What Breadcrumbs Are & How to Use Them

Principally, they’re navigation aids website developers add to each and every page of a site for various purposes. Let me bring you an example of such internal links that you should have definitely seen in websites. They look like the line below:

Site Booster Home – Search Engine Optimization Articles – Latest SEO Articles

It indicated that you’re reading SEO articles of the year 2008, which are placed under search engine optimization articles. They also are under the homepage of Site Booster.

Breadcrumbs are sets of links that could be made using different technologies. The technology I suggest you to use for your site is simple html that spreads page rank from all over your site to higher-layer pages. As the pages in higher layers are more important, adding html breadcrumbs are extremely helpful in enhancing your internal linking structure and main site keywords. Simple html links showing pathway to the page are powerful search engine visibility. Search engines understand these links and follow them.

Benefits of Breadcrumbs for Search Engine Optimization

Simple html links showing pathway of webpage are powerful on-page SEO factors recommended to be utilized inside your site. They enhance internal linking structure of a website. In order to make the most of breadcrumbs, make sure you use the main keywords of each page as the anchor text within the links you make to the higher layer pages. This has got the following benefits in the SEO results your site will deliver :

• They will show search engines that those keywords are so important that you’ve created more content pages to explain them. Besides, several pages have used those keywords in their content and links.
• They will add to the content relevancy of your site, because a link from a page to another is for providing more information on the same topic. There should be some related topic in another page of the same site that such internal links are referring to.

Benefits of Breadcrumbs for Human Readers

Apart from the on-page SEO benefits you get from adding breadcrumbs to your site, human readers will find them very useful as well. They arrive in a page by different methods:

• They may have found a link to this page from a search engine result page.
• They may have clicked on a link at another website and landed at your page.
• They may have clicked on a link in an email they’ve received from a friend, newsletter from a site, an ebook, etc.
• Etc.

Such a landing page isn’t necessarily always the homepage of your site. Therefore, adding breadcrumbs to all pages of your site will help your readers know where they are at your site and don’t get disoriented. On the other hand, as mentioned earlier at this post, they are navigation aids. So, the surfing of your site will be much more easier for your human readers when you add breadcrumbs to your site.

–
Guest post by Rahman Mehraby.
Site Booster is a website optimization company that helps you with SEO article marketing. It offers other website optimization services catered to your requirements. Visit: http://www.site-booster.com/blog/.

For many bloggers, increasing traffic to their blogs is not the sole goal. Most individuals that blog want to keep their visitors coming back for more. The following are four ways to keep visitors coming to your blog site.

Update your blog: The simplest way to keep visitors coming back to your blog site is to update your blog on a frequent basis. Subscribers will stay true to blogs that are updated day-by-day.

Some blog writers even updated several times a day. Subscribers will tend to lose interest in your writing if they have to wait several days for new material. Be loyal to your reviewers and your subscribers will be true to your blog. Likewise, there are literally zillions of blogs available on the Net. If your blog is not updated on a regular basis, you will lose your readers to another blog site.

Another fun way to update your blog and keep your readers interested in your site is to include something fun for your subscribers to relish. That could be as elementary as a joke or maybe a link to a humorous narrative you have found on the Net. You might also try including a trivia game or polls for your readers to enjoy on a regular basis.

Take Part in web communities: Taking part in web communities or discussion meeting places and mentioning your blog whenever contingent will help keep subscribers coming back to your site. In addition, you can gain new subscribers when doing this.

Understand who reads your blogs: Another great way to keep blog subscribers coming back for more is to understand who reads your blog and publish content that is targeted towards them. This does not mean that you have to compose on only one particular subject, though.

If you are a stay at home mom and write about your life at home with the kids, your loyal subscribers may not appreciate it if you write about cutting-edge issues or use a lot of offensive language in your writing. If you mostly write humor, do not bog down your readers down with sorrowful woefulness’s and stories. Your subscribers will be interested in the things that attracted to your site in the first place.

Include keywords: You can gain readership and help keep your current readers by including certain keywords in your blog. If you have entered your blog on a search engine, these keywords that point to your blog will come up after a search. This is a great way to get readers interested in your blog. This is also a good way for companies to increase the traffic to their blog. This is THE best way to receive backlinks, ranking and SERPs from the engines – the best way because it’s the easiest way.

You already have someone writing the content for you, or you might be writing it yourself – either way, by using keywords, you could beef up your visitors by blogging with keywords, adding tags on the blogs, and keeping up with the blogs. Google usually suggest 1-3 blogs every 3 days in order to get the best results possible.

Guest article by Kristi Ambrose (a huge fan of http://www.kristiambrosecontent.com)

You might do your research tick off traffic and tick off low competition and say, ok, here’s a keyword I can go after. Then when you actually come to the market and try to monetize that you’re not really going to have anything.

I think a lot of people get scared away from markets that have competition, and if anything, I think Jeff Johnson talks about this, you want to go after markets with competition because it shows there is money there. All you have to do that is just a little bit better.

We do a lot testing at Market Samurai with the traffic component, relatively recently, Google started providing some sort of insight into how much a particular keyword’s getting. Through some of the testing I’ve done, I’m seeing massive discrepancies. For example, you can have number one position ranking for a keyword and not even get one tenth or even much less than that, click throughs on that particular keyword.

I think ultimately that’s the thing about testing, you take it with a grain of salt and you do look to multiple sources. Just like with share trading you don’t buy something just based on one signal, you look for multiple signals to be saying the right thing before you take action on something.

Most people get so tied up with analysis paralysis, and particularly with the product we provide, we provide data that people can just get so obsessed about and it’s good that it does provide some discipline and some rigor to what can be a very risky business if you don’t know what you’re doing.

I like to do an AdWords campaign first and actually confirm the data. I know that the AdWords data should be a percentage of what the full number of searches are and AdWords will tell you the number of impressions that your ad got as well. So if you’re looking for confirmation you could spend a little bit of money to get that insurance that the traffic is behind a particular keyword. Proper keywords research is key.

I certainly do the AdWords, throw it to a site and test the commercial value and the conversion and the traffic before I invest heavily going into that market.

So one of the first stages, both pay per click and SEO is obviously to do some keywords research. With SEO obviously you can take those keywords and load them into your pay per click and start to do your monitoring of conversion and that sort of thing and tweak things.

Once I’ve done the research, I consider how many keywords to pick out and where to start.

I try to pick a small subset of keywords that are tightly semantically grouped with each other that meet certain traffic competition and commerciality filters that I put on them. So I basically say I’m looking for keywords that have a decent amount of traffic, so it’s going to be worth my time, with a decent amount of commercial value.

Obviously it’s going to be the way my competition threshold based on what my SEO asset base is in terms of my other sites and my ability to get links. So I like to think of this cluster of keywords as essentially becoming categories.

If it is a blog on my site I typically have somewhere between six to twelve major keywords or something behind my site. But there’s definitely some semantic clustering of those keywords. They’re related to each other. That is really one of the cool things behind Google keyword tool. They’re actually giving you semantically relevant keywords and that’s really important.

–
This was a guest article written by Jimmy Cox.
Know more about Nitro Marketing. Visit www.kevinwilke.net to learn more.

Whether or not you are already using article in your affiliate marketing efforts, you can take advantage of it during the holiday season. Article marketing is the process of using articles full of original content that display your knowledge and expertise to attract customers. Thousands of content publishers look for quality, relevant articles for their directories.

Further focus your efforts by taking advantage of what consumers need during the holiday shopping season; valuable information. Create quality content that addresses the reader’s concerns as well as provides the information they need to make an informed purchase. Treat each individual article you write like it is the one that will generate your next sale.

Knowledge and Expertise

Some aspects of article marketing don’t change whether it’s spring, summer or Christmas time. It’s always important to highlight your knowledge and expertise about the items you’re marketing. Your knowledge as an affiliate marketer becomes even more valuable during the holiday shopping season.

More than any other time of year, the holidays bring consumers searching for products they may not know much about. Many people are searching for gifts that the recipient is knowledgeable about while they themselves are not. Use your expertise to give them confidence and ideas will draw them directly to back to the sites you are marketing.

Recycle and Use New Keywords

One great thing about article marketing during Christmas is that you can recycle articles you’ve already written. There are several ways to change your focus and re-write articles so that they appeal to the holiday shopper. One way is to highlight Christmas and holiday traditions that are related to the products and services you’re selling.

Another great way to promote your products to gift-buyers and increase sales is by grouping items together. Many people love giving holiday gift baskets or themed packages. Focusing on products that complement each other lets you upsell. Upselling generates more revenue while at the same time providing exactly what consumers are looking to give.

Take advantage of your usual keywords and add targeted holiday keywords. Potential customers will be searching for gifts, holiday themes, and festive merchandise and ideas. By adding specific Christmas keywords, you attract shoppers who are specifically looking for gifts. Once they’ve found your article, they will be further impressed by the information you provide.

Christmas is a great time to draw new customers into the sites you’re marketing. By using articles to show off your expertise and the quality of your products, you attract new shoppers. They pass along great gift ideas to their friends, who will and pass the information along to their friends.

Article marketing is a great way to get the message out there for all of the products you include in your affiliate marketing business. Create a marketing strategy that includes article marketing and take advantage of the opportunity to create high quality content for consumers. Providing information they seek is the best way to turn readers into customers.

–
Mike Lawson is a freelance consultant to internet marketers. His professional writing service provides quality content for affiliate marketers. http://contentcrooner.com/holiday_promotion.php

Now certainly, I could have used one of the php bits to create thumbnails on the fly like TimThumb – but I really dislike using plugins for things I can do without them. She also gets totally confused using custom fields, so that’s out as well.

What I needed to do:
1. Determine a standard size for thumbnails and post images that would work well for her theme.
2. Create a post thumbnail using the first image attached to a post.
3. Display the post thumbnails on the blog main page listing of recent posts.
4. Create a standard image that would be displayed if she forgot to add any images to a post.

Since I’m a big fan of reusing code, I decided I wanted to use the built in sizing options of WordPress to get this done. I remembered recently reading an article with a chunk of code, so I found it again and reused that. The code process can be found on Web Developer Plus.

Setting The Image Sizes

Go to your WordPress backend and then Settings -> Media and configure the sizes that work well for your theme.

The thumbnail size is the most important. I set this one to 150px by 150px and selected the option to crop the thumbnails to that size. The reason I selected the crop is in the likely case the photo she’s using isn’t a perfect square, the image won’t look out of proportion when it’s sized down to 150×150.

Creating a Thumbnail From The First Image

This is where we get the code bit from Web Developer Plus and with a couple of minor changes end up with this:

<?php
// Get images attached to the post
$img = null;
$args = array(
'post_type' => 'attachment',
'post_mime_type' => 'image',
'numberposts' => -1,
'order' => 'ASC',
'post_status' => null,
'post_parent' => $post->ID
);
$attachments = get_posts($args);
if ($attachments) {
foreach ($attachments as $attachment) {
$img = wp_get_attachment_thumb_url( $attachment->ID );
break;
} ?>
<!-- Display the image in here -->
<?php }
?>

The code, at this point, doesn’t do much but it will in the next steps. I do want to stop and explain the terminology a bit. You’ll notice the use of the word ‘attachment’ in the code above. That’s how WordPress identifies the image associated with the post. Think of sending an email and attaching photos to it. The code finds the images attached to the post and selects the first one. It puts the information about that image in the $img variable we’ll use later.

It is important to note that this only works for attached photos because that is what WordPress it set up to handle. That means that if you host your photos elsewhere and just link to them – it’s not going to work. You have to actually upload them into WordPress using the media uploader.

Deciding Where To Put The Thumbnail Code

Since I want the thumbnails to show up on the main page of the site in the list of recent posts down the content section, I need to edit the index.php that displays the content. Your site may use the_content() but in this example the site is using the_excerpt(). It doesn’t really matter, so long as this stuff goes inside the loop but before the spot you want to show your photo.

<div class="thecontent">
<?php the_excerpt(); ?>
<span><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="<?php the_title(); ?>" class="readon">Read the rest of '<?php the_title(); ?>'</a></span>
</div> <!-- end thecontent -->


I’m going to add the bit of code right above the call to the_excerpt() because that’s easiest at this point.

<div class="thecontent">
<!-- get the thumbnail -->

<?php
// Get images attached to the post
$img = null;
$args = array(
'post_type' => 'attachment',
'post_mime_type' => 'image',
'numberposts' => -1,
'order' => 'ASC',
'post_status' => null,
'post_parent' => $post->ID
);
$attachments = get_posts($args);
if ($attachments) {
foreach ($attachments as $attachment) {
$img = wp_get_attachment_thumb_url( $attachment->ID );
break;
} ?>
<!-- Display the image in here -->
<?php }
?>

<!-- end get the thumbnail -->
<?php the_excerpt(); ?>



Display the Thumbnails on the Main Page

Now the code is actually in the area it should be, but it’s still not going to show anything until we put something in place of the ‘<!– Display the image in here –>’ placeholder. What the code HAS done is created the $img variable we can call. So let’s get that working by putting in some code that will call the image.

<div class="thecontent">
<!-- get the thumbnail -->
<?php
//Get images attached to the post
$img = null;
$args = array(
'post_type' => 'attachment',
'post_mime_type' => 'image',
'numberposts' => -1,
'order' => 'ASC',
'post_status' => null,
'post_parent' => $post->ID
);
$attachments = get_posts($args);
if ($attachments) {
foreach ($attachments as $attachment) {
$img = wp_get_attachment_thumb_url( $attachment->ID );
break;
} ?>

<!-- ***** THE ACTUAL IMAGE ***** -->
<span class="the-thumbnail">
  <a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>">
    <img src="<?php echo $img; ?>" />
  </a>
</span>
<!-- ***** END THE ACTUAL IMAGE ***** -->

<?php }
?>
<!-- end get the thumbnail -->
<?php the_excerpt(); ?>


What the above code has done is take the placeholder and replace it with a call to the image.

Then since this is for a front page thumbnail, we want people to go to the main article so we create a link around the image that points to the article.

Finally, for CSS styling I wrapped it in a span called the-thumbnail (you can wrap it in something other than a span, name the class anything you like, and style it any which way you can think of).

But What If… There’s No Image?

But wait… what if my client forgets to add an image to a post? That one article will look strange on the main page without an image when most of the others have one.

I want to create a fail-safe for dealing with an instance where she might forget to put in a photo for the post. What to do first is create some kind of dummy image (maybe just a large square with the site logo / branding or whatever you want). Upload that image somewhere.

<!-- ***** THE ACTUAL IMAGE ***** -->
 
<!-- # if post has an image # -->
<span class="the-thumbnail">
  <a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>">
    <img src="<?php echo $img; ?>" />
  </a>
</span>
<!-- # END if post has an image # -->

<!-- # if post doesn't have an image -->
<?php } else { ?>
<span class="the-thumbnail">
<a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>">
<img src="http://thedomain.com/fallback-thumb.jpg" />
</a>
</span>
<!-- # END if post doesn't have an image -->

<!-- ***** END THE ACTUAL IMAGE ***** -->

The most important line in that new section is <?php } else { ?> — that tells it to do something if there is no photo.

You’ll see that you can just as easily change the url of the image to be any image location you upload the fall-back image to.

Putting It All Together

So here’s what we came up with after that. I’ll highlight the sections of my template code so you can see where I put it inside the template. Remember, your index page may not use the_excerpt() – it may use the_content(). That’s perfectly ok so long as:

1. You put the code that generates the thumbnail somewhere inside the loop – the loop beginning looks like this: <?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
2. You put the image display code where you want it to be.

So here’s the final code I used on my clients site:

<div class="thecontent">

<!-- get the thumbnail -->
<?php
//Get images attached to the post
$img = null;
$args = array(
'post_type' => 'attachment',
'post_mime_type' => 'image',
'numberposts' => -1,
'order' => 'ASC',
'post_status' => null,
'post_parent' => $post->ID
);
$attachments = get_posts($args);
if ($attachments) {
foreach ($attachments as $attachment) {
$img = wp_get_attachment_thumb_url( $attachment->ID );
break;
} ?>
<!-- ***** THE ACTUAL IMAGE ***** -->
 
<!-- # if post has an image # -->
<span class="the-thumbnail">
  <a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>">
    <img src="<?php echo $img; ?>" />
  </a>
</span>
<!-- # END if post has an image # -->
 
<!-- # if post doesn't have an image -->
<?php } else { ?>
<span class="the-thumbnail">
<a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>">
<img src="http://thedomain.com/fallback-thumb.jpg" />
</a>
</span>
<!-- # END if post doesn't have an image -->
 
<!-- ***** END THE ACTUAL IMAGE ***** -->
<?php }
?>
<!-- end get the thumbnail -->

<?php the_excerpt(); ?>

Oh, and remember — if you don’t like the size your thumbnails are coming out as — change it in Settings -> Media.

I hope you found that useful

~Nicole

Social Media by Luc Legay.

The social media movement has expanded the amount of people we can reach and connect with on a personal level. The new relationships and connections we create with people all over the world can have a profound effect on our personal and business growth. We learn about cultures and nations that we were, perhaps, previously ignorant of. None of this is a new concept, but what may be is how quickly you can destroy your business by using social media incorrectly.

Transparency is a Utopian Concept

Not too long ago, Michael Fortin wrote an article titled “Don’t Be Transparent, Be Authentic Instead.” That article is an important read for any social media wrangling business blogger.

That article is the tip of the iceberg in the concept of ‘transparency’ being too Utopian to work within the jaded confines of our society. Of course, true transparency is ideal. Many things about a perfect world are Unfortunately, as a group, most of the world isn’t ready or willing to accept true transparency without penalty.

When Transparency Fails

Let me give you a couple of examples of transparency failure we’ve seen.

Failure 1: We had a copywriter who was posting on Twitter about the work he was doing. He made several posts within a few hour period which were ugly complaints about a client and how ‘stupid’ he felt that client was. We obviously considered this unacceptable and immediately removed him from our list of subcontractors, but think about this: If he was hoping to use Twitter to get more client work – how many potential clients just read that and thought… “I’m not going to risk being badmouthed on here, I’ll find someone else.” Everyone gets frustrated, but what if the client he was working on read that? Put it this way, if you wouldn’t say it to your client directly – don’t post it either.

Failure 2: We had a designer who was a day late returning her design phase work. When we contacted her, she said she had a family emergency the night before and was unable to send in her work because she wasn’t home. A quick check on her Facebook showed that she was actually out at a party that night and posted multiple times while drunk talking about how much she was drinking and even hinting at wanting to bring a man she met there home with her. Obviously, we relieved her of the design work, handed it to another designer who caught up on the time schedule, and never again worked with her. In this case, people are allowed to have a life, we understand that. But if you cannot get your work done and have to lie about why – it’s a problem. If you do not have enough class to not post details about your ‘wild nights’ to everyone on your social networks — that’s also a problem.

How We Monitor Social Media Conversations

My business has been around for over a decade and is very focused on client satisfaction and excellent treatment of our web design clients. We have a network of hundreds of copywriters, designers, and coders who work with us on projects. However, even with screening of those experts when they come on board with us – you don’t always know someone until you have observed them over a long period of time.

That’s why we monitor what they say online.

How do we do that? Well first we get as many of their social profiles as we can. Usually, we ask for a list of them. We’ve also found that most people won’t provide them all. We then Google search the usernames of the ones they have given us because most people use the same usernames over and over. We also monitor blogs, and check for listings of social networks on those.

We have a system set up to consolidate all their social media comments into one master feed. That master feed can then be browsed directly to see what they’re up to, but that’s a lot of things to read each day. What we do is take the master feed, run it through a filter that creates two sub-feeds based on certain things we think are important to monitor. The first sub-feed is created by running the master list through a keyword & synonym filter that pulls out words related to business – for instance, “client” “business” “work” etc… The second sub-feed has a filter that runs their posts through a check for foul language and words like “sex” “drugs” “drunk” etc… There are hundreds of words in each filter.

Seem a bit ‘big brother’? It probably is – but reputation and client treatment is very important to us.

Here’s the thing: If we can read it and you can lose work with us over it… how many POTENTIAL clients did you lose also?

7 Ways to Edit Yourself

We’re not suggesting you stop having a life and stop making mistakes. You can post about those things and it simply makes you a more interesting person to read about. Just use common sense:

1. If you wouldn’t say it to a client or boss – don’t say it where they can read it either.
2. If you wouldn’t say it to your grandmother – don’t say it on your public posts.
3. If you wouldn’t say it to police officer – don’t post it on your social networks. For that matter, don’t do it either.
4. If you plan to lie to your boss – don’t put the truth where they can see it.
5. If you plan to go out and get drunk and know you have a tendency to post while drunk – give your phone to a friend to keep for you.
6. Learn how to use privacy settings and understand how visible your posts are on different social networks.
7. If you want a place to vent – create a completely different identity for yourself to do that. Name no names in your posts, and make no connection to your other profiles or email addresses.

Consider it all part of Internet Etiquette. Social networks are great to hear more personal things about someone and we encourage people to share a bit of themselves online (using normal cautions etc..). In the long run, full transparency is too Utopian for our modern world to handle well. We’re still at a point in our societal growth that when someone seriously calls a client an idiot – they tend to get a bit upset about it.

~Nicole

The Site – Lou Riley Live

The current website is a blog which serves as a living record of the weight loss journey Lou is undertaking.

I asked Lou the typical pre-review questions, and here are his answers about his blog:

Q: What is your primary goal for this site?
A: My primary goal is to create a movement in the health and wellness industry based on my personal journey as captured on video. So I guess I am building the “Lou Riley Live” brand. I want to draw people into my story and have them subscribe to my blog. Once I establish a “fan” base, I want to convert them into customers for the health and wellness product I am affiliated with.

Q: What do you feel is the biggest weakness of the site at this point?
A: Biggest weakness? A lack of visitors. I also need to improve the process for converting visitors to sales. So far in the videos, I haven’t sold anything. I think that creating this “movement” will make selling easier as visitors will be able to connect with me and not a product. I like the design, but I think some color adjustments can make it better.

Overall, it looks like the goal is going to be to solidify the Lou Riley brand and to bring in more new and repeat visitors. Once he’s got those things, the sales will start coming.

Current State of Affairs

Let’s take a peek at the current Lou Riley Live site:

Lou Riley Live - Home

Sometimes a long screenshot of a website can really tell the story at a glance, and I think we’re seeing that here as well. We’ve got a really big white space in the main content area that’s throwing things off balance, but there are quite a few other things as well.

Let’s Talk Branding

The very first thing we need to talk about is how to make the Lou Riley brand so integral to this site that there is no mistaking what this site is and who it’s by. To do that we need to take two initial steps:

1. Focus on the brand.
2. Remove everything irrelevant.

Old Branding.

Start building the brand from the very beginning. Put your name at the top, and I’d love to see a photo up there too, something to really push who you are.

Be reachable. People may want to contact you – but more importantly, they want to know that they CAN if they want to.

Add Contact Page.

The second thing about branding, is emphasizing that this site is a video blog. People will go there to see videos. I see the pagination of the videos on the front page as a problem.

Video Pagination Problem

The videos stop there, and if I want to scroll through them, I use the navigation there. I have no incentive to keep scrolling down. BUT there’s a lot of stuff in the sidebar further down that I won’t see by stopping there! We need to do that in a different way that doesn’t leave a large empty space in the content area.

Removing The Excess

Let’s just talk about what to take out.

Ditch the entire blogroll section for now.

Remove blogroll.

Remove the login box. You’re the only writer on the blog – and as far as I can tell there’s no members-only material, so this is just taking up space for now. Bookmark the link to login and write posts, no one else really needs this.

Remove login.

Take the Twitter out of your products – this should be in with your social bookmarking links.

Remove Twitter.

We also want to remove the duplicates. I see that video with the veggies 3 times on the front page of the site. That makes people think there’s very little content – which isn’t true in your case. The recent videos in the sidebar should only show for internal pages (like when I’m on a single post page watching a single video) because then I don’t have to go back to the homepage to see what else you’ve done recently. The featured video should stick at the top, without repeating underneath itself on the homepage.

Remove duplicates.

Personal Product Recommendations

Right now you have two major product selling sections on your site. One in a box like ad section and one in a vertical format down the sidebar.

Drink Ads.

Nutrition Ads.

The nutrition ads are okay, they’re small and consolidated (once you remove Twitter you can add a 4th also). The drink ads are a bit of an issue though. They’re too separate, take up too much space, and have a big blank space to the right. Additionally, the first drink is the only one you can see doesn’t show up below the point where the videos stop and people quit scrolling.

I’d like to see you put those drink ads in a similar configuration to your nutrition ads.

Also – give us a reason to trust those products. Rename the sections to personalize it! Maybe instead of calling it ‘Sports Nutrition Products’ you can call it ‘Stuff Lou Is Eating – Certified by Lou to Not Taste Like Powdery Health Food.’

Ok, so maybe you won’t go that far, but we’ll trust your products more if they’re personal recommendations. People who want to lose weight often try to copy a process that was successful for someone else. If you tell them what you recommend – they’ll trust it more (even if you’re not actually using it – although it’s best if you are).

Build Your Fan Base

One of the biggest parts of building a brand is getting people to recognize it through exposure. To do that, you need to build a following.

Subscribe & Connect.

Your social networking and subscription buttons need to be way up at the top of your page so it’s always being pushed. And hey Lou – we connected on Facebook: You have no Facebook button anywhere on there!

One final note on subscriptions. I’m going to strongly suggest pushing email subscriptions to your blog via Feedburner. I would go with an email subscription textbox signup right in the sidebar.

The reason is – your audience isn’t specifically high-tech users and many people out there are still uncomfortable with feed readers. Email, now that is familiar to most people. Since your site is something that can reach out to many many different kinds of people – I would go with the most universally known way to get updates: email – and push that hard.

Prominent Navigation

I see that you’re using tags for navigation through your video posts. That’s fine – but they’re located too far down. We need to move stuff around on that sidebar to make sure that the primary site navigation is always located high enough that people don’t have to scroll to see it.

Tag Navigation.

Another note on tags — rename that section to not be called ‘tags.’ I know they’re tags, you know they’re tags, but an inexperienced web user doesn’t know they’re tags. Doesn’t know what they are really. Make it dead simple for people, something like: ‘Topics of the Videos’ and put a little text in there that says something like, ‘Click to see videos on this topic.’

Improve The Look

I really think your site could be better served by a different WordPress theme. I found one online called Videographer that I think you could tweak to really push your brand more. Simple is best, adding is easier than taking away.

The theme looks like this in its bare basics form:

Basic Videographer.

What I really like about this is the way the videos are organized to scroll down in a list that keeps the eye moving and the user scrolling. This allows your sidebar to grow a bit because there is still content in the main section.

The other reason I like this theme is because it is so minimal and open to tweaking.

Playing With Changes

Let me show you what I did in a bit of playing around with this new blank slate.

Lou Videographer.

I stole the picture for the header from Lou’s Facebook (great sketch image by the way), and threw it up on top. People like personality and a face to go with a name. Then the name, brand yourself by using a unique font and look for your name.

Don’t consider what I did in the header as a refined or complete — it’s more a sketch of what you could do.

I do think it’s important to add a tagline or quick summary of what this site is about in the header. Also, you’ll see that I’ve moved the social connect buttons up to the top header. This visually associates you with being reachable and real – that’s a good thing.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the site needs to stay plain vanilla white and this minimal forever — add a fun background that doesn’t detract from the videos. Add flavor to it in small places, but even if you put out this design on without changing the background or colors: it would put more focus on what the site is about = You, and Your Journey.

However – if you’re really in love with your current theme: ditch the pagination so the page is filled with videos instead of broken down into little bits.

Getting Visitors

The site is doing pretty good on general tech tests. If you want to run your own on your site regularly to see how you are doing, check out Website Grader. I think the biggest thing is going to be promotion.

Digg and bookmark your videos. Maybe write a bit more text about your videos so the search engines have more text to parse for relevance. Keep up the networking. Write some articles on what you suggest to position yourself as an expert and submit them to online article submission sites like Ezine Articles and GoArticles. Make sure your videos are uploaded onto every single video site in existence that will take them and work on building community within those sites. In other words — you’re doing good, just keep trying to get the word out.

Last Thoughts

Lou… I love what you’re doing. I think you are a charismatic man on a mission, and a truly beautiful person for how strong you’re being through this journey of yours.

I think that many people out there will connect with you on so many levels. You could be a symbol of living hope to people who are struggling with the same problem, who have the same desires for a healthier life, and I sincerely hope you keep doing what you’re doing.

Heck, even if you never sell a dime worth of products – I hope you never stop giving the world the opportunity to share in your experiences.

I want you to always feel free to ask any technical web programming or design questions you may have, and I hope that you’ll come back by here from time to time and let us know how it’s going.

My best and most sincere wishes that you succeed in all ways.

~Nicole

Interested in a Site Analysis?

Would you like to have your site reviewed on Beyond Caffeine? Drop me a line and let me know all about it! Do you have a site that you think needs a redesign? Head over to my business site and get your free consultation.

I was contacted by a friend on Facebook, Mark Rones ( FB ) and asked to review his online costume store called Nothing But Costumes.

The Site – Nothing But Costumes

The current site is an online web store that sells a wide variety of costumes for all occasions.

I also asked Mark the same two typical pre-review questions, so that I could understand his business needs a bit.

Q: What is your primary goal for this site?
A: We are looking for an office, so we eventually want to be a Brick and Mortar. There is always like a .05-1% visitor to sales ratio. So getting more customers AND a better sales ratio is important.

Q: What do you feel is the biggest weakness of the site at this point?
A: NothingButCostumes.com Explodes in Sept-Oct and then falls off the cliff. I have thought about a face design yet my customers tell me how much they like the site.

So in a nutshell, we need to figure out how to get more visitors and improve sales conversion by looking at the existing problems with the site. Additionally, to offset the problem of lackluster sales for the rest of the non-Halloween time of year – we need to figure out how to make the site be more year-round.

Current State of Affairs

Let’s begin by taking a look at the current Nothing But Costumes (N.B.C.) store.

N.B.C. - Home

While Mark mentioned the design as a minor note – I think the design is a HUGE problem. At first glance the site is overwhelming, cluttered, and unfinished looking.

Image is important, and as a consumer I know I would be very hesitant to buy from a site that looks like it isn’t complete. Thoughts that would run through my head range from “Is this a reflection of how they do business?” to “Am I safe entering my credit card information here?”

Building visitor trust is essential when selling products online. They have to be willing to take a leap of faith that the site will keep their payment information safe, that they will actually get their product in the mail, and that the business will keep theit promise of providing it on time.

From a web design standpoint – this site isn’t finished, not by any stretch of the imagination. To that end, I’m not even going to address the visual design of this site because it doesn’t have one yet. I know this is a bit harsh, but I think an honest professional opinion is needed – if the customers are saying they like the design… frankly, they’re just trying to be nice.

I’m going to strongly suggest either heading over to Template Monster and buying a pre-made ZenCart template or think about getting a custom design for this site from me or anyone else.

That said, there’s plenty of functional aspects that can go wrong even with a great design – so I want to touch on several of those.

Rebrand To Be Year-Round

One of the elements that is a big problem for this site is the peak at Halloween time and lackluster site performance for the rest of the year.

First things first – remove the elements that scream Halloween.

Halloween Elements

Keeping Up With The News

Perhaps it’s only because my daughter, her dad, and I are all planning to go to the midnight opening of the new Harry Potter movie, but I started wondering whether or not they have Harry Potter costumes. I’m sure Mark knows this, but for anyone who isn’t aware – going to a midnight movie opening in costume is very common.

Showcase Trends

Turns out, there they are, buried waaay far down on the list. Look, see that? Transformers too! If you haven’t been to a movie theater recently, go to one. You don’t have to watch a movie if you don’t want to. Go look around inside a movie theater. See what posters are hanging up. That’s what ALL those movie-goers are seeing anytime they go to see a movie. It’s pre-selling, early branding, conditioning. I can promise you that Harry Potter posters have been hanging up for months at my theater and I’ve got a note on my desk reminding me to reserve midnight showing tickets. If you can, stay and check out a movie – watch the trailer previews. It’ll show you what will be soon hanging on the walls.

Keep an eye on TV people also. Did you know that Miley Cyrus started filming a new movie this summer? She’s talking about it all over the place, including @mileycyrus on Twitter. That news is sparking an even bigger interest in what is associated with her name — Hannah Montana. NothingButCostumes has Hannah Montana costumes, and they’ll probably be extra popular this year.

How about the news? Michael Jackson died recently. I’ll wager a guess there are quite a few people who will want to dress up as MJ for Halloween this year, but even more than that… some people may have wanted to get the costumes out of a nostalgic tendency. I’m not sure if the site sells those, but the idea is simple: Sales always spike after catastrophe and death. It’s the well known morbidity factor. Look at how the sales spiked for the Batman movies when Heath Ledger died.

The point I’m getting at is simple. If you know what’s happening now, just happened, and is happening soon – you can tailor the things showcased on your site to grab those hot buyers.

Know Your Competition

I headed over to Google and typed in the one keyword phrase that should bring in the most ‘ready-to-buy’ visitors for this site: “buy costumes”

The Competition

The very first site that popped up was BuyCostumes.com so I decided to check out the competition. That site is actually quite nice, although it does suffer from some clutter issues.

Since I just finished talking about keeping up with the news, I found it amusing that I landed on BuyCostumes.com and saw a showcase of all the hot new movies people might want costumes for front and center on the site.

Movie showcase

Keep an eye on the competition. They may catch something before you do. If they do, see it, jump on it. Don’t let them have an advantage over you. How else does your business compete with them? With a strong brand people remember, trust, and recommend.

Rebrand to Be Memorable

Every business wants their customers and visitors to remember their name. They want them to talk about how great their business is, and return to it later. Branding is very very important and developing a strong brand takes time, effort, and skill.

Logo Comparison

One thing to begin with is to have the primary site branding done professionally. The Nothing But Costumes site needs a stronger brand that has nothing to do with Halloween, and an image that can go on every single piece of marketing material it has.

Keep The Focus

On any business site, it is important to maintain the overall focus of that site. I see a couple of things on N.B.C. that I would suggest keeping out of any new design.

Your fortune is..

I have no idea why there is a daily horoscope front and center on this site. It needs to go. So does the animated rotation of costumes. If there are photos of costumes on the front of the site in the new look (which there should be) – the rotating carousel is unnecessary.

Linking Out

If a business store MUST link out to another site, it’s vital that offsite links open in a new window and are not given prominence over anything that is important to the business.

Don't hide the gems

Keep the focus on converting visitors to customers. People love specials and like to browse what’s ‘featured‘. This should be prominent, because those things are a huge lure to buyers. They should be a big focus. From a marketing standpoint, those things should also be things that are currently very hot right now.

A minor note. On the sidebar there is ‘Other Stuff We Sell’. For a site that says ‘Nothing But Costumes’ I think that’s going to have to go. It seems strange to go to a site that only sells costumes and find candle holder sets. The Mardi Gras masks? Can’t those just go in accessories – there are only 2 of them. I’m not sure why there are 2008 links there, but I don’t see those as necessary. Rarely does a shopper say.. hey, I want to go shop for something old. Just mix those in among all the rest and they’ll never know

Don’t Overwhelm

Online stores are usually a de-cluttering challenge. They have a lot to say, a lot to sell, and they want everyone to see it at once. For the visitor, however, with too much stuff crammed onto a page, their eye doesn’t know where to look.. so it goes everywhere. They’re overwhelmed. Watch someone using a store site they’ve never seen before. People need to be SHOWN where to look, and what to look at.

When the site is redesigned – that ENTIRE list of things down the center needs to go. Hand select a few items that are REALLY strong and have great selling potential based on current trends, and put those on the front page.

Break things into chunks for people. Pagination is where you break content apart on to separate pages that they move through using a numbering system. Any site that has 87 items on one page in the boys costume section needs pagination. Break that list up into no more than 12 items per page.

The drop down menus are distracting and overwhelming. They need to stop being dropdowns. The same content is listed on the left, and they should link only to the primary pages not show each sub-page as well.

Categories

If I mouse over categories, I get a list so long it makes the page scroll. If I mouse over Categories -> Licensed TV Movies … the list is twice as long as the categories list. That has become too huge to be manageable for a typical user.

I should be able to click on Categories at the top (no drop downs) and see a nice, neat, listing of the categories .. organized in the group I see on the left hand sidebar. I shouldn’t see a site-wide sitemap, which is currently the result.

Build Trust – Fix Errors

One of the easiest ways to make someone not comfortable buying on a website is to have lots of system errors popping up all over the place.

Keep the software updated and get help fixing it if needed.

Site Errors

Several of those links (Page 2, Page 4, and the Zen Cart Dev) contain unfinished content. One page with default text still in it. One empty page, and one with an error message. Just don’t worry about putting those things back in a new site, they’re not needed. The videos – which are a great idea to help people see costumes on live people – are wonderful, but could be on an attached blog.

Horizontal Scrolling

Horizontal scrolling isn’t good on any store. It indicates a code error in most cases unless someone is browsing with a teeny-screen resolution. In this case – it’s a code error.

Getting Visitors

Optimizing sites for search engines is a learning process, but there are a few major changes can be made easily and NOW.

The page title, meta description, and meta keywords are all way too long. It is very likely going to be seen as an attempt at keyword spamming by the search engines, and they penalize for it.

Title is 523 characters long = reduce to 70 or less.
Meta description is 1195 characters = reduce to 150 or less.
Meta keywords are 23 = reduce to 10 or so highly targeted keywords.

Make sure that on a redesign, alt text is added to all images and use correct, keyword rich, descriptions of those images. Currently 10 out of 14 images on the page don’t have alt text at all.

Big problem — there’s no WWW to non-WWW redirect set up for this site. This is probably causing a major problem.

Rather than repeat myself, I’ll direct everyone to read the previous site analysis I did on New Focal Media where I describe how a lack of redirect causes duplicate content penalties from Google. It also means splitting up of inbound links in the eyes of search engines. For instance, there are 812 links coming in to the non-WWW version of the site, and 1449 coming in to the WWW version of the site. Search engines are currently seeing those as two different sites, not one with a total of 2261 links pointing to it.

Get the word out! Put up a blog. Can’t put it any plainer than that. Make a blog on the domain, attach it and link to it from the main store, and use it to post videos and articles about costumes. Then use that blog to generate traffic for the site by listing it on social bookmarking sites and other social media sharing sites.

Last Thoughts

The site has some really great costumes and I think it could do really well if it’s given wings to fly. The business potential is strong and the customer base is out there. The site needs a serious redesign, a careful eye out watching for clutter issues, and some social promotion to get the word out. Mark, would love to have you back for another review in the future! Some before and afters would be awesome.

Interested in a Site Analysis?

Would you like to have your site reviewed on Beyond Caffeine? Drop me a line and let me know all about it! Do you have a site that you think needs a redesign? Head over to my business site and get your free consultation.

~Nicole

Evan R., attending community college full-time and thinking of heading into a business major, has this to ask:

Q: “What is the best thing about being a business owner?”
A: “The best thing about being a business owner is that no one can fire me for wearing rude tee-shirts.”

Make sense please.

AND it’s also really nice that no one else can fire you either. Except yourself. But then, if you want to fire yourself, there are bigger problems going on.

Fine fine, I’ll get serious. The most awesome part of being a business owner is knowing that you created something that it lives or dies based solely on the strength you have to keep it alive. It’s entirely up to you to keep it afloat. If that kind of pressure doesn’t sound exciting … it’s not for you. But if it is something that sounds appealing, watching your business prosper, struggle, change, improve, etc… it’s like being a parent. A totally awesome, completely horrifying at times, experience.

~Nicole