Historically, search engine companies (Google, Yahoo!, Bing etc) are among the original innovating web application developers and their success has afforded them with the resources to learn how to scale applications. In particular, Google has been working diligently (as does Yahoo) to contribute to the web developer community, increasing awareness and providing research about creating good experiences with web content. Today they’ve even released their solution to the performance issues surround Domain Name Service (DNS) and with their Google Public DNS project. DNS is the process by which your browser determines which server to query for the pages you request.

It has probably always played a role in the background in some way, but is now a talking point — the speed of a web site is instrumental in how Google determines the rank of your site in search engine result pages. While there may be numerous opinions on the topic, the fact remains that speed is vital to a positive user experience and a healthy eco-system, so those facts make any opinions quite moot. You can now find Google’s opinion on the speed of your web site in Webmaster Tools, in the site performance section (currently still a labs feature). Take a look and see how your site compares to the rest of the web.

WordPress is an extremely popular open source content management system and publishing tool. I contribute to the performance of WordPress via W3 Total Cache, which (from a bird’s eye view) accomplishes a number of goals:

• Make servers more green by reducing the resource demands in delivering dynamic content
• Reduce load time of sites, thereby providing the benefits stated above
• Allow bloggers and other WordPress plugin developers to continue to focus on producing content and easy-to-deploy functionality for WordPress without having to worry about performance penalties / implementation issues or keep an eye on their WordPress installation.

The action items to implement the largest performance wins for web applications traditionally include the following:

• Progressive render: It’s imperative that CSS and JavaScript are properly embedded into web pages to ensure that the user begins to see content displaying as quickly as possible. The term progressive render literally implies that the web site loads instantly with a water fall effect rather than showing users a white page for several seconds and drawing the entire page at once. Proper use of this technique is realized through careful placement and embedding of CSS and JavaScript in the head of the page. As well as loading JavaScript near the end of the page in addition to using pipelining techniques to overcome download limitations in some browsers.
• Reduce HTTP Transactions: This technique takes shape in 3 ways:

  HTTP Compression: the smaller the file, the faster it can be generated, sent and rendered or executed. Gzip or deflate compression is supported by modern browsers and is one of the most fundamental performance wins in web development.

  Minification: the staple technique of Yahoo.com, Google.com and Bing.com for years and instrumental in the “1 second page loads” they appear to have. Combining CSS and JavaScripts respectively, removing white space, comments, line breaks and even inserting CSS and JavaScript inline in the document, (if also compressed) ensures that the least amount of data is sent to the browser.

  Image Sprites: combining multiple images into a single file and using CSS to manipulate them on the page. Since your browser will download a larger image faster (in practice) than numerous smaller images, this is a real performance win when coupled with browser-side caching.

  These methods make sure that there are fewer “calls” to a web server to deliver a page. When it comes to performance, less is more.

• Caching: Cache everything and cache often! Words to that effect are the mantra of hard core web developers. This technique includes setting expiration time for CSS, JavaScript, and images etc that are downloaded from your site. It also includes, caching pages, database queries, RSS feeds and so forth so that your web server spends time sending content instead of generating it. Don’t forget that Content Delivery Networks are also a very important type of cache that significantly reduce the latency of content intended for a global audience.

Will it ever be enough? Doubtful. And there’s much more to it than the few items I listed. Google is already more than kicking tires on their new take on how web enabled devices should communicate. A very ambitious endeavor, but for Google who is bold enough to deploy HTML5 on their main property (Google.com), I’d have to say that they’ve got the resources to see it through. And as always it’s easy to see the wake of Steve Souders’ contributions to web application performance – no doubt a vital contributor at Google (the page speed Firefox plugin?), formerly of Yahoo fame.

The takeaway is this, on the horizon, there will be more talk about the performance of your site and that in turn will raise the bar and awareness in the open source community about how to make high performance applications, the reasons to do it and with which tools to measure those results.

However, there are some Google ranking factors that most professionals agree affect site positioning on Google SERPs. However, these are opinions, find out for yourself how these apply to projects you’re working on.

Recommended Steps to Improve Google Ranking

1. Use keywords in HTML title tags. Probably the most significant factor for a site regardless of the competitive landscape, the title tag must be consistent with content in the page for best results. The more keywords in your title, the less effective this factor, be judicious.

2. Create quality anchor text for inbound links. At one time, according to some SEO professionals, quality anchor text was an essential component of a well-ranked site. After all, this is the text the user opted to see by clicking a link on another site. Most SEOs still contend that quality anchor text is a highly significant, positive ranking factor. If not for spiders, for visitors clicking in as well. Obviously the text should be relevant to the destination page for best results; that’s where your on page optimization comes in to play.

3. Increase link popularity. Link popularity takes into account the number of inbound links present. Link authority has less relevance, though it is still a factor depending on the competitive landscape. Link popularity is based on a global count of links from all sites. However, quality links are still critical to creating site authority; authority means ranking for more phrases than you intentionally target.

4. Hang in there. The age of a site is an important positive weighting factor according to many SEO professionals. It’s certainly a reasonable assumption. Failed sites are dropped as soon as the hosting subscription ends. If a site has been around for 10 years, the owners must be dong something right, especially if link popularity is steady developed over the years. Unfortunately for site owners, there’s no way to speed up the aging process – except hanging in there.

5. Increase the popularity of internal links. These links direct visitors to helpful, related content. They’re important in providing visitors with a positive on-site experience. Search engines view on-site link popularity as a sign that visitors like what they see and want to learn more.

7. Build deep links. Deep links are relevant to the topicality of the target page or keyword. The relevance of these inbound links matters to a site’s Google ranking. However, please note point 3. The sheer number of inbound links is a factor as well. Quality deep links carry more weight and add credibility to a site.

8. Connect with sites selling to the same demographic. Create a number of links with sites within your topical community. This helps visitors further their searches – something Google likes very much.

9. Keep old links. Google looks for web stability. The older the link, the more trust it has. It indicates a happy relationship with the site owner linking in who recognizes the value of sending visitors off-site. Google watchers suggest a three to four month time window for spiders to determine that this is a well-established, long-term link that has value to visitors of both sites.

10. Use keywords in body text. Make sure that keywords receive prominent display in headlines, headers, sub-heads. It’s important that the keywords used in HTML text on page match with keywords used in the site’s meta data and title tags.

Not Recommended

1. Don’t use session IDs in URLs. It sounds like a good idea on the surface, an easy way to track customer information, but here’s the problem. Each time a spider crawls the site, a new URL with session ID is created. The spider now has two, or three or more URLs all showing duplicate content. Go back to Go, do not collect $200. Don’t confuse this with pages that may have a couple GET variables in them; avoid that when you can, but just avoid having your pages containing session IDs.

2. Choose a reputable web host. The most potent negative ranking factor is server accessibility. If your server, located in Timbuktu, is inaccessible to spiders, it’s inaccessible to visitors. Down time soon becomes down and out time.

3. Avoid duplicate content. Googlebots employ filters to detect duplicate content. Now, if you opt to post some syndicated articles, you’re providing a service to visitors. However, a bot will recognize that content (it’s already appeared on 400 sites) and you’ll see a drop in traffic rank.

4. Jettison low-quality links. Google assesses the character of your site by the company you keep so keep good company by unlinking from (1) links farms, (2) sites with absolutely no quality content and (3) otherwise low-quality sites; e.g. FFA (free for all) sites.

5. Avoid any kind of links deception. Googlebots aren’t smart, but they can detect some paid links and a variety of links scams, including generated links. If a Googlebot suspects links fraud, your site may be penalized and sent to the basement or banned altogether.

6. Avoid a log-in before visitors and bots access “the good stuff.” Log-ins can easily confuse a bot who won’t be able to access quality content hidden behind a log in. Even though users with Google toolbars will be unknowingly suggesting new URLs to be crawled as they surf about, having teasers for the content your monetizing by subscription will help your SEO.

7. Avoid using frames. Horizontal and vertical framesets frameset are commonly used by designers to present more than one page of a site on the screen at the same time. However, frames are also bot traps. They can get in but they can’t get out, making it impossible for them to index a site – at all! Tell your developer to look at using iframes if possible or absolutely necessary.

8. Avoid duplicate title/meta tags. Title/meta tags are a valuable resource for site owners to expand access points to a site. Using title tags ensures that more pages are indexed and listed in Google’s SERPs as distinct links. All good. Unfortunately, too many duplicate title tags on pages in which the content topic hasn’t changed, is redundant and a waste of the bots time. Use tag your pages uniquely and judiciously.

9. Do not keyword stuff. Even though search engines no longer give much weight to keyword tags, keyword stuffing continues. Select 20 to 30 keywords – top-tier and long-tail – and focus on them. Keep keyword density in body text at no more than 3%. The old 5% rule still led to on-site gibberish – obviously these figures vary by competitive landscape.

10. Do not let quality slip – even for a day. Spiders crawl sites with greater frequency and sophistication and index updates are common as changes to a site are implemented. During periods of construction, be sure to keep spiders out of staging areas that have yet to be completed nofollow or block with robots. These works-in-progress may cost you points in the ranking sweepstakes.

Google controls 46% of all searches. Doesn’t it make sense to give this search engine exactly what it wants and delete what it doesn’t want?

Rhetorical question.

Whether starting out with a new domain name, or a domain that’s been around for a decade, you can rank your blog on Google if you just do what Google wants you to do. So here are 25/50 tips to get your blog ranked by the world’s biggest SE.

50. Build your own or move to WordPress. WordPress is a blog platform that’s open source (free), robust, extensible and easy to use. Add Feedburner, which equips site owners to broadcast RSS feeds and develop user metrics. Next, synch up Google Analytics and a sitemap plug-in to simplify populating the blog and developing useful, actionable metrics. Also, make sure your blog is pinging Technorati and other social media sites like digg.

49. Don’t worry aboutpage rank. PR is highly over-rated as a yardstick of online success. Connectivity within a web community and expansion through content syndication and guest blogging are more critical to building site credibility than page rank. PR will take care of itself over time if you do it right.

48. Make a difference, or at least have a clear purpose. Differentiate your content on every post. Cover lots of editorial ground.

47. Use a conversational tone. Dry, starchy academic writing is strictly for the textbooks. Write words that people “hear” instead of read.

46. Provide a “Tell Your Friends” link on your blog. Birds of a feather do, indeed, flock together. So, if one of your regulars shares an interest in philately, chances are s/he has other friends with an interest in stamp collecting.

45. Study the competition. They’re studying you. Check out SpyFu to do a little undercover work on search analytics employed by competitor sites and their visitors. You can’t touch the content but you can’t copyright an idea, either, so pick up some new paths of thought from others in your site’s arena.

44. Remember SEO basics. Use provocative, keyword-rich title tags, meta keywords and descriptions, and only link to high-quality sites. Never over do it. Keep your posts relevant, natural, accurate and, above all, current.

43. Don’t stuff blog post titles with keywords. It’s a form of keyword stuffing and spiders hate keyword stuffing. The ratio in headlines should be ~40% keywords, ~60% non-keywords.

42. Submit your URL to blog directories. There are “best of the web,” and paid directories, like Yahoo, and free directories like the Open Directory Project. Every directory listing is another link to your site and another way visitors can find you. Just google them to find more.

41. Create blog categories that contain keywords, i.e., Ecommerce, SEO, Affiliates, etc. for use with a “site hosting” or “site design” blog.

40. Content quality counts. Research topics about which target readers want to learn. Write something new, useful and relevant. And don’t forget to regularly update older posts. Things change fast on the web so last year’s “next big thing” is this year’s hackneyed cliché.

39. Vary topics, content length, relevancy and posting times. However, be consistent, as well. Keep blogging. It can take time for a blog to catch the notice of a search engine spider.

38. Get guest bloggers. Add links from their blogs and establish your site’s link community. There are people within your web neighborhood with opinions and good information. Contact them to invite submissions to your blog and your site in general.

37. Don’t use duplicate content. The only duplicate content that appears in your blog posts are quotes, and they should be identified with quotation marks.

36. Call posters by name. If Bob M. from Athens, Georgia, posts to your blog, recognize his contribution with a “Thanks, Bob” at the end of your response.

35. Make friends with other bloggers in your commercial, business or NFP space. Ask to become a guest blogger, or seek endorsements from the “names” within your site sphere.

34. Send a personal note to posters. Not all bloggers have the time to do this but if you can send a personal email thank-you note to a poster, you’ve increased the chances of that poster becoming a member of your site community.

33. Encourage viral link building. Take a stand. Introduce the coming paradigm shift in web commerce, provoke controversy. It sells. Just ask Ann Coulter.

32. Ensure the blog is optimized for Technorarri. Claim your blog, set an avatar and pings, use tags where appropriate and be sure to ping various blog tracking sites.

31. Don’t place ads on your blog, yet. If you feel you must (you’re seeing nice PPC revenues), determine that your site’s HTML is optimized to position those ads at the bottom of each blog page.

30. If your blog isn’t pulling, have the code reproduced so it’s as semantic, accessible and code-to-content optimized as possible. Also, hire a code expert to position content above ads or any other content in the site markup.

29. Ignore Alexa. A lot of new site owners rely on Alexa for site metrics but remember, Alexa is a popularity metric since only Alexa toolbar users contribute data — and that’s a less-than-universal test population.

28. Build credibility. Publishing authorities on your site’s topicality usually does the trick. Once blog credibility is established, identify trends, solve new problems and gradually expand the topic range of your blog.

27. Buy or build a hot blog design and submit it to design galleries. Hire a site/blog designer, or bring your vision to fruition. This enables your blog to appear five or six demographic iterations from your home site, expanding the site’s reach outside the immediate site community. This creates new marketing channels fast.

26. Develop some friendly contacts on social media sites and participate in the community. Ask contacts to promote your blog content. Also ask for contributors. People love to express their opinions.

25. Focus on ranking for three key words or phrases to start. The keywords you select should appear in your HTML title tags and within the site’s content when appropriate. However, watch keyword density levels. Anything above 5% starts to sound like gibberish. 2% to 3% keyword density provides more creative latitude for the content developer, and still lets bots know what the site is about.

24. Only purchase ad links on relevant niche sites. This, by default, limits competitive links and delivers more qualified (knowledgeable and ready-to-purchase) visitors to your site.

23. Participate in your link community. Forum and blog links are ephemeral, lasting a day or two as web fodder, so there’s always the need for more green. Interact by posting to not only drive traffic with the link, but to also pick up another link from a credible site. All good.

22. Publish new content on weekdays. Even search engines need a break. Actually, more people are online Monday through Friday so your latest blog post is still the latest when posted on Monday rather than Sunday. A little thing, for sure, but little things mean a lot online.

21. Write content for various experience levels. For many spaces DIYs are the largest sector. Some readers are just starting out. Others have been at it for years and probably know more than you do, so post blogs to appeal to a broad range of skill sets — from green rookie to wizened old vet.

20. Cite the sources of your content. This adds credibility to your posts. It also provides a trail for a reader interested in learning more about the topic at hand.

19. Focus on contextual relevancy before quantity of links. Connectivity within a market or topic segment has more value than SEO anchor text, at least in the short term.

18. Poll your readers. Everybody’s got an opinion. Provide a platform to let posters and readers vote on a topic related to your site. It doesn’t do any good if you run a retail outlet and poll visitors on who they’d like to see in the White House. Stay on topic.

17. Create surveys. Surveys are more in depth than a poll. One survey you might want to try is one in which buyers rate the services and products you sell. Great marketing information. Consider placing a satisfaction survey somewhere on your site.

16. Write about popular brands or celebrities where possible. It doesn’t matter if you’re blogging short sales in the market or clothing for the over-sized human, celebrity and name brands get picked up by spiders.

15. Find free stuff to give away. Free still works on the web. There’s lots of open source software (OSS), mortgage calculators, real-time stock feeds and other digital goodies that visitors can download free. Free is nice.

14. Answer questions on Google groups and Yahoo Answers. People write in with all sorts of questions, some sure to fall within your area of expertise. By signing on as an authority in a field (your arena) you build credibility. Plus, it’s fun helping others from the comfort of your own work station.

13. Add imagery and video content to your posts. A picture is worth a thousand web words. Charts and graphs simplify complex information and don’t take up a lot of room. If you aren’t an artist, create a relationship with a freelancer. Never use clip art.

12. Use QA sessions in your blog. You’re the expert. Also, invite guest bloggers to handle questions beyond your skill set. Helpful, simple advice keeps visitors coming back and makes you a guru.

11. Syndicate content outside of your blog. Every site owner needs content. Fortunately, there’s plenty of it free for the taking. Sites like Helium, Ezine and Go Articles are content supermarkets. Post your piece and pick up non-reciprocal, in-bound links for your effort. Content syndication increases link popularity.

10. Direct (future) page rank efforts to well-optimized content on your home site. Don’t direct visitors and bots to the garbage bin of out-dated content stored in the site’s archives. Point them to the new news.

9. Update or create a Wikipedia page and link to your site. Another means of establishing yourself as an authority. Just make sure the Wiki piece is accurate, well written and typo-free.

8. Submit industry or topical news to general news sites. Not just industry related sites. If a small oil and gas company brings in a gusher, it’s of broader interest than to just industry insiders. Also adds credibility and another link.

7. Deep links or links to sub-pages are vital. There’s a tendency to link from a remote site to your home page. Not necessarily the best strategy. Consider linking to pages deeper in the site – pages related directly to your blog post. This way, visitors are in your site and less likely to bounce.

6. Respond to comments in your blog. This accomplishes three important objectives: (1) it shows that there’s a human behind the blog; (2) it gives you a chance to show your expertise; and (3) you can lead the thread in a new direction or keep the discussion going. Oh, it’s also the polite thing to do, as well.

5. Cross link your posts. Link amongst your related blog posts using the keywords you’re optimizing your blog for as the anchor text.

4. Get linked alongside related blogs on other sites. You can contact the blog administrator to swap links, you can become a regular guest blogger if your writing is good enough or your knowledge extensive. Niche sites are great for building blog links networks.

3. Bait your blog. Post unconventional and controversial articles to create lengthy threads that, in turn, create site stickiness.

2. Be consistent into month two. Keep the tone, style and topicality of your blog consistent for the first two months until spiders get it. Then, you can branch out to peripheral topics to expand reader interest.

1. Network offline. Helpful networking tools include LinkedIn, MeetUp and MyBlogLog. These sites provide real world contacts to simplify and streamline the process of networking. They’re also useful in building beneficial online relationships – not to be overlooked. Also reach out using conferences that are available in your area and abroad.

The keys to building a successful, well-tended blog run the gamut from good content to good contacts, and from credibility to controversy. There are lots of ways to expand your blog community and develop quality rankings at the same time

Once you’ve got all of this down your next steps are to begin monetizing your site.

So, blog.

Hosted Content
Hosted content, also sometimes called pre-sell pages, makes your site look very good. The problem is, there are usually costs involved. Here’s how it works.

You, the content expert, write an article. It should be longer than 600 words but no longer than 1200 words. It should be well-written, completely researched, edited, re-edited and finally proofed so that it’s letter perfect. Okay, now you have host-worthy content.

Hosted content is content that’s placed on another site for a fee. In other words, you rent a page on another site to display your work. Now, what do you get for your money?

First, position your article on a site that’s (1) related to the topicality of your site and (2) has a tons of one-way links to content that’s “deep” in the site (in other words sub-pages that rank well in SERPs based on their title tags, for example). These two factors are the best way to measure and quantify the strength your page has in the target site, and ultimately, the link love it creates passes to your site. As you already know hosted content creates editorial inbound links, also known as pure gold.

Second, because it’s your article and you’re paying for the space, you can embed text links directly to specific pages of your site. This does a couple of things. First, you spread your web net further. Links to your site now appear on other sites — some several incarnations removed from your own site. This, ultimately, increases your site traffic as people read your interesting commentary and click on those embedded links to see what else is on your mind. That’s good. More hits. More page views. Higher conversion ratios.

Third, if you spread your words across the web, you start to develop some name recognition within your niche. Unless you’re Dan Kennedy or Skip McGrath, it’s tough building name recognition. However, by crafting numerous, informative articles you’ll start to be recognized. And wait until you Google your name and find 15 SERPs because your articles appear on dozens and dozens of sites.

The downside is the cost. Site owners charge you for the use of their space. If you’re well capitalized, no problem. Spend the money to spread your words. If money is a problem, choose your host sites carefully. Use Google Analytics or ClickTracks data to determine not only number of unique visitors you create from these pages of hosted content, but quality of traffic as well. Look for sites that match the two criteria above. Very important.

Article Submission
Okay, money is a problem. You don’t have a lot. You can still get your name and your opinions out there through various article submission sites.

Once again, site owners need green content and many rely on article submission sites to pick up fresh content for free. Here’s the deal. You write an article and go through the same steps of researching, editing and proofing until the piece is pristine and makes you sound like a savant. Perfect.

Now you place that piece on sites like www.goarticles.com or www.ezinearticles.com for free use by other sites. The plus side is, if the content is solid, you’ll get picked up by literally hundreds (even thousands) of sites. And in return for the free use of your written brilliance, the sites that display your content are obliged to include a link back to your web site. So, you put out 10 articles on topics related to your business, each one gets picked up and used by 20 other sites and you’ve got 200 non-reciprocal inbound links. Well done.

But isn’t this the same model as hosted content except it’s free? No. There are two key points to consider. First, with articles you syndicate it’s much more difficult to embed editorial links to your targeted web site. Instead, you take advantage of the target link and anchor text in your bio box that appears at the end of the article.

What does this mean? Ultimately syndicated articles are not unique content like hosted content is, and ultimately it’s more challenging to place links to your own site editorially without appearing to be hyping your goods or services. So there’s a tradeoff when you go the article syndication route. The key, just as with hosted content, is to have killer, useful information in order to entice webmasters to repurpose the article for their communities and give you credit, a bio and a back link.

But, it doesn’t cost you anything but your time, assuming you can string words together into cogent sentences, or at least your brother-in-law can.

If you’re good at syndicated content or article submission, you control the anchor text — the actual links readers click on. You can also embed editorial links in syndicated content. Now, these aren’t links directly back to your site but they will take the readers to a target page that you want them to read, so if you’re building links for other sites in your portfolio, this approach has a proven track record.

Reciprocal Links
Sites still exchange links. The concept isn’t moribund but it certainly doesn’t have the impact a non-reciprocal link has. Reciprocal linking is simply an exchange of links. You link to my site; I’ll link to yours. And since spiders follow links, it’s not a bad arrangement.

A couple of warnings, however. Any site with which you exchange links should be related to the topic of your site. If you’re selling baby clothes on your site and you’ve got a link to transmission fix-it site, you’ll get nicked by the search engine. Remember, the whole purpose of a search engine is to provide useful, relevant content to users so any links you exchange should be considered from the point of view of the site visitor. Is that link going to further the search of the site visitor or is it a dead end?

If a site appears to have a significant number of back links, and better yet, ranks well in the SERPs, it’s a likely candidate for a link exchange even if it’s a PR 2. Look for quality sites, or at least quality characteristics.

One-Way Link Building
This comes a several forms. First, there’s the ever-popular ‘link begging’ where you contact a site owner (you can find that information in Whois, if it’s not on the contact page) and basically plead your case to have that site owner accept your link. This is a tough sell because, naturally, the site owner wants to know what’s in it for him or her. Custom written, tailored emails tend to do better than form letter emails, obviously, and there’s definitely nothing wrong with a phone call provided you make it abundantly clear what you have to offer.

There are paid links programs. For example, www.textlinkads.com lists web sites willing to sell links to your site. You can bid on the cost of the link, agree to the length of time the link will appear and where it will appear. There are other programs that will hook up sites — usually with decent PRs — with site owners looking for good deals on paid links. Again, don’t forget to buy links with relevance to your site.

You can pay to advertise on another site with banner ads, though this has been shown to deliver lukewarm results unless you know your market very well. Do a competitive analysis and see what’s working for the competition. The click-thru rate on banners is less than 3% but they aren’t usually too expensive.

Finally, you can post your thoughts and opinions on forums and blogs related to your site. Each post will create a back link, but one that spiders will recognize as a blog back link — not a bad thing, just not a gangbusters way to build site credibility, especially considering that most links have a nofollow added and forums capable of giving any link love tend to moderate (and eliminate link spam) quite heavily. Don’t be fooled though, links even with a nofollow attached still have some magic — even on Google.

From hosted content to blog posts, anybody can get a little recognition on the web. And if you’ve actually got marketing capital, you can pay for hosted content and watch your site grow quickly.

Very quickly.

In part one of this two-part series we reviewed the basics of conversion rate optimization and how Google’s Web Optimizer — a free tool from Google — can help improve your conversion rate, making tire kickers drive off the lot. We also examined some of the tests that GWO performs to deliver useful conversion rate analytics. But there are additional benefits to using this performance assessment tool. Let’s have a look:

Test Problems Identified During Usability Testing
In part one, we urged you to undertake usability testing — sitting actual humans in front of a monitor to move through your site identifying anything confusing. From usability tests, you should have a list of problems and issues identified by your testers (or your observations of them). Then move on to use GWO to analyze anything other problems.

For example, if several people thought the checkout was confusing, test it after site launch to see if the checkout page is where many visitors bounced (opt-out of the sale). If so, you need to make the checkout more simple, don’t make visitors think. Remember, usability tests identify why visitors aren’t buying and that’s one thing you want to know now!

Test Your USP
Your USP — your unique selling position — is what sets you apart from the competition. It could be your low, low prices or the assurance that high cost means high quality. In any case, describe your USP in a few words. Then, look at the competition to see what they use as their USPs and conduct some A/B splits to see if, maybe, your current USP could be changed, clarified or refined.

What Do Visitors Take Away From Your Site?
Make a list of priorities — the five messages or sell points you want each visitor to remember when s/he leaves the site. Then, run GWO tests to determine if these five points are clear. You’ll be able to tell with the reporting GWO provides which messages stick and which are lost on visitors.

Characterize Your Ideal Buyer
Male, over 30, income over $50K annually — make a list of the characteristics of the ideal buyer. This is who you’re trying to reach. Your copy, site design, graphics and images should be directed straight at your target demographic — the market segment you most want to reach.

Test Headlines
Headlines are critical to site success. If they don’t motivate buyers to action you won’t make sales. So try different headlines in A/B splits to see which headers pull best. Headlines should describe the benefits of products or services (not product features), they should emphasize ease of use and finally, they can’t be overblown bombast, i.e., headlines must be believable. In fact, all site text must be believable.

Test Your Tagline
The tag line is the phrase that follows your site or company name, e.g., Dow: Better Living Through Chemistry. The tag should express the essence of your site and, in a few words, the site’s USP.

Test Pricing
Cheapest isn’t always best. Many consumers take comfort in knowing that they’re getting better quality at a higher price. This “velvet rope” approach to marketing is what makes haute couture so expensive. Test pricing to find the comfort level of your target demographic.

Also, drop prices a penny. $24.99 sounds so much less than $25.00. It’s a strategy that’s worked for decades and all of us fall for it because we tend to round down not up.

Promotions and Give-Aways
Buy one get one free. A one-month free subscription. Enter our Island Hide-Away Sweepstakes. Test these one at a time to see which promos have the greatest impact on your site’s bottom line.

Make the Call to Action Link Really Obvious
A colorful button labeled “Order Now” tells the visitor what’s expected and how to complete the most desired action. Don’t let them guess. Tell them what to do next.

Other ways to make points stand out? Bold type face, italics, high-lights, arrows — anything to grab the readers’ attention — quickly.

Test Site Layouts
A single-column layout gives you greater control over the order in which information is presented to visitors. Make sure the most important information comes first.

Also, studies show that people read from upper-left to lower right, stopping at the headlines. That makes the upper-left corner of each page prime site real estate.

Critical Information Goes Above the Fold

Some visitors don’t scroll so if they don’t see it above the fold they don’t see it at all.

Test Images
A picture is worth a thousand words — sometimes. Test various images and color usage to see what pulls best: a tabletop product image, product in use by happy customers, etc. A/B splits will tell you what you need to know, here.

Typography
Critical to site success. Don’t overwhelm visitors with pages of text. Use enough to make the pitch then get off stage. Know when to stop selling.

Use simple language to describe product benefits not product features. Make sure visitors have all the information needed to make a buying decision and address common buyer objections, e.g., too expensive, etc.

Test font sizes and colors for readability and use bulleted lists for quick delivery of key points. Refine after each test.

Accessibility
Accessibility is closely married to usability. Start by testing your site in different browsers and at different screen resolutions to get a “customer’s eye view” of your on-line business. What looks good in FireFox may not look so good in IE.

Keep download times as short as possible. 90% of visitors will sit through a 10-second download. Only 10% will sit through a 30-second download so keep site pages light on graphics, Flash animations and other bells and whistles.

Activate Google’s site search feature using Google Mini and Google’s Free Web Search tools. These make your site more accessible to search engine users.

Create “clickable” features. Users click on anything – links, pictures, graphics — anything that captures the attention of the visitor should be clickable.

Test on-site adverts such as Google Adwords. Adwords allows you to split links into various channels for A/B split testing. Test for: ad size, shape, positioning on each page and color formats to make ads pop out or blend in with the rest of your site design.

Finally, establish and record baseline measurements for comparison purposes. Compare test results to your baseline findings to determine what’s working and what needs more work.

Google’s Web Optimizer is a terrific tool for improving your site’s conversion rate and improving your bottom line. However, be patient. It may take several refinements before your site is fully optimized to convert visitors to buyers.

Also, remember that conversion optimization is not a goal. It’s a process — one that continues even as your site sees improved traffic and sales. Optimization should take place regularly and every change you make should be tested for results. Does the change improve conversion? If not, go back to what you had and try again.

Conversion optimization is a little bit of a science, a bit of an art and a whole lot of trial and error so keep at it. With Google’s Web Optimizer, you have the tool to test how your site is doing.

Use it to grow your site to profitability faster. Use it to achieve site success. Use it to make your site the best it can be. After all, that’s what we’re each trying to do in the world of e-commerce — and Google wants to partner in your success.

Within the e-commerce sphere, the “mind games” between site owners and search engine designers have focused on search engine optimization (SEO). After all, you can’t make a sale if visitors aren’t reaching your site. However, as the web marketplace grows exponentially more competitive, attention among webmasters and site owners has turned to conversion optimization — converting site visitors to buyers.

Conversion optimization has nothing to do with SEO. SEO is designed for spiders and bots. Conversion optimization is based on two factors only: the needs and motivations of human site visitors and persuasive site content and design to encourage humans to make a purchase or perform some other action. Any other considerations are sub-sets of these two factors in conversion optimization strategies.

Measuring Human Motivations and Site Effectiveness
SEO is based on the development of numbers (metrics) that are immutable. Numbers are numbers, there’s no debating that. The interpretation of site metrics, on the other hand, is a true combination of art, science and testing.

Assessing conversion rate optimization must apply a completely different approach to data gathering and the accurate, actionable assessment of the cold hard facts (percentages and such) that are the basis of SEO.

The Google Website Optimizer (GWO)
Google owns SEO (sorry Yahoo). It is now moving into eyeball optimization (EBO) to help site owners improve conversion rates. It’s got lots of features, it’s totally flexible in designing useful tests for human reactions and it provides data using simple to read and understand charts showing what’s working and what would work even better.

One key point here: after indexing billions and billions of web pages, who is going to know better what works and doesn’t work for solid EBO? After all, all the Google gurus have to do is evaluate their top performing sites to develop measurement criteria and tools to improve conversion optimization. Google is going to know what works.

One other point worth mentioning — it’s free. A flexible, user-designed test engine developed by Google and available free. It’s a must have for any site owner, site designer, webmaster or SEO.

What Can Google Website Optimizer Do For Me & How Can It Do It If I Don’t Know the Difference Between a Statistical Mean and a Statistical Average?

Multi-Variable Testing
Got to have it. When quantifying human motivations and the effectiveness of a site page, you must have data to compare — data based on site variables such as a different home page image or revised site text. There are hundreds of variables within any website. Color selections, type font, type color, navigation tools, product images and descriptions — literally an endless list of variables.

Google’s Website Optimizer allows you to design tests to compare variables to see which ones work best. Often called A/B split tests, these simply compare a change or two to see which performs best. For example, you might have a picture of your product on test site A and a photo of the product in use by a human on test site B. Simply by comparing visitors’ reactions to pages A and B, you can make refinements to your site.

Another useful A/B split test to check the success of your Adwords placements is to create two identical ads with two different destination URLs. You’ll quickly discover which placements pay for themselves and which should be dropped.

Easy Analytics
The information gathered by Google during testing is delivered in an easy-to-understand format. You’ll see, in graphic form, where visitors go and where they don’t go when on site. Taking a good hard look at your bounce rates and possible paths-thru-site are essential parts of your ongoing conversion optimization diet.

Usability Testing
Real humans navigating your site. Get as many people as you can to site down and click around — from your computer-whiz 12-year-old to mom and dad who still use dial-up. These tests provide the reasons why visitors take specific actions — over and over again.

Eyeball Optimization
GWO shows you what attracts eyeballs but doesn’t generate a click. It also shows what visitors miss entirely because it’s misplaced or mislabeled. Every page should undergo an “EBO” to improve conversion rates.

Follow the Leaders
You can’t copyright an idea so use the same features and techniques employed by higher ranking competitor sites. Then, conduct A/B split tests to see which changes show improvement in conversion optimization.

People Are Still the Same
There’s nothing new about direct response advertising, which is what successful sites use. Infomercials, newspaper ads, TV 30-second spots — these are all examples of direct response advertising and the same motivators that work in other media will also work on your website. Once again, you can’t copyright an idea and the principles of direct response marketing haven’t changed one iota.

Determine and identify the buyer’s needs; provide the solution to meet those needs. It’s worked for the past few millennia and it’ll work for you today.

Small Steps or One Giant Leap
Do you make incremental improvements or try to fix everything all at once. It depends on where you are right now. If you’ve optimized your site (or paid to have it optimized) a small step here and there can make a huge difference, and a major revamping of your site may actually set you back in the optimization race.

On the other hand, if you’re just launching, run a couple of A/B splits and other analytics to see which site pages are hot and which are not. Adjust accordingly. The point here? The more optimized the site, the less optimization is needed so if you’ve been at it for a while, take small steps and assess improvements. If you’re just starting out, launch, track and adjust as needed — whether it be small steps or the proverbial giant leap.

Create a Diagram of Your Marketing Funnel
Start with placed adverts (Adwords, paid links, etc.) Add your home page, each product page, the checkout, automated order conformation, customer care and order fulfillment. Each one of these is a component of a sale and, from the list and with the help of GWO, you’ll be able to more clearly identify holes in your marketing funnel — those areas most in need of improvement, i.e., optimization.

Now, this is just the beginning. Conversion optimization is an on-going process and there are additional steps you can take based on test results delivered by Google’s Web Optimizer — steps that we’ll look at more closely in part 2 of this series.

Continue reading part 2 ›

Ask Google, search engines love links. Of course, they love some links more than others. For example, a simple link exchange (reciprocal link) doesn’t have as much value to search engines and so, it doesn’t receive the same weight as a non-reciprocal (one-way) link — the theory being that a one-way, in-bound link is a recommendation from a site owner to visit this linked site. The link, itself, is testament to the quality of the site being referred.

Article Syndication
In recent years, many sites have employed article syndication to develop links. These site owners write (or have written) articles of interest to a particular audience. The site owners then offer these articles to other relevant sites free in exchange for a link back to the originator of the content in the “about the author” section of the article. In this way, a single site owner can submit dozens of articles for syndication receiving an inbound link from each article in return for the free use of content. They can also watch other sites post the content virally to keep their sites fresh, as well.

Sites need fresh content so many will happily display your article and provide a link to your site. It’s a tried and true link building tactic. However, search engines are programmed to seek out the most natural, and therefore valuable, links they can find.

The way articles are syndicated is through sites like goarticles.com and ezinearticles.com. The standard format for the display of the article is: headline, article body followed by a small blurb about the author with a link back to the author’s site. Since those links appear in the body of the page, they appear to be more valuable in comparison to most purchased or reciprocal links which often appear at the bottom of a page column, or in the footer surrounded by lots of other links — somewhat effective, but not necessarily the best way to acquire inbound links.

In addition, syndication leads to duplication when a single article appears on 10 sites all at the same time. This diminishes the quality of the text and the back link to the author’s site. It’s still more valuable than a plain link exchange but search engines are placing less emphasis on syndicated content. So, what’s a site owner to do?

Hosted Web Content
It goes by many different names: content swapping, advertorials, pre-sell pages and hosted content — all basically the same idea.

The way hosted content works is that you, the author, pay a site owner to display your article. However, now, instead of the back links to your site coming at the end of the article, you embed those links in the body of the text surrounded by your target keywords and actually useful content for the reader. In the “eyes” of a search engine, this is among the highest valued back link.

Hosted content is basically renting a page on another site with links to your site embedded in the main body of the article. The web site that hosts the content receives payment from the author plus fresh content, the author gets a valuable back link and visitors to the hosting site get useful content.

This strategy isn’t new. It’s simply doing what search engines want us to do — produce content that’s useful, beneficial and appears on quality sites. Not only does a quality piece of content receive more visibility when hosted on an authoritative site, it also delivers increased benefit to the author, and the page may even rank itself for target key phrases. When a major site hosts your content, you gain from its page rank in strong testimonials and referrals. Whether or not the site owners want to monetize their site by allowing approved authors to post content is the same debate as whether or not links should be bought and sold. However, publishing high quality, unique and useful content, rather than just creating inflated link popularity with diminishing returns, is, in comparison, a tested SEO tactic.

Designing a Hosted Content Page
You’re paying for the placement of this content so you want it to be good. In the eternal quest for successful link bait, you also want the content to be ranked by search engines because it provides real value to the reader and is hosted on an authoritative site.

Design the hosted content page using standard SEO conventions: a keyword
savvy title, header <h1>, subheads <h2> and a keyword density
of less than 5%. Any higher and search engines may consider the content
to be “spamish” regardless of where the content appears.

Now comes the most important part. As you write the article, carefully place links to topically relevant pages on your own site within the body of the article’s text. These are high value links that will improve your SEO. However, it’s also important to place your articles on sites that are topically related to your piece (and probably already rank for related topics). The authority of the site hosting your content, the relevance of the site (topically speaking) and that back link make your site look stronger as far as search engines are concerned. Also, remember that the quality of the content to which you link also matters. Link to strong pages (those with quality back links) on your site, as well. Your article should reference other authoritative, relevant articles so that search engines see that your piece was written to offer real value to readers.

It’s Not Quantity, It’s Quality
It’s no longer simply a matter of how many links point to a site. There are many cases of sites in which 50 quality links outrank sites with hundreds of links. It’s not quantity, it’s the quality of the links that improve ranking in the SERPs.

Editorial links (links in hosted content) are more “natural” from a search engine’s perspective and, therefore, more valuable because the article has, at most, two or three targeted links pointing to your site’s pages. Just like quality link bait, which is unique, original and useful content, quality hosted content on respected sites will also naturally develop its own back links — the ultimate validation and the desired outcome of placing quality content. Finally, because these links are found on pages optimized with your keywords, search engines will consider them extremely relevant to the subject at hand.

Start Your Hosted Content Campaign Today
It’s being done everyday, successfully building small sites into larger sites, providing free advertising for the thought-leader/author, delivering less duplicate content to search engines and more new content (plus revenue) to the hosting site and, perhaps most importantly, hosted content actually delivers useful, relevant information to readers — exactly what search engines rank in the first place. As with any link-building technique, hosted content can be abused, but topically authoritative sites are not going to accept content that does not meet their high standards — so everyone wins when the goals are white hat.

Start searching for websites that might be interested in hosting your next article, or start looking for a site owner interested in content swapping. Create content that’s unique, useful and well-written and you may find that you won’t even have to pay a site owner to share your content with their readers — exactly how it should be.

MDAs can be obvious or very subtle. For example, the MDA on a commercial site is to induce visitors to buy something. That’s obvious. Other MDAs include providing an email address, providing additional personal information, opening an account, signing up for a service, asking for a quote or opting in for the monthly newsletter.

Less obvious MDAs include submitting a blog entry, starting a forum thread, referring new visitors, book marking the site or reading critical sales or informational copy. You could also include coming back again as an MDA for almost every site. That repeat traffic is valuable in building your online enterprise.

Identifying the MDA
Before visitors can perform any MDA, pyoup have to determine what the MDA is for each age of your sitep. And though that may sound like a simple task, it’s not.

Multiple MDAs
Multiple MDAs can cause problems if not presented properly. It’s difficult to persuade visitors to perform one task much less two or three. There are several reasons for this.

Visitors aren’t very patient. They want to determine if your site is what they’re looking for, they want to conduct their business and move on to Mah Jong solitaire. Asking a visitor to complete a customer satisfaction survey after a sale is like asking visitors to take their SATs again. Not very likely.

Ambiguous MDAs
You see this quite often on NFP sites and sites designed to provide informational content. For many of these sites, the MDA is to have the visitor make a donation. However, on the same page viewers may be offered the opportunity to become a member, to receive regular updates or to be bombarded with affiliate spam. (Can we send you useful information from time to time?)

More than one MDA per page will deter many visitors from performing any actions. Too confusing. Too much time.

Linear MDAs
A common aspect of many service providers’ web pages, linear MDAs require visitors to perform more than one action in a series.

For example, the first MDA for a site selling debt consolidation services might be to motivate visitors to click on a link from the home page that will take them to a form to be completed in order to access the debt consolidation services. In cases of linear MDAs, each page of the site must clearly state the MDA for that page.

Continuing to use the example of the debt consolidation company, if the MDA is to click a link to a form, the link itself would appear on the home page. It would be very large and well labeled, i.e. Click here to get started. The home page copy would be directed specifically to the MDA. Urge and persuade the visitor to click on that link.

The next MDA, completing the form, would be addressed on the link from the home page. In fact, there are usually several (many) MDAs for a single site and each page of the site must specifically address the MDA for that particular page.

No MDAs
More commonly found on personal sites and owner-designed commercial sites, the lack of a clearly stated MDA will leave many visitors scratching their heads and wondering just what they’re expected to do. Not only should you have a clear picture of the single-most important MDA for your site, you should make sure your visitors know just what that MDA is, as well.

Optimizing the Homepage for Maximum MDA Conversion
A site’s conversion rate is nothing more than the rate at which visitors perform the MDA. If one in 10 performs the MDA the conversion rate is 10%. If only one in 100 performs the most desired action, the site’s conversion rate is 1%.

The site’s homepage is the first place to clearly introduce and identify the MDA to the visitor. The MDA call-out should appear on the home page above the fold. It should be the first thing visitors see without scrolling. For example:

Welcome to Nutty Nick’s Wicker Hut
20% Off Everything You Buy

That header identifies the MDA &MDAsh; buy some wicker from Nutty Nick. Here’s another headline that defines an MDA. What do you think the action is here:

Sign up for our FREE newsletter and
you may win a free trip to Bermuda!!!

Obviously, the headline is intended to persuade visitors to opt in for a newsletter. It’s clear, unambiguous and it offers an incentive for completing the action.

MDA Incentives
“Why should I?” and “What’s in it for me?” are two questions many visitors ask when the MDA offers no clear benefit to them. That’s why incentives are useful in many cases.

What kind of incentives? Well, anything FREE is always good. Free shipping and handling, a free extended service warranty, free (and really useful) information, the chance to win something &MDAsh; there are plenty of incentives you can employ to encourage completion of the MDA.

Just make sure that the incentive and the MDA are closely tied and closely positioned as in the example above. The incentive doesn’t have to be expensive but it should deliver clear benefit to the visitor.

Also, when more than one MDA is the goal, limit the number of calls to perform an action to exactly one on the home page. Other, less critical actions can be introduced on landing pages, aka zone pages, within a site.

Optimizing Zone Pages for the MDA
Once visitors have navigated the home page (and performed the MDA), they next click a link that takes them to a zone page or landing page (same thing). Once again, the MDA should be clearly displayed above the fold on each zone page.

Zone pages serve different purposes. A link off the home page to a description of company services looks and sounds very different from the zone page for the check-out or contact us page. In all cases, visitors must recognize the personal benefit to them when they choose to perform the action for that specific page. They will save money. They will receive something useful. They will find a solution to a specific problem. Any discriminating visitor is going to ask, “How does this help me?” Provide the right answer and you convert. Provide the wrong answer, or no answer, and that visitor is a click away from gone.

That’s why every site owner must consider the MDA for each page of a site. MDAs must also be specifically targeted on individual pages within the web site. Directions for performing the MDA must be clear, unambiguous and persuasive. Finally, on every page of your site, the visitor must see the clear benefit of performing the MDA &MDAsh; even if the most desired action is clicking on the link back to the home page. Clear, straightforward and persuasive.

If you don’t have a clear understanding of the MDAs for the pages of your site, neither will your visitors. So, if your conversion rate isn’t where you’d like it to be, develop text for MDAs and optimize every page of your site.

Despite the plethora of e-books on how to make a million dollars on the Internet (usually overnight), building and launching a successful online enterprise is a risk, rewards don’t happen overnight and the odds are against your success. About 94% of all online businesses fail to achieve profitability, in large measure because these entrepreneurs didn’t manage the risk versus reward equation.

If you’re planning to invest in an online commerce site, read on. There’s a lot more to e-success than you imagined.

Risk Assessment
If you plan to invest a lot of money in an online business, it’s best to assess the possibility of losing that money. What are the risks associated with your particular business model?

For example, too much competition or competition that’s too well established put your investment at risk. If you can’t gain market penetration because you’re competing against nationally known brand names, you’re business won’t thrive without finding a different hook to draw in visitors.

Site development cost is another obvious risk factor. Not only will you pay for site design, copywriting, web hosting and search engine optimization, you’ll also need a number of pricey software programs to provide a secure check-out for buyers, to measure and assess site activity and to track orders, shipments and other back office chores.

Now, if you know something about site design and SEO, you won’t have to spend as much, but you’ll still have to spend something. When you calculate the rough numbers for site development, launch and marketing (SEO) ask yourself if you could afford to lose all of that investment. If you can’t, you need to better manage your risk. Here’s how.

Product Availability
Are your products readily available? Do your suppliers drop ship, that is, handle the shipping for a fee? Are your suppliers reliable and well-established? Are there alternative sources for the same product?

This is an area often overlooked by new site owners planning on that quick million. They hook up with distributors only to discover that the providers are barely getting by themselves. They fold and the owner scrambles to find other, comparable products.

Also, determine price stability. If wholesale prices are creeping up that’s going to cut into your margins and, ultimately, your business’ profitability — its margins.

Product Pricing
The world wide web has been a boon for buyers, creating a highly competitive marketplace. Great for buyers, not so great for new site owners. If you’re selling an exercise treadmill for $499 and your competition has the same product at $399, buyers aren’t going to pay that extra $100 just because you have a more attractive web site.

Your site must be competitive, either beating the competition on price or matching it and delivering additional freebies, as well, e.g. free shipping, a coupon for savings on future purchases or 24/7 customer support — all add-ons that should be a part of your business plan from day 1.

And it’s simple enough to do the research on the prices the market will bear. Just Google the competition to see what they’re selling widgets A, B and C for. If you can’t beat the competition on price, if your margins are just too thin, you’ve encountered a stumbling block — one you must overcome before investing in your online business.

Marketing Costs
If you launch your e-venture but don’t market (advertise) it, how will buyers find you? If your site shows up on page 213 of Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs), you won’t see any SE-driven site traffic. Search engine users rarely look beyond the first page or two of SERPs. Think about it. Do you?

That means you’re going to have to develop other means to drive traffic to your site. And there are lots of ways to do just that.

You can get some exposure for no or low costs through the proliferation of blogs and other personal sites like myspace.com. You can create an online presence and get some links to your site for little or no investment, but the chances of that traffic actually generating enough revenue for business success are slim and zip. It’s not going to happen, though social sites are useful in increasing the number of visitors to your site.

So, plan on marketing costs. You’ll have them. For example, Google’s Adsense program places contextual links on appropriate sites. You’ve seen them. They say “Ads By Goooogle.” Well, those links cost money and every time someone clicks on one, Google takes some of that business owner’s money. These PPC (pay-per-click) programs can cost anywhere from a nickel a click to several dollars a click depending on the keywords you obtain through bidding.

Order Fulfillment Costs
If you handle your own order fulfillment it won’t cost you anything but time because buyers expect to pay for shipping and handling. That’s not a problem. However, packing up 135 orders everyday takes a lot of time when you do it yourself. So, in your risk versus reward equation, factor in order fulfillment costs.

Many manufacturers have drop shipping programs wherein you capture the order through your site, pass it on to the manufacturer who then actually packs up the order and ships it out with your company logo on the bill of sale.

There are also fulfillment houses — businesses that fill orders on a per unit basis. Do the math to determine if outsourcing order fulfillment works with your business model or if it’s something you’ll have to do — at least for a while.

Tweaking Your Way to Success
No one makes it to profitability right out of the blocks. There’s always some site tweaking and SEO tweaking that takes place after the site’s launch. This tweaking is based on the development of site metrics — numbers that provide information on your site’s performance, or lack thereof.

For example, imagine a site that gets lots of traffic but few sales (a low conversion rate). The problem isn’t SEO because visitors are finding the site just find. However, once they do find the site they don’t make a purchase. It could be anything from the look and feel of the homepage to a lack of visitor confidence in the security of the checkout to difficulties in accessing the right product.

Metrics software will help you determine what’s successful and what isn’t on your site, what’s selling and what isn’t, how most visitors find your site (search engine, site links, paid adverts, etc.), what keywords people are using to find you and so on.

Here’s the essence of managing risk versus reward before you invest in an online business: do as much pre-planning as possible before you launch. And, if you don’t know how to assess your investment risk and/or your competition, hire someone who does. It’s that important.

Factor all costs into your business plan — site design, monthly hosting fees, etc. Then, allow for tweaking time before your site starts showing a profit. Again, it won’t happen overnight despite what all of those “Make a Million on the Net” e-books say. It’s hype.

You won’t be able to eliminate all risks associated with starting an online business but you can tip the risk versus reward equation in your favor with some planning and foresight.

If you’re new to the e-commerce sphere you’re probably not up-to-speed on SE algorithms, semantics compliance or cascading style sheets. And, when you select a site designer for your online venture, s/he is going to talk about search engines, semantics and CSS. She might as well be speaking Bulgarian.

Still, you have a vision. You have preferences for the color scheme, the type face and the site’s layout or architecture. It’s like building a house. You may not understand the importance of kiln-dried lumber but you don’t have to. You just have to know what you like.

Talking the Talk? Don’t!
Be honest with your site designer. Don’t pretend you know all about HTML when you don’t even know what HTML is. (It’s the code used by web designers to build sites.) A good design firm will not only create a great looking site, they’ll also take the time to teach you a few things about site design and online marketing.

Instead, point out several sites and explain what it is you like about each. Designers aren’t mind readers so if you just say “I like these 10 sites” the designer will visit those sites but won’t be sure if you like the color motif, the layout, the navigation or something “indescribable.”

Start Making Lists
Make a list of sites you like with reasons why you like them. But don’t stop there.

Make a list of “must-haves” on your site. A secure checkout, a merchant account, pictures of you and the family, no more than one product per page and so on. You don’t have to know a thing about site building to have a clear picture of what you want your site to do.

The problem is conveying those desires and needs to the design firm.

Ask the designer or firm to develop a reaction piece — a sample web page that you can react to. Then react. Point out what you do like and what you don’t like. This helps the designer hone in on the right look and feel for the site.

Talk About Your Demographics
Demographics are simply descriptors of your market — the ideal buyers. Male, over 40, married, children, earns over $40,000 a year, college degree, white collar and so on. Your site, and the copy that appears on it, should be developed specifically for your target demographic.

Now, you have knowledge of your customers. But your designer has knowledge of the ruthlessly competitive w3 marketplace. And those two bodies of knowledge must be brought together to create an effective site.

Listen to the Designer
When you go to a doctor, you expect expert, knowledgeable advice from an up-to-date professional. Well, you should expect the same from any good site design professional. And just as you take the doctor’s advice, if you’re behind the curve on e-commerce, take the designer’s advice, as well.

There’s plenty of room for your creativity but a design pro knows what works best for SEO and how to construct the sub-structure of the site for fluidity and ease of navigation.

These pros also know the dynamics of effective site skin layout. The site’s skin is that part of your site that visitors actually see, and there are copywriting and layout conventions with proven track records of converting visitors to buyers.

Know What You Don’t Know
If you’re unfamiliar with the world of e-commerce but you have a great idea for a web site, there are three options available to you:

1. Learn enough about web coding, semantics compliance, SEO dos and don’ts and how to create a secure merchant account to accept credit card orders and build the site yourself. You should be ready to launch in 12 — 18 months depending on how technically adept you are.
2. Option two is to simply hand over the entire project to a design/SEO professional. Yes, this will cost more money and yes it does require a leap of faith that you’ve selected the right design firm for the job, but you can be operational in a couple of weeks. Then, you can learn on-the-job so to speak. However, you should keep your SEO/designer’s number close by for matters of tweaking, updating and so on.
3. The third option is the best. Take enough time to learn something about e-commerce and search engine optimization. It isn’t necessary to learn HTML or XHTML coding. You can pay people to actually write the lines of code that will become your web site.

But, if you understand the fundamentals of site design, what key words are and how search engines access, spider and index a site you’ll be in a much better position to discuss these things intelligently with your designer, working in tandem to bring your vision to fruition.

There are lots of books on “Making Millions on the Internet” but save your money. There is so much content on SEO, principles of site design, opinions from those in the know and anything else you can think of associated with online commerce — and it’s all free. All you have to do is dive in and start reading. Soon enough, you’ll know what you need to know to move forward.

And soon enough, you’ll be able to speak to a site designer in the language of the industry. You’ll know what a home page is and key word density, conversion rate and web hosting pitfalls. It may sound like a lot but it’s anything but brain surgery. There are lots of people just like you earning good (great) income through e-commerce.

So, if you don’t know anything about it, but that idea keeps running through your brain, learn enough to move forward with some confidence. It’s not a good idea to hand the entire project over to a designer and keep your fingers crossed. And it’s not a good idea to take a couple of years to become a techno-SEO guru. By then, your good idea will be an old idea.

Your best course is to learn what you need to know so you can converse with your site designer to ensure that it is, indeed, your vision that’s brought to life.