Your website’s homepage is not just another web page. It’s the landing page of your website’s URL, the first page that visitors see on your site. You have to leverage your home page to ensure your home page hooks your visitors and keeps them browsing the rest of the site.

Speak The Right Language

Eliminate all corporate and business language from your home page. Speak directly to your target audience in the language they best understand – simple, non-technical and without jargons.

Use Eye-catching Headlines

Craft a headline for your home page copy that conveys your messaging with resonates compellingly with your audience. The headline should jump out at the visitor and compel him or her to read the rest of your message. Use prominent keywords in your headline.

Use A Great Design

Use plenty of whitespace to make your CTAs and offers stand out. Make sure your homepage’s colors don’t clash. Avoid negative backgrounds, and use clear fonts that are visible and easy to read. Make sure your homepage is structured beautifully so people feel like lingering there.

Keep It Usable And Mobile-Friendly

Your home page should be easy to navigate, should load fast and have no distracting Ads or Flash elements on it. Avoid bars, boxes, loud graphics, flash banners, pop-ups and animations. Also make sure your site is mobile-optimized.

Direct Users To The Next Steps

Use Calls-To-Action (CTAs) to direct your visitors to what they need to do next. This could be something like ‘View Demo’, ‘Buy Now’ or ‘Sign Up’. The idea is to somehow get your visitors to navigate into inner pages, and thereby deeper into your sales funnel.

Compel Visitors To Stick Around

Offer a compelling value-proposition, so that your visitor feels like sticking around to see how they can benefit. If you have a top ongoing offer, put that up boldly on your homepage to attract visitor attention.

Keep Updating

Keep your home page constantly updating based on the changing needs, questions and problems of your visitors. Do continuous A/B testing with different copy, CTAs, layout and content. Use dynamic content to sync your home page with the keywords that your visitors search for.

Avoid Irrelevant Ads

Some amount of advertisement is necessary. However, too many Ads and very little content will only drive your visitors away. Plus, fancy Ads and Ad banners tend to slow down your page loading as well. Blend your Ads cleverly with content so as not to frustrate visitors.

Add a Search Feature

A Search feature on your home page can offer a great advantage. Visitors can search for what they want and navigate directly to that content via the results. This saves them much time and also builds their confidence in you.

Describe Who You Are

Your home page should clear answer your visitor’s question as to who you are, what you do, and what value you provide to him or her. Offer this information above the fold, in short, concise sentences. It shouldn’t take more than 10 seconds for the visitor to know who you are.

Several of our clients are interested in setting up a website offering deals and coupons. Deals and coupon websites are shooting up all over the internet and several of those websites fizzle out within a few months. However there are a lot of people who make a living out of coupon websites. People all around the world are ‘coupon crazy’,  the term ‘coupon’ is searched a million times in Google every month. Despite the competition for space in this niche, there are thousands of coupon websites that really making a great deal of cash. The sole purpose of these sites is to offer the visitors coupon codes and discount links.

Creating a good coupon code website is not as difficult as it used to be; with several custom platforms available themes available, one can set up a coupon code website within a week. Setting up the website is the easy part, the key to success in this niche is to generate traffic and monetize it. There are several ways to monetize such websites. The most common way is through affiliate commissions; online vendors hand out coupons through affiliate network platforms and when visitors use those coupons to buy a product/service you will get a commission.

This industry has become so big, billions of dollars are generated every year as revenues through coupon code sites.

[blockquote author=”” link=”” link_title=”” target=””]RetailMeNot Inc posted a revenue figure of $144 billion during the financial year 2012. They filed an IPO this year for an amount of $230 million. All of this through giving away free coupons[/blockquote]

If you are building a coupon site then you have to sign up for the affiliate programs of the retailers that you want to deal with. You should then generate coupon codes and use it in the website. The entire process will be tracked and you will be paid a commission when a buyer completes the purchase successfully using your coupon code. This process helps you in monetizing your traffic in a highly profitable way.  However it is not easy to become an affiliate with certain online retailers, and in certain cases you might need to get in touch with the retailers personally for providing coupon codes. Most top retailers offer their affiliate programs through ‘Commission Junction’ or ‘Linkshare’, but getting in touch with the vendors’ affiliate managers can help you in getting top and exclusive coupon codes.

It is easy to develop a website, however it takes proper planning and execution for building a reputation and getting exclusive coupons and partnerships with online retailers.

Good Luck.

If you own a business, you are probably seeking to expand your customer base in order to reap more profits. If so, online marketing might be just what you are looking for. Website marketing can help you to reach out to a larger consumer base by giving you the ability to literally advertise all over the world. Read this article for tips on how to benefit from this groundbreaking marketing technique.

A compilation of your client email addresses is vital. You can offer customers the option to provide their information, or you can make it mandatory for purchases. However you accomplish this, the list will be used to inform customers of future sales and promotions or to request feedback.

How do you want to advertise your site? Free or relatively inexpensive ways to advertise your site include hanging posters in community businesses, using social networking sites, or posting on blogs. There are a number of different ways to get visitors to check out your site. It just requires a little creativity.

Take the time to do as much research as possible and look to others that have found success. Choose a trustworthy admirable online mentor. It’s possible to find expert advice from people proven in the internet promotion field for little or no cost. You should find a system that works for you, and keep at it. While progress may be limited in the beginning, perseverance will show results in the end.

Your site needs to offer something unique. This will allow you to market your services to a specific group of people. As these visitors come across your page, they will feel compelled to explore your offerings. The longer they stay on your site, the more your page ranking will be improved.

A squeeze page is a great way to build a contact list. Squeeze pages prompt visitors to provide their email. You can even give them an incentive to sign up like a coupon or promotional item to get them to fill out contact information. The most important goal here is to get people to sign up so that you have their email list for future mailings.

To increase sales consider offering specials on the check-out page of your website. You can add discounted prices for grouped items. This will make the customer feel appreciated and you can get rid of excess inventory at the same time.

It can be challenging to choose which direction to lead your business in and design the accompanying website. Channel your interests, and come to a conclusion what is the best idea. Make sure your approach is something you would enjoy and pleases others as well. You will find website marketing more simple when you have goals.

Make sure the design of your website makes your links highly visible. When people open your web site, they want to be able to efficiently find any information they are looking for. Most people will not spend extra time hunting for information.

What Is An eCommerce Merchant Account?

If you plan on selling your products or services through a portal like Shopify.com, then you will need to open a merchant account with them. It’s the same with other eCommerce portals. Any transactions involving credit cards will need such an account, third party providers such as Seymour Direct who supply offline credit card machines are partnered with the banks which approve these accounts and it works out cheaper to contact them than go directly to the bank.

Essentially, an eCommerce merchant account is a special bank account which give you the ability to take orders over the internet. Orders go through secure payment systems, ensuring that the buyer’s money is secure and protected during the transaction.

A merchant account will also allow you to facilitate refunds easily in cases where a customer is not happy, for whatever reason.

Our tips can lead to increased business, huge profits, and a more productive work ethic. Clearly, any entrepreneur interested in broadening his or her customer base needs to realize the potential of Web marketing. You should use these tips and strategies and gain customers.

LocalBlox is social networking platform that connect neighbors. It is 2 years old and was built to cater businesses with a cost-effective means to reach the right target audience. It is effectively bridging the gap between neighbors and their local communities.

It provides a highly scalable neighborhood platform and has well over 23 million local listings across 112,000 neighborhoods.

LocalBlox – What Does It offer?

Businesses can no longer afford to ignore ‘online reputation management’ because more than 80% of the people, who purchase online search for more information before making a purchase decision. They look out for reviews, social media activities, and other listing data before purchasing.

LocalBlox specializes in this area and they provide businesses with the right tools to create and syndicate events at their local store. In addition to that they have real-time update and cross validation across 20+ sources for greater accuracy.

Their algorithm captures every data change about a local business in real time. Factors like reviews, social media activities, photos, check-ins, deals, hours of operation and contact info are updated.

How It Works?

It is based on the ‘Kayak’ model and provides a comprehensive yet simplistic view for a local business. This is done by leveraging a distributed system, NLP and Machine Learning technology.

There are two key areas considered

• Accuracy and Freshness
• Love Score

Accuracy and freshness

The algorithm tracks whether a business is still operating and analyzes results from top sites like Yelp, Yext, Manta, Facebook and so on. It then identifies the most recent check-ins and reviews posted for a business.

It automatically discovers signals from any arbitrary site which may have first reported the business as ‘closed’, and deduces the current status. It is done by tapping in to some key sources and factors like activity dates , recent check-ins, recent reviews, likes, photos or deals posted, profile attributes, social & mobile activities, fan engagements, changes in primary sites & web results.

Love Score

The second key area is love score. This is obtained by calculating how “loveable” a business is within its community. It is calculated by assigning values to the social review activities like Facebook likes, retweets, media coverage, yelp reviews and so on. It is scored on a scale of 1-100. It is updated real time and is cross validated across different sources. The factors considered are

• Facebook check-ins
• Social media activities
• Reviews on yelp, citi-search and directories
• Real time interactions with groupon, local merchants and customers

So Love score effectively indicates business health and likeability, accuracy of information, improves efficiency and increases sales.

LocalBlox is an effective solution for all your ‘Reputation Management Needs’, make use of this affordable medium and take your business to the next level.

Facebook acquired Instagram even before it launched its initial public offering. It is the largest acquisition of Facebook till date (for about $1 billion in cash and stock). The reason for such a major acquisition is to tap in to the growing mobile market. Within just 2 years of inception Instagram became a billion dollar company and by 2012 the total instagram users crossed the 100 million mark. These 100 million users provide every business with a great opportunity.

Creating An Advantage

Any small business should always make use of new and untapped opportunities especially when it comes to marketing. Instagram provides that opportunity, it is far more effective than other form of marketing because pictures communicate better than words and also it is cheaper.

Since it focuses on visual content, it can result in viral marketing provided you have a good set of creatives and images promoting your business.

What to Market?

You need to have something to showcase, it may be a service or products, but you need to answer the question  ‘Do I have something really interesting to show to the target audience?’

Instagram despite its size is still a growing market and presents a great scope to increase your sales exponentially. However your target group will be obliged to follow you only if you present them with great creatives and images.

The Right Target Group

It is important that your current and prospective clients use Instagram. If majority of your target group don’t use instagram, then it is better to allocate your time and resources to target other marketing platforms.

The Instagram users mostly are teenagers through adults in their 30’s and 40s and are technologically savvy. So unless your target group is a subset of this demography there is no point in using Instagram as a Marketing tool. However if your target audience belongs to this demography then with 100 million users, it provides an ideal platform to promote your business.

Complimentary Marketing Strategy

Online marketing strategy for you business should not solely rely on Instagram. Ideally it should be used as an extension of social media marketing. It is best to use Instagram as a source to show a constant stream of high quality visual contents that are complimentary to your main marketing campaigns.

The Right Message

The visual content should not be a straight promotion. Use different form of messages like your products, images of how they are made, images of your back-end, images of what your product can do, a sneak peek of new launches, work culture, community outreach and celebrity sightings. These are some of the most commonly used visual contents for successful campaigns.

Using the Right Hashtags

It is important to keep your hashtags related to your company, but at the same time you need to harness the popular and trending hashtags for greater traffic. If your creatives are interesting then with the right hashtags your message will get viral quickly.

Businesses can also ask their followers to take pictures related to their business and to share it with a particular hashtag as a part of a contest. This contest can be promoted in other social media like twitter and Facebook.

Increasing the Follower Count

It is essential to get good number of followers to make sure Instagram works for you, else as the common lingo goes you will end up talking to an metaphorical internet wall. You can follow the above mentioned methods to gain followers, else it is best to hire a third party to get your followers. There are some highly trusted service providers from whom you can buy instagram followers.

The internet remains to be one of the most lucrative places to start a business at and earn a lot of money from. All it takes is some intensive internet marketing efforts on the business owner’s part. After several decades after the boom of the internet, there are still a lot of slots left for future internet millionaires like you. Assume your seat by following the tips below, which are influenced of course by the future of internet marketing:

1. Market your products, service, or business in real-time.

No more email campaigns will be effective in the future, so don’t put your money on that anymore. The money is no longer on the opt-in list, so to speak. What works today are the social media. Market your products over the social networks in real time. You’ll get a better response that way.

2. Invest on inbound marketing efforts rather than using the traditional outbound methods.

Outbound marketing refers to the use of print, audio, TV, and similar mode of advertisements. Those won’t work anymore. What will work for you is the inbound approach, which provides for a two-way, interactive communication line between you and your customers. Instead of you reaching out to your customers, let them find you instead. Promote your business, products, or services via the search engines and the social media. Provide real value to your customers through your website. Make sure that your site is information and content-rich that users are entertained and educated the moment they get there.

3. Focus on your customers.

The future of internet marketing suggests that business goals are placed on second priority and customers are placed on top. Invest on your customers and know everything about them. Once you have defined who your target market are, you will be able to attract them better and sell whatever you want to sell to them. If you know the passions and the aspirations of your customers, all marketing efforts become more focused and more effective.

Article provided by 1DigitalAgency.com, BigCommerce, Volusion & WordPress Custom Design Company.

We get lot of requests for migrating clients’ current website in to a wordpress site.

The following are the Common migration request’s we get regularly

• Migrate from Blogger to WordPress
• Migrate from Drupal to WordPress
• Migrate from Joomla to WordPress
• Migrate from Movable Type to WordPress
• Migrate from Custom CMS to WordPress
• Migrate from TYPO3 to WordPress
• Migrate from Pligg to WordPress

The followign are the frequently asked questions

Q: I want to maintain the current design of my website, but just want to change the current platform to WordPress. Is that possible?

Yes. It is possible to retain your current design of the site in most cases. It is a wise decision to move to WordPress as it has a vast amount of content management capabilities that can help you to manage your website and publish your content easily. In addition to this there is a huge database of free plugins to use so you can add any functionality to your website. However in some cases like flash websites and websites based on xml it is a bit difficult to retain the design and need a site audit before commenting on the possibility.

Q: I paid a huge amount for coding my website; can you retain the coding from my existing website?

You can, but there is no point in retaining the coding. Depending on your current setup, we can re-use some of the code. The coding standards of old websites are not up to the mark with the changing dynamics of the industry. It is always better and more productive to start from scratch.

Q: I have worked hard and paid a lot of money for search engine optimization. Is it possible to maintain the ranking after migration?

Most of the time, yes. There are ways to generate “301 Redirects” for all the web pages and direct them to new location. In many cases changing to wordpress has helped our clients by a increase in rankings. If you are ranking well, then the first thing that we will do is take our time in auditing your site and create sufficient back ups before starting the migration with a redirect script. So anyone who visits your old page will automatically redirected to the new location. This will not affect your SEO or SERPs

Q: Can migrating to wordpress improve the SEO?

Absolutely yes. WordPress has many built in features to aid in SEO, the permalink structure, the tags, internal linking, option to add ping servers and so on. There is even a meta data management tool. In addition to these, there are several top notch SEO plugins to help you to automatically optimize your website for search engines. There are also plugins for generating a sitemap in a single click (no matter how big your site is.

Q: Can Migrating to wordpress reduce maintenance costs?

Yes.In our experience and based on our customer feedback, there is no other platform which is as easy to use and maintenance free as wordpress.

Q: I’m already using WordPress, is it easy to transfer all of my information to another domain name?

Yes. It doesn’t matter if you are using a blog in wordpress.com or a self hosted wordpress site. WordPress has a great import/export option. We can do the entire migration in under 24 hours for you with all the features and capabilities preserved.

Q: Many say that WordPress is a poor CMS option, and it is just a blogging platform. Is this true?

No. You are currently browsing a page that is hosted in wordpress. There is a difference between wordpress.com blogs and self hosted WordPress. A self hosted wordpress can easily be converted in to a powerful CMS site or any other website. You can make wordpress work like a bookmarking site, a forum, a blog, a business website or a micro blogging site. You have the power to use the platform as you want.

Q: What all things that can go wrong in migration?

• If you site is entirely based on user driven content, or if your site is a memebership site, then there are lot of difficulties in migrating the site.
• eCommerce site and payment processing options are time consuming to convert.
• A very large site with database entries in the range of 20,000 and above when hosted in a shared hosting or a less powerful server.

Q: I’m interested in knowing more, how do I get started?

You can get more information and a free quote from us. Give us your requirements through our contact page and we will give you more information and a Quote.