The concept of blogging to increase visitors and interests has been around for quite awhile. With the onset of social networking many people are dropping their blogs in favor of 'Friend'ing and 'Follow'ing. Our suggestion is, not so fast...hang onto those blogs!

What exactly are the advantages of blogging over social media? Blog can greatly assist in SEO! ( A reason on its own to stay...) Blogs contain content which search engine index and rank! Due to the fast changing text, search engines are constantly crawling and updating. Additionally blogs are a great link builder. It's a great forum for people to drop links (only reputable ones) and for you to share back.

There is something about the personalization in the way a blog is written that garners people interests. Social networking just doesn't achieve the same connections. Blogs lend an opportunity to connect with your readers on a more personal level, allows you to share a bit more of your personal life with our customers. For example, share a hobby or favorite past time, you'd be surprised how much people appreciate the personal touch! Even if its just one or two viewers who love golfing as much as you and decide after your post in which you dropped a line about golf, "This guy is my kinda guy. I wonder what else he's got to say...." It can really lead to continuous customer support, an increased viewer interest and eventually profitable conversions!

Blogging is a great opportunity to increase brand awareness. It gives the opportunity to present your product in its own unique niche that sets it apart from its competition. You can express more in the casual conversation of a blog about your company and what it offers, without throwing it in your reader's face, than you can via social networking. It allows your readers to feel a connection to your brand, a connection that will usually play itself out to your benefit!

We mentioned just a couple of reasons why blogging should not be disregarded. There are great benefits in maintaining this kind of connection with your readership and you'd do best to keep the lines open!

One great way to improve your SEO is through link building. As with most proper SEO tactics, you need hard work and effort to really get the ranking you want. There aren't really any shortcuts, just plain old hard work will be what gets you to the top. Do your homework and research which sites you would like to link to and which sites you have a chance of linking to. Different links are valued differently, and you want the best value for your link! Many times large sites will only offer links for a fee. Figure out what you can offer to the sits that link to yours in exchange for the link. Analyze what makes your link request unique and build on that. If you have quality content available you can suggest that in exchange or offer an exclusive discount or promotional effort.

Additionally, consistency is the key. You need a steady base of links in order for the search engines to be sure of your credibility. Obtaining a large number of links over a short period of time and then nothing for awhile looks a little suspicious and will cause the search engines to question further. It's not worth it to trick the search engines by joining link systems or buying links, rather try for one link at a time, acquired in 'white' way.

The most effective way of acquiring link is by requesting one! You can communicate via email, phone or utilize your social media contacts. Creating some sort of contact with a prospective linker is much more effective than a cold email, out of the blue. Create a connection and then request the link.

Beware of scammers. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is! Stay away from companies promising quick and easy gains and any shortcut you take will probably backfire on you in the long run.

As with all SEO tactics slow and steady wins the race. Be patient, research carefully and let time and effort build your website. And when needed, contact an SEO company to help you iron out the details!

Can there be an advantage to referring customers elsewhere when a company can%u219t satisfy its customers needs? Marketing research has shown that not only will it not hurt a business to refer customers elsewhere it can even assist in conversions!! There are a couple of reasons for this.

One reason is that customers admire honesty in the businesses they shop at. By referring a customer over to another company, especially a competitor you are showing the customer that you have their best interests in mind. Customer trust is priceless, after all it keeps them coming back!

A shopper who has a need satisfied by completing a successful purchase is much more likely to pursue another purchase soon after, even if it wasn%u219t such a necessary want. So by referring a customer to a competitor which leads him to a purchase you are increasing your chances of having him return and purchase something you do carry!

A satisfied shopper can drop a quick post or tweet about a purchase or a happy browsing experience which greatly encourages third party conversions.

To illustrate this point, review the following scenario. A popular bath soap company that retails all kinds of bath essentials, oils and creams, doesn%u219t stock the particualr cream that a browser is interested in. Obviously the first step can be to offer, without being too pushy, a comparable cream that is stocked by the company. If that doesn%u219t seem to satisfy the customer it may be in the best interest of the salesperson to refer the browser to another bath soap company which may stock the particulalr item. After such a display of honesty and integrity there is a great chance that the customer will return to purchase other items stocked by the company in addition to suggesting to all friends and acquaintances to shop at this particular bath soap company. The company will lend up benefiting over and over again from that competitor referral! What a worthwhile suggestion!

A key in marketing success is branding. The goal in branding is to create a company awareness to the extent that when people think of the product you market they automatically think of your company. There are many ways to increase brand awareness but we will choose to focus on a cost effective and generally successful idea, blogging.

Using a blog to create a brand awareness has many benefits. Numb one, it costs nothing. Most advertisement methods incur large costs, though they may be worth it in the long run. It's ideal to focus on an idea that is cost free and can result in ultra awareness.

A blog lends a personal touch to your product. It allows you to share the virtues and to familiarize your readers over and over again about your product. It's a story you can constantly retell in different ways and gives you the chance to put a face behind your product.

A blog is a great conversation station, a place for customer and business owner to interact and build a relationship. It is a great benefit for a business owner when a customer has a relationship to the 'brand,' it increases the chances that he will use it and that he will share with his friends. This is in essence viral marketing. Word of mouth advertisement. A satisfied consumer who shares his positive reports with a friend, a coworker, a neighbor is promoting your business for you in the best way. People are so much more likely to listen when a friend recommends something to them as opposed to some anonymous rating on your product page.

And most important is spice your blog up with a little personality and invite your customers to see your friendly side more than just the professional touch. You can open up more on a blog, share tidbits back and forth and inject some positive product info as you chat! Get blogging!

The goal of any retail website owner is to generate as many conversions as possible which will hopefully ultimately result in profit. Each business owner tries to figure out a way to expedite the selection process and facilitate a quick adding to cart and finalizing purchase procedure. Many customers get stuck on the selection process, comparing different items, which slows down the adding to cart and completing purchase time. This is where instating a 'Quick View' option may really come into play!

'Quick View' otherwise referred to as 'Quick Look' enables viewers to view a larger more detailed image of the selected item complete with product descriptions just by scrolling over the item and clicking the quick view option! Without having to wait for a new page to load, a small pop up window will appear and provide all the information. This can greatly speed the selection process as a shopper can easily determine which product is best for him without the additional waiting time between loading pages.

To give an example: A visitor is scrolling trough the clothing products you market and notices a beautiful girls jumper. Excitedly the visitor decides to check which material it's made out of and see the design in larger view. Voila enter quick view where the visitor can decide quickly, based on the information displayed in the pop up window, whether the cotton material is to her liking or whether shed prefer something made out of a different fabric. Decision made the visitor can now proceed onwards with the rest of her browsing, having dramatically quickened up the choosing process!

Important features to insert on your 'Quick View' button will include an 'add to cart' option, the price (especially if its discounted, let the customer know early on in the process,) product detail images and an option to 'see full product details.'

To ensure the success of this feature it's a good idea to place the 'Quick View' button in a visible place to minimize confusion caused by the pop up window springing up from a hovering mouse. As this feature grows in popularity it will become a standard part of each website. For now as you introduce it to your visitors, design it in the clearest way possible to ensure that your browsers will appreciate the full advantage to this feature.

Responsive web design refers to the idea of developing a websites design that it can transfer smoothly to fit the screen its being viewed on to provide the best experience possible for the viewer with regard to navigation and viewing. Most people surfing the net nowadays are using devices other than a good old desktop. In order to optimally display your website you need to design in a way that everyone can see clearly all you have to offer. This is where responsive web design will come into play.

Designers for a responsive web design will be best off utilizing grid and layout systems and CSS to ensure that regardless of any new devices released in the near future your website will always be able to provide a proper response. One important idea is flexible grid. Gone are the days when we can design using fixed width style, will all devices boasting different widths we're sure to head into trouble. Flexible grids will grow or shrink while keeping all its elements in their correct proportions to each other.

Most important with all this redesigning is to ensure that no matter what size screen your page will conform too, the key elements need to be visible without the need to scroll and search for them. Additionally implement a reorganization tactic to be used when the screen size shifts to rearrange all important features and ensure optimum navigation and easy viewing

Images play quite an important role on any website. Images that are not designed to respond correctly can really disturb an otherwise fantastic look. To create flexible images you may want to try CSS's overflow property to crop the images as the pages are modified to fit the different viewing devices. This will also optimize the loading time as opposed to a standard liquid page where you may have a correctly re-sized images albeit an extended loading time. Another idea is to create duplicate versions of an image and save them in your server and call on the website to pick the appropriately sized image and place it. (This can be accomplished using a detection feature together with DOM manipulation.)

This information is just a touch on all there is to know on responsive web design. There are many different ways to design in order to optimally respond to all possible situations. Good luck!

We've touched on different aspects to email marketing in previous articles. We know that in order to achieve maximum results an email need to be relevant to its recipients. But how do we create a relevant email? I'd like to focus on the personilization aspect of email marketing.

The basic way of personalizing an email is by inserting the name of the recipient into the heading, such as 'Hi Tom! We'd like to inform you of a promotion we are currently running..' as opposed to writing simply, 'Hi friend.' But that's just the basics and as the Internet communications world expands, soon this may not be enough to achieve optimum personalization results. Since you want to give your email the best chance to be viewed, you've got to tap into your creativity and get the ideas flowing!

One great method in personalization is to gather all the facts you know about the recipienet and insert them appropriately into the correspondence. For example, Robert lives in Maine and has a pet dog and his birthday falls in March. With this valuable information you can pen an email to Robert as follows, 'Good morning Robert. Just suggesting you take a look at our latest sweater arrivals which you might found a great way to combat the cold weather!' Of course we are not suggesting a separate email to each of your subscribers, you can program the emails to transfer the appropriate words taken from customer files. While some companies may feel this is not necessary, it definitely improves your chances of having you email opened which hopefully leads to some serious shopping!

Another idea is to to suggest products in your email that the recipient has previously purchased or shown an interest in. Aside from the personal touch this lends, there's a much greater chance of conversions occurring if you are indeed advertising a product that the customer is interested in. Instead of a response sounding like: "Wool suits on sale again! How many wool suits can a man own?" Delete, You can generate a reaction more similar to "Oh they're having a sale on the shirts I like! Let me check them out!"

A date triggered campaign is the next step in personalization. A typical example would be a Happy Birthday campaign which many companies currently use to wish their subscribers well and to include some special birthday deal too. We'll use Robert from Maine again in our example. Roberts birthday is March 14 to be exact. His information is stored in the database and a set amount of days before march 14 a happy birthday email is sent to him with a 10 percent off coupon to use on his next purchase. The email can be further personalized to include any other information you wish and can be set up to include other special dates such as anniversary or graduation too! I'm one of those who looks forward to that special day the whole year just for the coupons that come pouring in my inbox! It's really not that difficult to set up these campaigns and you will have your business on the road to personalizing success!

Viral Marketing is a method of Internet Marketing by which brand or company awareness spreads by word of mouth or Internet connections. As opposed to a paid advertisement campaign, viral marketing leans more towards promoting the services you offer in such a way that people will feel compelled to share what you offer with their friends.

Firstly,implement a giveaway campaign. Offer a free gift, useful knick-knacks (engraved with company logo), service or whatever else can help promote company awareness to all visitors or Facebook fans. One thing, in order for this to be effective, don't give away junk, give away something that people will really use or appreciate which will encourage them to tell their friends. A CD producer, may want to offer a free download of a song, a detergent company can send out free samples, a photographer can offer a free sitting fee as part of a package, etc. Aside from satisfying your visitors with their free acquisition its a great advertisement!

With today's dependency on social networks for communication, work your network!! Create an account and update your statues with messages or information that will really GET PEOPLE TALKING. After all that's the main objective here, to spread the word! Post exciting information about the products or services you offer. Extol the virtues and advantages to your goods; after all if a 'friend' is constantly viewing your updates on the quality eyeglasses you provide, its only natural that the next time his prescription changes he'll decide to check out your service. And it just spreads from there as he wears the glasses and encourages his friends and families to try you out too! What people hear and read gets subconsciously embedded in their minds only to be pulled out at the slightest cue! The constant advocates for you business that you send out will just reinforce the positive impression you are trying to give.

Sometimes posting random, interesting, even humorous bits of information (for example: fish sleep with their eyes open) will keep people interested in what you have to say. Your success will be measured through your contacts who encourage their friends "Check out this website, the guy always has something interesting to share." You want positive company awareness to spread and spread some more. People trust the opinion of their friends way more than the five star rating on your product page. And it can be fun for you too!

After tireless efforts your website is now up and running. You eagerly anticipate the fantastic amount of traffic and conversions that are sure to take place on your website. But as the weeks go by the visitors are not generating many conversions. On the screen your site appears as if all is good and well, running smoothly but apparently something is not. Why is this happening? What aspect of your site is not satisfying your visitors need? And why are they leaving without any sort of conversion?

If this scenario seems at all familiar, it may be a good idea to employ the services of a user testing site. A user testing site will run through the usability of your site to determine why people are not converting. For a nominal fee they can perform any task you want, whether it's a specific run through of selecting and purchasing or just a basic browsing through your site to test the navigation. You can have them try subscribing to your newsletter or run through the log in process. These testers can perform any task just as a regular customer will, except they will give you feedback on why they would feel compelled to look elsewhere for their desired product. They will be honest with you if the shopping cart loading page takes too long for the typical busy browser or whether the design needs a little pizazz to encourage further browsing past the landing page. With their help you can really get to the bottom of this mystifying situation. Sometimes it may take more than one or two testers to uncover the problem, but it's worth to keep at it until the problem is discovered.

Computers with all the knowledge and 'brains' they posses are still an electronic device. There's nothing like a good old human to test out your website and ensure it's operating to suit the whims of the typical visitor.