Is Your Website Springing a Leak?

Today, I would like to share a fun and informative article written by Philippa Gamse. 


Imagine that you own a beautifully designed yacht. It looks great on the surface of the water, with superb lines, gleaming decks, a well-appointed galley… but you’re having real trouble getting out of the harbor and you can’t figure out why!

You investigate, and you find that beneath the surface your beautiful boat has a number of slow, silent, leaks. None of them are big enough to sink you on their own, so there’s no obvious immediate crisis – just a constant drain on your efficiency and your speed.

I’ve been reviewing Web traffic reports for over 10 years, and I believe that this analogy applies very well to almost all business websites. Very few sites are so terrible or have something so wrong with them that they’re clearly a disaster. Yet just about every site has some area where it’s quietly losing traffic, losing potential business or the opportunity to create relationships – or failing to attract visitors in the first place.

If you’re not regularly reviewing your traffic analysis, you can’t know for sure if your site is leak proof. In this article, I’ll show you a few of the most common areas where you can look for – and fix – those silent leaks.

1. Leaks in your Brand & Positioning

The excellent folks at MarketingExperiments online research laboratories have shown that clearly articulated and differentiating value propositions have a critical effect on Website conversion rates.  (The conversion rate is the measurement of visitors fulfilling your desired outcomes – which might include calling you, buying a product at your site, signing up for your newsletter or blog feed, etc.)  Your value proposition should be front and center on your home page. It should answer the classic question: “Why should we do business with you instead of your competition?”

Although this question isn’t a Web strategy issue in itself, it is one that many people struggle to answer. But the lack of a compelling opening message can be a major impediment to your online success.

How to check for this leak: Even if they don’t enter your site at the home page, most visitors who don’t know you will go there as the second page they look at to find out more about you and your business.  If visitors are taking a quick look at your home page and then immediately leaving, something is wrong. Your copy is failing to pique their curiosity or to answer their questions: “Can this company meet my needs?” and “Should I explore further?” You have a leak!

2. Leaks in Visitor Engagement

Popular theory says that you have 10 seconds to engage a visitor – i.e. convince them to stay on your site before they click away in search of something more interesting.

While I don’t believe that it’s quite that simple, there are some definite ways to get rid of visitors fast before they’ve had a chance to really check you out.  The best of these is probably the infamous splash page – the entry page to your site that your Web designer persuaded you to have because it “does cool stuff”. Hopefully there’s a “Skip Intro” button somewhere on the page!  In all my reviews of traffic reports I’ve seen a consistent leak of up to 30% of visitors leaving from this page alone – before they’ve ever seen who you are or what you offer.

How to check for this leak: Easy – look for the splash page in your traffic reports and see how many visitors exit at that point. If it’s more than a small percentage, you have a leak – take the page out today!

The other major area where you should watch for leaks in visitor engagement is in what are called “landing pages”. These are inside pages of your Website which turn out to be the first page that a visitor sees, usually because you have some well-indexed content that they’ve found in a search engine.

Here it’s absolutely critical to understand the visitor’s mindset. Each visitor is at your site looking for something specific, they may well have found you by accident, so they may have no idea who you are – and worse, no interest in you.

The first page that they see on your Website must engage them immediately in accordance with their needs, and it must have enough context to draw them into other areas, and to want to find out more about you. It’s not enough to give great information on this page – they’ll soak that up, and then leave.

How to check for this leak: Hopefully your traffic reports are sophisticated enough to show you which keywords bring visitors to each specific page of your site. This shows you each visitor’s “mindset”.

If visitors are leaving a page very quickly, then it probably isn’t satisfying their informational needs, so you should review the content.

If visitors are reading the page (your traffic reports should show the time spent at each page) and then leaving, you’ve given them what they wanted but failed to draw them into the rest of your site. This can be fixed with more compelling navigation and calls to action.

Either way, you have a leak!

3. Leaks in Directions & Outcomes

I’m constantly amazed by the number of Web pages that give great information and content – and then just end abruptly – perhaps with some navigation tabs if you’re lucky!

Steve Krug in his excellent book “Don’t Make Me Think!” describes how crucial it is to direct visitors to the next step that you want them to take. If you don’t do this, and rely on your visitors to figure this out for themselves, there’s a strong chance that they’ll make a different choice than the one you want – or they’ll leave your site altogether, creating leaks in your potential revenue stream.

Every page of your site needs strong calls to action that stand out visually and click directly to where the visitor can fulfill the outcome that you want (e.g. “buy now!”, “sign up for our newsletter / RSS feed”.) Pages can have more than one call to action, and there’s nothing wrong with repeating them on longer pages so that they’re always within eyeshot.

And by the way, “Back to top” is not a call to action!

How to check for this leak: If your traffic reports show this information, look at the paths that visitors take through your site – where do visitors go next from each page? If many of them are exiting the site and / or they fan out across many pages with no clear pattern or direction, you have a possible leak.

4. Leaks in your Credibility Building

MarketingExperiments research has also shown that powerful, specific, and authoritative testimonials can have a major impact on your site’s conversion rates.

Consider this statement: “Documented results show that just a few hours with [ expert ] can increase lead generation by 125%”. Imagine how much stronger that assertion would be if there were some examples of the “documented results” and some customer quotes to that effect.

However, including a page on your site called “What Customers Say” doesn’t do it – I can safely say that visitors don’t go to those pages. And it’s not just traffic reports that tell me this – whenever I ask a live audience “Would you click this link?” there’s always a resounding “No!”

How to check for this leak: This is a much more subtle leak to detect, but it’s an important one. The question here is whether you are potentially losing business because your site fails adequately to establish your value and credibility.

My recommended approach is to review your site for credibility-building content such as client lists, testimonials and case studies. You need to spread your testimonials through your site, using short one or two line excerpts that are relevant to the content of each page – whether it’s about a product or a service, or the value of subscribing to your newsletter or blog.

Make sure that all of this material is linked to from other pages so that it’s easily found by visitors. If you then experience an increase in calls, or in the quality of your leads, then you might have just fixed a leak!

© Philippa Gamse. All rights reserved. Publication rights granted so long as article and byline are reprinted intact, with all links made live.

Philippa Gamse is a Web strategy expert who spends much of her time fixing leaky Websites and other website problems. Would you like your own “Leaky Boat Website” Review? Visit http://websitesthatwin.com/leaky-boat-report.html for more information.

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Philippa Gamse is a Web strategy expert who spends much of her time fixing leaky Websites. Would you like your own “Leaky Boat Website” Review? Visit http://websitesthat win.com/leaky-

boat-report.html for more information.
© Philippa Gamse. All rights reserved. Publication rights granted so long as article and byline are reprinted intact, with all links made live.




This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

Proven Internet Marketing Strategies

Internet marketing as part of a company's overall marketing strategy is becoming an increasingly important part of nearly every company's promotional line of attack. To achieve noticeable exposure, professional and original search engine optimized content, written and propagated throughout the web about your company, products and services is necessary. This will provide the Internet exposure you need to be noticed. To deliver a sustainable long-term traffic solution, a company will need a thorough Internet marketing plan with a customized combination of Internet advertising methods. This article will cover many of the Internet marketing practices implemented today.

Essentially, Internet marketing is using the Internet to communicate a company's message about itself, its products, or its services online. Initially, Internet marketing consisted mostly of having a website and placing banner ads on other “affiliate” websites. A major problem with affiliate marketing is the tracking systems have issues ranging from revenue reporting errors to generating invalid code that causes code violations. While utilizing the affiliate marketing method, it is imperative to have access to multiple affiliate networks with reputable companies using proven methods of fraud prevention and revenue tracking that generates advertising code that is free of special characters and Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standard compliant.

On the Internet, changes occur continuously and any Internet marketing professional must keep pace with the constantly changing promotional possibilities. Responsible Internet marketing using legitimate promotional practices, also known as “White Hat” techniques is a worthwhile yet gradual endeavor. Beware of companies that advertise an instantaneously successful website and try to sell some form of “Internet Marketing Program” or use techniques commonly referred as “Black Hat” that can get a website banned by search engines. In order to prosper on the web it is important to use evolving website promotion methods as well as proven techniques and online advertising services.

First, it is imperative that a website be free of errors with high quality well-optimized website design and content easily navigated by both search engines and users. Next, build Internet traffic using a combination of the following: Search Engine Marketing (SEM), which is marketing a website online using search engines, either by improving the site's natural (organic) ranking or position through search engine optimization (SEO), buying pay-per-click (PPC) ads or purchasing pay-for-inclusion (PFI) listings in website directories, similar to offline yellow page listings.

Another method of Internet marketing, article marketing, involves writing articles related to your business and publishing them online with syndicated article sites. Article marketing can result in a traffic boost for a website, and the distribution of syndicated articles can promote a brand to a wider audience.

In addition, social media marketing is quickly developing into a significant marketing medium. It connects businesses with an audience by driving online conversations in social media outlets to increase brand exposure. Twitter, a micro-blogging site, Facebook and MySpace, both social networking sites, are utilized to keep companies at the forefront of their respective industries.

Finally, the integration of web design, development, and Internet marketing with focused traffic-generation tactics is vital to the success of a site. With the right marketing strategy, designed specifically for a site, traffic will build now and continue in the future. Successful Internet marketing can transform a business from a struggling enterprise into a lucrative business. Find out how Internet Market Consulting can help you.

Copyright 2009 Internet Market Consulting. All Rights Reserved.

Website Repair, Design, Marketing

Both Microsoft, Google seal deals with Twitter

Google and Bing indexing twitter updates.  What does this mean to the Internet marketing?  

Both Microsoft, Google seal deals with Twitter - Tech and gadgets- msnbc.com

Donate Life California

104,000+ waiting for an organ in the U.S. alone, and with 10 million blind worldwide waiting for a corneal transplant, and so many burn victims, amputees and other injured people who would benefit from skin and/or tissue transplants. Sign up online to become a donor - each state has its own online state registry for you to quickly and easily sign up. Below is the link for CA.

Donate Life California

Bloggers Forced to Disclose Payments

The Federal Trade Commission issued their first new updates to The Guidelines for Testaments and Endorsements in Advertising since 1980. The FTC recently determined that bloggers, both professional and amateur, must disclose to readers any money or "in-kind payment" received from organizations to review products. Companies referring to research group findings about a product must inform readers of their relationship to such group. Even if there is no requirement for a positive review, bloggers must still disclose their relationship to the organization promoting the product or service. Violators face fines of up to $11,000 per infraction.

VOTE NOW! GQ Magazine "Better Man, Better World" Search

John has dedicated the last 6 years of his life to making the world a better place - to help increase lives saved and improved through organ, tissue and eye transplantation. But he’s not a surgeon or healthcare administrator or politician - instead, he’s a creative entrepreneur who has built modernized electronic medical records software for the transplant field.

John’s work fights against odds that are daunting: today, more than 100,000 people in the U.S. alone are waiting for an organ transplant. Nearly 20 of them will die every day due to the severe unavailability of organs. More than 10 million men, women and children worldwide suffer from corneal blindness that can be eliminated through ocular transplantation. Burn victims, amputees and many others can be helped through the transplantation of skin, bone and tissue that is in short supply as well.

Back in 2003, John made an enormous sacrifice and life decision – an Ivy League-educated, successful corporate attorney, media executive and Internet entrepreneur, John walked away from those successes, driven by his passion to contribute to society in a more meaningful way.

John created far-reaching partnerships with leading transplant surgeons and organ, tissue and eye transplant organizations spanning from California to New York and Washington, DC and many places in between. Working closely with these partners, he created a software organization – Transplant Connect - to step in and replace the inefficient paper and phone-based steps that slow down the donor-transplant process with modern, real-time, Web-based software.

Constantly traveling and often working for no salary, John’s dedication was so strong, he even mortgaged his Los Angeles beach house to fund his organization’s efforts in the early days. His perseverance and commitment to touching lives by improving transplantation has remained unyielding through those challenging and difficult times.

Transplant Connect has directly expedited, improved and modernized transplantation. Today, nearly 50% of all U.S. organ transplants are enabled by the software John’s organization created, and with his software, faster and better decisions are made, with the result that more lives are saved and improved.

John’s efforts have touched many thousands of lives across the U.S. in just a few short years. Through his resourcefulness, talents and dedication, John has already contributed greatly to creating a better world. John Piano
President & CEO, Transplant Connect


John works tirelessly to help increase lives saved and improved by organ, tissue and eye transplantation.

10 Awesome Things That Would Happen If Health Reform Passes

Unable to win the debate on the merits of their arguments, opponents of health care reform have resorted to a dizzying array of outright falsehoods to terrify Americans into opposing a process that might deliver real benefits to their families.
They've falsely claimed that the government would "take over" the health system, put private insurers out of business and let pasty bureaucrats decide what treatment Americans would receive.
They've spun wild tales of federal agents coming into Americans' homes for lifestyle checks and faceless government officials making end-of-life decisions for patients.
They've falsely claimed that the legislation being considered by Congress would cover undocumented immigrants, and they sent around elaborate-but-wholly-fake "analyses" of the supposed bill, with references to made-up page numbers and all.
All of these serve the same ends: using the politics of distortion and distraction to capitalize on people's natural fear of change and compelling them to fight noisily against their own interests. And it can be somewhat effective -- that's clear from the raw, populist anger unleashed into the health-care debate in recent weeks by well-heeled corporate-lobbyists bent on derailing the democratic process.
The industry-approved fog-and-monsters strategy has another benefit: It puts advocates of reform in the position of batting down a series of nonsensical arguments based on an endless string of health-policy straw men when they could be explaining why getting something decent done would in fact be good for the country.
So let's get past the fearmongering and look at some of the highlights of what's really in the more progressive legislation working its way through Congress. The proposals aren't perfect. As I've written before, in their current form, the bills fail the test of having a truly "robust" public insurance option, and as such has limited potential for cost savings.
But they are also substantial reforms that would go quite a way toward beefing up the health and economic security of a lot of American families if enacted.
The following breakdown is based on the legislation developed by three committees in the House of Representatives (HR 3200) and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee. A third piece of legislation is yet to emerge from the Senate Finance Committee. Reports suggest that the legislation coming out of Finance will be much more accommodating to the insurance industry and other corporate stakeholders.
Much of the real legislative fight will come when the two Senate bills are combined and then, later, when the final Senate and House bills are reconciled.
1: The First Thing That Will Happen Is Absolutely Nothing
At least that's the case for a lot of people who now have quality health insurance.
If you have a decent health plan through your job, nothing will change for you in terms of your insurance.
In fact, if you work for a large or medium-sized company and have decent coverage at a price you can afford, then nothing can change for you -- you'll be ineligible to enroll in the public insurance option (which is discussed below).
If you have already have government-run health care -- if you're a vet, or are on Medicare or Medicaid or have a child in the State Children's Health Insurance Program, nothing will change for you in terms of your coverage. (One exception: Under the House bill, eligible children would be shifted from S-CHIP to a new public insurance program in 2013).
The only thing that would change for you in these circumstances would be this: your current insurance company would have a harder time screwing you over if you get sick. That's because, although your policy wouldn't change, it would be governed by new public-interest regulations for the entire health insurance industry. (See next item.)
2. New Protections for Consumers
Regardless of your place of employment or the kind of coverage you have now, new regulations would take effect in 2010 that would go a long way toward curtailing the insurance companies' worst abuses.
Insurance companies could no longer deny coverage to people because they've had health problems in the past, nor could they charge hugely different rates for different groups of people (premiums could only vary by age, geography, tobacco use and family size).
The House bill bans recissions -- the insurance industry's habitual practice of collecting premiums until someone gets sick, and then digging through their histories for an excuse to cancel coverage.
Insurers wouldn't be allowed to cancel an individual's coverage for reasons other than failing to pay the premium.
Insurers would no longer be permitted to impose annual or lifetime caps on benefits.
Insurers that sell insufficient, cheapo plans that leave people vulnerable to medical crises would be required to disclose that fact to their customers.
All insurers would be required to disclose how much of their spending is on health care and how much goes to costs like overhead, advertising, etc.
The legislation (especially the Senate HELP bill) creates new tools for fighting insurance fraud and abuse.
3. Medical Bankruptcies Would Plummet
One of the most significant of these regulations is in the House bill: a cap on out-of-pocket expenses. If the measure passes, individuals would face a maximum of $5,000 in out-of-pocket expenses a year, and families no more than $10,000. For poorer families, the limits would be much lower: $500 per year, for example, for a family making less than 1.33 times the poverty rate.
In 2007, Harvard researchers studied thousands of bankruptcy filings and found that medical causes played a role in more than 6 in 10.
4. People Who Could Never Get Decent Coverage Will Finally Be Able To
So far, one of the great victories for the anti-reform movement has been convincing many small-business owners that health reform will put them under.
The reality is that small-business people, their employees, independent contractors, freelancers, entrepreneurs, part-timers and the "marginally employed" would be the biggest winners from the legislation if it passed as currently drafted. Small business owners and their employees -- as well as those other groups -- would, for the first time, be able to get decent coverage at a fair price, and if eligible, both employer and worker would be able to get extra help paying for it.
Under the current system, most of the largest employers in the country self-insure -- they pay their employees' claims directly and cut out the middleman.
Big firms that don't self-insure buy insurance on the large-group market, where risk is spread out over a large pool. Large-group plans tend to be more or less comprehensive and, relatively speaking, affordable.
But those forced to purchase coverage on the individual or small-group markets have little buying power and are routinely forced to pay budget-busting premiums for the worst possible coverage -- plans with high deductibles, caps on benefits and strict limits on what is and isn't covered.
This gets to the heart of the "public insurance option" -- the most contentious point of debate in the reform battle. It would work like this: The government would establish regional exchanges, or "gateways," that would be open to those who would otherwise be forced into the individual and small-group markets. These gateways would have relatively large insurance pools just like large employers -- and public programs like Medicare -- have now.
Within these large purchasing pools, people would be able to choose from among different insurance plans -- one a government-run "public option" and the rest offered by private insurers.
In order for private insurers to sell plans through the exchanges, they would be required to offer a standard set of benefits (which the public option would have to offer as well). They'd also be permitted to offer plans with more bells and whistles at a premium price.
For those enrolled in the public exchanges, the process would be quite similar to what employees in many large companies experience -- they would simply choose from among a variety of plans, with slightly different levels of coverage and costs.
Compared to the plans now available in the individual and small-group markets, they would pay a lot less for significantly better insurance (which, in reality, is what those "teabaggers" are protesting).
Because of pressure from Republicans and conservative Blue Dog Democrats, the public exchanges will phase in slowly, over a period of four to six years.
5. (Almost) Everyone Gets Covered
That brings us to another "controversial" -- but ultimately commonsense -- piece of the puzzle, the "individual mandate." It means that (almost) everyone would either have to buy health insurance or pay a modest penalty that would contribute to the system. In the House bill, the penalty would max out at 2.5 percent of income. Waivers would be available in the cases of economic hardship or for those who have religious objections.
There will be those who get those waivers; others will be left behind -- it's not a truly universal system. But according to preliminary projections, the result would be an uninsured rate of 3-5 percent, rather than the 16 or so percent who lack insurance today, reducing the rolls of the uninsured by some 20 million30 million.
6. Those Who Can't Afford the Premiums Will Get Help Paying
Ultimately, even if the public exchanges were to succeed in bringing the price of health insurance back to earth, a lot of people would still be priced out of the market.
All of the Democratic plans come with subsidies to help those at the lower end of the economic ladder get access to decent health care. The most generous are in the House bill, and how extensive the subsidies will be in the final legislation will be a point of heated debate.
In the House bill, individuals making less than 400 percent of the poverty line -- $43k per year and families earning under $88k -- will be eligible for subsidized coverage on a sliding scale.
Those at the lowest income levels (but who earn too much to get Medicaid) will be required to pay no more than 1.5 percent of their total income for health coverage.
Subsidies would also be available for co-pays -- also for people earning up to 400 percent of the poverty line.
Finally, many small businesses would be eligible for tax credits for insuring their employees.
7. No Free Lunch for Businesses
Currently, large employers that rely on low-skilled workforces usually offer little or no health coverage, and much of these workers' health care is already subsidized by taxpayers in the form of Medicaid and Medicare payments, other public programs and unpaid bills for emergency-room visits. Under the proposals in Congress, medium and large firms would face a simple choice: Offer their employees decent coverage or pay something into the system to offset the burden their employees' health needs impose on the American taxpayer.
8. More Low-Income Workers Eligible for Medicaid
All of the plans being considered by Congress make more of the working poor eligible for Medicaid by lifting the income limits on eligibility.
9. Some Things Will Change, but You'll Never Notice
The right's fearmongering is only effective because the health care debate is often so complex. Opponents of reform paint dark conspiracies about some of the more-obscure provisions in the reform package (a good example being the gross mischaracterization of a rather innocuous provision that makes counseling on living wills and other end-of-life decisions available to ill seniors as a "government death panel").
It is true, however, that the proposed legislation contain a number of provisions that aren't getting a lot of attention in the debate.
For example, there are measures that would impact the way doctors are paid, allocate additional dollars for developing the health care workforce and bring new technologies online.
These provisions will have a significant impact on a variety of stakeholders -- mostly health professionals -- but ordinary people looking for health coverage are not going to notice anything different about their health care.
10. Over Time, the System Will Become Healthier
Everything depends on what the final legislation entails. But if it were done right, those systemic changes -- greater competition, tighter regulation, technological improvements, a greater emphasis on prevention, the buying power and efficiency of less-fragmented insurance pools and an end to treating the uninsured in emergency rooms -- would gradually "bend the cost curve" of health coverage and offer insurance to tens of millions of people who today struggle with the health problems and stressful economic insecurity of living without insurance.
As I've argued before, the Democrats' approach is far from perfect. But the things outlined here are essentially what would come about if the more-progressive version(s) passed.
Understanding what's actually contained in the legislation leads to an unavoidable conclusion about the anger we've seen in recent weeks: it's doubtful that at anytime in the history of our nation have a group of people been so furiously opposed to something that would so obviously be an improvement over what they now have.
It's nothing less than a testament to the power of industry propaganda.


See more stories tagged with: health reform
Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet.