How should I feel when I visit your website? What emotions do you want me to have after that experience? When someone visits your website they are going to make up their mind in a matter of seconds about what the site is all about and more importantly how it makes them feel. We often focus on designing the site for the sake of a "good look" without ever considering what emotions we want to invoke. Those emotions will translate into action, good or bad. Real World Emotions Yes you need to have a call to action, whether its sign up for something, buy something, respond to something or inquire for more information but creating an emotion is central to your success. Think along the lines of some real world examples; Target vs. Walmart Apple Store vs. Sony Store Ikea vs. local furniture store Each of those clearly evoke an emotion that you experience the second you walk in. The question is which emotions do you want to evoke. (click image below to see "Wheel of Emotions") Your Website Should Be No Different When someone visits your site you should have in mind the emotions your looking to have them experience. For this site my focus was for you to experience a professional, smart, modern and inviting design. The emotions I want people to experience are optimism and trust. Once I established these then I could go about designing the site to reinforce those emotions. Lastly is to iterate, get feedback, test and improve, so on that note - give me some honest feedback, how does my website make you feel? What can I improve on? Oh and dont forget to sign up for my free newsletter photo credit

Where do most of your customers come from? It's a question you should obviously know and I'm sure you do. However have you ever sat down and looked at all the ways in which customers reach your business?  You should list all the ways, then see which ones come to the top as being the best for providing new customers. If the Internet is not in your top two then something is wrong. Over the next 12 months you need to develop a plan to increase your Internet leads to the point of being your #1 source. I wrote a two part article on Internet marketing for small business that addresses some of the reasons why. Internet Leads Jumped to #1 Recently website inquires surpassed trade shows as our #1 source of leads.  This is a trend that's been 10 years in the making.  Slowly, year after year, our Internet leads increased and its now to the point where our website will provide more leads this year than trade shows.  It's not just an "economy" issue either. How about you what are you top sources of leads? Leave a comment below, I would love to hear about them. Photo Credit

There are over 1.7 Billion people accessing the Internet today.  Of that a mere 1% account for most contributions.  Are you part of that 1%?  There are two things that are a given a) Internet use will continue to increase b) The Internet is the dominant social, economical and political tool of our lifetime. Why You Need To Be A Part Of The 1% With such far reaching opportunity you need to be creating a strategy to leverage the use of the Internet.  Participation is one of the key aspects and ultimately will help you separate yourself from your competition.  Most (90%) Internet users are considered "Lurkers", that is they simply consume content as opposed to creating it.   The huge mistake that happens today is that most assume the Internet is overcrowded and therefore there are no opportunities left.  That couldn't be further from the truth.  For all practical purposes the modern day Internet with browsers and all truly became consumable in the mid 90's.  That's less than 15 years!  Think about it, you have access to the greatest, most powerful tool that's only in its infancy.  Right now there are only 1% of the users driving the bus, steering the direction of content.  You must realize the opportunity that's before you. Start contributing today.  Leave comments, start a blog, post videos, make a podcast, do something to start getting comfortable with contributing to the Internet. It's just getting started and your fortunate to be in the perfect position in history to take advantage of it. Do you consider yourself to be in the 1%?  Leave a comment below and get started today ;) photo credit

"Attract more leads to your website today! " "Order now! Guaranteed to increase your website traffic!" " Triple your website traffic in 30 days!" I get so tired of these offers, it reminds me of the "half naked girls" tactic.  Every year I travel all around the world to attend boat shows for my company. Without fail every show I go to has one ingenious company that has figured out the tactic to drawing a crowd - half naked girls. By strategically placing women in bathing suits on the boat the crowds grow. It always amuses me to see the crowds gather around, I can't help but think how someone from that company must be saying "look at the crowds, what a great idea this is". The problem is that while there may be a crowd gathered around a) they aren't there to see the product and b) they couldn't afford it.  The tactic is attracting the wrong crowd.  This same principal holds true when it comes to attracting traffic to your website. The quickest sign to me that you have no idea what you are doing is by making one of these hollow, senseless, traffic increasing claims. Gathering a crowd for a crowds sake is not what your business is looking for. Attracting more website traffic is not your goal.  Attracting more qualified website traffic is. One hundred interested, motivated and qualified leads are much more important than boosting your traffic stats. The reality is most sites already get enough traffic, it's conversion to that next step in the sales process that they need to work on. However that's not to say that you shouldn't continually be working on ways of cultivating more qualified traffic to your site. Magnetize More Qualified Leads To Your Website So how do you go about building qualified traffic?  The tools that you want to focus on are many of the Internet Marketing ideas we cover at this website. Here's a list of 9 specific ways you can increase traffic.

Why does your business have a website? You may think because everyone else does, or because you have to.  But have you really ever sat down and thought about what you want your website to do for your business?  Now in a perfect world you would have first developed an online strategy and then figured out the tools and tactics you were going to use to accomplish this. However, I realize  that most small businesses don't do this. At best they get someone to design them a nice website, because "that's just what you're suppose to do."  O.k. fine, that was then this is now.  So going forward what do you want from your website? Three Simple Things I'm currently reading Web Analytic's 2.0 by Avinash Kaushik and right from the start of the book he states something that while seemingly obvious is missed by many business owners. A website attempts to deliver just three types of outcomes: Increase Revenue, Reduce cost, Improve customer satisfaction/loyalty Thats it. Three simple things. So which one of those three outcomes is your website delivering? Increase Revenue by Generating Leads I want to focus on increasing revenue.  Many small businesses that are selling a product or service (not e-commerce) make the mistake of giving and not getting.  By that I mean your website is full of great information about your company, product and services but there is no obvious way for a customer to go to that next step in the buying process.  Maybe for your buyer the next step is to get a quote or find a local dealer.  If that's the case there should be a clear path for your customer to do this.  I'm not talking about a contact us section either.   Sure you have a contact us section but the next step needs to have a harder more obvious call to action than that. Your site needs to have a clear call to action that is repeated throughout. For example you could have a big box on the upper right hand side of every page that offers a FREE quote and gives a buyer a place to put in their email address.  Perhaps you could offer a free informational DVD about your product which would allow customers to learn more. You can also use live support which allows someone to chat with a customer online right then.  The point is you need to direct your buyer step by step through your website.