Why Do Visitors Leave Your Website?

Visitor traffic is one of the most important factors that determine the success of a website on the Internet. However, something more important that attracting visitors is to retain them on the website. By keeping your visitors on the site for longer times, you can increase the number of page views as well your chances of them performing a desired action. Often you may notice that though your website gets a huge number of visitors, they tend to leave abruptly. This may be because there is something on your website that they don't like. By knowing the reason why visitors leave your website, you can seek to make adjustments and thus improve the website. Here are some common reasons why people exit websites.

Poor Accessibility

No matter how great the website is, it is completely useless if the visitors are unable to access it. They have no option but to leave. Browser incompatibility is one of the prime reasons why website fail to be accessible. Make sure you check for compliance at the design and development stage itself so as to avoid any future issues.

Unintuitive Navigation

Navigation is a determining factor of how visitors browse through the website to find information. However, poor navigation can frustrate them and cause them to leave abruptly. Therefore, devote plenty of time and attention to design your navigation system. It should be logical as well as intuitive. If your website is fairly large, you should include a sitemap.

Over Advertising

Advertisements are an essential revenue generating source for websites. But some businesses take it overboard and paste their websites with ads all over. This highly irritates the visitors and makes them leave out off frustration. Therefore, try to limit the advertisements on your website. Avoid using overtly flashy ads that tend to distract the visitors.

Inadequate Information

Visitors come to a website looking for some or the other information and when they don't find what they are looking for, they just choose to leave. It is very important to understand your industry audience and know their needs and requirements. Armed with this knowledge, you can cater to them more effectively and provide them with what they need.

Slow Loading Pages

This is probably one of the most common reasons why visitors leave a website. Internet users are an impatient lot. They like to find instant information and would not wait till the website loads completely. A much easier way for them is to look for information on another website. The connection speed of users also influence this. Therefore, it is important that you design pages that load easily even on slow Internet connections. Use Google Analytics to determine the percentage of users who have slow or fast Internet connections.

Automatic Audio and Video Play

Audio and video features are fast becoming popular. However, even though they are effective means of communication, leave the option for the users to decide. Don't start music automatically and even if you do, provide an option to turn it off. Visitors can often get irritated with the uncontrolled music and videos and leave the website altogether even if the website was good enough.

About the Author:

Kabir Bedi is a senior web consultant at LeXolution IT Services, a professioanal web development companythat has a team of skilled Web developers India. The company offers a plethora of web services includingweb development services & web design services.

Custom Banner Design vs. Template

There are a lot of websites that allow you to create a free banner by providing you with several free templates. All you have to do is to select a template, add your text and literally create your banner design in a matter of seconds only. However, the down side is that the company (that provides you with free templates) also uses their URL or company name on your banner. Now, I wonder why people wonder why their banner designs are not giving them the results they are striving for. Well, if your market is thinking of you as a cheap business that can’t even afford a banner, then why will they buy your products or show interest in acquiring your services.

Now, it is very clear that the best practice should be to create a custom banner design instead of using a template. However, to ensure that people truly understand the power of customized banners and why they should avoid using templates, we need to explore this subject in great detail and take a look at some important factors that can totally break your banner and ruin you marketing campaigns. So, let’s take a look at these important factors now.

Personal Touch:

To make your marketing campaigns successful, you have to give them a personal touch. Copying and using someone else’s ideas will never help you succeed in the world of marketing and you will end up ruining your credibility. Hence, it is crucial that you give a personal touch to your banner to help you correctly represent your business model. If your banner is unable to tell your market that what your business is about, you will have trouble winning their trust. Therefore, people will avoid clicking your banner and your CTR or click thru rate will go down. No clicks mean zero visitors to your site.

Don’t Look Cheap:

If you are selling expensive products but are using a free template to create your banner design, then know this, you will soon end up ruining your business image. Your market will think of you as unprofessional and amateur. If you can’t spend a few bucks to create a custom banner design, then will you spend to provide quality products to your customers? Well, this is the question that your market will want to know. Of course, they won’t contact you to find out. They will simply ignore you and go elsewhere.

Don’t Look Like a Copycat:

The problem with templates is that they are widely available and anyone can use them. If you consider your business to be unique in its own way then your banner design should be unique as well. Using a template will make you look like a copycat without any creativity at all. So, ensure that your banner is always customized.

See, using a customized banner will allow you to give it a personal and unique touch. It will allow you to convey your message in a powerful way because your designer will even change the colors and layout according to your message.

So, the best thing is to go for a custom banner design instead of a template.

eCommerce Website Design

eCommerce websites have their own unique character that is designed to lead the visitor to one simple task – make an online purchase. A web designer needs to consider a variety of online selling principles while designing an eCommerce website. In this article we will try to take a look at some of the major design aspects that you must have in an eCommerce website. 

Many of you are probably already asking why eCommerce website design is different from any other website design. They all need to be attractive, well organized and use the right colors that fits the website spirit and so on. Your instincts are good. However a close look at some successful eCommerce websites will reveal the conceptual differences that are typical in a successful eCommerce website. 

An eCommerce website needs to follow certain selling principles:

1.     Give the user a pleasant experience during his online shopping.

2.     Make certain you provide sufficient information on who owns the website and why they should be trusted.

3.     The website must be easy to use. If it isn’t, the visitor will go to your competitor.

Those principles are not new. We all know those basics from our day to day experiences in the mall, shopping center and every other market place that is waiting for us to open up our wallets. The big challenge for a web designer is how to translate those conventional marketing techniques to the virtual world of the internet. I’m sure you’ve all noticed that in most supermarkets the bread stand is placed at the far end of the building, yet you can smell the fresh bread at the entrance (sometimes they even use a special air duct to carry the smells). That has been done deliberately. Marketers use our sense of smell to draw us through the store where we are exposed to all sorts of tempting goodies as we go to get our loaf of bread. 

How do you draw an imaginarily path in a web page? A path designed to lead the visitor to do what you want him to do…make an online purchase. Unlike the supermarket our website has no smell. In a website the distance from one point to the other is pretty much the same, so the exit is always right there. In a website you can try to order the “shelf” in the way you think will best expose the visitor to many of your products, but there is always a chance that he will find a short cut to another page that can also be the way off your site. 

As can be see, although putting your products on the web is much easier then renting space and opening a supermarket. However, selling your products on the web can be difficult. 

A good eCommerce website design will lead the visitor to the right page in one click or two at the most. Sometime web designers will use techniques that would never be considered for non-eCommerce websites. Everyone has seen at least one sales letter website. On these web pages the only link is to the order form. Sales letters are not the most typical eCommerce website because they usually sell only one product. That allows the web designer the ability to exaggerate the one click principle and make it an advantage. All the facts about the product have been presented to the user is a smart way while every few lines he has the option to click on the order form. If he is not yet convinced he will have the option to continue to read more facts and testimonials about the products. Believe it or not, those sales letter websites are actually selling. 

“What about online shops?” Online shops have to deal with more then one product. Of course, the greater number of products increases the complexity of the website. Sophisticated eCommerce websites use a variety of personalization technologies in an effort to determine the best selection of products to offer to the visitor. Personalization technologies are a major part of advanced eCommerce websites. However this topic is beyond the scope of this article. The cleverness of an eCommerce website’s personalization technology has a major influence on its design. The first to use such technology was Amazon.com who decided to push their client’s books to a visitor based on that visitor’s past orders combined with the statistics they had collected on all visitors used to predict what someone looking at a specific book might also be interested in reading. Today the goal is to try to predict what to offer the user on his first visit as well. 

An eCommerce web design is also about the layout. One important aspect is where the user’s eyes look first when accessing a web page. Lots of research has been done on this topic. Most research showed that the middle left side area will attract the most attention followed by the center of the page. By using these techniques web designers try to draw the “walking path” for the visitor’s eye, much like what was done at the supermarket. An experienced eCommerce web designer will know how to create designs to meets those demands. 

If you are about to open an eCommerce website or you are already own one, make sure you understand the web design principles for online selling. Consider consulting with an experienced website designer preferably someone who has experience with eCommerce websites.

Casino Affiliate Program: Building Your Websites

If you have been struggling to work out why so many people are making money from the Internet and wonder how you can do likewise, you could do no better than joining an affiliate program. Unlike the so called 'get-rich-quick' schemes you may have read about or even signed up to affiliate marketing is one of the few to be proven to be successful time after time. There are no gimmicks, no risks and best of all no money to part with. All that is needed is a website, a subject and a good affiliate program. There are no details to work out, no difficult customers to deal with and all the accounts are managed automatically so there is no need to even keep a track of any of the customers.

The affiliate programs are usually based on a click and sign-up basis. The most successful affiliates choose to combine their sites with the largest online businesses and industries. Few of these online sectors can match that of the new virtual casinos. These online gaming forums have been hugely popular since they were first launched and their popularity has never wavered. In fact for the most part participation and the monetary revenues have been increasing year after year. So backing such a huge industry is a great way to make sure that your site earns money and attracts right number and type of clientele that you are looking for.

Once you have decided on your industry as a website owner you must then go about the content of your site. Making it as relevant to the subject of online casinos, or gaming of some kind, can guarantee that you are attracting the right people. If you have a site about music or flowers, the likelihood of visitors being interested in joining an online casino are far smaller than if it is about a group of casinos or even just the online industry that has made the businesses possible. The way in which you present your information can also be a tool in making people decide to try one of your links and join up to a site. If you make an offer sound too good to be true or make the online casinos appear to be hugely exciting and potentially lucrative you can hope to lure in a few extra clients. If you simply churn out the boring facts without any enthusiasm or interest it will show and readers are going to be far less motivated to click on your links and make you money.

Converting hits into money may be as simple as using professional graphics and emotive language, but the problem really lies in attracting people to your site in the first place. To make money in the casino affiliate program you really have to have a large foundation of customers. Some may win, some may quit early but others will lose and play over a long period of time. Therefore the more people you have on your books the higher the possibility of striking affiliate gold. But attracting people is a problem that all websites face, including the very same sites that the affiliates represent. It is for this reason that any successful affiliate makes sure that they are as visible as possible, utilising every trick to make sure that they are top of search engine lists. SEO documents, forum postings and even emailing with special links with an embedded URL unique to your site. All these are options and widely available utilities at even the smallest website owner's disposal. With marketing tools and imagination anybody can master their own online business in the casino affiliate program.

Why Good Website Navigation Is Important ?

Web surfers are basically an impatient bunch and if a website is hard to figure out because the links are not obvious, they will click away never to return. Website navigation is one of the most crucial elements in determining the effectiveness of a website. This article discuses the basic principle of designing website navigation. 

To be effective website navigation must first and foremost make sense to the average person. While there is always room for creativity, well-designed websites tend to have similar navigation layouts. 

As a web designer you must always keep in mind the basic purpose of the website and the intended audience when designing navigational elements. Most websites exist to either inform the visitor about a product or service or to actually sell the product or service. Therefore there are some basic guidelines to follow: 

Make sure all navigational elements are clearly links by using standard conventions for links such as buttons, menus, underlining the text or changing color on mouse. Resist the temptation to use clever or ambiguous names for links. 

When using non-conventional links, explicitly tell the visitor that this is a link. For example, suppose you design a web page where you want to use a map showing several different cities and want to let the user click on the city name to pull up information about that city. Just make sure you tell the user to click on the city name to get more information about that city. 

Remember the “Three Click Rule” that most professional web designers use. Studies have shown that most users will not click more than three links to get to the information they want. So every page on your website should be reachable within three clicks. 

I do not recommend using a flash movie or other type of splash page on your website. Keep the web page design simple yet attractive. But if you do decide to use one, make certain you use the META REFRESH tag to take the visitor automatically to your home page after a few seconds and provide a clickable, clearly marked button or link so the visitor can skip the entry page and go directly to your home page otherwise a large percentage of visitors will just click away never to return. Remember most visitors are looking for information not entertainment. 

Navigation Element Locations 

Top Menus – a top of the page menu bar is usually located directly below the page header graphic that contains the site logo. These menu items may be single links, drop down menus, or expanding menus. Each menu item can be represented by a graphic or just text. In ether case a hyperlink is associated with each item that the visitor can click on to get to the information described. 

Left Side Navigation – left side navigation is typically implemented as either a column or text area on the left top portion of the webpage. Like the top menu, each item can be a single link or an expanding menu. 

Right Side Navigation – right side navigation is not used that often, but when used, it is implemented as a column or text area on the top right side of the webpage. Most designers use this area for advertisements rather than site navigation. 

Bottom Menus – bottom menus can be either a menu bar or footer. Menu bars use either graphics or text links while footers almost exclusively use text links. 

Important Navigation Elements 

Internal Page Links – Every page on the website should be within two or three clicks from the home page. Important pages should be ONE click away. The type of website will determine which links are more prominently displayed. 

Login Boxes – login boxes should be prominently displayed. Common locations are top left, top right or inside the page header. 

Shopping Carts – if you use a shopping cart to sell your products, you should prominently display a view cart button on each page. The most commonly used location is the top right side just below or as part of the header. 

Order Buttons – if you use individual order buttons they should be large and visible. The fewer clicks it takes to get to your order page, the more orders you will get. 

Breadcrumbs – breadcrumbs are both links and a graphical representation of where you are in the site. Breadcrumbs are usually located at the top left of the page just under the header. Each word is a link back to the previous page. They are in the form 

       Home-> Articles-> Marketing 

External Links – external links can be used anywhere but are most frequently used inside the text areas on a website. They may be references to more information located on another site, to recommended products, or to almost anything else. 

Advertisements – advertisements are usually either a graphic or text with an associated hyperlink. Ads can be placed anywhere on a webpage but are usually used just under the header banner, down the right hand side of the page, under navigation elements on the left margin, across the bottom of the page or even interspersed within the test areas of the page. Studies show that ads “above the fold” are more effective. 
(“Above the fold” refers to the area of a webpage that is visible without having to scroll.) 

Downloadable Items – if you offer downloadable items such as audio, video or pdf files, make sure that you tell the user haw big the file is and whether they need an application to use the file. If they do an application, provide a link to the application. For example, provide a link to the free Acrobat reader if you offer pdf files. 

Site Map – A site map is a good way to layout your entire site for your visitor. (Search engine spyders like them too.) It is just a hierarchical listing of every page on your site with a clickable hyperlink to that page. 

Summary 

A good navigation system can increase the numbers of pages viewed by each visitor. This in turn can increase signups, customers, sales, members or whatever it is your site is designed to do and make your website more successful.

3 Elements of SEO That Are Best Run Alongside Website Design

Find out why it can be beneficial to start SEO work early in a websites development.

Ensuring that a website is properly optimised for search engines is one of the most important steps that an online business will take. Until a business manages to become renowned online (such as amazon, ebay, etc) a huge amount of their traffic will be derived from search engines. Due to this it is vital that the website appears near the top of search engine results pages. Despite the fact that most business owners are aware of the importance of achieving a high ranking in the big 3 search engines (Google, Yahoo and Live) a huge number of them don’t even consider search engine optimisation until they have either launched a website or are preparing to. This article aims to explain why it can be hugely beneficial to start an SEO campaign at the same time as, or slightly before, the website is being designed.

Keyphrase Selection

One of the most important steps in the search engine optimisation process is the selection of keywords. There are several important aspects to look for in a keyphrase that is likely to prove successful. Firstly it is vital that enough people actually search for a particular term. Secondly it is necessary to analyse the competitors that already hold the page one rakings for that phrase. If the top 20 results in the major search engines are held by dominant authority sites with high pagerank ratings it is extremely unlikely that a new website will be able to have a strong impact. Finally the keyphrase has to be considered in relation to how well it relates to the page that it will be linked to. For example, for businesses it is integral that they not only generate traffic but also that the traffic is likely to convert to sales. Typically highly generalised keyphrases will generate traffic that is looking for information rather than products or services so it is worthwhile looking into more specific long-tail keyphrases.

When designing and building a website it is enormously beneficial if the keyphrases have already been selected. This allows the developer to tie the different sections of the website (or product categories for e-commerce sites) to the keywords making each of these sections far easier to optimise for in the long run.

On-site SEO

One of the first steps that an SEO specialist will take when beginning to optimise a website is to analyse the website and create a list of recommendations on what can be improved to give the site the best chance at achieving high rankings. While often these changes are relatively straightforward to implement after a website is completed it makes far more sense if these recommendations are made early to allow the designer to implement them on their initial build. By doing this the owner of the site can save the considerable amounts of time and money that would have been incurred by writing and then rewriting the code and content on each page.

Copywriting

Another reason for starting SEO before a site is completed is that the copy on the site can be written with search engines in mind. While it is obviously important that the website is written for its human visitors first and foremost there are some straightforward SEO techniques (such as utilising the keyphrase within the text and linking to other relevant pages on the site using keyphrase appropriate anchor text) that can help boost a websites ranking. By figuring out the keyphrases early and writing SEO friendly content from the start a lot of the time and money that is often spent redrafting content can be saved.

Ultimately while it is perfectly possible to embark on an SEO campaign after a website has been completed it usually makes far more sense to start it early and then build the site with the SEO in mind. This can save the considerable amount of time that rewriting Titles, headers, descriptions, content, etc can take and result in a website that is ready to launch with the highest potential to rank highly.

Web Design: Is your Website User Friendly?

It is important to pay attention to little details that make the site easier to use by visitors. Sometimes small details make the difference, and the user likes our site better than other sites, just because he feels comfortable navigating it, and finds what he wants easily. Of course, it depends on the audience you expect for your website. For instance, if you have a website for professional designers, then you do not need to keep it that simple. Users will find their way and probably enjoy that sophisticated and strange menu system that is a piece of art. But if you expect a general audience, it is better to keep things nice and simple. The site usage should be intuitive. This is a list of several aspects you should consider:

· Let the user adjust the font size, avoid using fixed font sizes in your stylesheet. If you use fixed fonts, at least make them big enough so they can be read by people with sight problems.

· Make the forms clear and avoid crowded pages. Insert text hints when necessary so users always know what they have to input in each field. You may also use a small help icon next to the form field that users can press to get a pop-up with more information about the field usage.

· If you use menus, make sure they are easy to use. It is better if they are not too sophisticated if the site is for a general audience.

· Use the ALT and TITLE attributes in images. This will also help you with positioning your site in search engines.

· Make sure the site content is easy to access. This means that you placed the pages in the logical menus or submenus. Try to think as the user would think. You may ask someone else to use the site and give you feedback, since it is hard to realize if content is easy to access for others.

· Minimize the number of clicks to get to destination pages. Try not to nest pages inside menus, then submenu, then submenu… .Two or three levels should be enough for most cases.

· Contact Us page should be accessible from all pages. Include a form in the page so users can send you comments. If they found trouble using the site, they will probably tell you and you can fix the problem for future users. It is also a good idea to include a "Comments about this website" link in all pages footer so users can send a message to the webmaster.

· Choose the colors wisely. Different color schemas may help identify different areas of the site, for example.

· Make sure text is easily readable. Do not use too similar colors for text color and background.

· If you have long pages, insert Back to Top links in the page body.

· Keep design consistent throughout the site. This also helps you define an identity for your website.