Many would be website owners fail to realize the importance of domain names as part of effective web marketing. Although not as important as content and top quality keywords, the right domain names will enhance the web marketing efforts. A few pointers for the selection for great domain names are provided below to help you make the right choice.

Let the name stick

Names that are easy to remember because of their uniqueness or because of generic value, will be more memorable than names that can be confused with other domains. Also keep in mind that if the name is difficult to pronounce that the users will most often make mistakes when typing the name and may even land at competitor sites in the process. This could spell disaster. The name should be unique enough to remember and not be confused with that of a competitor.

Shorter is better

As with anything that has to do with web marketing, shorter domain names will be better. The shorter the name the easier to spell it, remember it, and refer others to it. Shorter domain names can be used in the logos, forms, and paid advertising. The longer names usually get misspelled and with many users being unsure of the correct spelling, some may give up altogether and not visit the domain again.

Extension counts

Domain names can have many extensions such as .net, .org, .cc, .com, co.za, co.uk etc. Domain names ending on less frequently used top level domains may be suspect and will leave a lot of room for domain hijackers to come in and sow havoc in your web marketing efforts. As such select an extension that will fit with the audience. If your market is international the best extension will be .com, but if your target audience is in your country then use your country’s extension for example, co.za for South Africa or co.uk for the UK market.

Relation with business

If you really want to confuse web users then the name will be unrelated to your business. They will wonder whether they are at the correct site. They may even ignore your electronic newsletters because the name has no relation to the main topic of your site. Get descriptive domain names that will show your main business. Take for instance, a site about careers. If the name says careers.com it will be easy recognizable. If the name however, looks like an acronym such as johnjenkingslabour.com the users may think it is a site about labour law.

Brand building with domain names

Consider the value of a solid domain name. Large companies like Coca-Cola and Pepsi do because they know how important association with a brand is. First before you start branding with the domain name, check whether the name is still available. Then also consider trade marking.

Where to get inspiration

If you cannot come up with good domain names consider places such as domainfellow.com to get possible combinations or perhaps even an older place such as nameboy.com.

Poor domain names cost their owners money

Domain hijackers love domain names that can be misspelled as they register the misspelled form of domain names and then whenever a user misspells the name, the user will land at their website. Convenient for them and a terrible loss for you. It is thus important to invest time in the selection of the correct domain names before you start with your web marketing.

“Intoweb Marketing offers internet marketing solutions for your website in South Africa. Contact us for a internet marketing quote today.”

The success of your e mail marketing as part of an internet promotion strategy will depend on the readers opening the newsletters. For this reason you will need to make it as easy as possible for users to receive and open the e mail marketing newsletters.

Start at the top

The formatting plays an integral part of making the e mail marketing newsletters user-friendly. Start with the subject field to create interest as it will be the first thing that the user will see. If the subject line doesn’t stir interest you can be assured that the reader will not open the e mail marketing newsletters. The focus of the subject line should be the client. The reader wants to know what they will get from opening the newsletter. You thus need to create a subject line that will indicate immediately how to the client will benefit. Format the subject line to indicate personal attention. By including the subscriber’s name in the subject line you will indicate a personal connection. It will immediately draw attention and spark interest. It is thus important to get the recipient’s name when they sign up to receive the e mail marketing newsletters. This little step will help to create personalised e mail marketing newsletters which of course will mean that you can get back more for your investment into internet promotion.

Help the reader to recognize from where the email originated

If the subscribers don’t recognize the sender chances are that they will block the emails, not open them or simply tag them as spam. The “from” is thus as important as the subject field and should receive the same careful consideration. Select the most known name of your company or website to insert in the “from” field and don’t switch between senders. This will confuse the subscriber and trigger alarm bells.

Valuable content

You don’t want subscribers to delete e mail marketing newsletters when they recognize your name because your newsletters don’t offer value. The third important component will thus be valuable content. The recipient should benefit every time when reading your newsletters.

Compatibility

The main discussion among e mail marketing specialists is whether to send the emails as HTML or plain text formatted. Many recipients block the HTML, but with HTML you still get higher click through rates than with the plain text mails. With HTML e mail marketing newsletters you can add tracking code to establish the reaction on offers. These types of emails are normally also more attractive and with people being drawn to visually appealing emails, your newsletters will get the required attention. Plain text however, can be sent to many platforms including cell phones and offers more consistency. Users trust the plain text more because they know that there will be no tracking code inserted and with the risk of viruses being prevalent in HTML emails, they may opt for the safer plain text emails.

Solution for internet promotion purposes

To ensure that you get both the sceptic and the open minded reader’s attention have both options available when they subscribe to receive the e mail marketing newsletters. It should be the reader’s choice. You will thus create two formats: that of HTML and that of plain text for your e mail marketing newsletters. If you need help with running such a campaign get in the assistance of internet promotion specialists such as Intoweb Marketing.

“Intoweb Marketing offers internet marketing solutions for your website in South Africa. Contact us for a internet marketing quote today.”

Web content writing should form part of any internet marketing strategy, but unfortunately it is easier said than done. Most people have the notion that a writer has ample time to come up with creative ideas and will have the leisure life of doing web content writing next to the swimming pool with a cocktail in the one hand. Although it is the ideal it is certainly not the case when you have to write copy for your website that will be used for Internet marketing purposes.

Time is normally limited and with the Internet being a fast moving environment requiring fresh content daily, weekly and monthly, you will hardly have the time to create web copy at leisure time. This is perhaps the most important reason for hiring a web content writing company where numerous writers will slave away at professional copy as fast as they can. If however, you decide to do it yourself you will benefit from the web content writing tips below.

Internet and the offline environment differs vastly

Normally when you write a features article, a short story, essay, report or book you will have enough space and time to start with a comprehensive introduction leading gradually to the climax before coming to a conclusion. It is not the case with the Internet. People read Internet pages in another way and will simply not have the time to scan through an exceptionally long introduction. Just as time is not on your side when it comes to web content writing, so the reader doesn’t have time. You will write copy with that in mind. Also keep in mind that the copy for a blog differs from that of the actual information pages that you will create for your website. That copy in return will differ from the articles you will write as part of internet marketing. The copy for the newsletter will once again be unique and will have another structure. Our focus here will be on populating your website with content.

Web content writing for populating the website

When writing articles for the website you will have more freedom of expression and can use paragraphs rather than bullets and short sentences. The reason is that once a person decides to read an article, they are willing to spend time on the activity. When a person visits a website to find information about a product or service however, they will scan the page and not read it. In this case the content should be formatted for scanning and not reading.

Create a structure for scanning

Web content writing should thus be done in a hierarchical manner throughout the website. You need to give the readers clues as to the importance of wording through headings, contrasts, placement of information and colours. This is where superior graphic design will also be a benefit. Use style sheets in navigation to help the user.

Font sizes and colour combinations

Apart from the way you will go about to write the content you will also have to pay close attention to presentation. Use narrower columns rather than wide columns to organize information. Use an easy to read font type such as Arial or Verdana that will display well on all computers.

Web content writing for internet marketing purposes – the actual copy

The page content must be visible within the first paragraph. Many readers will only read the first paragraph to decide whether they want to move on or will want to read the rest of the page. Most important keywords and information should already be in the upper part of the page. You will have long paragraphs at first – not a problem you will summarize each paragraph in a single sentence which will form the beginning of the paragraph.

Headings and bullets for scanning

Have you ever noticed how many people never buy the newspaper and only read the news headlines when they pass the newspaper advert boards? The reason is simply because the majority of persons feel that they can get the information they need from the headlines. Keep that in mind when you populate the pages of your website. Create information packed headlines for the various paragraphs. This will help the reader to get the information wanted without actually having to read through the content. Create bulleted lists to organize benefits.

Armed with the above information on how to do web content writing for internet marketing purposes you are now ready to practice a few times before applying the knowledge to your own website.

“Intoweb Marketing offers internet marketing solutions for your website in South Africa. Contact us for a internet marketing quote today.”

You can make use of article directories to get free web content and information for email marketing. Did you know that you don’t have to write all the information for your e newsletters used in internet marketing to your clients? It should be good news because normally you would employ the services of an online writer which can cost a bit at the end of the day or you would spend hours in creating content for the e newsletters.

There are many article directories on the internet offering excellent free web content. True some of the free web content is of poor quality, but if you search a bit you will find many articles offering top quality content.

The article directories offer free web content because they make their income from Google Adsense and the article writers get back links to their websites in return for giving the free web content to you.

The latter is also a great way for you to get back links to your site. If you are a good writer you can write a few hundred articles or write two or three and make use of an article spinning service to create hundreds of articles from the three that can be submitted to article directories. You will be able to add a small biography at the bottom of each article with a link back to your site. Besides getting back links from the articles to your site (and normally they have good PageRank), you can also get back links from the websites where the free web content will be displayed.

The one problem you will have to overcome with submission of articles to numerous article directories on the internet is that the search engine spiders can easily identify spam if the same article is submitted to hundreds of article directories. The secret is to create unique articles by writing original articles which can be spinned and then submit by hand to about five to ten article directories.

Regarding free web content you should know that normally a link back to the original website will be required. This means an outgoing link for every article you use. This could damage your website PageRank. If the link is in an email however, it will not hurt your website PageRank as the back links will not be on your website. As such go ahead and make use of the free web content offered at article directories to create interesting e newsletters.

Where to find the best article directories on the internet for free web content and to get back links

The best route is to locate the top article directories for free content and also to get back links simply because you want directories with high PageRank and Traffic Rank. As such always check the URL (web address) of the article directory with a page rank checker (which can be located through a simple search on Google for “ google pagerank checker”. Go for directories with rankings of four and more if you want to submit your articles to be offered as free web content and thus get back links to your website. Some of the best article directories are that of SearchWarp, EzineArticles, Web-Source, and ArticlesBase. You will be able to locate many by simply doing a search for free article directories at Google.

Used responsibly the free web content can help to improve the content value of your e newsletters. Used as an internet marketing tool, the article directories will be excellent for back links and thus improved web page rank.

“Intoweb Marketing offers internet marketing solutions for your website in South Africa. Contact us for a internet marketing quote today.”

If you want to drive up website ranking on the Internet you need to get links. We will explore ways to get links not paid or artificial ones, to legitimately drive up website ranking on the Internet.

How directories can help to get links for pushing up website ranking on the internet

The quickest way to get links without paying for them and which will thus legitimately drive up website ranking, is to submit your site to as many as possible relevant and high ranking directories on the Internet.

Sites with high page ranks which link to your site will help to improve your website ranking. As a rule of thumb don’t seek links from sites with lower page ranking than yours. Your site will benefit theirs and not the other way around.

To improve website ranking on the Internet you need to get links which don’t require link backs. If you need to link back it will defeat the object. Remember that your site should generally have more incoming than outgoing links to get a good standing on the Internet. Blindly submitting to directories without careful planning is not recommended. The first step should thus be to prepare the various directory listings.

Preparation for submission to directories to get links

Create about five listings which can go under different categories. By preparing the listings beforehand you will save time and ensure that you can simply copy and past the information into the spaces provided by the directories. In this way you will also prevent unnecessary mistakes and ensure consistency.

Elements to be included

For each listing prepare a title, description, three keywords, and decide in which categories it will fit.

The title will be the website title which must include the keyword that you wish to obtain good ranking for. Also prepare a listing with the company name as title as some of the directories are rather specific and only allow company names.

The description must contain all three keywords for which you want high ranking. Keep the description short. Some directories on the internet will allow up to 250 characters (including spaces), but to ensure that your descriptions are short enough keep to 150 characters. The description should accurately describe the website. Keywords must be selected carefully as the keywords will be what will help to rank your web pages high for specific terms. The keywords are the words used by internet users at search engines and directories to find sites about specific topics. Prepare a list of keywords that will be relevant. Keep to three keywords per listing that will fit the specific description.

Selecting the categories

The category is important if you want to get links that will be valuable for website ranking on the Internet. Make a list of categories beforehand and before submitting the page to each of the directories, carefully study their categories to select the most appropriate categories. Remember that although you will use the directories to get links, you will also benefit from the incoming traffic generated by users clicking on your site at the specific directory. If the site is under the correct category you will get more relevant hits.

Which directories to submit to if you want to get links to drive up website traffic

Submit to the main directories first such as the Yahoo Search (even though it is a paid directory). Don’t add any marketing words which will lead to disqualification. Also consider the Open Directory Project which is free and be ready to wait for inclusion, but don’t miss out on this great link builder. It should be noted that at most of the directories with free listings you will have to wait a few days before your submission is accepted and will go live. It is however, worth the wait. Another free directory worth the submission is Jayde.

Now do a search at Google for business directories or directories relevant to your specific website. Submit to each one. You can also make use of bulk submissions although many of the directories don’t accept automated submissions. If you are in a hurry for links you can use a tool such as WEB CEO or SubmitWolf to get automated submission to quite a few directories at once. Don’t get links from free for all sites as these links will not do you any good.

You can do all the above in one day and confirm submissions within 24 hours to get links from directories that will drive up website ranking on the Internet.

“Intoweb Marketing offers internet marketing solutions for your website in South Africa. Contact us for a internet marketing quote today.”

Website performance can be measured by analyzing the bounce rate which is an important indicator of whether the keywords used in internet marketing are relevant, whether technical problems at a site exist, and whether your website addresses the expectations of the visitors.

Bounce rate is a metric to indicate how many visits to your website were only to one page before the user exited. It is not to say that if a user only visits one page and then leaves that there is something wrong with the website. The user could have found the information looking for or may have followed a link from a site to another. Affiliate marketing sites will not so much look at the bounce rate if the user came in via a search term, but rather where the user went from the page. If the user clicked on the link leading to the landing site it will indicate success.

Another instance where the bounce rate will not matter that much is the first page of a blog. The user may have read all the posts on the main page and then leave – not an indication of poor website performance, but rather that the user has found the content useful, provided the time spent on the first page was enough to read through the various posts. In this instance you will look at the time spent to measure website performance as part of internet marketing rather than the actual bounce rate.

How to measure the bounce rate as an indication of website performance related to internet marketing

The bounce rate is obtained by looking at the number of visits to the page. The formula for the bounce rate will be number of one page visits divided by the number of persons entering the website through the specific page. Google Analytics is an excellent tool to use if you want to identify the bounce rate. Many of the website analytics and statistics tools normally found at the website control panel also provide the information without having to do complex formulas to get to the answer.

Why is the bounce rate so important for measuring website performance as part of internet marketing?

Often when clients approach an internet marketing company because their site is not performing as desired, the internet marketing company will first use an analytics tool to discover flaws in the site and thus identify areas that can cause poor website performance. The bounce rate is one of those metrics used simply because it is such a good indicator of what is transpiring on the website. High bounce rates universally give an indication of poor website performance except for the cases already discussed. If someone lands on a page and then leaves without visiting another page or taking an action it indicates that the person did not find what they were looking for or it was their perception.

When is the bounce rate high and thus an indication of poor website performance?

Above 90% normally indicates that there must be some kind of technical difficulty while a bounce rate above 70% can indicate a problem with keywords or content and information structure including navigation. The range between 30-60% is rather difficult as it can indicate a bit of a problem, but not enough to give a clear indication of what the problem area may be. In this respect you may want to also check where the visits originated from and analyse whether the links to your site were not relevant. Below 30% means your website performance is excellent and you are at least getting part of the internet marketing spending back. Keep going on this track!

Internet marketing companies will also look in-depth at the website performance to see whether there is a problem with content, specific types of traffic or technical problems which may cause high bounce rates at specific pages.

“Intoweb Marketing offers internet marketing solutions for your website in South Africa. Contact us for a internet marketing quote today.”

You spend a considerable time in developing catching e-newsletters as part of online marketing and as such will want the email marketing campaign to be successful. The deliverability of the e-newsletters can have a tremendous influence on the success of your email marketing campaign. We will have a look at some of actions that you can take to improve the deliverability of the e-newsletters.

Spam complaints and the deliverability of the e-newsletters

Email marketing in terms of e-newsletters can be severally affected by spam complaints as the ISPs will no sooner drop your emails in the junk folder. Few marketers realize that it is possible to receive copies of the spam complaints sent to the ISPs. You can in fact sign up and through the feedback looping system receive copies from ISPs such as Hotmail, Yahoo, and AOL.

How can the feedback loop help you to identify spam complaints regarding your e-newsletters?

You can study the copies of the spam complaints to find reasons for citing the e-newsletters as spam. This will help to identify email hijackings and to identify how many complaints the ISP has received. It is also possible to use feedback loop reports available from Surety Mail that will indicate how many complaints a specific ISP received about your email on a daily basis. Monitor the complaints to ensure that you can act quickly to restore your email reputation where needed.

Importance of good reputation for deliverability of e-newsletters as part of email marketing in your online marketing campaign

The email sender must have a good reputation with the ISPs to ensure that the e-newsletters will not be blocked as spam. The reputation refers to the track record of the company with the subscribers to the e-newsletters and the reputation with the ISPs regarding the sending of accurate e-newsletters to valid email addresses where the content is opened by the subscribers.

Factors that can improve the deliverability of the e-newsletters as part of an email marketing campaign

Make sure you only send e-newsletters to subscribers that are relevant to the topic for which they have subscribed originally. If the recipients perceive the e-newsletters as off track it will create a negative perception and can cause your emails to be blocked at the end of the day.

Never overdo it. If the recipients find their inboxes to be filled too often they will quickly find reason to unsubscribe from the e-newsletters. The problem however, is not with those who unsubscribe, but the ones who don’t and simply block the emails, mark them as spam or don’t open them anymore. If too many of the subscribers fall in the last category, it can severally affect your reputation with the ISP. Make sure you use the feedback loops available from the larger internet service providers and take quick action to remove the subscribers that have tagged your e-newsletters as spam.

Send shorter e-newsletters and rather keep from sending huge volumes at once as this will get the attention of the ISPs immediately. Take action to get negative subscribers to once again open your emails through amazing offers and freebies. Also make sure that the e-newsletters are not unintentionally blocked by the subscribers by giving them instructions as how to white list your email address. Make use of confirmations for subscriptions to ensure that the users will be aware of the subscription to your e-newsletters. Follow the above guidelines to ensure high deliverability of your e-newsletters and the subsequent success of your email marketing campaign as part of the overall online marketing strategy.

“Intoweb Marketing offers internet marketing solutions for your website in South Africa. Contact us for a internet marketing quote today.”

People don’t like to buy blindly. They want information and if they cannot locate the information at your website they will turn to a competitor site. It is thus important to have an FAQ page to improve website sales conversions on the Internet. The FAQ page has as purpose the answering of questions to help the buyer make an informed decision. Many websites fail in terms of website sales conversions on the internet simply because not enough attention is given to the answering of questions.

Why the FAQ page helps to improve website sales conversions on the internet

Although many companies have 24 hour customer support call lines where most of the questions will be answered, it just so happens that not everyone cares to call. Most of the customers will want their questions answered directly on the website without having to pick up the phone and dial a toll free number.

In instances where the audience is international, many customers will not be able to dial the toll free number and will thus be hesitant to call because of high international dial rates. The call centre is important, but if you can have the questions answered on the website without any further action required by the customer, you will see improved website sales conversions on the internet with minimal capital investment required.

Only about one out of ten customers normally call although more will email, but will expect an answer almost immediately. Many customers leave websites frustrated by the lack of information and answers for their concerns. Even sites with basic FAQ pages experience low website sales conversions because they have not taken the time to build an efficient FAQ page that can be navigated with ease.

The solution – create a list of possible questions that will exhaust every possible reasonable question

Even if the answer to a question seems a bit obvious to you, you should still include the question as the user is most probably new to the site or have another reason not known to you for asking the question.

Types of FAQ

Normally users will have questions about delivery dates, time taken before delivery takes place, guarantees, ordering information, refunds and more with e-commerce activities. They will also have questions about secure online payment, credit cards, confidentiality and more. In terms of the products or services they will have questions about costs, discounts, payment plans and more. Regarding information submissions, they will want to know how to, confidentiality and what will be expected from them. Regarding products they will want to know about the safety, working, specials and more. Make a list of questions that you will want to ask about every topic on your site and then make appropriate categories.

Rank the questions in relation to importance

After having categorized the questions that will help to improve website sales conversions if answered, list the questions in each category according to importance. Get to ground level. Ask the customer sales division which questions they receive on a regular basis. Check emails of questions received so far. Now remove questions that overlap.

Rephrase the questions

Next put the questions in the way that the users will normally ask them and then answer the questions in a concise manner. After each answer should be the option to mark whether the question was answered fully and a place given for suggestions/comments or further questioning.

To prevent the page from becoming too long, you could hide the answers to the questions and when the user clicks on a question the answer appears in a window underneath it. Another solution is to have all the questions at the top with anchor links to the text lower down on the page. Make it possible to get answers at one page rather than leading the user to several pages. Create a comprehensive FAQ page and see how website sales conversions on the internet improve.

“Intoweb Marketing offers internet marketing solutions for your website in South Africa. Contact us for a internet marketing quote today.”

It is almost universally accepted that the more incoming links from high ranking sites, the higher a website will rank at certain search engines including Google. The difficulty lies in obtaining those links. In order to get ahead you will have to develop a strong internet link building strategy that works for improving site traffic and ranking.

One of the tools often overlooked is that of Delicious which is in essence a bookmarking tool that will allow linking to websites which fall in your preference range. It is the perfect Internet link building tool to get other people to refer others to your website through quality links. It works with tags which are used to place websites liked into categories through the usage of keywords. The tags are thus the keywords. It also allows exploration of websites tagged by others for particular keywords. The above is from the user’s side. In terms of the SEO or website master Delicious can be used for the categorizing of the various internet link building possibilities through effective organization of the links.

Step 1 – Install the Delicious plug-in

The Delicious plug-in must be installed to take advantage of its features. This can be done by going to http://delicious.com and to ensure that others don’t peek into your research simply select PRIVATE.

Step 2 – Keyword building for the Internet link building strategy

Do some keyword phrase research to find the best keyword phrases relevant to your website. The secret is to create keyword phrases rather than stand alone keywords. You want the most likely queries to ensure that you will find the most relevant websites that will link back to your website. You want to find places where you can submit your site to which will accept the submissions. You can use tools such as the link finder at http://www.seomoz.org for the purpose. Through the use of the tool you will thus find websites likely to accept submissions from your site and which will link to your website.

Step 3 – Develop categories

This is where the Delicious tool will come in. Make categories for the various links and potential link opportunities. Be warned there will be hundreds of results and this will be the most time consuming part of the process. You will have to distinguish among the many actions that can be taken for example, commenting, adding resources, and submissions.

Step 4 – Sort through the results

In this phase of the internet link building process you will sort through the results and categorize each of the smart queries or keyword phrases with tags through the use of Delicious. Only do the top results for the first 50 or so. You will use the list of contacts to submit your site to for links.

Step 5 – Research content relevant to your site

You will have to create excellent content to make it worth the while to link to. In this phase you will find the most used tags under the popular section of Delicious relevant to your website’s content. Also apply the social voting system to find results of topics that will interest people in relation to the overall theme of your website.

Step 7 – Create content for internet link building

Now make sure you have written quality articles about the popular and most tagged keyword phrases. You will have to write quite a few articles so either put a few days aside for the project or get in the help of an SEO company such as Intoweb Marketing that will have the team of writers to write about the keyword phrases you provide.

Final Step – Internet Link Building

Do your internet link building submissions to the various websites and go through the whole process at least once or twice every year. Also be sure to check the various websites every six months to make sure they are still relevant. This is one great way to improve ranking and incoming traffic. If time is a problem and perhaps you lack the writing skills or are not all that Internet savvy, but want the benefits of internet link building contact the marketing specialists at Intoweb Marketing to handle the whole process for you.

“Intoweb Marketing offers internet marketing solutions for your website in South Africa. Contact us for a internet marketing quote today.”

Your website should be structured with the reader in mind. View websites consist of only one page. As such make sure that the website content will show relation to a single topic – meaning each page must be connected to another and the website content should thus flow logically.

Always keep in mind that Internet users don’t read the website content from page one through to page 80 as would be the case with a book. Every article should thus be written to be able to stand alone without the reader having knowledge of the other pages. All the content must be related to the main topic of the website as to prevent confusion. Rather create another website for topics unrelated to the main subject if you have a diversified subject field.

All of the above taken into account you will still need to create coherent website content even though each page must be able to stand on its own. The relationship between the various pages must thus be obvious. The Internet makes it possible to jump from one page to another and to other websites. It is thus imperative that the relationship among pages will be noticeable.

You cannot for instance, have a website about flowers and then have an unrelated page about dog training among them unless you can show the relationship between a dog and flowers. To create relationship you will have to show in the article how dog training can help prevent a dog from trashing your garden.

When writing website content you will also have to keep in mind the pages read before the user got to the present page as well as the pages that the user will visit directly after reading the specific page. If you for instance, write about furniture selection for the dining room, the user most probably read the page of furniture selection for the house or furniture selection for the lounge first and may probably read the page about furniture selection for the bedroom or the study next.

Navigation can become tricky on the Internet

With the user being able to click on a link within a web page and then suddenly jump to another page in the website, you will want to create continuity so that the user can still see the relation between the page jumped to and the page jumped from.

Keep in mind that the user will not always get to a page through the same path. The user could have landed at the web page through a link from another website, banner ad, organic search results, affiliate marketing site, a referral from a friend, a direct link placed in an email or from pay per click advertising. The user could have reached the web page from the main page of your website, the sitemap, a link in another page on the site etc.

The solution

The secret is to help the user see immediately where they have landed and what the relationship to the other website content is. The best way to do this is to have each of the pages on your website start the same with a headline and introduction to help them understand what the page is about and how it is related to the rest of the website content. Also guide the users at the end of each page to related pages with links for further reading.

“Intoweb Marketing offers internet marketing solutions for your website in South Africa. Contact us for a internet marketing quote today.”