How Fast Does Your Homepage Load

Slow loading websites and slow loading pages are the KISS OF DEATH. You have about five seconds to load the first page of your website. After that "bail-out" starts and brides will just leave looking for one of your competitors. Here's a great online tool to help you evaluate the load time of your home page. It also shows you, in detail, what is loading and how large it is. I was surprised at what it told me about my websites!

This full article is available to members of my ADVANTAGE program: How Fast Does Your Homepage Load.

Follow this link to learn more about my ADVANTAGE program and how it will help you beat your online competition, get better results from your website, and book more weddings.

Keeping Your Website Fresh and Updated

Q&A With Chris

Q: Chris, how often do we have to update our website? How important is it?

A: You'll leave a better impression with a bride/groom visiting your website if your website looks up-to-date and has current information on it - particularly on the home page. Weekly updates are actually quite valuable. They don't have to be full page updates, but a paragraph about a recent wedding, a happy customer, or new service you are offering is surely valuable content and will keep your site looking fresh.

Keep in mind, brides may visit your website more than once, particularly those early in their planning process, so "fresh" does have value.

But if you're going to do this you have to do it right, like most things Internet. Your credibility falls like a rock if you have homepage content that is outdated or occurred two months ago.

So, yes, it is very important and the more frequently you can update or provide "freshness" to your homepage and website, the better.

Google Love

Google Love: Getting and Keeping Good Position With Google - What Does Google Think About Your Website?

Everyone wants great rank and position with Google. It's the most popular search engine and used by millions of people daily.

If you get top ranking, for the keywords and keyword phrases you're targeting, it can mean hundreds and hundreds of qualified brides and grooms for your website.

My report "Google Love: Getting and Keeping Good Position With Google - What Does Google Think About Your Website?" is free for ADVANTAGE members and shows you how to quickly and effectively tell if your website is in the good graces of Google.

This special report is free for ADVANTAGE MEMBERS or available for purchase ($14.95) and immediate download here:

Google Love: Getting and Keeping Good Position With Google - What Does Google Think About Your Website?

My Favorite Tools To Fight Spam and PC Viruses

I get a lot of questions about the different tools and software I use, here are a few of my favorites:

Spam Arrest
Stops 99.9% of spam using a challenge/response system. It has a few short-comings (it adds an additional step to a legitimate person's attempt to contact you via email) and requires some management, but it does work. Spam Arrest.

Cloudmark
I also use Cloudmark to filter email that gets to my PC. I don't use Spam Arrest for all of my email accounts, so found Cloudmark to help filter and automatically put junk email into a junk email folder (which I review every couple days for legitimate email).

McAffee Virus Protection
I like McAffee over Norton/Symantec. I've heard of so many problems with Norton/Symantec. McAffee works great with no trouble. I don't like how it updates itself, but it's probably a setting I could change.

Building Inbound Links (Limited Opportunity)

INBOUND LINK BUILDING IS CRITICAL TO YOUR POSITIONING WITH GOOGLE

"Some of Our Favorites" Front Page Position & Link at Wedding Planning Links (.com)

If you are familiar with the value of inbound links, and working on a well thought out search engine optimization strategy, this is exactly what you're looking for.

Limited to 100 positions, this is on the FRONT PAGE at Wedding Planning Links (.com), a direct link, and positioned in "Some of our Favorites."

If you're developing inbound links to your website from quality ranked sites, this is a great, inexpensive, cost-effective opportunity to get a full year of link value.

If you are working to KEEP your existing top rankings, or IMPROVE your current rankings as part of an overall search engine optimization strategy, this will help.

Wedding Planning Links (.com) currently passes great link value on to all the websites in our directory. A front page link is even more powerful.

Sign-up on line or call me with questions at (978) 283-8295.

http://www.bookmoreweddings.com/products/item17.cfm

Chris Jaeger

Please note: This is a limited offer and positions are selling quickly. All links are first come, first serve. Visit http://www.weddingplanninglinks.com

Understanding The Brides Who Visit Your Website

There are four types of brides who visit your website and providing each of them the information they are looking for is critical to your conversion (turning a bride who visits your website into a phone call or inquiry).

Your navigation scheme and the content you provide at your website is very important when it comes to keeping a bride's attention.

Often the difference and conversion is heavily influenced by your unique value proposition.

Here are the four types of brides who visit your website.

1) She knows EXACTLY what she wants.

2) She knows approximately what she wants or has a pretty good idea.

3) She doesn't know what she wants, but if she found it, she'd buy it.

4) She found your website by accident and really doesn't want anything you offer.

When you start thinking about these things, while developing your online marketing strategy, you'll acheive a competitive ADVANTAGE, and be on your way to getting great results from your website and you'll consistently beat your competition.

FLASH and SEO

I get a lot of questions about FLASH and how it fits into, or doesn't fit into, search engine friendly sites. Here's my .02 cents worth (and the truth!).

1) Search engines DO NOT see FLASH code. So anything at your website that uses FLASH, will not be indexed or crawled by a search engine spider.

This means:

Menus
Navigation
All FLASH "Enter Here" Pages (the KISS of death, trust me..)
Anything... that is created using FLASH

Does this mean if your site is ALL FLASH search engines won't see it and be able to index it?

YES

Does this mean your ALL FLASH website doesn't have a chance of being top ranked at Google, Yahoo!, or MSN?

YES

Does this mean your ALL FLASH website will be harder for brides to find?

YES

Does this mean your FLASH navigation system is invisible to search engine spiders and therefore they can't follow and index those pages?

YES

Are there workarounds to an all FLASH site that I can use to solve this problem?

NO

Are there workarounds that I can use if I use some FLASH to get the FLASH elements of my website indexed and ranked?

NO. If it's FLASH... it doensn't get indexed, plain and simple.

Can I use some FLASH on my home page (or web pages)?

SURE, as long as you don't mind that ANYTHING in FLASH will not be crawled and therefore stands little or no chance of being indexed or ranked well at Google, Yahoo!, or MSN.

I've heard there are things you can do to fix this problem and that FLASH isn't that bad?

Oh yes, and I heard the moon is made out of cheese, too.

Any of your competitors, who create easy to crawl, well optimized pages, without FLASH, and using a full suite of search engine optimization techniques, both on-page and off-page, is going to beat you - and their website will be easier for brides to find at Google, Yahoo!, and MSN for any competitive keyword/phrase.

Understanding Conversion

My friend Dianna Huff, at DH Communications, is a MARCOM writer and one who "gets it" when it comes to the Internet.

Today she sent me an article about conversion and it made me think:

Most people don't even know what conversion is or take it into consideration when developing a strategic online marketing plan or designing a website.

Here are some thoughts I'd like to share related to conversion:

1) Conversion is what it's all about. You can have all the traffic in the world, but if it doesn't convert, it's worth nothing. If the source of your traffic doesn't have quality traffic (i.e. brides who need your products and services) the result will be poor, or no, conversion. Start thinking QUALITY and not quantity.

2) AGAIN, conversion is what it's all about. You might have what you think is a "great website", some brides might even tell you they like it, but the brides who found it and didn't like it didn't call you to tell you it's lousy, trust me, they just left looking for your competition.

3) Conversion takes place ONLY after a bride has done these four things:

a) Read your page copy
b) Determined that you have what she needs or is looking for
c) Has connected with your unique value proposition.
d) Is ready to move to the next step

Conversion is usually a phone call, an inquiry form filled out, or some other form of desired action (i.e. she had downloaded your "take-away").

4) If you're not tracking and measuring conversion, you really don't have any idea how well your website is really working - or if the investments you make in your website and online marketing are really paying off.

Calculating Calculation

1000 visitor sessions
50 inquiries or phone calls
Conversion is 5%

Conversion doesn't "just happen" and if your competition understands how important it is, and you don't, you'll lose sale after sale to them.

You can buy a special report I wrote, with tips and advice to help you improve your website conversion, Conversion: Turning The Brides and Grooms Who Visit Your Website Into Inquiries and Sales, here.

Buy it online, mention you heard about it at my Blog, and I'll include a one-hour follow-up phone consultation, a $150 value, to answer your questions and evaluate your current conversion ratio.

Opening A New Account at Go Daddy

Go Daddy is the best domain registrar around. They offer 24/7 live technical support and the people who answer are actually helpful.

Why register or move your domain to Go Daddy?

1) 24/7 technical support at (480) 505-8877.

2) Great prices on domain registration (75% cheaper than Network Solutions).

3) Easy to use control panel allows easy management of your domains.

4) Friendly, knowledgable people on the other end of the phone, who are there when you need them.

5) Reputable and you can bet they'll be around for a long time.

6) Transfer your domain registration to Go Daddy and they'll give you an extra year of domain registration for free (this may be a limited offer).

The question: How do you open a new account at Go Daddy?

Surprisingly, their isn't a button on their home page to "Open A New Go Daddy Account". This is hard to believe and I've mentioned it to their technical support staff. Maybe they'll add one. Until then, here's what you do:

1) Go to Go Daddy at http://www.godaddy.com

2) On the right side of the page, DO NOT put in a login name or password, just click on the SECURE LOGIN button.

3) On the next screen, you'll get an error message and an option link to SET UP A NEW ACCOUNT.

4) Follow the directions!

5) Write down your Go Daddy account number, password, and PIN.

6) Watch your email for confirmation information.

To transfer your domain registration to Go Daddy use your control panel or main navigation options to select DOMAINS, DOMAIN TRANSFERS.

If you run into problems, give them a call. They'll help you and can walk through each step with you.

Page Title Tags and Search Engine Optimization

Page Titles and Search Engine Optimization

The single most important variable, in any search engine optimization strategy, in my opinion, is your page title tag.

This is the code, programmed individually into each page at your website, "behind the scenes" if you will, that displays information at the top of a user's browser (top left).

It's also what search engines use, almost exclusively, as the first piece of information displayed about your website in the search engine results pages (SERPS).

These are the page title tags - in almost every case.

Title tags are considered an "on-page" search engine optimization variable. Their counter-part would be an "off-page" search engine optimization variable (i.e. inbound links).

While a title tag won't magically get your web page top ranked, nor will it, by itself, catapult a web page to top rank for a keyword/phrase, without a carefully crafted title tag you're page doesn't stand a chance of showing up when a bride searches for your keywords/phrases.

If I go to your home page and the page title is:

Page 1

Untitle Page

Insert Page Title Here

Blank

... you're not even in the game.

What do you need to know?

There are a lot of things to know about page title tags, here are some of the basics:

1) Your page title tag should not be more than nine words, or about 150 characters.

2) It has to contain the keywords and phrases a bride is using to search. You're trying to "match the search".

3) The word wedding and weddings (with the "s") are two different keywords.

4) It does not have to be perfectly correct grammar.

5) One page CAN NOT be used to target all of your keywords and keyword phrases. Use separate pages to target different keywords/phrases.

To view the source code of a web page and see a title tag, with the other meta-tags being used, follow these steps (Internet Explorer).

* Go to the page with your browser.

* Right click on the page somewhere with your mouse.

* Select "View Source"

Don't panic, this is the .html code that creates your web page. At the top, look for the word TITLE between a greater than and less than sign.

Writing Good Web Copy

20 Things To Remember For Good Web Copy
Source: http://www.webpronews.com

1) Tight writing. That doesn't mean bad or easy writing.

2) Copy of about 600-800 words is better for SEO and catching the long tail of search.

3) Title - Subject - Support, in that order, like subject, verb, object.

4) Titles should be snappy and informative - clickable, but clear.

5) Leads (first sentence or paragraph) should get to the point. Tell the reader what the article's about first thing.

6) No fancy, wordy intros where it's not clear what you're talking about.

7) Information beats fluff every time. Pretty is for books and newspapers (and only sometimes).

8) Information does not beat style every time. Style keeps people awake.

9) Sans serif fonts are easier and faster to read on computer screens.

10) White space is awesome - even better than big, pretty pictures.

11) Content should be scannable.

12) Think in bullets and subtitles.

13) People like lists.

14) Pictures should be specific and informative, not generic, decorative and ad-like.

15) Photos should be relevant to content.

16) People in pictures should look friendly and approachable (and have their whole head).

17) Photos should be full body if possible.

18) Spell stuff right. It makes you look smarter.

19) Grammar IS important. Unless you're not really a professional.

20) Online press releases should be even tighter than Web copy.

You can subscribe to a variety of online marketing newsletters and RSS feeds at http://www.webpronews.com

Thoughts For The Day: Domain Ownership

Domain Ownership

Do you own your own domain?

You'd be surprised how many people I talk to who don't even own their own domain.

Most don't know.

You might think you do, but it's worth confirming.

Seems a lot of webmasters register domains in their name, or their company's name.

I've done it myself, not intentionally, but when in a rush.

1) Do you own your domain?

2) Is the email address that they use for notifications (i.e renewals) your current? If it isn't, you won't get notifications of a pending expiration or other important news about your domain registration.

3) Is your regular mailing address current?

4) When does your domain expire? (consider renewing it for a 5 or 10 year term).

5) Who is your domain registered through? Who is the "REGISTRAR"?

6) Do they offer 24/7 telephone support (i.e. you can call and a REAL person answers the phone?

7) If not, move your domain registration management to Go Daddy immediately.

Helpful links:

Domain Tools - http://www.domaintools.com

Go Daddy is online at: http://www.godaddy.com

Common PPC (Pay Per Click) Mistakes

When you make mistakes with using pay-per-click you can spend a lot of money fast and have little, or nothing, to show for it. Pay-per-click isn't rocket-science, but it is rather sophisticated if you want to use all the bells and whistles and get the best value for your dollar.

This full article is available to members of my ADVANTAGE program: Common Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising Mistakes.

Follow this link to learn more about my ADVANTAGE program and how it will help you beat your online competition, get better results from your website, and book more weddings.

Want Better Results From Your Website? Who Doesn't?

The marketing message you deliver at your web site does some pretty *heavy lifting*.

In other words, it's a primary reason a bride/groom converts from just another web site visitor into an inquiry or lead.

Trust me, it isn't your animated graphics, background music, or use of Flash (all of these things I recommend you do NOT use).

Do you focus on the value and benefits of doing business with your company?

What makes you different?

Why should a bride make an inquiry – today?

Here are some guidelines that will help you evaluate your marketing message:

+ Is the benefit of doing business with you communicated in a clear and very obvious fashion throughout your website?

+ As a new customer, would it excite you or make you more interested?

+ Is your message very specific about what's in it for the bride if she chooses you?

+ How does your marketing message compare to your competition?

+ Do you offer a unique value or benefit that they don't?

+ If you do, is that clearly communicated at your web site?

If you're conversion rate is less than 10% something is probably wrong at your web site.

A good place to take a first look is your marketing message and your unique value proposition.

What Should You Be Looking At In Your Website Stats (At A Minimum)

Reading and Analyzing Website Statistics: The Basics

Q: Chris, why should I be looking at my stats?


A: Tracking the visitors to your site is an essential part of any online business. Simply knowing how many visitors you are getting is justification enough to have some kind of statistics tracking capability. It will also help you determine if the investments you are making with your website and online marketing are paying off.

This full article is available to members of my ADVANTAGE program: What Should You Be Looking At In Your Website Stats (At A Minimum).

Follow this link to learn more about my ADVANTAGE program and how it will help you beat your online competition, get better results from your website, and book more weddings.

5 Tips To Help Grab A Bride's Attention

Sometimes you get so hung up in "the look", or that FLASH is "cool", or fill-in-the-blank, that you lose sight of two very important objectives:

(1) Getting a bride to stay at your website once she's found it.

(2) Getting her to click to the next most important page.

Obviously, you'll want to add:

(3) Conversion: Inquiry, phone call, or take-away.

You only have a few seconds to grab a bride's attention once she gets to your website.

Online marketing folks call it the "3 Second Rule" and I believe it.

Here are five tips to grab a bride's attention and interest and keep her from heading for the back button on her browser.

1) Make Sure Your Homepage Loads Quickly

If your homepage takes more than 5 to 8 seconds to load you risk a "bailout". If you don't believe me, go take a look at your logs and see how many people are looking at one page and then leaving your website. One way to reduce this problem is to make sure your home page loads quickly (and without errors). Flash presentations or large graphics that take 10 to 15 seconds to load can create serious problems and adversely impact the results you get from your website.

2) Get To The WIIFM (What's In It For Me Message)

Brides want to know what you can do for them, what you've done for others, and "what's in it for them". If you don't open your homepage with that message what message ARE you delivering? Give a bride the information she came looking for immediately at the top of your homepage. THEN... and only then will she keep on reading.

3) Avoid Using Odd Colors and Background Images

When it's hard to read the information at your website brides will just leave - it's just that simple. Use black or dark blue text and avoid funky colors or background images that can distract attention from your marketing message (i.e. WIIFM).

4) Use Navigation Links That People Can Clearly See

Your links to sub-pages and other features at your website should be VERY CLEARLY identifiable. I shouldn't have to mouse-over them to see they are a link and they shouldn't be light colored in such a way they blend in to none-linked text.

5) Use Bullets To Highlight The Most Important Value/Benefits

People tend to scan web pages first before they make the choice to read the rest of your page copy or even to visit other pages. Using quick-and-to-the-point bulleted items you'll actually get them to READ about the value, benefits, or special and unique features of your services or products.

6) Important Content Goes Above The Fold

Put your MOST important information up front and "above the fold" or visible on the first screen with minimal scrolling. In other words, get to the point! When was the last time you visited a website and kept reading down a page (or clicked to another page) when the first paragraph of copy didn't DIRECTLY address the reason you clicked to that page in the first place?

Will Cascading Style Sheets Improve Your Search Engine Rank?

Will Cascading Style Sheets Improve Your Search Engine Rank?


There's a lot of talk about Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and when I try to explain it to new clients I tell them it's like cleaning your house and then keeping it clean.

This full article is available to members of my ADVANTAGE program: Will Cascading Style Sheets Improve Your Search Engine Rank?.

Follow this link to learn more about my ADVANTAGE program and how it will help you beat your online competition, get better results from your website, and book more weddings.

10 Reasons A Bride or Groom Will Leave Your Web Site

10 Reasons A Bride or Groom Will Leave Your Web Site
By Chris Jaeger, Book More Weddings, http://www.bookmoreweddings.com

If you're not getting the results you expected from your websites you might be suffering from "bail-out" - that horrible moment in time when a visiting bride says to herself "where's my back-button".

Here are ten reasons a bride is likely to leave your website and look for another website:

Slowness

Most brides will leave a web site when they have to wait for it to load. The result: lost sales. Online marketing types call it “bail out” and it’s hands down the number one reason brides will leave your web site. Your first page needs to load in less than 5 seconds, 8 seconds at the most. That’s right 5 to 8 seconds. Studies show bail out starts shortly thereafter. After 20 seconds, bail out rates can be as high as 80%. Slowness is usually a result of poor web site hosting, pages that are too large, pages with too many graphics or nested tables, complex programming, poorly written scripts, or maybe even FLASH.

404 Errors

When a bride or groom visits your site and requests a nonexistent page (URL) the server sends their browser an error page. This event is recorded as a “404 Not Found” error in your web server logs and is important information you should look for on a monthly basis. It means brides are NOT getting what they’re looking for. Encountering an error page is a frustrating experience for a web site visitor and studies show this is a leading reason why people leave web sites. The most common reasons for 404 errors include: programming error, incorrect or outdated link on one or more of your pages, incorrect or outdated link to your site from another site, search engine index contains an outdated page, outdated user bookmark to a page you deleted, or a bride/groom made an error when manually entering a URL.

Web Site Text That is Hard To Read

Background images, use of italics, animated graphics dancing across a bride’s computer monitor, use of multiple fonts, too much text and not enough “white space” all make it hard to read the information a bride is looking for. Dark colored text on light colored pages (non-background) will outperform any other combination 99% of the time. Also, DON'T SHOUT AT YOUR VISITORS BY WRITING IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS and keep text aligned to the top and to the left – that’s how people’s eyes are trained to read. Centered text in paragraphs is hard to read in most cases and should be avoided. Choose fonts that are easy to read like Arial, Verdana, Geneva, and Helvetica and keep them consistent in size and color throughout your site.

Frames

I see too many framed web sites and I recommend most sites avoid using them. In most cases they are more confusing to the brides and grooms who visit your site then they are worth. Frames can be useful on occasion, but often they create more problems then benefit. Study after study shows web browsers have a more enjoyable experience at web sites without frames. If that’s not enough of a reason, most search engines have problems or ignore pages that use frames. If your webmaster insists on using frames, ask him/her WHY and then how they will compensate for these two significant problems that can result in lost sales.

Navigation

When a bride can’t clearly figure out how to get from one page to another at your web site she’ll usually just use the one thing she can count on every time – her BACK button – and leave. Navigation links should allow moving from your home page to any other page on your web site within three clicks. The most usable navigation (i.e. bride friendly) uses both TEXT links (underlined blue text links) and graphical buttons (buttons!! not pictures). I just finished a book by a consultant who works for America Online. They pay him big $$$ every year to make sure AOL is easy to use and “user-friendly”. When it comes to navigation, at web sites that deliver the best results, he says it comes down to these five words, “Don’t make them think”.

Poor Overall Design

In the past 12 months the quality of most of the wedding sites I've visited has improved significantly. I attribute this to the fact that sharp business owners and managers know they can sell more wedding products and book more of their services with a top-notch web site. As a result, most understand that taking a casual approach to the design and marketing of their web sites is a mistake that costs them sales. If you’ve never built a web site before, if you don’t have a very good understanding of online marketing, web page design, programming, and layout, it’s unlikely a “home-grown” site will be very effective at selling more of your products or services. When brides find a poorly designed web site it doesn’t leave a very good impression. Not surprisingly, they usually just leave and go looking for something better.

Poorly Written Marketing Copy

The words that appear at your web site communicate a message and if your message is poorly written, grammatically incorrect, or difficult to follow, you significantly increase the chances of a bride leaving your web site with a less than favorable impression about your business. Even if she doesn’t leave, an ineffectively written and delivered message will reduce the results you get. Marketing copy makes a big difference.

Eye Candy Doesn’t Work

Forget about loud colors, blinking or scrolling text, fancy animated graphics, that's NOT what brides are looking for. It isn’t a very good way to portray your business and in some cases it communicates the wrong message. In the worst case, it leaves a bad impression. Anything at your web site that distracts or challenges someone’s eyes is a potential problem and will most likely annoy a bride or groom who is trying to make a decision about using your products or services.

Get To The Point (FAST)

Give a bride or groom the information they came to your web site looking for and DO IT FAST. If you don’t they’re likely to become disinterested and then leave looking for better information somewhere else. You probably have less than 20 seconds to deliver enough information to keep a bride interested in staying at your web site. Keep your pages clean looking and well organized. Make it easy for a bride/groom to find information about WHO you are, WHAT you do, WHAT special services you offer, WHAT makes you different and WHY they should do business with you. Everything else is fluff. Brides don’t buy fluff they want the real thing – so get to the point right away and give them what they came looking for.

Inadequate Contact Information

Brides love the Internet because it saves them time and makes finding local wedding services easier than ever before. Typically (or, hopefully) a bride will visit your web site, browse through several of your pages, and then want to know how to contact you. Besides an online inquiry form (not just an EMAIL link), you should have your company name, address, phone, fax and email address at the bottom of every page (or in another appropriately located position on each page). If this information isn’t easily available it sets up a situation where a bride can visit your site but then leave without taking the next natural step: making an inquiry and requesting more information.