Posts Categorized ‘Direct Response Websites’
By Bob Speyer, Web Success Team
Every website owner is competing for the hearts and minds of their visitors. Keeping their eyeballs transfixed to your site can lead to more business and increased revenue. Making that important good first impression is the result of great direct response copywriting. Your content must engage the visitor within the first 15 seconds, giving them reason to stay, read and navigate through the site.
Here are five copywriting take-a-ways that can make your website more effective: Continue reading “Copywriting with a Bite to Hold Your Reader’s Attention” »
By Bob Speyer, Web Success Team
One of my favorite movies is Marathon Man, starring Laurence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman. In a classic scene, protagonist Olivier asks Hoffman, “Is it safe?” while holding a dental drill to his front tooth. This gruesome scene reminded me of another equally painful question, “Is it time?” — time to redesign and rebrand your website.
If one asks the question, the answer is usually yes. Here are a few convincing reasons why a redesign is in your best interest: perhaps your company has outgrown the current site; your image has changed along with your product and services and the site doesn’t fully reflect the scope of your company; the functionality is outdated along with the look, feel and navigation; or you need a fresh new brand image to re-energize your productivity.
Continue reading “10 Guidelines to Redesigning Your Website” »
April 27, 2010 at 11:42 am
By Alyse Speyer
Every person in America has bought something that either broke or stopped working after a few days. Because of this, today’s customers want to feel reassured that you are selling quality products and services. Customers do not want to lose money or feel like they’ve made a bad decision. The best way to assure customers is to have good, strong testimonials.
If a business has happy customers and a lot of return clients, it should have testimonials. You wouldn’t hire a contractor to remodel your house without checking references. Therefore be proud of the work you do and get some testimonials. Customer testimonials will help increase sales as well as boost the confidence of potential customers.
The Difference Between Good and Better
In order to have testimonials work for you and increase clientele, you must be careful how you phrase them. Testimonials are a marketing effort, which means that they need to be geared toward making your company look spectacular. For example instead of writing “I love their vitamins,” write “Taking these vitamins everyday gives me lots of energy and keeps me feeling great all day long.” The latter testimonial is a lot more eye-catching and will be more effective in gaining a customer’s confidence than the former. Ask customers who are willing to write testimonials to be specific.
Cherry Pick Your Testimonials
If you don’t have any testimonials, check your company’s email inbox for customers who sent compliments. If you can’t find any ones you like, look at your client list and find out who is buying your products and at what frequency. Call or email a handful of your best customers and ask them to write a specific testimonial. Have them send a picture as well. This will give potential customers further reassurance of the validity of the testimonial.
Testimonials will not only improve your business, but will also improve your company’s image as one that values customer satisfaction. So make the effort to get some strong testimonials.
Four Tips for Effective and Eye-Catching Locations
As we build our new website, we’re making sure to keep these four tips in mind to help improve our testimonials page.
1. Once you have the testimonials, you need to figure out where to put them on your site. Placement is key, particularly when using flash. You want your testimonials to give maximum impact. The most common place on a website is for them to have their own navigation button titled either “Testimonials” or “Rave Reviews.” This way more testimonials can be viewed on their own page.
2. Another option is to use flash testimonials on a sidebar on the homepage along with the customer’s name, job title and company or logo. If you are using the testimonials in the masthead, they should rotate every 7-10 seconds then stop after all testimonials are shown. You don’t want a testimonial to be so distracting that it takes the emphasis off of the content and what you are selling or offering. By having the flash cycle stop, you are allowing viewers to see the testimonials and then freely look at the content without the excess flash.
3. An alternative way to present testimonials is to sprinkle them throughout the site, highlighting them within the content – using graphics, such as a color block background, upper and lower bar, etc. These visual stops are equally effective in reinforcing your credibility and can act as an additional selling point for specific products or services.
4. If you have the option for audio or video testimonials, this can be very effective in boosting your company’s credibility. Audio is easy to record using Audio Acrobat. Video, on the other hand, requires more thought to positioning and angles. If you are at a trade show or with a client, you may want to pre-plan these testimonials for more impact.
Remember that in order for a testimonial to be effective, it needs to be specific, believable and placed in a credible location. With these four tips in mind, your testimonials will build customer confidence and web success.
Grow Your Business Online: These tips are meant to be used as a guideline to improve traffic to your site, increase your conversion rates, help turn visitors into buyers, and keep you ahead of the competition. Turning to a web marketer can ultimately save you time and money and increase your success online. The Web Success Team has many proven marketing strategies and techniques that can be viewed at http://www.websuccessteam.com. The Team would be happy to discuss your web marketing needs with a complimentary consultation and web marketing assessment of your current site. Simply mention this article when contacting bob@websuccessteam.com or call 818-222-5643 for an appointment. Please visit our Facebook page or follow us on Twitter for more information. To your web success!
By Bob Speyer – Web Success Team
I believe one of the most important pages on a website is the About Us page. It is often misunderstood and at best undervalued. Going against the grain, I propose this page is more about the reader and less about the company or person.
Here’s my reasoning: Marketers have long agreed that people both read and react (positively and negatively) to the proposition “What’s in it for me!” In real estate it’s location, location, location. In online marketing it’s benefits. People want to know the advantages of a product or service before making a decision. In their quest to find reasons to buy or learn more, website viewers will go to the About Us page to gain a better insight on who is selling to them or, more to the point, whom they are buying from.
This is key, because viewers do not just want a resume of location, employees, company history, and growth patterns. What they really want is to find out the personality of the company, what makes them tick and if they are sincere and credible. It’s their first impression of you, how you want to be portrayed and if your values match up.
A Culture of Caring About Your Customers
From the corporate side, Starbucks is a great example of an effective About Us page. It is not too wordy or detailed as in how may locations they have. Rather it is about the customer and their experience. They humanize their page stressing each customer is as important as the next one. It’s about making a connection; serving the community and conducting business responsibly. They have other links to other social media outlets on the page if you want to go deeper into their mission statement, their history and their company workings. But the message is clear.
They are about people and making their lives a little bit better each day. In reading their Facebook page or Twitter, you are instantly engaged, thinking, “I can relate to that!”
For small companies or entrepreneurs, your online brand should be personalized. Using an inviting picture of smiling head shots or an engaging video of a talking head will connect with your viewer. The content should be informative and portray you or your company as well rounded and committed to giving back to your customers and your community. Sprinkling in some personal glimpses of your life or interesting anecdotes will help make you the reader feel they know you or get to know you. Putting yourself out there is never risky, it is what makes us human and real to others.
It’s About Us — Your Viewer and You
In conclusion, if you can get a reader to make that positive connection with your organization, they will be more receptive to processing your information and ultimately interacting or contacting you. You will achieve more web success if you can follow these simple guidelines.
The Web Success Team specializes in developing and marketing direct response websites that take full advantage of the latest developments on the Internet. The Team has an arsenal of effective web strategies, online marketing tools and proven customized social media techniques to promote your products and services. And we’ll show you ways to increase the amount of qualified traffic to your site.
For more tips, tools and articles of interest, become a fan of the WebSuccessTeam Facebook page and learn more about online marketing, SEO and social media. Visit us at http://www.facebook.com/WebSuccessTeam. Contact the Team today for a complimentary consultation to your web success!
February 4, 2010 at 2:32 pm
By Kristin Tomlinson-Web Success Team
With the Winter Olympics and Super Bowl just around the corner and with the World Cup taking center stage this summer, sponsors are taking a new and different approach to advertising their brands. They are scrambling to invest more in social media campaigns and less on expensive TV and print advertisements. Aside from the obvious cost savings, the big question is why social media? The answer is two-fold. Social media is personal and it builds relationships. Advertisers are fast recognizing that to build brand loyalty they need to connect with their consumers in new ways through online direct response marketing. What better way than through sports marketing where fans identify with athletes and their national teams.
Social media is playing a critical part in presenting brands and athletes in a manner that interacts with fans on a worldwide basis. It creates anticipation and excitement for fans that can communicate directly with their favorite athlete and connect with them on a more personal level. Social media is enabling brands to create lasting relationships with people around the globe that isn’t possible with television and print media.
The Crossover to the New Media
NBC, who has exclusive broadcast rights to air the Vancouver Olympics, is making a big play with online marketing as a major part of their promotions to achieve web success. It has partnered with the social media firm The Swarm Collective to produce Olympic Pulse, a place where visitors can look up tweets from athletes, Olympic blogs and top trending stories. The Super Bowl promotions have also been very active in social media on Twitter, Facebook and blogging. Athletes and teams are scrambling to hype the event and gain more followers.
In order to prep for the World Cup in the coming months, the corporate partners of FIFA, football’s world governing body, are moving away from the use of traditional TV and billboard campaigns. Instead they are trying out social networking sites to promote their brands, to sell their pitch and build their business online. Calum MacDougall, director of global marketing partnerships at Sony Ericsson, says 2010 will be the first “social networking World Cup.”
Changing the Way the Game Is Played
What makes social media so attractive to powerhouse companies is the realization that more and more people are resorting to popular social destinations like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to get their daily dose of their favorite brands and athletes. In addition to this, these sites come with major audiences and give brands a huge boost and a way to reach millions of consumers. As an added bonus, these sites give brands the viral, online hype that they’ve been searching for in their audiences and their markets. In addition to this, it’s cheaper than spending millions on TV, billboard and print campaigns, and they can get real-time results in relation to how many people are engaging in these sites and taking advantage of their promotional offers.
The consumer has changed and companies have finally recognized that they need to be where the consumers are most responsive. Is social media the advertising vehicle of the future, replacing more traditional media? Probably not, but it may run an effective second.
December 10, 2009 at 6:33 pm
The Web Success Team has scored a touchdown (and a few extra points) in helping promote a premiere event during Super Bowl Week, called Taste of the Game. Our clients, Entertainment & Sports Plus (ESP) and Sports Entertainment Team (SET) are hosting five exclusive events that will benefit charitable causes and educational institutes, as well as entertaining prominent business, sports and celebrity and VIP attendees.
To date, corporate sponsors include: Bacardi, CRN Digital Talk Networks, WealthTV and boingo.
A Website Sporting Good Causes
In collaboration with The Heart Truth®/Red Dress campaign, a portion of the proceeds from The Red Heart Gala and Taste of the Tropics events will benefit Athletes for Life and WomenHeart: The National Coalition for Women with Heart Disease.
In collaboration with our clients, the Web Success Team helped developed the event logo and website to give it a flavor of Miami and give the potential attendees a taste for the game’s activities. Branded to reflect the Super Bowl Miami location with a football themed logo, the site is geared to reflect the 5 exclusive events: Business of Sports Summit, VIP Welcome Reception, Red Heart Charitable Gala, Taste of the Tropics, and End Zone 44 wrap up party.
The site is constructed for ease of use and navigation with events clearly presented with its own page descriptors, sponsorship opportunities with downloadable pdf package, the standard about us and contact us pages, along with celebrity hosts and prominent celebrities and VIP Guests, including actresses Vivica Fox and Kym Whitley, former and current NFL players Willie Gault, DeShaun Foster and Michael Boley.
A Brite Way to Promote Ticket Sales
The lifeblood of any event is ticket sales and the Web Success Team set-up the Eventbrite site to help manage, promote and sell-out the event. The Team branded Taste of the Game on the Eventbrite engine so those going to purchase tickets to the various events will experience the continuity of the branding and event descriptions while making their decision/purchases.
Since Social Media is now an important component in any online marketing plan, Taste of the Game is no exception. The home page has all the social media networking icons so visitors can connect with the clients and spread the word about this exciting star-studded event.
TeamWork Brings Web Success
The Web Success Team can help develop, manage and promote your event through the power of online marketing and social media marketing. Our experience and knowledge can be a valuable resource in this new economy to get the most traction out of your business or event and achieve web success. Contact our Team to learn how we can get you wired into your target markets and make an impact on your bottom line.
The Web Success Team has scored a touchdown (and a few extra points) in helping promote a premiere event during Super Bowl Week, called Taste of the Game. Our clients, Entertainment & Sports Plus (ESP) and Sports Entertainment Team (SET) are hosting five exclusive events that will benefit charitable causes and educational institutes, as well as entertaining prominent business, sports and celebrity and VIP attendees.
To date, corporate sponsors include: Bacardi, CRN Digital Talk Networks, WealthTV and boingo.
A Website Sporting Good Causes
In collaboration with The Heart Truth®/Red Dress campaign, a portion of the proceeds from The Red Heart Gala and Taste of the Tropics events will benefit Athletes for Life and WomenHeart: The National Coalition for Women with Heart Disease.
In collaboration with our clients, the Web Success Team helped developed the event logo and website to give it a flavor of Miami and give the potential attendees a taste for the game’s activities. Branded to reflect the Super Bowl Miami location with a football themed logo, the site is geared to reflect the 5 exclusive events: Business of Sports Summit, VIP Welcome Reception, Red Heart Charitable Gala, Taste of the Tropics, and End Zone 44 wrap up party.
The site is constructed for ease of use and navigation with events clearly presented with its own page descriptors, sponsorship opportunities with downloadable pdf package, the standard about us and contact us pages, along with celebrity hosts and prominent celebrities and VIP Guests, including actresses Vivica Fox and Kym Whitley, former and current NFL players Willie Gault, DeShaun Foster and Michael Boley.
A Brite Way to Promote Ticket Sales
The lifeblood of any event is ticket sales and the Web Success Team set-up the Eventbrite site to help manage, promote and sell-out the event. The Team branded Taste of the Game on the Eventbrite engine so those going to purchase tickets to the various events will experience the continuity of the branding and event descriptions while making their decision/purchases.
Since Social Media is now an important component in any online marketing plan, Taste of the Game is no exception. The home page has all the social media networking icons so visitors can connect with the clients and spread the word about this exciting star-studded event.
TeamWork Brings Web Success
The Web Success Team can help develop, manage and promote your event through the power of online marketing and social media marketing. Our experience and knowledge can be a valuable resource in this new economy to get the most traction out of your business or event and achieve web success. Contact our Team to learn how we can get you wired into your target markets and make an impact on your bottom line.
December 8, 2009 at 6:30 pm
Join the Web Success Team for a FREE social media workshop hosted by the L.A. Chamber of Commerce. The workshop is called Latinos and Social Media Strategies for Nonprofits and is on Wednesday, December 16th from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m at Bank of America Room A, B & C on 350 S. Bixel St., Los Angeles 90017. The sponsor is the California Wellness Foundation. The workshop is promoted by VPE, a Hispanic Public Relations firm, whose social media practice area, commUNITY®, is geared to bringing online opportunities to Latinos.
During this one-day workshop, you will learn how to utilize the latest web technology for your organization’s advantage. Presenters will share outreach strategies and how to manage an online presence for your organization in support of your mission. You will get key insights and recommendations to harness the power of new media to maximize your dollars.
Marci Rosenblum – Featured Speaker
Throughout the day there will be guest speakers on a variety of social media topics. Kicking off the morning is Marci Rosenblum, co-founder of the Web Success Team, who will be talking about “Effective Branding in a Social Media World.” Marci will discuss the pros for carrying your brand forward in social networks; and the benefits that it creates for spreading your message to the right demographics.
Other topics include successful social media campaigns. You will learn from nonprofit organizations using social media. This session will focus on successful strategies and challenges in launching social media campaigns including online fundraising, community organizing and civic engagement. The afternoon session will delve into developing social media strategies. You will learn what steps to take before launching a social media effort and strategies to use to engage with your online community.
Take-Aways…
There will be a host of tips, techniques and strategies you will gleam from this one-day workshop. The focus may be on non-profits, but anyone can benefit from the content presented by these social media marketing experts. Some of the workshop take-aways include:
- Learning about the most useful web tools for nonprofits.
- Discovering the latest trends on how to use Social Media to communicate with constituents.
- Conversing with experts on how to develop strategies and manage online presence.
- Discussing with organizations that have successfully used social media for promotion, advocacy and fund raising.
Sign-up and join the team for this FREE.
For more information and a schedule of workshop activities and speakers, go to the link: Latinos and Social Media Strategies for Nonprofits. Join the Web Success Team for a day of learning and networking.
TeamWork Builds Web Success
The Web Success Team specializes in building and marketing direct response websites that take full advantage of the latest developments on the Internet. The Team has an arsenal of effective web strategies, online tools and proven techniques to promote your products and services. And we’ll show you ways to increase the amount of qualified traffic to your site through the expanding social media and online marketing strategies.
For more tips, tools and articles of interest, become a fan of the WebSuccessTeam Facebook Page and learn more about online marketing, SEO and social media.
Contact the Team today for a complimentary consultation to your web success!
November 24, 2009 at 7:07 pm
By Kristin Tomlinson-Web Success Team
Thanksgiving dates back to 1621, when both the Mayflower Pilgrims and the American Wampanoag Indians shared 3 days of celebration for conquering their harsh environment and feasting with new friends in a new world. Today, Thanksgiving is a time where people come from near and far to reconnect, rejuvenate, reflect and rejoice. Thanksgiving is one of the few times of the year that can be classified as a social holiday. People actually have a reason to get back in sync with someone they’ve lost touch with or possibly repair old ties that have previously been severed.
Like Thanksgiving, social media gives people the tools to reconnect and stay in touch. Instead of a wooden table decorated with lavish decorations and dishes, people gather around electronic devices adorned with various forms of networking sites and portals that enable people to get plugged in and unite. Thanksgiving and social media networking draw similar parallels, bringing people together for practical purposes, whether it be eating or solidifying business deals, cooking meals or cooking up interesting tweets and Facebook chats.
Just as Indians and Pilgrims from distant lands came together on common ground to harvest their bounty, people from various parts of the globe join forces in a “cyberspace” field to prosper for business and networking purposes.
Thanksgiving is also a time for welcoming friends and neighbors into your home to get better acquainted and make existing bonds stronger. Similarly, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter were all designed for people to welcome others to their homepages and websites and get reconnected.
Proclaimed a national holiday by President Abraham Lincoln, Thanksgiving has morphed into an international event celebrated by Americans and their friends across the globe. In contrast, social media was founded by a few daring entrepreneurs and has exploded into virtually millions of household and businesses throughout the world wide web, granting a ton of web success.
Thanksgiving only comes around once a year, but by incorporating online marketing into your everyday life, you can have a reason to celebrate daily. You certainly have a reason to give thanks because social media is known for giving back. It can help businesses reach more customers, boost their sales and give them an edge on the competition. Social media can sit at the proverbial head of the table, and allow consumers to feast on success and profits (instead of turkey and yams).
Both Thanksgiving and social media gives us a reason to celebrate and bring us closer together. But unlike our historic ancestors, we hope our brave new social world will lead to better and more understanding between people of all ethnicities and cultures. Happy Thanksgiving.
October 27, 2009 at 6:43 pm
By Bob Speyer and Kristin Tomlinson – Web Success Team
The speed of the way we communicate has morphed into an Internet monster. Today we can virtually work in anywhere on the planet. Hotels, planes, cell phones — anywhere we can get our WiFi fix. Yesterday’s news is today’s fish warp. Our gratification is instantaneous, but like anything, be careful what you wish for. There is always a downside to hyper-productivity.
From Tortoise to Virtual Hare.
It’s hard to comprehend that it was only a couple of years ago when present day technology had yet to evolve, and business folks alike carried serious stress about meeting specific deadlines, worried about finishing work on time before departing on vacation, or were hesitant of traveling, not because of the fear of flying, but because of the anxiety that their future destination would not contain the necessary accommodations needed to get work done and lost productivity. Offices were tense, and businesses were limited.
Looking back, it would give any business savvy worker cold sweats to wonder how they could get their present job done efficiently. In America there’s a saying that we “live to work,” and with that accompanies the ideal that we have the divine right to work whenever and wherever we are.
Welcome to the land where those concerns have become extinct, and a new species has staked its claim on planet earth. It’s the virtual office.
Cars, Online Trade Shows and In-Flight WiFi. . . Oh My!
The Internet has indeed become elastic, stretching its reach into various places once deemed impossible, but now a reality. In this day and age, we have wireless Internet in our cars and on our phones; a tool that has acquired so much attention in the past couple of years that it has actually turned into a major problem. The Internet application on cell phones has only added to the controversy of cell phone use while driving, and Congress has created a law banning such use, officially putting that application in “time out” indefinitely.
Even traveling business people have the Internet in literally every country they travel to, allowing them to stay connected to the office from their “business away from home,” thousands of miles away. Everyone has jumped on the WiFi bandwith. Hotels that aren’t connected lose business. Today it is as essential as in room telephones and bathrooms.
The Web Success Team recently took a business trip to New York. Just before returning to Los Angeles, we had a rush project that “couldn’t wait.” We finished what we could in our room on the laptop, took a cab to Newark; connected to the airport WiFi to “kill 2 hours”; reconnected on the plane via gogoinflight, finished the job; emailed the completed files; then kicked back to relax for the duration of the 6 hour flight. A short time later, the client emailed from her Blackberry that they received the files, reviewed them and thanked us. Just another day at the “office!”
The Internet “Fix”. . . Good or Bad?
The Internet has come along way from the confinements of a cubicle to expanding its power to the farthest borders of the world. Not only has it offered its services to help strengthen and build your business online, but it has also allowed people to stay connected. It’s funny how you can’t imagine a world without it, but yet there was once a time when it didn’t exist at all. Looking back, it must have been an anxious time, not being connected 24/7 – or has this ultimate Internet fix made us more nervous and less laid back with even more stringent deadlines? Makes you wonder.
October 1, 2009 at 11:41 am
By Bob Speyer and Eric Pangburn Web Success Team
You can have the flashiest and most visually impressive website on the Internet, but if no one ever visits it, then your site isn’t really doing you that much good. By the same token, an e-commerce site that pulls in a fair amount of traffic but very little actual sales isn’t living up to its potential either. In both cases, the one factor that can tip the scales in your favor is effective lead generation. And not just any leads, mind you; what you want are leads that are targeted specifically to build your business.
Continue reading “Effective Tips For Generating Leads in Today’s Changing Online World” »
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