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Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Are Testimonials Unreliable?

I talk a lot about building trust within your website and I’ll say it again, people do not do business with people they do not trust. Which leads me to my post…

I was just asked a survey question about what makes you trust a website and believe in its integrity and credibility?

[X] Testimonials (Added here for the sake of completeness)
[X] Third party credibility seals (VeriSign, TRUSTe etc)
[ ] Photo of founder
[X] The voice of the text
[X] Guarantees
[X] Other (Please explain)…………….

  1. Awards
  2. Actual physical address of business
  3. Ability to test the software (free download or trial).
  4. Reputable payment system
  5. Response rate: A rule of thumb I have is to email support and see how fast they respond if at all. If they do and answer my question quickly, I am more likely to trust the website and make a purchase.
What does a website have to do to make YOU trust it and ultimately make contact or purchase?

Posted by: Michael Swartz at 10:37 pm

Comments: None | Filed under: Web Design, Writing For The Web


Thursday, May 18, 2006
One Billion People Have Internet Access

Here’s a great little factoid that I had to pass along…

“One billion people have Internet access“

Wow! With that many people online, it’s all the more reason to be on the web.

Build a New Website

If you don’t have a website, it’s more important than ever to establish one. You may only need one page to satisfy your clients. A website nowadays is as important as a business card. Most people, after you’ve given them your business card, will want to check out your company further by visiting your website. If you don’t have one, you’re out of luck.

The article also explains that a quarter of those people have a high-speed connection. What does this mean? It means your website can include more elaborate graphics and video without the worry of you’re website being to slow to download for people who used to have a slow dial-up connection. (Don’t get me wrong…you’ll need to do some research and make sure the majority of your visitors are using a high-speed connection).

Optimize Your Existing Website

With so many people on the web, you’re website needs to be found. Can it be? If you do have a website, do you know how many people are accessing it? Are they coming from the search engines? How many people are contacting you from your website?

Don’t forget about optimizing your website for these (1 billion) people too.

Each day more people are getting online…are you?

Cheers.

Posted by: Michael Swartz at 10:51 am

Comments: None | Filed under: Web Design, Web General, Web Marketing


Wednesday, May 17, 2006
A Small Change to Your Website Brings Big Results

While doing a little keyword research on our site, I noticed a particular keyword phrase was being searched on more frequently, so I added the phrase to about 4 places on our homepage.

(You’ll understand why I don’t mention the phrase, right? I can tell you that the phrase gets searched on 2 times/day with 3.2 million results in Google and 36 pages within those results have the exact same phrase - my competition).

After applying the update, our homepage is now #1 on Google, Yahoo, and MSN for this complete phrase. Before I made the change, we were about 2nd or 3rd in Google’s page results.

Just one small change made a big difference.

And I do mean big. After the update, new web inquires came in by virtue of our new keyword phrase. Pretty amazing I say.

So don’t think you have to do a complete website redesign in order to successfully reach the top of the search engines. You may only need a small change or quick fix to succeed.

See my other posts, Optimize Big, Focus Small and Small Changes Lead to Big Profits that highlight this same topic. I mention it again and again because it’s true - I’ve witnessed it first hand.

Cheers.

Posted by: Michael Swartz at 11:33 am

Comments: None | Filed under: Web Design, SEO


Monday, May 8, 2006
Profiting From Local Search

Hello.

I hope you had a great weekend.

Ours was fun. My girlfriend and I spent Sunday fishing on Chabot Lake. (We didn’t catch anything, except a sunburn.) The sun here in California is finally out and we’re taking full advantage of it.

Speaking of advantages, we have completed and sent out our first quarterly email newsletter: Profiting From Local Search. If you missed it and would like to receive future issues, please sign up here.

Our email newsletter has many advantages, including:

  • Articles to help you get your website found.
  • No tech speak. Just simple and down to earth language you can understand and put into action.
  • Links to recent blog entries and company updates including new web services offered by MJS Web Solutions
Mike Swartz says, “Check it out.”

Cheers.

Posted by: Michael Swartz at 12:11 pm

Comments: None | Filed under: SEO


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