Knowledge is the Foundation To Success  

So you just have to ask your customers one question, “Do you feel like buying from me/hiring me/contacting me/partnering with me/using my services?” Of course, you really should follow that question up with a pleasant “Well, do ya?” I’m amazed at how many websites don’t focus on that core question, especially those using pay per click (PPC) advertising to drive traffic to their sites.

If your goal is for a potential customer to call you, then why don’t you have your phone number on every page, asking the customer to call you? If your goal is for a potential customer to purchase something, why don’t you have an Add to Cart button immediately visible on the page right next to the product? If your goal is to get a potential client to send you their contact information, then why don’t you have a simple form available for them to fill out with a nice big Submit button right beneath it?

What action do you hope to entice a new customer into performing? You must ask yourself that question because you need to have an answer for it. If you just send potential customers to a page that doesn’t entice them to perform the action you want them to perform, the odds are greatly in favor of them not doing what you want them to do. Is that what you want to accomplish, especially after you’ve paid for that click with your hard-earned money? I sure hope not.

So go ahead and ask yourself that question, too.

If you need assistance with custom landing page optimization or website development, you may want to check out Webivore. They have done impressive work for JumpFly clients.

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I’ve lost count of how many websites I’ve gone to where the immediate question comes to mind: “Hello, is anybody home?” The website looks like it hasn’t been updated for years. It’s not necessarily a color scheme issue, or a graphic design issue, or the fact that the site could just be plain ugly. It’s just the fact that there’s no indication of anything current happening on the website. It’s hard to give potential customers confidence in a site, or convince them to purchase something from a website, or entice them to fill out a contact form, if they are not sure that someone is actually minding the store.

I’d like to offer a few simple solutions to help rectify this “empty” feeling. First, you can put up a date stamp on the site that reflects the current date. This can go in your header, near your navigation bar, or anywhere in the upper portion of the website. Yes, it’s a potentially useless bit of data that even an abandoned site could be using, but at least one of the first impressions that a new customer will get is one of “now.” And first impressions are absolutely critical for first time visitors, especially in the pay-per-click (PPC) advertising arena where you are paying per click for each one of these new visitors.

Second, put up a current bit of news about your company, your business category, the products you sell, the brands you carry. Date the news and update it about once a week. Again, it’s all about giving the website a “lively” feeling, that someone is actively minding the store, putting up fresh current tidbits of information. The news really could be about anything, but you’ll get more mileage out of it if it relates to your business and products. This could include starting a blog, which is very similar to this. Or you could just carve out a small space on the home page and update that with some timely bit of information every week or so.

Finally, and I think most importantly, give your calls-to-action a sense of urgency by giving them an end date that’s no more than a few weeks or a month out. If you offer Free Shipping, then also mention the month in the same sentence. For example: Free Shipping in December! Maybe you will offer Free Shipping in January, but then again maybe you won’t. The same thing goes for any sales you might run. If everything is 5% off, then offer 5% off in December. Maybe you will offer 5% off in January, but maybe you won’t. If you leave Free Shipping or sales offers open-ended, then you don’t give customers a strong incentive to buy now. They’ll think they can just come back later and get it, but of course then they have a good chance of never coming back at all. Once they are on your site, you need to do everything you can to close that sale as soon as possible. This all ties back to giving the site a sense of being “current.” By putting an end date, or a month name, into all of your promotional pushes it gives the site a sense of being “alive” and “fresh.”

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JumpFly PPC Account Executive

Did you know that you can customize your 404 Error pages? Did you know it’s a really good idea to customize your 404 error pages? Customizing a 404 error page is a great way to prevent a lost click, a lost visitor and a lost sale or conversion.

First off, what is 404 error page? Let’s say you’ve updated your website and all your URLs have changed. Natural, or organic listings can take awhile to catch up, and someone could click an old listing and land on a 404 error page. Same with bookmarks. Unless you’ve taken the time to automatically redirect every old URL on your site to your new pages, that visitor is going to land on a 404 error page. Another way to land on the 404 page is if someone misspelled a page of your site, or forgot the “L” at the end of the “.html.”

Now here’s why creating your own custom 404 error page is a good thing: The standard 404 error page is pretty generic, it really doesn’t explain what a 404 error is and every server displays different error text. It can also be pretty confusing for a visitor. After all, the page they get is not what they are expecting. They could just leave, and you don’t want them to do that after they took the time to visit you. Custom 404 errors are good customer service. Think of it as one more way of being extra helpful and friendly.

So, here’s what to include on your new custom 404 error page:

• First, apologize. It might not be your fault, but that’s okay. Just say you’re sorry, but the page they are looking for doesn’t seem to exist.
• Give them reasons why it might not exist. Maybe they spelled a word in the URL wrong. Maybe all your pages end in HTML, and they missed the “L” on the end.
• Give them a few links of where they could go, like Home, About, Products, or maybe the top five pages on your site.
• Include a search box. But a search box should be the last resort, not the only option.
• Brand it as your site, without overwhelming them. This page should be simple without every choice possible.

Another school of thought is sending 404 errors to the home page (and before you give me a hard time, yes, I know the JumpFly website 404 error page goes to the home page. I’m not in charge of our site. And this Blog is just a matter of my opinion and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the owners of JumpFly.). However, sending 404s to the home page can confuse users because they’ll wonder why they ended up back on the home page. You could also send someone to your sitemap, but again, they’ll wonder how they got there, and why. The point is, we’re trying to help visitors, not confuse them more.

I’m not going to go into the mechanics of HOW to create your 404 page. There are a couple of good sites out there that explain how – here’s two that I think are decent resources:

• www.plinko.net/404/custom.asp: explains the mechanics of how to create a custom 404 page based on the server your site is hosted on
• www.404errorpages.com: much more technical on what exactly a 404 error is.

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