| Free Adobe Photoshop website templates by Colorifer.com. Web design articles | |
|
|
|
|
Congratulations! You've Gotten Visitors To Your Site! Now, Can They Find What Theyre Looking For?
As search engine marketers, we spend an enormous amount of time trying to get targeted traffic to our site. But, once those visitors get to our site, can they find what they're looking for? If not, guess what? We've lost a customer. Think about it this way. How many times have you found a site through a major search engine or directory, only to visit the site and not be able to find what you're looking for anywhere on the site? What do you do next? You go back to the search engine and click on the next site. That site has lost a customer: you. Helping your visitors find what they're looking for on your site can cover a great many areas, such as navigation, user interface issues, and the lack of a clear "call to action." But one way around many of those issues is to offer an onsite search engine, so that once visitors hit your site, they can easily find exactly what they're looking for. The really neat thing about onsite search engines is that many of them are FREE. Yes, you read right: free. Of course, that also means that you may have ads in your search results, which may or may not present problems for you. However, even if you choose to purchase an onsite engine, the cost is generally not expensive. What should you look for in an onsite search engine?
In my training material and resource library at the Academy, I had an onsite search engine for a long time. Then, the company folded. Until recently, I hadn't set up another onsite engine, because the one onsite engine that I really wanted to use didn't index password-protected areas. So, I "patiently" waited for the onsite engine, FreeFind, to add this to their list of features. When they recently did, I jumped on it, and now both of my online training programs have excellent onsite search engines through FreeFind (http://www.freefind.com). But why did FreeFind stand out among the others, and why was it so important to me to wait until they could index password- protected areas? FreeFind offers some features that I couldn't find on other onsite search engines, features that would help me tremendously with my work. For example:
In Conclusion Look closely at your site. Is it time to add an onsite search engine? Is it time to make sure visitors can find exactly what they're looking for when they land on your site? Are you losing customers who get lost and can't find what they want? FreeFind (http://www.freefind.com) is an excellent onsite search engine that met my exact needs. However, to be fair, and because this article isn't meant to be an advertisement for FreeFind, here are some other onsite engines that you may want to consider. Look closely at their features, and find the one that works best for you. Other Onsite Search Engines Atomz: http://www.atomz.com PicoSearch: http://www.picosearch.com SiteLevel.com: http://www.sitelevel.com/ FusionBot.com: http://www.fusionbot.com A listing of numerous onsite search tools: http://www.searchtools.com/tools/tools.html Copyright 2002 Robin Nobles. All rights reserved. About The Author Robin Nobles, Director of Training, Academy of Web Specialists, has trained several thousand people in her online search engine marketing (http://www.academywebspecialists.com) training programs. Visit the Academy's training site to learn more about their online search engine marketing training (http://www.onlinewebtraining.com) and search engine optimization (http://www.se-optimizer.com) software. She also teaches 3-day hands-on search engine marketing workshops in locations across the globe with Search Engine Workshops (http://www.searchengineworkshops.com). Email: RobinN@acws.com
MORE RESOURCES:
Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Make it Clear What Your Website is About Just about every list of the "Top 10 Web Design Mistakes" includes at least one reference to either1. Not clearly specifying the objectives of your website, or2. 5 Ways To Improve Your Website Immediately If you are reading this, I assume you either have your own website or planning to get one. Either way, these 5 tips can help you create a better business website immediately. Web Design for Ecommerce Your website is your tool for showing the online community an image of your Drop Ship retail business. Whether or not your business succeeds depends heavily on your website. How To Boost Your Chances at Having a Successful Web Site New Web sites are springing up online by the millions. However, when they don't reach a level of success, the Web site owners assume that they can't make money off the Internet. Website Design: 10 Web Site Design Pitfalls To Avoid If you've a website that is not generating a lot of sales, it may be due to some design flaws.Below are website design flaws you should correct now, to empower your website:1. How Important is Content to a Successful Website Content is the most important part of any website.The Internet was created in the first place as an information source. Website Design Firm Website design firms come in all shapes and sizes.When choosing which firm you would like to build your website, there are many factors which you need to take into consideration. Sales Versus Customer Oriented Websites Should Generating Revenue From A Website Be The Prime Motivator? A pure sales site has only one purpose.. Three Things You Must Do When Designing and Building Your Small Business Website If you are going to have a web presence for your small business, it only makes sense that it should actually help you get more business. In order to do so, your website design should focus on performing only one function - and that's to convey your sales message to your site visitors in an effective and efficient manner. Why Should You Care About Your Web Site Colors? **How Colors are Used in web design:**Demarcates screen elements into groups- You can pu a blue background for your navagational bar and white for rest of your page. This tells the visitor that the blue area has different elements and grabs his attention. Web Designers Beware! As a web designer, I have a personal interest in a new trend which threatens to put me and my kind out of business. That "threat" is Web Design Templates. How Not to be Ripped Off by Your Website Designer As web designer my self, I have had the unfortunate luck of speaking to too many of my clients who have been ripped off by a web designer somewhere along the line. Whether it be that the designer never really finished the website, took the deposit and was never heard from again, or finished the website with less than promised quality. Building Web Sites Using Web Templates Gone are the days when you had to rely on a web-designer to design your websites. New technologies with innovative ideas have brought out a new variant to this trend in the form of ready to use website templates. Long Copy Sales Letters on the Web: Hype or Not? I have written before about long sales copy on the web. But I have more to say on the subject. Selling Multiple Products? Avoid These Top Blunders When your web site sells more than a dozen items, you may face a fierce challenge of helping shoppers find what they are looking for. You'll need to classify products into categories, but these will serve as obstacles and even deal killers if those categories do not match those in the heads of shoppers. Web Site Professionalism? What Is It? Your web site should be-visitor friendly to navigatesearch engine friendly for the crawlersAutomated with ecommerce and subscription forms.. The Key to Getting More Magic Shows Booked Online This article is the result of a conversation I had with a magician about his website. He wanted to know if I could build him a nice looking site that had his name and contact information on it. 6 Reasons Why Using Flash is a BIG Mistake Most web designers and web design companies will try to convince you that if you want your business to have the best site possible that you MUST have a flash site. Flash, for those of you who are newbies, is a software program that can create really cool special effects and animations. Through The Looking Glass My mother used to take me along when she visited an old lady down a cobbled lane who had a crystal ball on her dining room table and a pack of playing cards. My mother was superstitious and really believed a lot of what she was told by the old lady. Website Polls For You And Your Visitors Setting up a survey on your site is extremely simple and many times just as beneficial, for two main reasons. One, they let you create a more interactive website for your visitor.
|
|
2007-2008 © Copyright colorifer.com. All Rights Reserved. Free Adobe Photoshop templates. Web Design Articles | Site Map | Terms of Use 
|
