The Stanford University compiled a list of 10 guidelines for building the credibility of a web site. These guidelines are based on three years of research and on several studies about that topic.
The Stanford list confirms the recommendations we gave in previous issues of this newsletter and the tips that are available in the marketing tips section in IBP. Although the information in the Stanford list is not new, it is still very important if you want to be successful with your web site.
50 milliseconds is not a long time. It's about one frame of video, or half as long as the blink of a human eye. And that tiny little slice of time is all it takes for a visitor to a website to decide how appealing that site is.
Dr. Gitte Lindgaard and her team undertook a fascinating study at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. Their goal: to determine just how long it takes to make a reliable judgment of the visual appeal of a website. They found that we can accurately judge visual appeal in just 50 milliseconds, or one twentieth of a second! The study was published in Behaviour and Information Technology, March - April 2006.
I mean, there are dozens of analysts predicting what a company will earn and if that company falls short of expectations then they take a hit - usually as a result of panicked selling of its shares by investors.
But what gets me is these analysts - people who work OUTSIDE the company can actually influence shareholders so much that they drop stocks in a company that makes money hand over fist.
When you own a website your quest generally is to be top ranked in Google. Whether its in the top position or merely above the fold, ideally you want to be where the most eyeballs will see you and hopefully click on your link.
But many times that is an extremely difficult task to achieve organically. Especially when you are competing with sites that have been on the web for years, have huge reputation and PageRank and thousands of incoming links.
Google has announced a major update that will affect the ranking of web pages in Google's index. In contrast to the usual algorithm updates, this update will be much bigger because it changes the way Google works behind the scenes. Google has given the update the name "Bigdaddy".
Today we are living in a highly competitive business environment and it is absolutely required and essential for companies and internet marketers to maximize marketing effectiveness without much expenses and work to compete effectively online. How much it would be worth for you to have your logo and an arsenal of direct deep links to your site as well as an dynamic updating news ticker about your companies products directly in the user's face every time they open their browser window? What do you think about a tool that would offer outstanding added value to your vistors and clients by improved accessibility to your websites content, fully-featured add-ons build in and available 24/7 hours a day with a single click on their browser?
A few years ago, pop-up windows were all the rage in Internet marketing. What is a pop-up window? It's a window that suddenly pops up when the visitor clicks on a hot linked graphic or hyper linked text. Pop up windows are often smaller than the existing browser window and display on top of the existing page the visitor is viewing.
It seemed that every time one opened a web page they would be bombarded with offers for this or that. It had gotten to the point where surfing the Internet was almost like playing a video game; when the ads would pop-up one would try and close them out before another one came. This is precisely why we have seen the decline in the use of pop-up windows on the Internet today.
Like large companies, small business and home business owners need to advertise. When it comes to advertising dollars, small businesses don't have the budgets of large companies. They must be more careful about how and where dollars are spent.
Because small businesses and home businesses typically don't have the budgets to hire search engine marketers to optimize their websites for first page ranking, the best way to get found on the internet is to use Pay Per Click Advertising.
Pay Per Click Advertising is an online advertising format that enables you to place your advertisements at or near the top of search engines for your keywords based on the amount you bid.
Is your goal to get more traffic on your Website without spending a lot of money? Is it important that your Website is easy for your prospects to find on the Web? Though there are many things that contribute to a quality, well-positioned Website, increased link popularity - done properly - will establish your business as trustworthy on the Internet and bring more referrals.
As the web becomes increasingly more crowded, it is important for webmasters to take the extra step to make their web sites user friendly. There are a number of free resources available to webmasters: