Your site has a very short window of opportunity to work its magic – to establish credibility, build interest, and present an indispensable solution to a problem – in less time than it takes to change a light bulb. If all of the elements aren’t there (in the right combination), you will lose sales.

In coming posts, we’ll look at they ways your site can make a great first impression, so you can retain visitors and turn them into paying customers.

First, though, I want you to start with a much simpler exercise. Find a friend, family member, or complete stranger who knows nothing about your business, and show him your website. Even if he can’t specifically tell you what’s wrong, you’ll know by his reaction whether or not you’re hitting the mark. Many times, you’ll get varying degrees of feedback, which can point you in the right direction.

This test is very important to the success of your online business, because as a business owner, you’ve probably spent hours staring at your site. After a while, you develop a sort of “blindness”to what is working and what is not working. Eventually, even the obvious problems seem to disappear… but they’re glaringly apparent to your visitors.

Stay tuned (ahem, subscribe), and in the coming days, we’ll look at some of the ways you can tweak (or completely overhaul) your site to make a stronger first impression.

Lee

Twitter: @JJMbuzz

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Here are 5 quick ways to get traffic to your website or blog without blowing your online advertising budget:

1. Blog commenting. There are quite a few internet marketers who have dismissed this technique as slow and cumbersome, but it remains one of the best ways to get quick traffic. All you need to do is find blogs in related niches, and write meaningful comments. One caution about this technique: “Meaningful” is the key term here. Don’t resort to “trash” comments like, “I agree with what you said. Nice blog!” These comments will almost always get deleted, and will do nothing to build good will with the blog owner. A good rule of thumb: If you can’t add to the discussion, don’t say anything.
2. Forum posting. Again, this is not a “push button” technique. It takes quite a bit of time and effort. However, it be a solid strategy for driving traffic. Find discussion forums related to your niche market, and actively participate in the discussions. You won’t be able to promote your site in your post content, but most forums allow you to place site links in your “signature”, which will appear below every forum post you write.
3. Pay per click ads. I hesitate to include this technique, because I tend to favor the “slow and steady” approach to traffic building. Plus, you can end up spending a ton of money on pay per click ads if you don’t monitor your results. Used correctly, though, pay per click ads can be an effective way to attract quick traffic.
4. Guest posting. This technique involves developing relationships with bloggers in related niches, and offering to write guest posts to help them build blog content. This is a win-win approach, because the blog owner gets “free” content (and can offer your unique insights to his or her readers), and you get high quality links to your site. You’ ll also have the benefit of gaining the attention of the blogger’s entire audience - if you guest on a popular blog, you could quickly see a dramatic increase in traffic.
5. Video marketing. Videos give you the chance to engage potential customers in a way that text cannot. Plus, there are numerous video search engines (most notably, YouTube), where you can upload your videos to attract a large number of visitors.

These ideas are simply ways to jumpstart your site’s traffic flow… in future posts, we’ll look at ways you can build long-term traffic.

Lee

Twitter: @JJMbuzz

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The vast majority of marketing articles just end up taking up virtual space, with no real business building power behind them. That’s because most article marketers don’t develop solid strategies before they start posting to article directories. Without a strategic approach, you can end up wasting valuable hours that you could be spending on other, more effective tasks.

Here are five strategies that will help you get the most out of your article marketing efforts:

1. Effective keyword research. Don’t assume that, just because you post an article to EzineArticles or another directory, your content will be read. Proper keyword research is essential for driving readers to your articles - after all, the majority of your article readers will come from search engine listings, not from the directories. A paid service like Wordtracker will help you identify the keywords in your niche that people are searching for.
2. Developing useful content. Many marketers look at articles as “throw-aways” because they don’t actually add a website or blog’s content… so they put less effort into putting useful, relevant information into their marketing articles. It’s important to understand, though, that these articles will be the first impression of you for many customers… and if your articles don’t enrich their lives, they won’t be likely to click through to your site.
3. Make sure your articles are well written. If you’re writing them yourself, revise them until they’re perfect. If you’re hiring a copywriter, make sure you choose one that not only understands article marketing, but also possesses superior writing skills. It’s well worth paying a bit more for a great copywriter – your articles will retain reader interest and drive more traffic to your site.
4. Keep it conversational. Your marketing articles are opportunities to teach others, but they’re also opportunities for readers to get to know, like, and trust you. Don’t write just to show how much you know… instead, write for the purpose of developing relationships.
5. Develop a compelling resource box. Even if a reader benefits from an article, he or she still needs a reason to click through to your site.  Let your readers know exactly what the payoff is, and your clickthrough rate will increase dramatically.

Lee

Twitter: @JJMbuzz

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But does your content really speak to your audience?

Let’s forget about SEO for a minute. Your visitors don’t really care how well you’ve optimized your content for search engine spiders. What they care about is getting what they came for – useful content they can use to improve some aspect of their lives.

But your site content also has to be engaging. That means that you have to speak on your audience’s level. You should take into account certain factors, including:

• Age
• Gender
• Geographic region
• Education level
• Financial level
• Life experience
• Interests

If your content misses the mark on any of these factors, your website or blog is not going to perform as well as it could.

To some degree, it is possible to reverse engineer your sales process to determine who your target audience is. Let’s say you’re running a site that offers blogging templates through an affiliate program. Who is most likely to want a blogging template?

• Age: This product could appeal to anyone from about 20 to 55, but the target audience for this skews a bit young, probably in the 25 to 35 range.
• Gender: Both, although males are more likely to want a good blogging template for the purpose of making money online.
• Geographic region: Since bloggers come from all over the world, it would be a good idea not to post content specific to a particular geographic region.
• Education level: Most bloggers who would bother buying a template are college educated.
• Financial level: Moderate income, say $30,000 – $60,000. Above that, quite a few people would rather pay a programmer to create a custom blog design.
• Life experience: The target audience is web savvy, and has at least a vague idea of how to use blogging to communicate about their interests. 
• Interests: Online business weighs in heavily here. Not too many personal bloggers (the online diary type) are going to bother purchasing a premium template. Quite a few members of your target audience will either be interested in making money from blogging, or using their blogs to promote another website.

Great. So if you’re promoting a blogging template, your content should be written to target young, educated people who are web savvy and interested in using a blog for business or financial gain.

If you hire a copywriter to produce content for your site, it’s critical to make sure that he or she knows who your target audience is. If you haven’t taken the time to figure this out, or don’t communicate this to your copywriter, you’re effectively wasting your money.