UpBeat Living: 5 Keys for Websites That Sell, a ReBlog from Colleen Wietmarschen

Tags

Business blog, Financial abundance, success, The life you want

Photo by iStockphoto

Yesterday, I wrote about increasing circulation to your blog, which is great, but once you have people to your site wouldn’t it be great if they “hung out” to see what else you had to offer? Today I’m going to talk about “5 Components for Creating Websites that Sell.”  Whether you design your website yourself or if you are looking for a website designer, remember your website is literally your storefront, your business card, and most significant marketing piece rolled into one.  How it affects your visitors and customers is essential to your success.  Provide a memorable experience and customers are sure to return time and time again.

Below are 5 components you want to make sure you include in your website to keep people coming back:

1.    Make your website interactive.

As the internet continues to grow and evolve it’s becoming more important to create a community around your business. To accomplish this you want to engage your visitors and customers.  This can be accomplished a number of ways.  You can:

• Provide a forum.
• Post surveys or polls.
• Enable visitors and customers to review or rank items.  For example, a “How valuable was this article?” question and a scale of 1 to 5 stars or a ranking from 1-10.
• Offer a blog and inspire comments and feedback.

• Host contests and sweepstakes.
• Publish video and audio content as well as written content.  This gives users another way to access you and your personality.

2.    Make sure your website provides value.

People go online for a number of reasons.  They go online to research a potential purchase, to seek solutions for a problem they’re having, and to be entertained.  If your website provides all three; products, information, and entertainment then you’re in tip-top shape.  The best news is your content can provide both the information and the entertainment and when written well, can also inspire purchases.  Here are a few ideas to provide value for your customers and prospects:

• How to articles, videos, and audio.
• Tips articles, videos, and audio.
• Case studies.
• Workbooks and reports.
• Interviews with experts.
• Product reviews.

3.    Make sure your website is easy to navigate.

It takes a visitor about 20 seconds to make a decision about whether they’re going to stay on your website or click away. If your site is laid out nicely, with products and services, information, prices, FAQs, and content easy to find then people are more likely to hang out – the longer they stay on your site the more likely they are to make a purchase or return again.

To make your site easy to navigate consider:

• Keeping your site simple.
• Keeping your pages uniform with the same options and appearance.
• If you have a lot of content, great!  Use drop-down menus and organize your content by topic for easier access.
• Offering a search function where users can search for products, services, or content topics quickly and easily.
• Providing a way for users to easily go back to previous pages.  A back key is an option; however, if every page has the same options and drop-down menus, including the ability to quickly return to the Home page, a visitor will always be able to find what they need.
• Testing your website’s appearance on different browsers to make sure every visitor has a nice experience.

4.    Make your website easy on the eyes.

Ever visit a website and the text was so small or the colors so incompatible that you couldn’t read a word?  Readability is critical to a selling website.  Make sure:

• Your colors are easy on the eyes.
• Your graphics aren’t distracting.
• You keep formatting like underlining, bold and italics to a minimum.
• Your spacing between sentences and paragraphs is adequate and consistent.
• Your font size is large enough for people to read and font is easy to read.

5.    Give them a soft sell.

People expect to be sold to and they’re looking for it.  Instead of hitting website visitors with a hard sell, provide information, solve their problems, and show them the benefits of your products or services.  They’ll be much more receptive and appreciative.

Creating a website that sells requires a structured approach and a desire to create the best experience possible for your visitors.  Once you’ve created your website, consider testing it and asking associates, friends and family for their opinion.

There you have it; along with increasing circulation to your blog, now you have five suggestions to consider when creating your website or to discuss with your website designer to make sure it sells and keeps people interested once they come and visit. Have you considered any of these before? I’d love to hear your thoughts.  –Colleen

Learn more about Colleen Wietmarschen, business coaching and support, and find the original post at:

http://www.clericalplusva.net/5-components-for-creating-websites-that-sell/

———————————————

● Kebba Buckley Button is a corporate stress management trainer and the author of the award-winning book, Discover The Secret Energized You (on Amazon.com >Books>Buckley), and the 2012 book, Peace Within:  Your Peaceful Inner Core (on Amazon.com >Books>Button).  She also has a natural healing practice and is an ordained minister.

● Your comments are welcome!

● Get these articles by email– just click the Subscribe Free option in the right column.

● Reach the writer at kebba@kebba.com .

UpBeat Living: The Flow of Money, with Visiting Blogger Joanne Deck

Tags

Abundant, Effective living, Financial abundance, Money, The life you want, Wayne Dyer, Wealth

© 2013 Kebba Buckley Button.  World Rights Reserved.

Joanne M. Deck, SPHR, CWC, is an amazing wellness consultant, author of two books, a workout queen, and one of the most wonderful people I have ever known.  If this article by Joanne inspires you, do visit www.joannedeck.com to learn more.  Joanne has a weekly newsletter called “Nurture You.”

 “Money always has come to me, because I always have seen myself as endlessly abundant.”

Wayne Dyer

Photo by Microsoft

I heard Wayne Dyer once say that he never worries about money because he knows he can always make more. How I wish I could say that!  Is it because of his celebrity status that Dyer feels that way? I don’t think so.  (And although he didn’t specify it, I’d bet that when he refers to being able to make more money, he doesn’t mean just eking out a living or being able to get a job as a greeter at Walmart.)  I would say Dyer feels this way and has always proved it to be so because he sees himself as endlessly abundant.

These beliefs of Dyer got me thinking about two categories of things: those that are used up (or wasted), never to be replaced, and those that are expended and then replenished.  Time falls into the category of being irreplaceable, something that can be wasted and never to be gotten back.  Although, God willing, I may have tomorrow, today will be gone when it is over. If I fail to make the most of it, I’ll never get this specific day and time back again.  Yes, time is eternal, but my time as the human being I am is very much limited.  I have a start date and an end date.

I’ve always put water in the same category as time, having been taught that water is precious and must not be wasted.   I’ve come to understand, though, that water is not like time. The earth is bountifully provided for.  Without any effort on my part, the clouds do their thing, form water, and release it as rain and snow to replenish the earth’s water supply.  I do have a limited, localized supply of water, and life works better when I treasure and use it well, but the overall supply of water is unlimited or, as Dyer would put it, “endlessly abundant.”

How about energy, the force that keeps me alive and enables me to move through my day?  Physical energy is very much like water.  I have a localized supply.  I wake up in the morning ready to go.  Some days I physically work very hard, expending my energy supply.  At the end of the day, I take natural, simple steps to replenish my energy.  I have a healthy dinner, relax, perhaps have a little fun, and get a good night’s sleep.  While I rest, my body, like the clouds, does what it is designed to do.  It digests my food, keeps me breathing, and restores itself.  I don’t have to ask that these things be done.  I just do my part, and my body (God) does its part.  Without any conscious effort of my own, I awaken with my energy restored.

There’s another important point to consider here: if I spend my energy in a wasteful way, worrying needlessly or working physically hard without accomplishing anything worthwhile, it would not matter.  As long as I do my part by eating, resting, and so forth, my energy store will be replaced, even though I had spent my energy foolishly that day.  Clearly physical energy is like water and not like time.  We can waste time (as in use it and lose it forever), but we expend energy.  We deplete our local water supply, but neither energy nor water is gone forever; they just get replaced from the infinite supply through natural processes.

Where does money fall?  All of my life I’ve grouped money with time, and I now see what a detrimental perspective that has been.  When I view money like time, I see money as something that can be wasted, as in used and lost forever.  This often leads to ongoing regret, shame, and frustration.  Yes, there have been times when I’ve not been as careful spending my money as I could have been.  However, there have been far more times when I made a prayerful decision to spend money and it failed to yield the benefit I expected.  In other words, despite my very best effort to use my money wisely, I did not receive the blessing I intended.  When I see that money as wasted, never to be replaced, I blame myself for something I had no control over.

How does Dyer see money?  He must view it as I do water and energy, since he knows he can always make more.  Without fret or fear, he does what is his to do; he’s written over 30 books!  For me to release all worry about money and embrace the belief that I can always make more, I must recognize that the same Divine life force that moves the clouds and keeps my heart beating influences people and events to draw money into my life.  I need only take the simple, natural steps that are before me each day and let God be God.  When I do, I’ll be the endlessly abundant person I was meant to be.

———————————————

● Kebba Buckley Button is a corporate stress management trainer and the author of the award-winning book, Discover The Secret Energized You, and the 2012 book, Peace Within:  Your Peaceful Inner Core.  She also has a natural healing practice and is an ordained minister.

● Your comments are welcome!

● Get these articles by email– just click the Subscribe Free option in the right column.

● Reach the writer at kebba@kebba.com .