If your online marketing campaigns send everyone to the home page, you are missing out on the opportunity to customize your Landing Pages to resonate most directly with your prospective customers. Instead of the home page, direct people to a highly relevant page that ties in with the marketing campaign that drove them to the page.

2. Calibrate Your Headlines

Similarly, make sure that your Landing Page headline uses similar language to the page that drove the visit or the copy from the referring ad. It’s critical that you establish relevancy immediately when the visitor lands on the page.

3. Get to the Important Points Right Away

Readers will often skim a page rather than read word-for-word. They rarely read an entire page. Highlight your most important points at the top of the page.

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In fact, tens of thousands of items of clothing, both new and used, are traded on eBay every week. Though there are other specialist clothing auction sites available, none of them can guarantee anything like as many potential customers. Whether you represent a clothing company or are a private individual wanting to make some money out of old garments which no longer fit, eBay will often be your best bet. Along with all those customers, however, comes all that competition. How can you make your item stand out? How can you make a potential customer feel as if he or she can reach out and touch it?

I am continually amazed to see items of clothing advertised on eBay without accompanying pictures. Such items hardly ever sell. Why would they? Unless you’re selling a designer piece which everybody in your market niche is familiar with (in which case you should be promoting it as much as possible in order to encourage high bidding), people will be buying blind. Customers need to be able to imagine how they or their loved ones will look in the clothes they buy. The clothes must be presented clearly, in a good light. If an item has unusual features at the front and back, it may be wise to include several pictures. You can compound your pictures into a single image if you want to avoid paying extra fees. Consider whether the item looks best in a static pose or when moving – for instance, a full skirt should be drawn outward so that the customer can see how much fabric it contains, and giving the impression that it’s swinging outward helps the customer to imagine how it will look when she’s walking around in it.

It’s important to portray items of clothing in the right setting. Designer wear often looks best in a plain studio photograph, because that’s how it is intended to be seen. Fashionable urban wear can look good shot against the backdrop of a busy street or a window view of a city. Practical outdoor wear might be best photographed in your garden. This helps customers to think about the image which the clothing can give them, even if they don’t intend it to be worn in those environments.

Finally, when you have described the color and style of your garment, don’t forget about the texture. Texture is an important factor in many people’s purchasing choices. Make sure you identify the fabric accurately and any special features (such as whether it is crushed or pleated). Close-up photos can be used to highlight attractive details.

Properly packaged, your eBay item can seem every bit as appealing as a beautiful piece of clothing on the catwalk or in a high street store.

Think about it – in today’s business environment, most sales now take place online. And if someone is looking for a particular supplier or provider of a product or service that they’re after, then that person will probably look for a business using an online search engine like Google, as opposed to looking in a phone book or calling directory inquiries. So it makes sense for your website to be the ideal tool to not only get your customers in the first place, but keep them coming back afterward.

Make Your Site Interactive
So how can you use your website to its maximum effect to keep your customers happy? There are many ways, yet one of the best and most proven is to make your website as interactive as possible. This doesn’t mean that you have to have dedicated sections where visitors can pretty much have carte blanche to change the look of your site. However, there are a lot of options available to you to make your site interactive for both new visitors and existing customers.

The best method of interaction is offering your customers something that makes them feel involved – this could be a newsletter that they can sign up for, with special early offers on new product launches, for example. Or it could be a newsletter offering advice on how they can best use your products in either their everyday personal or business lives.

Another way to entertain customers while they’re on your website is to make it engaging. One of the best ways to do this is to have something like a talking character that responds to their query – there are numerous pieces of software and technical companies that can arrange this for you. The more advanced the software, the more responsive and interactive the experience, leading to more fun for your customers.

Ask Their Opinions
Almost everyone likes to think that their opinion matters, no matter how much or little expertise they might have on a given subject. Therefore, it stands to reason that they will be more receptive to a company if they feel that business is really listening to their needs. One of the ways you can do this via your website is to have a forum. Here visitors can log in and post comments on anything from your products to items they would like to see. By having a forum moderator from your company, you can ensure that customers know their ideas and suggestions are being taken seriously.

These are just some of the options available to you to make your website more interactive and fun for your customers. Even just having one of two of them will make a world of difference, and should see your client retention rates increase dramatically.

By having a website, it’s easy for anyone to copy and paste your logo, text, and pictures – using it on their own website to further sales or perpetrate fraud. There have also been plenty of instances of an unscrupulous company using online blogs and forums to pose as customers bashing a competitor’s business.

Luckily, the internet also makes it easy to keep tabs on your brand name and to make sure that it isn’t being misused. Here are some ways you can protect your company and its brand name:

Regularly do an online search for your brand name – Take the time every month or every quarter to do a search on each of the major search engines (Google, Yahoo! and MSN) for your brand name and your company name. Check out any new blog or forum postings or any websites that are talking about your company or brand. If appropriate, respond positively to any negative postings. You may also want to take the time to trace the negative poster’s email address – you just might find that it links back to a competitor! Also, do a separate search under Google images to see if any sites are stealing your logo or pictures for their own use. If you find that your images are being used without your permission, you can contact each website directly and ask them to remove your images.

Watermark your images – If you want to protect the images from your website, put a company watermark down on the lower corner. That will discourage most copiers from stealing your artwork or photography.

Protect your text – Because copying and pasting is so easy, lots of people do it without any regard for copyright laws. You can protect your website text by having your webmaster disable the right-click function on your webpage. Of course, seasoned web surfers know there are ways around this, but for 99% of your website visitors, this will be enough to stop any would be copyright infringers.

Look at your suppliers, vendors’, clients’, and retailers’ websites – Oftentimes, it’s the companies closest to you that end up misusing your brand name. You might enter one of your retailers’ websites to find that they’ve taken it upon themselves to say they are the only factory-authorized retailer of your brand in the U.S., when in fact they are not. Or, you may find your logo and a made-up quote from you hyping up a vendor’s services. Make checking the websites of the companies you deal with something that happens on a regular basis.

It doesn’t take much time or effort to take back control of your brand name but, unfortunately, most companies never take the time to put such measures into place until it’s too late. Both personal and corporate identity theft is on the rise and doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon, so the most important thing you can do for your brand name is to protect it.

Be sure your website looks up to date – Think of your homepage as the front door to your store. It should be professional, inviting and modern-looking. If your website looks old and outdated, then visitors will assume your products and services are too. Be sure to check your website often and remove out of date products or listings.

Set up a merchant account – While accepting Paypal may be easier and cheaper for you, it’s not exactly professional. It may leave visitors thinking twice about purchasing from your website and give them the incentive to go back on Google for another search. Having the ability to accept Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover doesn’t take much effort and there are plenty of companies that offer merchant account services.

Set up a “Contact Us” page – Many visitors want to know that there’s a real company behind a website before they order. So, offering as much information as possible will leave visitors feeling better about the reliability of your company. Email addresses should always have the address of the website and not @hotmail, or yahoo, gmail, etc. A phone number should never be your home phone number – having someone answer “hello” or having someone on a second line pickup and start dialing is a certain recipe for disaster. Stick with a call center, dedicated business line or even a cell phone. If you can, list the street address of your company. Remember, the more information you can give out, the more your potential customers will feel ready to become actual customers.

Make checkout easy – A true-tale sign of a new or small business is an archaic checkout process. Ideally, the your store’s checkout should be four or less steps. Keep it as simple and as short as possible, without asking customers to first sign up to be a member or requiring that they answer a set of unnecessary questions. Also, make sure that it’s easy for customers to look at their shopping cart and then continue to shop – otherwise, you’ll end up with frustrated customers who may leave your site for good.

It doesn’t take much effort to give your website a professional look that makes visitors feel at ease, never even questioning the reliability of your company or the safety of the website. You’ll be amazed at how just the look of a website can increase customers and decrease shopping cart abandonment rates.

The process is called website visitor segmentation, or segmenting. The idea behind this process is to split those who visit your website into groups, watch what they do on your site, and learn from the information gathered.

Website Metrics

There are a number of metric programs on the market that will allow you to monitor various aspects of your website visitors. You can see how visitors came to your site. You can also see what got their interest on your site, and which pages they completely ignored.

Additionally, you can see how long each page kept their attention, or if they just quickly clicked through. The information that you get from these metrics is priceless.

Marketing

You can see which of your marketing tactics have worked by finding out where your visitors are coming from.

By setting up a metric to monitor referrals to your site, you will be able to see a list of exactly where your visitors are coming from. Create metrics to give a number or percentage of hits that came from each referral site. You’ll find out if your blog is working and referring customers.

You’ll also find out if visitors are coming from your AdWords subscription or from a completely different source. Once you know where your visitors are coming from, you can do more to market in that area – and possibly increase the flow of visitors to your site.

Sales

Once you have them on your website, it’s time to take a closer look at what your visitors are doing. If they are buying, that’s great. Is there a way to get them to buy more, or more consistently? If they are not buying, what’s stopping them? This is something visitor segmenting will tell you.

You essentially have four types of people who are visiting your website – first time visitors, repeat visitors, first time buyers and repeat buyers. Here’s a look at what you can learn by dividing and comparing each of these groups.

* First Time Visitor – This person has never seen your site before. This person will either just look around or become a first time buyer. If you notice that new visitors are not buying, you may want to take a look at what items they are looking at on your site, and decide if a better deal can be had elsewhere.

There may be a way that you can change your marketing strategy to make these visitors become buyers.

* Repeat Visitors – These people pop in regularly to see what you have, but are not buying. Deal with them in much the same way as the first time visitor.

If you notice they are searching for items that you don’t have or keep looking at similar items, you may consider adding to your product line or changing your marketing tactics to make a sale.

* First-Time Buyers – Once you get a prospect over the hump and convince them to buy, you should take a closer look at everything that they looked at on your site, and what they decided to purchase. You may notice there are similarities between the items they are looking at, and ultimately buying.

By coming up with a marketing plan that will convince them to buy more than one of those items, you have the potential to double your profit on each sale.

* Repeat Buyers – Once you have a set of repeat buyers, take a closer look at what they are buying. You know that they are loyal customers, so if you can offer them something else they want, they probably won’t think twice about giving your their money.

Look at the most popular items among your repeat customers and try to find complementary items to add to your inventory.

Your website can be much more than a place to make sales. It can also be a place to study your business and learn how to make even more profits in the months and years to come.

Bloggers may not find Template Monster as useful as owners of websites, as WordPress already has many free themes available for use on blogs. The e-commerce templates are perfect for use when creating or arranging an online store, and templates are available based on three different e-commerce engines. The templates offered by Template Monster are compatible with nearly all hosting companies, and can be used for any type of online store or business.

Template Types and Selection

Templates on Template Monster can be purchased individually, and are separated into categories on their website. Purchased templates can be customized as needed and as often as you want, to create or update the content on your website. Template Monster offers a larger variety of format types than anyone else online, and they boast the largest selection currently available on the internet.

If you are looking for a web template for your website or business, Template Monster has many different web template options available for download. Available ready-made designs include Flash templates, Flash Intro templates, SWiSH templates, and Dynamic Flash photo gallery templates. All of these website templates are customizable, and come with stock photos, clip art images, a font collection, and a month of included web hosting. Template Monster also provides customers with 24-hour support when they purchase a Flash website template.

If you want to arrange an online shop, the e-commerce templates from Template Monster will be the perfect fit for your website or business. Template Monster offers osCommerce templates, CRE Loaded templates, and Zencart templates, all of which are fully customizable. Template Monster’s CRE Loaded templates allow you to easily add or change items sold through your store, and make it easy for you to upload images, text descriptions, graphics, and process credit card payments.

The corporate design section of Template Monster’s website contains many products useful for businesses that are seeking graphics to assist in their branding campaigns. This section offers logos, logo sets, icons, and corporate identities that are all fully customizable and can be easily changed to fit any specific brand or business. The corporate identity template consists of a set of pre-designed objects used to determine the style of a business, and includes a logo, business card layout, envelope, and standard letterhead. This set is ideal for a newly established business that might not yet have the financial resources to spend on a professionally designed and managed corporate style.

Templates for blogs are available all over the internet, but Template Monster offers a stunning selection of CMS (content management system) and blog templates. Even if you are new to HTML, using a CMS template will give you a professional looking blog that is easy to manage. Blog and CMS template types available through Template Monster include WordPress themes, Php-Nuke templates, PhpBB templates, Joomla templates, and Mambo templates.

Special Features and Ease-of-Use

The Template Monster website is easy to navigate, and the system for browsing and purchasing templates is simple and straightforward. You have the option of either narrowing your search results by using drop down boxes, which allow you to sort your results by product type, category, and style, or by searching for a specific HTML editor.

Most of the templates offered by Template Monster use unflattened Adobe Photoshop PSD files, but some are fully coded HTML templates. Template Monster accepts payment by credit card, and templates are delivered quickly – sometimes instantly. One negative point to keep in mind is that Template Monster’s markup is not the greatest, and the templates load slowly for users without broadband. This may be an issue you will need to consider, depending on your business and site traffic.

Template Monster provides users with email and chat support, makes available a comprehensive user’s guide, FAQ, and a searchable archive of submitted questions.

For those running their own template store, Template Monster allows you to establish your own chat system that connects your website visitors directly with their live chat support.

Affiliate Program

Besides providing your new business or website with an enormous variety of template designs, Template Monster offers an easy way to monetize your website with their affiliate program. Template Monster’s affiliate program includes a detailed commission statistics program that enables you to track your earnings and monthly traffic statistics for your template store. There is also an ad campaign tracker available, which is an analytic tool that allows you to gauge the usefulness of your advertising channels. You need only include a modified link in the promotional ads or banners that you use on other websites, and the tracker also monitors the number of clicks and conversions each ad generates.

You earn money through Template Monster’s affiliate program by referring visitors through your affiliate link to the Template Monster website, or by setting up your own online store with the ready-made store templates and scripts that Template Monster offers. You can also refer other affiliates to Template Monster’s affiliate program. This allows you to receive 25 percent of whatever they earn as commission. Affiliates earn 20 percent commission on all purchases made via their template store or affiliate link.

An important feature of Template Monster’s affiliate program is that it uses permanent cookies. This enables you to earn commission from purchases made months after one of your visitors is referred through your store or link. You can also choose any template from the Template Monster website and pay for it using your commission, while receiving a 20 percent discount.

Overall, Template Monster is the best source for templates if you want something professional, attractive, and easy-to-use for your business or website. Other sources of templates online offer a greater number of features than Monster Template provides, but those competitors have only a fraction of the template selection that Monster Template has. Plus, you can earn money through their affiliate program, and your templates will pay for themselves.

This is usually down to a variety of reasons – lack of fresh content, using old technology, out-of-date information and more. There’s nothing worse than having old information on a site that looks like it was designed in 1998. If you want to know if your website is out of date, take a look at your competitors’ websites and see how they compare to yours. If your site looks slow and cumbersome compared to the competition, you can be sure any potential customers are thinking the same. So how do you improve it?

Reduce the Pages
Contrary to popular belief, a website doesn’t have to be super intensive. The most effective sites only have around 10-12 key pages, with the rest as add-ons. Therefore, keep only the most important pages active – About Us, Services, Contact, etc – and condense any older news into easily downloadable PDF files in an archives section.

Revise the Look
You know how you keep your place of business looking as inviting as possible for visitors? Perhaps a fresh lick of paint each year, or new furniture or fixtures? Do the same for your website – overhaul any drab site design with a fresh design. Include Flash if you want to have interactive content , or simply change the template to a more modern design. There are a host of web design companies that can do this for you, if you’re unsure yourself, but make sure that you do something to make your website visually appealing.

Offer Visitors Control
It’s a well-known fact that your website only has 8 seconds in which to grab someone’s attention. With your new site design, this will be easier for you to achieve – however, once you have your potential customer, you need to make your site as simple as going into a brick and mortar store and buying something. So make sure your website is e-commerce friendly. Offer shopping carts and buying guides; make the buying and checking out process as simple as it can be; and offer a variety of payment options .

Marketing Tool
One of the most effective ways to keep your site up-to-date is to involve your customers with the process. Offer them an option to subscribe to a newsletter. Have a follow-up email thanking them for their business and asking how the buying process was, and how it can be improved. You can them use this information to streamline your site even more.

Use a Content Management System (CMS )
Early websites relied purely on HTML for their design and content. Now, however, there are numerous CMS systems that allow you to easily manage your website’s content. You can upload new files; update your sales page, and much more. Some of the best include Joomla or WordPress – have a look to see what’s easier for you.

There are other ways to modernize your website, but these are some of the most basic yet effective. Keeping your site fresh will also help you increase your search engine ranking, so make sure you update it regularly, and check on your competitors to help you stay ahead.

This user-friendly shopping cart features multiple customer, sales, and discount modes, and unlimited category depth. Zen Cart also comes with a fully integrated phpBB forum that can be configured or left out, depending on the needs of the user. Other features include a template system, multiple shipping and payment options, a means of creating coupon codes, and a newsletter manager.

Zen Cart not only offers a very impressive list of features, but the system is designed specifically for the needs of both store owners and web developers. You are given everything you need to create a professional, user-friendly online shopping cart. Even users with only the most basic computer skills can install and manage their Zen Cart shopping cart. This solution comes ready to go, and installation is fully automated. The easy installation process even alerts you if something is not configured properly, saving you time on troubleshooting later.

Zen Cart is managed using a browser-based admin "dashboard" panel that provides users with an overview of the website’s core statistics, including number of customers, hits, orders, and products. The panel also provides access to all the other management tools, and makes it easy to add new products to the store.

Zen Cart Advantages

Tons of features. This must be the biggest advantage of Zen Cart. It has more features than any other similar product reviewed.

Very easy installation. Zen Cart should market this feature more than they currently do. Anyone can properly install Zen Cart, as the process runs automatically and alerts you to any potential issues you may encounter in the future.

Customer Support. The Zen Cart website provides users with comprehensive information on the product and its features. There is also a forum available to assist users who are experiencing problems, or who may simply be looking for advice or techniques to increase sales.

Zen Cart Disadvantages

Boring design. If you want a unique store, you will need to invest in a professional web design service or spend time trying out various templates.

Tricky administrator manual. The documentation for Zen Cart is difficult to follow and understand, and is not updated as new versions of Zen Cart are released.

Optimized for US users. While not a problem for many users, UK-based stores will be required to do a lot of customization in order to use the UK address formats and currency.

Some difficult navigation. Many administration options are hidden inside lengthy pull down menus, which is frustrating and time consuming for new users.

Overall, Zen Cart is worth the money and the little bit of time it takes to get it up and running. The long list of features is far superior to other shopping carts, and the ease-of-use and installation makes this the perfect choice for those new to web and store design.

Just having a website is not enough. It’s important to make sure you have a website that is attractive to customers, helps them find the information they want and need, and is user-friendly.

Many people who delve into a website for the first time are drawn to all the “extras”. With that said, how do you know if you’ve gone too far? Let’s take a look at some common website design mistakes – and how to avoid them.

Enough is Enough

When picking the background and template for your website design, don’t overdo it. The days of website “wallpaper” (those tacky patterned backgrounds you saw on websites in days of yore) are over, as are blinking text and unnecessary animated images. Some background colors and designs may make it harder for customers to see the words on your page. The more difficult it is to make sense of a website (or the more frightening it looks), the less likely a consumer is to stick around. A simple or plain background is best, accented with pictures and images in appropriate places.

Make sure the color of the background and the color of your text are enough of a contrast that the text is easy to read.

Music May Be Too Much

If you run a business that relates to music, it might be alright to have music start playing when your website is loaded. Otherwise, skip the temptation to attach an auto-playing musical piece.

Many people listen to music on their computer, and your website’s music is going to clash with their music. This is especially true if you don’t give potential customers a way to turn your music off – they may well leave the site to stop it.

Forget Fancy Fonts

While they may be beautiful to look at printed on a piece of parchment paper, those fancy scrolling fonts have no place in your website design. They are not easy to read and may annoy customers who come to your site.

Instead, look for a font that is both attractive and easy to read, so you can educate potential customers instead of sending them screaming for the hills.

Lose the Long Prose

Unless you are an author, people are not coming to your website to read a book. Give them what they want – the information they came in search of. First and foremost, make sure your contact information is easy to find. There is no quicker way to send people looking elsewhere than to make it hard for them to figure out how to get a hold of you. While it’s ok to put some information about your company and service on the site, make it short, sweet and to the point.

A website is a virtual storefront. Make it an attractive one that offers your customers what they need and want, without making the mistakes that could send them away.