New Web Design for Lunarpages.com!!!

Many of you may have already noticed that Lunarpages.com got a face lift recently. We are really proud of the new site design and are hopeful it will help our customers find their perfect web hosting solution faster and more efficiently.

Please take a look around, and let us know what you think 

In this month’s issue we cover:

• LunarNews: January 2009

• Why You Want to Start an Online Business in 2009

• SEO Tips: Step Nine of Ten – Conversion Optimization

• Look at Your Site with the New Year in Mind

• 18 Free Stock Photo Sites

• 24 Links to Make Life Better

• Common LPQuicksite FAQs

• Writing for the Blogosphere

• Great Tool to Teach Yourself CSS

Enjoy!

You might have noticed that we did not release a December issue last month – that’s because we wanted to start pushing the newsletters out at the beginning of every month. So from now on, expect your Lunarpages Web Hosting Newsletter reminder in the first few weeks of every month! We hope you all enjoy this slight change in how the newsletter is formatted.

Okay, now onto the News!

Winter Web Hosting Special!

That’s right – we launched a Winter Hosting Special, which offers Unlimited Storage, Unlimited Bandwidth, $775 free bonus, Free Domain, and more, all for $4.95/month with 12 or 24 month agreement for our Basic Hosting Plan. Just remember, this is a limited time promotion, so if you are ready to start a website, now is the perfect time!

New LPQuicksite Features

Lunarpages LPQuicksite Hosting Plan received a small makeover recently, and we really hope you enjoy the new look, the slight change in the layout, and especially the new features added in. Among the new LPQuicksite features implemented are easy file uploading (for MP3s, PDFs, and more!), a new ordering and layout manager for our over 350 templates, new Template categories, changes for Products page, and more.

Visit LPQuicksite.com for more information or login to view all the new features and the beautiful new layout. You can also read through some additional LPQuicksite tutorials over on the Lunarpages Wiki!

Websites of the Month

In November and December, we voted for some new websites of the month over on LunarForums.com.

November’s Website of the Month was the exquisitely-designed AlteredHope.com. As a web design agency from Alabama, they of course know how to design a nice looking website! This is one of my personal favorite sites of the month, because their color choices and samples are just flawless. Congratulations are well deserved!

December’s Website of the Month was the clean and geeky GadgetGyan.com, a website about tech goodies ranging from computers and electronics to automobiles and motorcycles. It’s a pretty amazing site, with some incredible deals on these products. Congrats, guys!

If you’d like to nominate a website or just want to see the competition, visit the Website of the Month forums at LunarForums today.

The economy is down, unemployment is through the roof, we’re in the worst financial crisis since the great depression. Sounds like the worst time to start an online business right? Wrong! The year 2009 could be the perfect time to start an online business because of all the turmoil going on in the business world. Let me explain…

While the rest of the business world is in shambles the online business world is doing well. According to the Department of Commerce U.S. Retail E-commerce sales numbers are up all around. The 2nd Quarter of 2008 saw $34.6 billion in sales which was a 2.9% increase from the 1st quarter and a 9.5% increase from the second quarter of 2007. Just recently on “Cyber Monday” (the online world’s “black Friday”) the online world saw another positive sign, consumers spent $846 billion on cyber Monday which was an increase of 15% over 2007’s cyber Monday.

So, why is e-commerce increasing in such tough times?

Consumer spending is low, layoffs have started to happen and will continue to happen throughout the first quarter of 2009, so consumers have obviously realized it’s time to start saving. It is widely known that you are able to get the best deals online for any type of item you want. The reason for this is that online businesses are easier to maintain and cost less to run. These savings translate into better deals for consumers.

The other positives about shopping online include not having to fight traffic or wake up early, you spend less money on gas, etc. All this has combined to make for a rather good money-making holiday season for online retailers in a down economy. With the economy not expected to rebound until late 2009 to early 2010, consumers will continue to deal hunt and those hunts will lead them to online retailers and businesses.

The online business environment is easy to get into, too, which works to your benefit! An online business could be retail, blogging, copywriting, marketing, etc. That being said, it is not as easy to succeed in online business, because there is a lot of competition. However, there are things you can do to set you ahead.

Marketing online is all about the mix and measurability. A survey by Hearst Electronics Group and Goldstein Group of business to business marketers showed that the “migration of communications budgets from traditional media to online has accelerated to the point where nearly half of all spending, 47 percent, is spent on online marketing techniques today.” This is being done because online advertising methods are easily measured. In a time when budgets are being cut back and cash is strapped it is important that you know where to get the most bang for your buck. You can use free programs like Google analytics to measure your marketing efforts. This program will show you everything you need to know about how users are coming to your site, where they’re going on your site, and when and where they are leaving from your site. This amount of measurability allows you to spend less money and make more of it.

The ways of advertising your site online are free or cheap as well. Methods of advertising like social networking, article marketing, blog reviews, and forum posting are all free methods of advertising that can get your site noticed. Search engine optimization is also a key part. You can either pay a company to do that for you or you can do that yourself and make it free. Video advertising is another important way to advertise your site and that is free (after you buy the program to make the videos). You cannot forget about Pay-per-click marketing as well. Google Adwords is the premiere service for this type of advertising. These advertisements show up on the right side of the screen when you search for something on Google. This is an important method because you only pay when someone clicks on the ad and goes to your site, which makes it a relatively cheap way to get visitors to your site and it is targeted to certain keywords so the people coming to your site are already looking for what you are selling.

As you can see there are plenty of reasons to start an online business in 2009. The ease of entry, the cheap advertising, the multiple types of business you could create are all great reasons to get started now. Online business is not going away and while it isn’t recession-proof, the numbers are showing that online is one of the fastest growing segments of business in terms of sales revenue. It hasn’t stopped in a sluggish economy and it will only increase when the economy recovers.  The year 2009 is your year to start an online business and be successful at it!

Steve Quatrani is the founder and operations manager of RebateRabbit.com. A site which aims to help all those starting an online business choose the right web hosting company by being educated. Rebaterabbit.com Also provides hosting rebates to make all hosting as inexpensive as possible.

Welcome to step nine in this ten part SEO series. The ten parts of the SEO process we will be covering are:

1. Keyword Research & Selection
2. Competitor Analysis
3. Site Structure
4. Content Optimization
5. Link Building
6. Social Media
7. PPC
8. Statistics Analysis
9. Conversion Optimization
10. Keeping It Up

Give them Direction, then give them choice.

Marketing online doesn’t have to be terribly complicated or flashy in order to be successful.

I do a lot of market research for big corporations and smaller start-ups, all of which come to me with the same problems:

1. They aren’t getting the right traffic to convert on their website.
2. They aren’t getting return traffic to their website.
3. Their abandonments are high and their website has no stickiness.
4. Leads and/or sales are falling off.

Really, what they are all failing to do is build a real “brand relationship” with their market, and they cannot seem to figure out why.

But what is interesting is that the reason why is pretty much the same across the board – they never took the time to really consider the behavior of their current users and those users that they want to attract.

I know it is the oldest marketing tenant, but it’s so old because it is absolutely true.

If you really want to succeed and get more online conversions, you have to:

1. Look first to your market
2. Seek to understand your market
3. Identify what your market needs

Here’s the trick though…

1. Give it to them in a way that seems natural, specific to them
2. Coach them along the way

More often than not, whether it is B2B or B2C, most companies fail to give the audience what they want – because they don’t do it in the way the audience wants to hear it. Instead they use flash or messaging that is constructed around the way the business sells and not the way its customers buy.

Let me tell you a story.

Fifty years ago my grandfather opened a small butcher shop in the east end. He was an immigrant with some scraped together savings from working on the docks in the day and a family meat shop downtown during the nights. He would grind up sausages all night, cut porterhouses, and then break his back unloading booze and everything else off the boats.

I’m sure he kept a little for himself – a sort of cheap steaks on the waterfront and cheap booze from the butcher kind of thing – but he had a dream of making his own way and he did what he had to in order to make it happen.

I didn’t know him then, but he would tell me stories sometimes about how he worked for everything he had and how nothing came easy.

The things I remember most was that he told me it took him 2 years to find his storefront; had to be on the corner with windows shining light in from both sides; had to be able to have two 12 foot long displays on the inside walls; had to be able to have a register in the middle.

Location was the key for his success.

What’s more, he also made sure that it was the on the cross of the two bus routes – one that went to the downtown offices, the other coming up from the waterfront. It also happened to be surrounded by two bedroom family apartments.

He said he always put the right cuts of meat in each display, so there was a path for the bankers and a path for the workers.

By the time I knew him, he had over a dozen butcher shops in five cities.

The story may seem like a bit of a distraction, but I think that the same design my grandfather brought to his butcher shop is what is lacking in a lot of website design.

You see, my grandfather knew that his location would make stopping at the butcher a very natural extension of his customers walk home. He also knew that the guy coming in the center door from the right side would look through the window as he marched to the door and follow that direct path to the register.

In his shop, nobody had to crisscross the store – the two displays were tailored to either the cuts favored by banker or the cuts favored by longshoremen – the money at the register was the same – and everybody chose their distinct route, but they were definitely coached along the way.

Barrier Scanning in Websites

A few weeks ago we published a little whitepaper about a trend that we were starting to see more and more through some of our eye tracking studies. (http://www.enquiroresearch.com/barriers-on-a-website.aspx – it’s free to download) We started calling it barrier scanning in-house, and eventually we started seeing it so frequently that we thought maybe we should write about it.

Barrier Scanning happens on all types of websites, from e-commerce to lead generation microsites, and is the act of some on the page element – be it a large graphic, whitespace, video, or even the page fold – being perceived as a natural barrier to a user’s scan pattern. In essence, it interrupts the natural scan activity and either redirects, fences, or funnels a user’s natural flow on the page.

Think of it like rocks in a stream… if the rocks are large enough, or there happens to be too many of them, the water will change its natural course.

The image (Figure 1) above is a perfect illustration of how graphic elements can alter a user’s scan pattern. (The red to blue spectrum overlay indicates the area and concentration of a user’s fixations.) See how the user’s scanning is funneled to the text links in the right rail by the two large display ads.

However, the size of an image can also determine whether or not it is perceived as a barrier and blocks the scanning of the page (see figure 2 as an example). In fact, larger graphics, without text, are easier for a user to ignore because they are not part of the fovial fixations (people use their peripheral vision to look at pictures).

Like a large graphic, video or Flash can also act as barriers, driving users around the multimedia portion of the page.

Think about getting Conversions

Now imagine that your website has a large graphic call to action… is there a good chance that it is being perceived as a natural barrier and actually pushing user’s scan patterns away instead of attracting eyeballs?

Now imagine that you have embedded your conversion trigger into your Flash file – right at the end of it… is there a good chance that user’s are scanning around the media looking for a clear navigation path?

The answer to both questions is “yes.”

Let me first give this caveat though – just because your website has this type of layout doesn’t mean this is definitely happening, but if you aren’t leaving enough natural information scent on the page, more than likely your page is failing you as a result.

What do I mean?

Think of your page like a treasure map, you can’t just place your conversion trigger and hope a user will find it… even if you make it larger than life with flashing neon. User’s scan a page so quickly and make relevance and navigation decisions within fractions of a second… for those reasons, you have to lay clues or clear a path for the user’s scanning.

There isn’t necessarily a simple design rule of thumb other than making a strong paradigm shift. Rather than focus on trying to be engaging, try to engage your particular customer. There is a difference there; often designers confuse “engaging” with salesy or entertaining – these are not synonyms. When I say “engage your particular customer,” I mean that you have to look at coaching your customer to a conversion trigger rather than directing them to it.

Try the following steps:

1. Look at your page the way your customer sees it… if you can’t do eye tracking, asking them questions is usually a pretty good alternative.
2. Look at your page and see if there are barriers in the way of your customer reaching your conversion trigger – if so, remove them and find better alternatives.
3. Don’t be afraid of making a mistake, the worst mistake would be to stick with something that isn’t working – make some changes and test them.
4. The parts of a good design.Remember that layout and design are only a part of the equation, making sure that you make every decision with your customer at the center is the best marketing practice. In order for any conversion trigger or process to really work, not only does the page design have to naturally coach the user to the conversion trigger, but so does the messaging and the overall resonance of the website or else none of your problems will be solved.
5. Worst case, give me a call… I’m always willing to make myself available to talk about your website or more about how barriers can impact conversions, especially how we need to start looking at online as a coaching medium and not a driving medium. In fact, we will be starting up a recurring webinar in the near future that has a rotating panel of industry experts take a look at audience suggested websites and dissect what is working and what isn’t; while suggesting some best practices for the industry as a whole.

In the end

Like my grandfather said, “it takes work to make a success” – mind you my father said it took an inheritance, but I think he had a different perspective.

My grandfather was no fool though, he spent his time understanding how his customers walked and talked before he built his butcher shop, and that made all the difference …

Rick Tobin is the Director of Research at Enquiro Research and widely regarded as an authority on conversion optimization and study.

With the start of a new year, people often start thinking about what can they do different with this clean slate.  Even if you don’t keep your New Year’s resolution – I have a few ideas that might help you get a little more out of your web site in the next year ahead of us.

Expand Your Brand

Most successful web sites cover one niche topic.  However, expanding yourself to a little broader of a topic might help bring a few new visitors into the fold.  For example, if your web site is about sandwiches – and all you write about is how to make sandwiches, then you might look into also covering the history of the sandwich.  Maybe look at the most famous sandwiches of world history.  Expand your content, and try to appeal to even more people.

Set a Goal for the Next Year

You might sit down and write out several goals you want to achieve with your web site in the next year.  This will give you a to-do list to work from, when it comes to making your web site an even bigger success than it already is.

Add Some New Features or Services

If you only have one type of feature or service on your web site, it might be time to add something new.  Do you have something that you could blog about?  Setting up WordPress is an easy thing to do – and you can edit the templates to match your current web site look and feel.  You might also look into adding forums to your web site too – so your fans have a place to discuss whatever your web site is about.

Clean House!

Time to check through your files, and delete the ones that are no longer used – and maybe trim away some of the fat from your web site pages that have grown a little too big.  You could use a scalpel or a hatchet, it doesn’t matter.  The new year though is a perfect time to do some “spring” cleaning around your web site.

Take Some Feedback into Consideration

We all get feedback from our visitors throughout the year about what they think would make our web sites or businesses even better.  A new year is a perfect time to try some of these suggestions out, to see if they work or not.

Create a New Web Site or a Spin-off

As I mentioned before, most successful web sites are based on one niche.  However, in that niche there might be several micro-niches that you cover.  Let us use the sandwich web site once more.  You write about all kinds of different sandwiches, but for some reason – you have more content about the ham and cheese sandwich in comparison with your other writing.  Maybe you should look into spinning off your ham and cheese sandwich web site into it’s own domain?  The new year might also be a good time to launch a new web site.  Pick your favorite thing, or that project you have been putting off and create a web site about it.

What other web site related task do you think could be done at this time of the year?

Photos that have gone into the public domain or are free stock images are hard to come by and can be a useful tool for any webmaster out there.  Here are eight-teen of my favorite stock photo web sites I use for my own projects.

1. Public-domain-photos.com
2. ImageBase
3. FreePhotosBank.com
4. FreeJPG
5. Cepolina Photos
6. Studio25
7. Visipix
8. Burning Well
9. tOfz
10. stock.diwiesign.com
11. UnProfound
12. Abstract Influence
13. FreeFoto
14. unices.org
15. Amygdela’s atmosphere
16. ZURBphotos
17. star29
18. Photogen

Always remember to read through the terms of use for each site, as each web site has it’s own rules for usage (such as “only for non-commercial use” or something to that effect).  If you know of any more good ones, be sure to share!