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Map out your Conversion pages: How do you keep score if you don’t know where your opportunities lie? Just like a football team seeks to “convert” on fourth down by executing a play with a flow toward the “conversion,” so should you map out your site the way a coach maps out the play.

Hey… yesterday was the Superbowl… so you know why I’m using football analogies. But, they fit. The coach draws a play for the team so they know what to do. Then coaches make adjustments as things unfold on the playing field. Plan carefully. Watch how things unfold and adjust. Right coach? And, all this so you can… convert  In football, convert a fourth down into a first down, and on the web… convert a visitor into a lead or a customer.

Above, two sitemaps are given in this downloadable (click it) pdf… along with some “secret sauce.”

So draw your play first — that is, make a sitemap. Just like a team would not go onto a field without knowing a play, you need to visualize your own “play” at your website. Especially if you’re designing or redesigning your site. But also if you’re well into a site that has grown and changed for a few years — time to step back and see the sitemap so you can reevaluate strategies and tactics.

I’ve attached a couple of sitemaps (I call them “Mission Maps”) that I recently produced for real clients (click to download it – PDF). Note that conversion pages are clearly marked. And, you’ll find a great formula on it that you can use at your own site. Remember to begin with the end in mind — that’s the only way teams get to the SuperBowl.

WordPress 2.7 Rocks: WordPress has really come a long way since its humble beginnings as a blogging platform. Nowadays, it’s a full-blown Content Management solution used by Fortune 500 companies from Ford to CNN. And you should be using it too, for dynamic websites, optimization, engagement with prospects and customers, plus easy editing. And now, version 2.7 makes editing even easier.

Using an older version of WordPress? Upgrade now. Older versions are security risks, and don’t work well with updated plugins.

I’ve made a video overview for you with editing tips as you migrate to 2.7 — and an Optimization tip thrown in for good measure:

That’s it for this edition — contact me to discuss how you can Optimize, Connect and Convert… at your website.

- Scott

Contact Us · (360) 566-2451 · Email

Hello -

How well does your website convert visitors to leads or customers?: That’s precisely the question I asked in a new Poll at LinkedIn. The advantage of placing a poll on LinkedIN, is that mostly professionals, executives and C-level management will see it, they run it in a directory of polls on the site, and you can see some interesting demographic breakouts like results by Gender, Job Function, and Company Size. So, how many C-Level Managers said their sites convert well? Pop over to the poll to find out (and take it while you’re there). Oh, and if you’re new to tracking conversions (leads are good “conversions” for service companies to track, while sales are a primary conversion to track in ecommerce), Google Analytics is an excellent package, recently updated with enterprise level features, to use at your sites.

I’m being followed: It just started recently. There are several people following me, and I know it is true. Paranoid? Schizo? We’ll leave that debate for another time — but for now, I’m talking about being followed — on twitter. I confess to avoiding “twittering” for some time, but when I saw the “first twitter report live from a jet airline crash” appear on network news — I had to cave in and check it out. There are a couple of great plugins for your WordPress CMS that place your twitter stream in your sidebar, and also automatically twitter your latest posts. I’m using them at WebFadds.com, and also just installed them for Tom Hale, adwords specialist extraordinaire (see Tom’s twitter stream at ThomasCreekConcepts.com).

Newsletter Options: When you plan to integrate an enewsletter into you site, you have three strong options. And I strongly recommend an eNewsletter as a key tactic to Connect — the middle strategy in our “Optimize, Connect, Convert” solution (contact me to learn more). The three options? Use FeedBurner to create a “newsletter” sign-up that sends your RSS feeds to email, integrate a newsletter plugin into your WordPress CMS, or use a 3rd-party SAS newsletter provider to host and send your newsletters. The Feedburner option is the most efficient. The newsletter plugin is good for do-it-yourselfers, while a professional service like Constant Contact, can be great for companies requiring tech-support and a large list solution, off-loaded from their site hosting server. Learn more about the last two at our eNewsletter Service page, and visit Feedburner to learn about their service, then BestRatePlans to see an implementation.

Best of luck and success online -

Scott

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Do you have Goals for your website? You probably set some when you first built it, but I am talking specifically about “Goals” in Google Analytics — an excellent way to track visitor behavior and analyze the R.O.I. for your web effort.  You should be tracking “conversions” (number of visitors who buy or become clients), via the “funnel” (series of pages at your site leading them to a conversion).  You can read more about this important strategy in this blog post.  Contact me to get your Goals set up.

Trusted Email Marketing

Remember to stay in constant contact. A colleague of mine, Bob Leonard from B2BContentConversations, was just hired for two jobs as a result of enewsletters he sent out several months ago.  Newsletters require discipline, but it pays off.  We offer two options to help with your email campaigns — a Pro Package through Constant Contact, and a Do It Yourself Package, where we install an excellent eNewsletter program in your WordPress website, build you a template and you go ahead and write and send a newsletter to key contacts.  Constant Contact provides your own account with support and tracking stats to see how many recipients opened your newsletter (you can take a free, 60-Day trial to check it out).  Read more about the two packages… here.  Contact me when you need help setting these key marketing tools up for your business.

New B2B Website on problematic Windows Hosting: We just finished a new B2B business blog for Wang & Wang, an international law firm, and wrestled with making it work properly in a Windows server environment.  The majority of hosting plans (like our own at WebFaddsHosting.com), are based on the Linux Operating System… the one most “friendly” to WordPress installations.  While WordPress will work on Windows based servers, a couple of key functions — automatic database backups, and “permalink” structure (see next item) — could not be activated.  Bottom line: Why did we install it on a Windows server?  That’s what the client wanted.  Does it run as well as on a Linux server?  No.  Choose a Linux based hosting solution for your dynamic WordPress based websites.

SEO Matters:  One main reason we develop dynamic websites and business blogs on the WordPress platform, is that it comes with built in/automated methods of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  But you have to configure it properly.  There’s automated “pinging” (your site will alert a number of indexing services when you publish new posts), but you need to input a good list of services.  There are user and search friendly “permalinks” (url structure) you can set.  And, a number of SEO related plugins which both strengthen your site, and save you some time by automating insertion of tags, titles, etc.  I’ve written a series on SEO Matters… here.  We also have a service package, “Max-SEO“, that can help you quite a bit.

Let me know when we can help with SEO strengthening, enewsletters, and development of your dynamic, automated websites. I’ll be pleased to provide a prompt estimate for your projects — reach me via our Contact Page.