Hightide Web Resources Articles, News, and Reviews

by Frederick Townes

Identifying the MDA for Optimized Site Pages

You have designed, built and launched a web site for a reason. That reason is to persuade site visitors to perform the MDA - the most desired action as you, the site owner, see it.

MDAs can be obvious or very subtle. For example, the MDA on a commercial site is to induce visitors to buy something. That’s obvious. Other MDAs include providing an email address, providing additional personal information, opening an account, signing up for a service, asking for a quote or opting in for the monthly newsletter.

Less obvious MDAs include submitting a blog entry, starting a forum thread, referring new visitors, book marking the site or reading critical sales or informational copy. You could also include coming back again as an MDA for almost every site. That repeat traffic is valuable in building your online enterprise.

Identifying the MDA

Before visitors can perform any MDA, you have to determine what the MDA is for each page of your site. And though that may sound like a simple task, it’s not.

Multiple MDAs
Multiple MDAs can cause problems if not presented properly. It’s difficult to persuade visitors to perform one task much less two or three. There are several reasons for this.

Visitors aren’t very patient. They want to determine if your site is what they’re looking for, they want to conduct their business and move on to Mah Jong solitaire. Asking a visitor to complete a customer satisfaction survey after a sale is like asking visitors to take their SATs again. Not very likely.

Ambiguous MDAs
You see this quite often on NFP sites and sites designed to provide informational content. For many of these sites, the MDA is to have the visitor make a donation. However, on the same page viewers may be offered the opportunity to become a member, to receive regular updates or to be bombarded with affiliate spam. (Can we send you useful information from time to time?)

More than one MDA per page will deter many visitors from performing any actions. Too confusing. Too much time.

Linear MDAs
A common aspect of many service providers’ web pages, linear MDAs require visitors to perform more than one action in a series.

For example, the first MDA for a site selling debt consolidation services might be to motivate visitors to click on a link from the home page that will take them to a form to be completed in order to access the debt consolidation services. In cases of linear MDAs, each page of the site must clearly state the MDA for that page.

Continuing to use the example of the debt consolidation company, if the MDA is to click a link to a form, the link itself would appear on the home page. It would be very large and well labeled, i.e. Click here to get started. The home page copy would be directed specifically to the MDA. Urge and persuade the visitor to click on that link.

The next MDA, completing the form, would be addressed on the link from the home page. In fact, there are usually several (many) MDAs for a single site and each page of the site must specifically address the MDA for that particular page.

No MDAs
More commonly found on personal sites and owner-designed commercial sites, the lack of a clearly stated MDA will leave many visitors scratching their heads and wondering just what they’re expected to do. Not only should you have a clear picture of the single-most important MDA for your site, you should make sure your visitors know just what that MDA is, as well.

Optimizing the Homepage for Maximum MDA Conversion

A site’s conversion rate is nothing more than the rate at which visitors perform the MDA. If one in 10 performs the MDA the conversion rate is 10%. If only one in 100 performs the most desired action, the site’s conversion rate is 1%.

The site’s homepage is the first place to clearly introduce and identify the MDA to the visitor. The MDA call-out should appear on the home page above the fold. It should be the first thing visitors see without scrolling.

For example:

That header identifies the MDA - buy some wicker from Nutty Nick. Here’s another headline that defines an MDA. What do you think the action is here:

Obviously, the headline is intended to persuade visitors to opt in for a newsletter. It’s clear, unambiguous and it offers an incentive for completing the action.

MDA Incentives

“Why should I?” and “What’s in it for me?” are two questions many visitors ask when the MDA offers no clear benefit to them. That’s why incentives are useful in many cases.

What kind of incentives? Well, anything FREE is always good. Free shipping and handling, a free extended service warranty, free (and really useful) information, the chance to win something - there are plenty of incentives you can employ to encourage completion of the MDA.

Just make sure that the incentive and the MDA are closely tied and closely positioned as in the example above. The incentive doesn’t have to be expensive but it should deliver clear benefit to the visitor.

Also, when more than one MDA is the goal, limit the number of calls to perform an action to exactly one on the home page. Other, less critical actions can be introduced on landing pages, aka zone pages, within a site.

Optimizing Zone Pages for the MDA

Once visitors have navigated the home page (and performed the MDA), they next click a link that takes them to a zone page or landing page (same thing). Once again, the MDA should be clearly displayed above the fold on each zone page.

Zone pages serve different purposes. A link off the home page to a description of company services looks and sounds very different from the zone page for the check-out or contact us page. In all cases, visitors must recognize the personal benefit to them when they choose to perform the action for that specific page. They will save money. They will receive something useful. They will find a solution to a specific problem. Any discriminating visitor is going to ask, “How does this help me?” Provide the right answer and you convert. Provide the wrong answer, or no answer, and that visitor is a click away from gone.

That’s why every site owner must consider the MDA for each page of a site. MDAs must also be specifically targeted on individual pages within the web site. Directions for performing the MDA must be clear, unambiguous and persuasive. Finally, on every page of your site, the visitor must see the clear benefit of performing the MDA - even if the most desired action is clicking on the link back to the home page. Clear, straightforward and persuasive.

If you don’t have a clear understanding of the MDAs for the pages of your site, neither will your visitors. So, if your conversion rate isn’t where you’d like it to be, develop text for MDAs and optimize every page of your site.

About the Author:
Frederick Townes is the owner of W3 EDGE Web Design. W3 EDGE specializes in custom web design solutions that are built to convert your traffic into conversions. For more information you can view their portfolio or read more of Frederick’s web design articles.

by John Parker

1. Avoid creating menu on the left-hand side of a website. If unavoidable, an alternative way is to put some text with rich keywords at the top or above the left-hand menu so that this text will be the first thing to read by search engines.

2. Headlines are rated more important than the rest of the web page by search engines. To take advantage of this, you should have your keywords in the page headline. Since the header tag (h1) is quite large, you should format it to make it smaller.

3. Every page should contain the “title” and “description” tags with good keywords to describe the page content. The number of words for the title should not exceed 9 and that for the description should not be more than 20 words in order to keep within the limits of most search engines.

4. Try not to use Flash when possible. Flash cannot be read by the search engines to date and will cause slow page loading time and makes people run away

5. Think twice on how to use graphics. Make them relevant to your content and use an Alt tag containing the relevant keyword(s).

6. Do not only use images to link out. You should always use text links to link out to important content on your web site. Spiders can follow image links, but like text links more though.

7. Avoid using frames. Some search engines cannot spider web pages with frames at all. For the other search engines that can, they can have problems spidering it and sometimes they too cannot index the web page.

8. Avoid using too complex tables when laying out your page but to keep them simple for the spiders. There are some engines which find it difficult to navigate through to the other pages on your website if the navigation bar is too complicated.

9. Use external Cascading Style Sheets and Java Script files to reduce page size and make the download time much faster. It will allow the spider to index your web page faster and can help your ranking.

10. Use standard HTML. Software such as FrontPage, Dreamweaver or a WYSIWYG editor will often add unnecessary scripting codes that will make the page larger than it needed and make it harder to crawl. It will sometimes add codes that can’t be read by search engines, causing the spider not to index the page or not index the whole web page. If to use, you should use those web page creator software wisely with a good understanding of html.

About the Author:
The author is a Writer working with a leading software development company, which deals with software outsourcing, offshore outsourcing and offshore software development. Get more valuable information at http://www.a1technology.com.

by bas

Web design is graphic curriculum subject for customize and analyze a face of web site for straight with follow wanted of online people. The people which enter to training about web design will learn about using more program and learn about computer language and more trick which use in organize working combine to manage more composition is correct and appropriate.

The people which enter to training in web design curriculum will can bring a knowledge go to analyze and customize web site of organization for take have an interesting increase very much.

Web design curriculum fit with…

1. HTML language

Knowledge about structure of HTML language and Tag which often used. Creating a web site which tect editor for is a basic in customizing web site with help for creating a web site.

2. Macromedia Dreamweaver

Knowledge exercise one’s authority and stage in working Dreamweaver MX whcih is program for creating a web site for profession which have popularity very much. Since basic in creating home page to tectique in manage web in more tectique such as Layout, Frame, Table, Layer and bring your web site online on internet.

3. Adobe Photoshop

Knowledge about using for upgrade which use with customize a web site all to customize Layout and creating a button with Photoshop.

About the Author:
http://designsweb.blogspot.com

http://websdesigner.blogspot.com

by John parker

You have a fantastic idea for a business online. You know your industry and your products inside and out. You have a great marketing plan and you even shopped around and got the best rates for your merchant account, your shopping cart program for your website and you even calculated the shipping for your products so you got the best deal possible.

Then, you bought a domain name, web hosting and your brother-in-law offered to do your website for free which saved you thousands of dollars. You held your breath as your site was loaded onto the server and …nobody came.

You can probably go back to two reasons that your site isn’t working for you.

Number one, the pages on your website aren’t targeted so the search engines can index them for relevance. This means if you’re selling electric dog polishers on your website, then you should name the specific page with the subject, mention that subject a few times on the page and if you have an image of an electric dog polisher - use the alt text option to describe the image as well because not all web surfers use images when they are checking out web pages.

If you want the search engines to index your pages properly, give the text robots (called “spiders”) food in the form of keywords that pertain to your website So the next person looking on Google for electric dog polishers will find your website.

Number two will be a bit more labor intensive to fix. Your website needs to look professional. This means no blinking text, no flashing police siren lights over your specials and sales, no dancing dog graphics; in fact - your site should be as fast loading and low graphic as possible. Look at some of the top sites on the internet such as Yahoo, Amazon, and MSN, they all have light backgrounds, graphics are kept small and most of all, their pages are text rich. Don’t copy any of these designs for your site but rather learn from then and incorporate those winning techniques on your own pages.

You may fire a best Web Design firm if you’re not proficient in html yourself. You need someone that can make your site clean and fast loading. Use graphics on your site but keep them small - offer the option for someone to click and see a larger picture of an item.

Also, create a text only page that is a site map listing every single page on your website so people can look up where they want to be quickly and the search engine spiders can index your website just as quickly.

Make sure that your shopping cart is easy to use and all the pages work. If your sales method isn’t easy to use - your customers will go elsewhere where the shopping carts work quickly, are easy to use and don’t require a lot of labor intense information giving. Also, put a privacy statement on every page - if you don’t sell your customer’s information to third parties, let them know.

The more people know about your site and what your policies are, the more comfortable they will be doing business with you.

And those are just a few tips to get your new website rocking’ and rolling towards success!

About the Author:
The author is a Writer working with a leading software development company, which deals with software outsourcing, offshore outsourcing and offshore software development. Get more valuable information at http://www.a1technology.com.

by Mike Creati

Bad Navigation
You want to make sure your users do not have any trouble finding information. It is a good practice to have a set of your main links at the top of the page as well as the bottom. It is more convenient for your users to click on a link at the bottom of your page than to have to scroll to the top of the page.

Create drop down menus. Your visitor should not have to click on one page in order to find a link to navigator to another page. Users will get frustrated and leave if they can not find what they are looking for.

Slow Loading Pages
I do not know what is more annoying than going to a website and waiting for it to load. Visitors do not want to wait for their information. We live in a fast pace world and want everything immediately.

High quality graphics and rich interactive media is the number one course for slow loading web pages. I know your website will look more attractive with these rich graphics but it is not worth it. Export your images at a lower quality to achieve faster loading pages.

Unattractive Color Scheme
This is an important and underrated area in web design. You want your visitors to feel comfortable. Do not design your website so that it is a strains their eyes. Have warm attractive colors that compliment each other well.

Do not use bright backgrounds. Having a red, yellow or green background can draw to much attention from the users and they will be distracted from what is important on the website. In addition, do not use dark text on a dark background. You should make sure your text is easy to read and is more prominent than the background.

Page Layout
Be consistent. Consistency is important. Do not make each page different. Make sure they all look the same and the navigation is always in the same location. Have the important information located at a section that is easy to find and do not forget to have a common theme throughout the site.

Sideways Scrolling
Most developers are aware of this web design malpractice. I do not see many websites where the users have to scroll horizontally. If they have to they most likely will not scroll and could miss valuable information.

Non-Cross Browser Optimization
Just because your website looks perfect in Internet Explorer does not mean it will look the same in other browsers. Each browser handles HTML Tags differently. Be careful when designing your website. Constantly check your websites progress and make sure it is compatible in all browsers.

Not Taking Advantage of SEO
Optimize your website. The only excuse for not having a search engine optimized website is laziness. Add a title to your website, META tags, ALT tags, relevant content, title tags on links and other SEO practices. Internet marketing is its own beast to tackle.

Internet marketing takes a lot of time and dedication, but making sure your website is SEO friendly is the first step to attract a lot of traffic to your website.

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About the Author:
Mike Creati is the owner of a web design company called Lunico Design LLC. He also has his bachelor degree in computer science and is a member of Tau Alpha Pi.

by Sunny Tan

A lot us who are into adsense business know that to increase adsense earning potential, we got to increase that clickthrough rate. This is true when you have limited traffic going to your site. So it’s crucial to get the most out of the available traffic that you are having.

But just how many of you have come across articles or websites teaching you about increasing your adsense clickthrough rate, talking about the same thing?

A lot right?

They tell you about blending your ads into the background, using text ads rather than image ads, reducing other advertisement distraction, upper fold ads placement and yada yada yada…

While these tactics are not wrong and in fact might help you to increase the adsense earnings in the long run, but nonetheless, there is another method that can be implemented which will work like gangbuster.

Once done correctly, you will typically notice a much higher clickthrough rate than the rest of the tactics you may have used.

This method simply requires you to deploy videos into your web pages.

And yes, you would employ the use of videos alongside your adsense pages!

In this method, what you need to do is to source out good relevant content videos from either youtube.com or video.google.com.

Getting the videos onto your web pages is just the matter of copy and paste the object codes onto your html source.

For instance, if you were to source out video content from youtube, you can highlight and copy the embedding codes from the ‘embed’ column on the top right corner.

Then you would paste the codes onto your web pages and voila you’ll instantly have great content along side with multimedia rich videos.

But the real secret doesn’t just stop here. You have to make the right placement for better clickthrough rate.

I would suggest that you modify the video border width and height from the codes to match with a 250X250 adsense ads which are place side by side with the video.

Using the example above, you can see not only you can provide the page with good content about the subject, but also the corresponding video on top of the page. Then the adsense ads which are residing next to the video are shown which aptly complement the whole subject.

This video usage was known to have increased the clickthrough rate as much as 100%.

Try it yourself and always remember to test the placement on your websites. You can always test by modifying the width and the height of the videos to match against different format of adsense ads, as well as blending with different kinds of colors.

About the Author:
Find out more as Sunny Tan shows you how to leverage on the biggest website in the US, MySpace, for FREE, and get avalanche of traffic potential to your websites. Download the free interview report at http://www.dominatingmyspace.com