyers of a product. Why? The consumer-reviewer doesn’t have an axe to grind, making the opinion more reliable. A review by a professional may have an ulterior motive behind it – like the product manufacturer is a big advertiser, or the review is a cut-and-paste job from the manufacturer’s promotional literature.

The reason customer reviews work is they have validity. “I bought it and I love it,” when unsolicited, is as good as a recommendation from a friend. Same with “I bought it and it blew out every circuit in my house.” Now that’s a product you shy away from.

The Ethics of User Reviews

As a site owner, you have god-like powers. Post anything. It’s your site. But what about the ethicacy of user reviews? How do you handle this kind of input?

Consider the site owner who writes his or her own buyer reviews to move more junk out the door. After a while, this tactic is going to come back and bite you in your assets as more and more dissatisfied buyers return products, taking up more of your time and costing money.

And how do you handle the disgruntled buyer who slams one of your best selling products? Is it unethical to remove negative product posts? You bet it is. An occasional slam increases the credibility of all of those positive reviews. If every review sings the praises of the product, well, the reviews become less credible.

Also, if you receive numerous slams on a product or brand, consider dropping the item. Let the buyers tell you what they want – then give it to them.

The tools you use to promote products are often expensive and time consuming to create. A Google AdWords campaign can bust the bank in six months – and you have to write the little blocks of text.

User-generated product reviews have credibility and the nut jobs are easy to spot and ignore. So, give your buyers a place to tell you and other site visitors what they think about their purchases.

Then, watch sales increase as “friend” recommends to “friend.” It’s powerful promotion and, even better, it’s free.

Need some advice on converting those site visitors to buyers. It ain't brain surgery. In fact, it's pretty basic stuff so drop me a line or give me a call and let's let buyers give you the data we need to reach profitability.

Webwordslinger.com

Subliminal Website Text: Don't Hit 'em Over The Head

Plant the seeds. Orders will follow organically.

Back in the ‘50s and ‘60s, advertisers and movie makers gave subliminal advertising a bad name. It worked like this. Standard movie film runs at 32 frames per second. So if very few minutes you replaced one frame, 1/32 of a second, with an advert for soda or popcorn, concession sales would increase. And subliminal advertising worked. The problem was, lawmakers thought it was intrusive and passed a bunch of legislation to prevent advertisers from using subliminal adverts.

That doesn’t make it a bad idea. Just an idea that you can’t use in films and TV. But what about web sites? Well, since no one had heard of a web site back when these anti-subliminal ad laws were enacted, web sites can use subliminal advertising – not for illicit or unethical selling campaigns, but to boost sales in subtle ways.

Subliminal Web Site Messaging

The key to any subliminal messaging is that the viewer or customer isn’t aware of it. Visitors don’t realize that they’re being persuaded. That’s the danger and the beauty of this kind of advertising. It’s effective and intrusive.

So, what are the subliminal responses visitors have to your web site? It’s usually the first response, the most natural response. The visitor isn’t aware of your site’s subliminal messaging but it’s there on every page of the site. It’s persuasion by instinct or intuition. Today, some people call it a gut feeling, but you can deliver persuasive, motivational messages and your visitors won’t even recognize you’re selling.

The Elements of Subliminal Web Site Messaging

Text and graphics. That’s the way it’s always been and always will be. You must have text that stimulates those subliminal urges. The words you choose should be exciting, captivating and written in everyday English. Words should also indicate action. Examples:

discover (the world of ocean sailing)

uncover (the wealth in your attic)

save (money, time, gasoline – just save something!)

enjoy (the benefits of working at home)

Upbeat, lively words lead to upbeat lively buyers.

Graphics are just as important, maybe even more so, when your graphic artist is also doing the layout of your web site. Some general rules on selecting graphics that deliver a subliminal message to the astute site visitor.

Color scheme should be neutral with a splash of color, especially on links. Text should be easy to read against its background and the type font shouldn’t be too fancy.

Links, Buttons and Other Navigation Tools

Which has more prominence in the mind of a visitor – a text link embedded in a long paragraph or a graphic “button” labeled “Click Here for More Information.” You might not think about it (or your graphic artist not think about it) but there’s a hierarchy of site conventions that provide subliminal clues as to which is the most important content and main pathway through the site.

For example, a small graphic link is more important than a mouseover link from a list. A large button with text is higher up in navigation hierarchy than a small button. And if the large button has a call to action like “Click Now & Save $654.32 on your automobile insurance costs” the click rate will improve accordingly.

Web Site Images and Positioning

The top half of your web-site’s home page is the single-most valuable space on your entire site. It’s what most people see when they first reach your site and if, for any reason, it doesn’t capture the visitor’s attention in six seconds, you’ll get a bounce, a visitor who never gets past the homepage, because something wasn’t right about it.

Another important point about image use and placement: images can’t be read by search engine spiders and that includes gifs, jpgs, bitmaps and Flash animation, so if you have key text tucked away in a spiffy, expensive Flash opening, not only do you slow download times (not a good subliminal message), you lose any search engine benefit from the text within the graphic.

Use the top half of the homepage to make your biggest, strongest pitch:

If you don’t use our Scratch Out scratch remover

You’re wasting thousands of $$$ when you resell your car.

This headline would appear in a simple 24 point, bolded text. That indicates a high level of importance when given such prominent display. And both visitors and spiders understand that. Larger text is given more importance than smaller text by humans and spiders.

Image Quality

And speaking of images, if you’re just starting up, chances are you’ll have to use some free clip art which, subliminally, many people recognize as a cost-cutting measure and consequently, subliminally diminishes the value of your service or product to some visitors.

If you can afford to take some nice product pictures (ask a neighbor or friend with some camera experience) your site makes a better, intuitive, subliminal first impression..

Using Subliminal Web Site Messaging For Good

There’s nothing illegal or immoral about using subliminal messaging – messaging that hides its intent between the lines and pictures of your web site. People may not be aware that they’re being influenced by the shape or color of a button graphic link, but they are. Buttons are more important than text links, at least at the subliminal level.

With this in mind, your main site arteries should be button links off the home page, or if that isn’t feasible, tabs at the top of the page – another indicator of importance and priority of navigational tools.

Direct your visitor with hierarchical links, with mouseover text links at the low end of the scale and a big banner across the home page at the top. Search engines won’t get it but visitors will.

If you saw a banner that said “Save $10,000 on the sale of your home” would you click on it – especially if you were thinking of selling. On the other hand, if you see a text link in a list of other text links promising the exact same savings, you’re much less likely to make that click because it’s just a text link.

Everything Counts

Everything! Color combinations, the type face you select, the pictures and images you choose and where they’re placed on a page, the size, shape and selection of navigation buttons, the ease of use of the navigation bar – all of these and more send subliminal messages to your visitors and if visitors don’t land on a page that looks and feels right (for that particular demographic) bounce, bounce, bounce. You have less than seven seconds to impress a first time visitor.

Subliminal messages to visitors may make or break your site. Give everything careful thought; don’t decide on a whim. Identify the needs of your target market and use words that have positive connotations: health, wealth building, family and about a million more connotative words that will keep first-time visitors interested.

It’s subtle (that’s good) and an effective means of keeping a low advertising profile so it doesn’t look or sound like you’re hawking your wares.

Hit your market’s subliminal hot buttons with the right words and the right pictures and you’ll achieve the site success you envision.

Need more information on developing effective site text - site text that CONVERTS! Call or clcik webweordslinger.com to discover how good site text boosts conversion ratios in over a half-dozen ways. Yeah, for real.

Webwordslinger.com

10 Tips To Lower Your Bounce Rate

A site’s bounce rate is a measurement of the number of visitors who stopped by the site but immediately clicked off to another site, aka, bounced. There are lots of reasons web users boing from one site to another, which means there are lots of things you can do to lower your bounce rate and keep visitors on site long enough to convert.

Here are ten tips to help you take the spring out of your web site.

1. Don’t assume the visitor lands on the home page. A visitor can enter from a number of access points. For instance, by conducting a search for a A324 converter, the visitor might land on the product page for said converter. (There’s no such thing, btw.)

This means that many different pages may be the doorway to your site so treat each page as a home page. Read on for design suggestions from your web host.

2. Keep critical information above the fold. Above the fold is an old newspaper term that described the newspaper’s front page “above the fold.” This is where the most important (or sensational) news is placed in newspapers today.

In website terms, above the fold is everything seen by the visitor without the visitor having to scroll – prime site space. Your most important information should appear here. A recent study on how different groups of people use the web showed that the 50 and older crowd don’t scroll as much as their web-wise grandkids so if you want it read, keep it above the fold.

3. Web users scan your site pages from upper left to lower right. So, what visitors first see in the upper left corner of their browsers will often determine if they stay or boing, boing, boing.

4. Create compelling headlines. “Who else wants to make a million dollars before bedtime” and other web clichés do not compel visitors to stick around to read your long-form, Dan Kennedy template sales letter. Headlines create interest among human readers and search engine spiders who recognize headlines as important text. So make your point in and add keywords to headlines.

5. Layout your home page in a three column format. Using three columns, you can create three headlines above the fold. If two headlines don’t capture the attention of the visitor, maybe the third one will.

Again, also useful in optimizing your site so make sure to build keywords into your headlines to keep everything in sync and max the utility of both the site text and your top tier keywords.

6. A picture IS worth a thousand words. A visual image (not just text) above the fold naturally draws the eye and attention of visitors so a small image or an image banner is helpful in breaking up blocks of text, and starts off the visitor slowly. A walloping pile of text, no matter how compelling, isn’t going to appeal to those “on-the-fence” visitors looking for a specific service, product, message or arcania.

A couple of points. First, if you’re using a photo, make it a photo worth seeing – a photo that instantly delivers your site’s message. Google “pre-fab homes.” You won’t see innocuous clip art. You see beauty shots of the prefab on a snowy evening with a warm fire going in the fireplace. So don’t waste pixels. Maximize every one.

Charts and graphs are a terrific way to transmit a lot of information in the blink of an eye. You can write pages of text testifying that your stock picking formula is the best, or you can create a chart showing your online portfolio delivering gains of 150% a year. A chart showing rising value (whatever the product or service) makes a strong statement very quickly.

Charts and graphs are also useful in making complex information more accessible to the reader. Your typical visitor won’t read through pages and pages of company financial statements but s/he will make a buying decision based on proof in image form.

7. Make navigation simple enough for a well-trained chimp. If the visitor is confused, even for a moment, you’ll see a bounce. Life is too short to “figure out” how this works. We’ve grown extremely impatient in the digital age and if it even LOOKS hard, boing.

Keep your navigation bar in the same place throughout the site and provide the option to return to the home page from every page of the site. A visitor may get lost and want to start over, learn more or use the links on the homepage to further explore the site.

8. Appeal to the drives of your ideal buyer. Needs-driven buyers have already determined that they’ll make a purchase and pay a lot if the purchase meets their needs. For example, there are a million books for sale on the web telling you how to avoid foreclosure “even if the sheriff is knocking on the door!!!!”

Okay, now that’s a needs-driven buyer. Facing foreclosure. Sherriff at the door – that site visitor will pay $99 for an e-book download if s/he believes the product provides (or is) the answer to his or her foreclosure problems. That’s a needs-driven buyer – a prospect who needs what you market – products or services. These buyers are less concerned about how cool and stylish your site is, how many interactive features it has and so on. These people are looking for solutions and benefits.

Other on-line shoppers are more casual in their buying habits. For example, many browse the web to comparison shop for prices and then run off to the big box store to make the actual purchase. Or, they just may bounce to a competitor site to make their online purchase. It’s a very fickle marketplace. But…

… if something catches the eye and addresses the drives of your demographic bulls-eye, your bounce rate decreases quickly. This means:

• Know your target demographic. Describe your perfect buyer.

• Know your products – inside and out.

• Know the motivations of your ideal buyer – need, the desire for prestige, acceptance, to be part of something larger (to belong) – what motivates your buyer? Example? A site selling acne cures should appeal to the consumer’s natural drive to improve his or her appearance in order to better “fit in.” The human desire to belong and to be accepted is what fuels the cosmetics industry, the fashion industry and other “personal signature” industries.

So, the owner of the acne cure site can create three distinct headlines that address the drives of buyers of skin care products and place them above the fold: (1) Look Better The Natural Way, (2) Why Dermagel Really Works and (3) Stop Covering Up – three headlines aimed with laser precision at a site selling acne cures and other sensitive skin care products.

9. Real information. Not sales hype. If site visitors discover useful information that will directly benefit them on each search engine accessible page of your site, they’re much more likely to stick around and learn a little something.

Sure, if you’re operating on razor-thin margins and “Low Cost” is your prime selling point (WE BEAT ANY PRICE ON THE WEB) then that needs prominent, “can’t-be-missed” display on the home page – somewhere. But to lower your bounce rate, add a little informational content or a big link to your site’s information bank, blog or archives. There’s plenty of opportunity to make a sale once the visitor has begun to explore your site for additional, useful information.

10. Don’t follow the herd. 6,000 new websites hit the W3 each and every day. There are over one billion active websites worldwide. And if your online sporting goods warehouse site looks like every other sporting goods warehouse site you’ll continue to see a higher than acceptable bounce rate. You’ll never get your bounce rate to zero. All you can hope for is to lower it.

One last humbling fact: the average web user decides whether to stay on a site or move on in less than six seconds. Six seconds!!! That’s how long you have to compel the visitor to stay on your site before bouncing off to some other site.

Six seconds. How can your site grab attention in just six seconds? That’s the challenge we all face as site owners. Need some suggestions on keeping visitors on site longer? Drop me a line or give me a call and let's see why they're bouncing.

Webwordslinger.com