Website Optimization

What Screen Resolution Is Your Site Designed For?

Many webmasters overlook one important aspect of a website - screen resolution. BgTheory.com reports the following:
In January 2008, 48% of surfers used a screen resolution of 1024X768 while 38% used a higher screen resolution.
Resolutions higher than 1024X768 are seeing an increase year-over-year. To view BgTheory’s trends from 2000-2008, click here.
It is very important to look [...]

Many webmasters overlook one important aspect of a website - screen resolution. BgTheory.com reports the following:
In January 2008, 48% of surfers used a screen resolution of 1024X768 while 38% used a higher screen resolution.

Resolutions higher than 1024X768 are seeing an increase year-over-year. To view BgTheory’s trends from 2000-2008, click here.

It is very important to look at your screen resolution stats (you can use Analytics, WebTrends etc) and design your site around the most common screen resolution. It seems like 1024X768 is still the way to go, for now.

According to BgTheory, 76.5% of people click on the visible area of your page. Keep this in mind if your site is designed for a super high resolution (about 1024X768). Scrolling up and down is ok, left to right…ALL BAD.

Factors To Consider When Constructing A Website

A well planned marketing strategy is the key to your online success. Spend time researching and planning your marketing. Most small business owners have a great product but create website untargeted websites.
Spend time researching the following:
1) What age is your target audience?
2) What is the geographic target (if any) ?
3) Is your audience predominately male [...]

A well planned marketing strategy is the key to your online success. Spend time researching and planning your marketing. Most small business owners have a great product but create website untargeted websites.

Spend time researching the following:
1) What age is your target audience?
2) What is the geographic target (if any) ?
3) Is your audience predominately male / female or both?
4) What are your peak times?

Take the above factors into consideration when building landing pages for these reasons:
1) Different audiences like different colors - Read Why Colors are Important
2) Audiences may be prone to purchasing during certain times. For example, an adult dating site may have more user sign ups during the evenings since most single adults are working or at school during the daytime. If this is the case, conversion rates can be higher during certain time periods. Kick up your PPC costs during these times.
3) Do you offer your service to all countries but only offer 1 language? Consider using language translation tools and reach the world - Here’s a good translation tool
4) Consider showing different landing pages for different countries.

There are many factors to consider when creating a website and devising your marketing strategy. There are just some examples of how careful planning can lead to growth and stability.

Split Test Your Website - Google Website Optimizer

It use to be EASY. Create a website, create unique content, get organically listed, put some ads on a page and make money! Well it’s not so easy anymore. Web surfers are getting intelligent. OVer 50% of surfers know when they are click on an ad. For this reason, it is extremely important to split [...]

It use to be EASY. Create a website, create unique content, get organically listed, put some ads on a page and make money! Well it’s not so easy anymore. Web surfers are getting intelligent. OVer 50% of surfers know when they are click on an ad. For this reason, it is extremely important to split test your website content so that you can understand visitor patterns. Webmasters should test EVERYTHING.
Here are a few things we’ve tested for our website:
1) Headline - Find best performing headline
2) Templates - Test different website templates
3) Colors - Change background colors, image colors, layout colors, font colors

Split testing can get very complicated but Google makes it fairly easy. Google has a feature in Adwords that allows you to split test - it’s called Website Optimizer.

Website Optimizer allows you to install code on your landing/conversion page, and then measures different components of the landing page. For example, you can test your headline, or you can test different colored “Download” buttons.

I find that multi-varient testing works the best for me. Here’s how it works:
I tested three headlines and two download buttons. This gives a possibility of 6 combinations. Since I`ve created 3 headlines and 2 download buttons, Google will track each combination and show you the conversion rates for each combination. To use Google Website Optimizer, you MUST have a Google Adwords account. To learn more about Google Webiste Optimizer, visit
http://services.google.com/websiteoptimizer

Google Webmaster Central

This posting is about Google Wembaster Central. Every serious webmaster SHOULD BE signed up with Webmaster Central. Google Webmaster Central shows you the following information:
1. When Googlebot last crawled your pages
2. If your pages are in the Google index or not.
3. All web crawl errors. For example:
- HTTP Errors
- URL’s not [...]

This posting is about Google Wembaster Central. Every serious webmaster SHOULD BE signed up with Webmaster Central. Google Webmaster Central shows you the following information:

1. When Googlebot last crawled your pages

2. If your pages are in the Google index or not.

3. All web crawl errors. For example:
- HTTP Errors
- URL’s not found
- URL’s not followed
- Whats restricted by robots.txt
- etc

4. Crawl Rate
- This measures how many pages are crawled per day
- Number of KB downloaded a day
- You can select how fast you would like Googlebot to crawl your site

5. Query Stats
This is HUGE. Query stats state what terms people are linking to you with. For example, if an external site is linking to you with keywords “Online shopping,” it will state what keyword they are linking to you with. It also states the top search queries that people type into Google to find your site.

6. Links
Shows you how many links are on the web to specific pages of your site.

As you can see, Google Webmaster Central gives you tremendous value, all for free. If you’re in the sandbox, you can try to figure out why you’re in the sandbox, when you were put there, and possibly find out the reasons.

Google Analytics - Excellent Stats Software

We have just started using Google analytics and it is excellent software. You can signup at http://www.google.com/analytics/.
The most valuable features is their goal tracking functionality. For example, if you want a certain visitor to click through a certain path to get to a signup page, you can find out where the user left and based [...]

We have just started using Google analytics and it is excellent software. You can signup at http://www.google.com/analytics/.

The most valuable features is their goal tracking functionality. For example, if you want a certain visitor to click through a certain path to get to a signup page, you can find out where the user left and based on this information, you can optimize the “fall-off” page. They basically track everything you can think of.

Another valuable feature, they tie into your adwords account and allow you to see which keywords are converting etc.

GREAT SOFTWARE!

Your Site Needs Unique Content

It’s been proven time and time again, CONTENT IS KING. I constantly surf the Internet and notice the following pages on a website: home page, about us, contact us, and a few other pages that briefly describe products or services. Here’s my thoughts about the topic. Let’s say I sell coins, I can go ahead [...]

It’s been proven time and time again, CONTENT IS KING. I constantly surf the Internet and notice the following pages on a website: home page, about us, contact us, and a few other pages that briefly describe products or services. Here’s my thoughts about the topic. Let’s say I sell coins, I can go ahead and build a 50 page website and THINK that visitors will flock towards my shiny new coin site, OR I can build a 100000 MEGA site. Each page can contain a picture of a coin and a description of the coin IN MY OWN WORDS.

Always create unique content that will differentiate your site from other sites that sell the exact same product. Sure this is tonnes of work, but the pay off will be tremendous. Always ask yourself “How Does My Website differentiate from other websites.”

It`s difficult for small webmasters to think outside of the box because of the risk. If you`re going to do something, do it right the first time.