SEO Hosting Blog

In addition to making your website more appealing to the eye, videos can help engage visitors on a personal level and drive traffic to your website when optimized properly.

But figuring out when and how to use video on your website can be a bit tricky. If you miss the mark, you can actually cause your website to perform worse, decreasing your conversion rate. That’s why I’ve come up with 5 times I think it’s a good idea to use video on your website.

1. Show your product in action—Don’t just tell customers about your product, show them. Why do you think infomercials are so effective? Billy Mays used to show his Zorbeez towel soaking up a spilled bottle of soda. He would show someone pulling an 18 wheeler with a chain boned with Mighty Putty. Seeing is believing. Showing your product being used can add credibility to your claims.
2. Give new life to your testimonials—In the past, I’ve talked about ways to give your testimonials more credibility. Sure, written testimonials are good, but video testimonials are even more believable. They don’t feel forged, and they give potential customers a 3^rd party endorsement from someone like them.
3. Add clarity to your message—Sometimes, it can be difficult to clearly express a message in just text. Using video in conjunction with your copy can help clarify the message and drill it into the customer’s head.
4. Highlight your expertise—Customers trust those they perceive to be experts. That’s one of the reasons blogging is such a powerful tool. Videos let you take that a step further to educate your customers and to position yourself as an expert. Just make sure you don’t talk down to the viewers as that will make you look like a jerk, not an expert.
5. Promote sales—Have a special sale coming up? Promote it with a video. Think of it like a commercial. You can even include a special coupon code in the video to entice customers to watch it.

Do you use video on your website? Has it helped you get more conversions? Share your experiences by leaving a comment.

1. Clean and simple design is best

2. Clean and simple does NOT have to equal boring

3. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel with your navigation

4. Avoid using splash pages

5. Limit your use of Flash

6. Eliminate distractions that pull visitors away from the main message

7. White space is your friend

8. Focus on improving website’s loading time

9. Use images to break up long passages of text

10. Use images to add to the message, not just for placeholders

11. Test your website in different browsers to ensure consistent appearance

12. Test your website on different monitors and resolutions as well

13. Use easy-to-read fonts

14. Ensure text color doesn’t clash with background

15. Black text on white background is still the standard for readability

16. Optimize your ALT tags

17. Don’t have auto-play sounds or video

18. Web layout and design should be consistent throughout the entire site

19. Make certain the website is easy to scan

20. Don’t abandon proven design principles for the sake of being “creative”

21. Check every piece of your website for errors before publishing

22. Never stop learning about web usability

23. Follow the rules of SEO

Which web design rules would you add to this list? Share your thoughts in the replies.

Check out other posts in the “23 Rules” series:

23 Copywriting Rules to Live By

23 Blogging Rules to Follow

Whether you’re launching a website for your new business or you’re looking to improve your current website, you want to make sure you get it right the first time. A great website gives visitors all the information they need about your business and products, is easy to navigate, and is laid out properly for the search engines.

Which pages should you include on your website?

• Home—Well, duh, of course you’re going to have a home page, but let me give you a few words of advice for getting the most out of your home page. First, don’t ever have an intro page as you’ll instantly lose new visitors. Second, don’t waste your time with a headline that says “Welcome.” Third, keep the navigation simple and the design clean so that new visitors can find what they’re looking for as quickly as possible. And finally, don’t try to tackle every facet of your business on your home page; it will overwhelm and confuse visitors. Keep it simple!
• About Us—The about us section of your website helps give a face and personality to your business. Furthermore, it builds credibility as website visitors can see you’re a real person and a legitimate company they can trust.
• Products and Services—If you offer multiple products and services, break it down into one page for each product or service. Not only does this make it easier for visitors to find the information they’re looking for, but it also allows you to target more keywords for increasing your search engine presence.
• FAQ—I’ve noticed that a lot of website don’t have FAQ sections, and I think it’s a mistake. Here’s why: Your visitors will have questions. Some of them will email you their questions, but many won’t make the effort as they just leave your website. A FAQ section allows you to give them all the information they need, and it can keep you from having to respond to the same questions over and over again.
• Contact—I recommend placing your contact information on each page, but you should also have a main contact page too. You want to make it as easy as possible for visitors to contact you, and you also want to appear as professional and trustworthy as possible.
• Testimonials—This is another page you don’t always see on websites. Look, new visitors to your website aren’t going to trust you right away. Of course, you’re going to claim your products and services are great; ever company does. Testimonials give skeptical visitors an unbiased recommendation of your company from people just like them. Read my post on giving your testimonials more credibility.
• Guarantee—If you offer a guarantee on your products or services, there are probably some restrictions to it. Lay out the fine print of your guarantee on a separate page, and do so in plain language that the average consumer can understand.
• Site Map—The site neatly outlines your website for both visitors and the search engines.

Are there any other essential pages I left of this list? Leave a comment with your tips.

Recently a college student asked me for an interview for a school assignment. I felt like it would also make for a good blog post titled, How To Be a Successful Web Designer. If there is anything that you’d like to add, feel free in the comments below.

- What is your job title and what is the name of the company/organization?

I am a self-employed web designer. My legal business name is Garry Conn Sales.

- What are your responsibilities?

I am responsible for listening to and understanding what customers want their future or current website to look like and then executing what they vision onto the web.

- How long have you been doing this job?

I have been web designer for ten years.

- Briefly, can you let me know how you got to where you are today?

Ten years ago, my father had an idea for a web based business selling aircraft. He needed someone to help him build the website and asked me if I had an interest in learning how. I was interested in learning and taught myself how to do it by reading book and various tutorials on the web.

- What is a typical day like?

A typical day consists of me spending about half an hour checking email. I reply to any new clients or leads generated via the web. From there I spend three and a half hours working on client websites. I then break for lunch and return to check email for about half an hour. The next two hours I work on marketing and promoting my business, in addition to soliciting new business on social networking sites such as FaceBook and Twitter. The end of the day typically includes writing and publishing a helpful article on my company blog. My company blog draws in business from search engines and by the readers who refer their friends and family.

- What skills are required for your job?

In order to be a successful self-employed web designer, you need to be an excellent listener and interpreter of what customers need. From there you need to have the skills to take the customers vision and develop it into a website. The programming skills necessary to be a web designer include: HTML, CSS, PHP, MySql, and Perl. As the web continues to develop, understanding additional programming languages are recommended. Many social networks and search engines have open source API, which allow anyone access into their system architectural backbone. Quite honestly, the more you know, the more you’re able to help your customer.

- What activities do you enjoy doing the most? What are 3 things that you enjoy most about working at your company/organization?

The three things I enjoy most about my career are being able to convert ideas into something live on the web. I enjoy the personal reward. I enjoy the compensation.

- What is the greatest challenge of this job? What are the 3 most challenging aspects of working at your company/organization?

The three greatest challenges of my career are keeping up with the speed of the web and other online companies, keeping up with my continued programming education, and managing my time and keeping customers happy by delivering on time.

- What skills are the most important for you to learn to be successful in this career?

Anyone can be a programmer. Anyone can learn the programming languages needed to be a web designer. The most important element that allows me to be a successful web designer is creativity.

- If I wanted to start in this career area, how would you recommend that I go about it?

The best thing to do is to go to college. However, many people can not afford to go to school. In fact, many people seek web design careers because they need to work from home. If college isn’t an option then I recommend purchasing books at the store. Also, if you can’t afford books, endless information is available on the web. Once you have learned the programming languages, you need to work on promoting your business. Once again, I use the web for this. I use social networks, my blog, and the people who read my blog to gain business.

- What advice would you give to me in regard to my career direction? Or, if you had a chance to do it all over again, what would you have done differently?

I am unsure of what your career direction is. I can say that if I had the chance to start over with my career, the only thing I would do would be to invest more time learning in advanced rather than learning on the spot.

I have seen an increase in sites using floating footer toolbars. I decided to do some homework and figure out how I could add a floating footer toolbar to some of my sites too. A floating footer toolbar is a program with a user interface that allows visitors to bookmark, save, or share information discovered on your site. One of the best floating footer toolbars I have found is Wibiya.

Using Wibiya you can boost your blog or website by adding rich and interactive features. It works on all the popular blogging platforms and also includes a universal javascript code that will work on any type of website. Using the toolbar can help you create a grow a community of returning readers or visitors.

Wibiya gives owners the option of creating a community using FaceBook Connect. It can also help you increase page views. You can gain traffic from FaceBook through your members news feeds and engage readers and raise pageviews with applications such as post navigator and blog search. Wibiya also has their own traffic growth and analytic tools so that you can track your traffic growth.

Communicating with readers and visitors is simple. With Wibiya, readers and visitors can share content using Twitter. Tweets can also be shared among other readers and visitors in real time. Short messages can be sent to members alerting them of new contents or posts on your blog or website. FaceBook fan pages can be created and members can join and communicate via a direct channel connection.

In Wibiya, these features are called applications and you’re able to custom build your toolbar to fit the needs of your blog or site. Available applications are simply dragged, dropped and installed onto your toolbar.

The available applications are:

• Blog Search, which can help you increase pageviews and reader engagement.
• Translations, which provides for easy content translation into one of twenty available languages.
• Post Navigator, which offers readers and site visitors easy navigation tools.
• Live Notifications, which broadcast alerts, messages, news, and more to all your visitors.
• Twitter Gadget, which will show your visitors live notifications of your latest twitter messages.
• Community (via Facebook), which gives you your own blog community with facebook connect, and allows users to join your community through their facebook account.
• Sharing Tool, which enables your visitors to share, save and distribute to your content through the AddToAny application.
• Register to RSS Feed, which gives your visitors the ability to subscribe to your blog through an RSS reader.

All in all, if you’re looking to add a floating footer toolbar to your blog or website, I recommend using Wibiya. At the time of writing this post, the toolbar is available via invite only; however, I received an invite less than 24 hours after registering. To get your Wibiya toolbar, simply register on Wibiya.com for an invite and wait for it to arrive in email.