If you are using your website to sell a service then you want to make it as easy as possible for potential clients to contact you. Our SEO and PPC courses will help you get visitors onto your site but you then need to turn them into customers. The easier it is for your clients to get in contact with you via their preferred method, the more likely you are to be able to sell to them.
Even if you have e-commerce on your site, many people prefer to ask questions before spending their money. This week’s Free Resource is from WordPress expert Ada. If you use WordPress to manage your content then there are a wide range of contact form plugins to make your life easier. But you still need to make the decision as to what your contact form should include. The tips in this post should help you make those decisions…
A contact form is your communication channel with your readers and customers. If your contact form is poor, this seriously hurts your image. What is worse, it can lead directly to lost sales.
While a contact form in itself isn’t rocket science, a good contact form does require some thinking. In order to save you the hassle to think on your own, here are some tips how to make your contact form a better one.
List All Available Ways to Contact You
If you want to be reached, you must be available. While there is nothing wrong to include only an email address as the way to contact you, this is usually a good idea for personal blogs only.
For business sites, listing an email only isn’t enough. Of course, almost everybody has an email address, so if your clients really want to reach you, an email is enough but if you want to make it easier for them, list all available ways to contact you – email, phone, fax, Facebook and Twitter accounts, etc. Also, if you have a preferred way to be contacted, (i.e. email or phone is best), don’t forget to mention it. Read the rest of "Tips for Better Contact Forms"
It is very easy to open up your website on a smartphone or tablet and make the snap judgement that because it loads and the links work you can leave it as it is. However, how many businesses go the next step and think about how usable their site is on mobile devices? Or how attractive it is?
In this blog post we have produced a check-list to help businesses perform a mobile site audit to ensure their site is as mobile-friendly as possible. Click the image to download the Silicon Beach Training Mobile Web Design Checklist and then read through this blog to find out why each point is so important.
Regular visitors to the site will know how strongly we believe that the future of technology lies with mobile. Our recent mobile post highlighted how Apple sold more iPhones and iPads in 2011 than they sold computers in 11 years. That is a staggering stat. Another recent figure claims that 1.45 million mobile devices enter the world every day compared to 317,124 births.
For whatever reason, mobile devices have achieved something that desktops and laptops never truly managed – they have become a consumer device. Nobody sees a desktop sitting at home, but people go out of their way to flaunt the latest smartphone and read the news on their iPad on the way to work. They have become a fashion accessory as much as a communication device.
As a result of this, more and more people are accessing the internet on the go on smaller screens. Any business that has not considered a mobile strategy is potential missing out on interest and sales. Mobile use has been proven to have higher click through rates and higher average spend. So not only are some businesses missing out on potential customers but those customers are likely to spend more money!
Silicon Beach Training Mobile Web Design Checklist
We love jQuery! And one of the things its being used a LOT for at the moment is some lovely animated navigation elements.
We used to see some navigation elements designed in Flash – but now that it isn’t supported on any Apple mobile devices you’d have to be a complete lunatic to develop navigation elements in Flash (we recently started a discussion about this on LinkedIn which ran and ran!)
Adobe has cottoned on to this and has recently launched a preview of a new product – Edge – which animates using HTML5, jQuery and CSS3 Read our thoughts on Adobe Edge
Anyway – just as it looked like we would never be able to animate navigation elements of our sites again – along come HTML5, CSS3 and jQuery to save the day. Hurrah! Check out this lovely sliding jQuery menu on Fresh Egg’s new homepage
So – how’s it done then? There’s LOADS of jQuery navigation bar tutorials out there on the web, with more being added every day. Some of them are great, but there are a lot to sift through.
So – we’ve saved you the job by providing a list of our Top 10 jQuery Navigation Bar Tutorials below.
For percentage symbol you need to use the character viewer. If this is not shown in the menu at the top right of your screen you will need to enable it.
As the Flash / HTML5 debate goes on, people are looking for ways to achieve the same level of functionality that flash provides, without depending on an external plug-in. This may be possible for simple interactions, but the problem is making solutions that are cross-browser compatible, which can be really difficult. JQuery is a strong contender in the race to find solutions. Not always cross compatible there is a vast array of downloads and tutorials out there at the moment that can solve many of the problems.
jQuery is one of the most famous, free and open source JavaScript library in use today. jQuery is a lightweight, cross-browser JavaScript library which is designed to simplify the client-side scripting of HTML.
Today numerous jQuery plugins has been developed and are available on the Internet to create dynamic effects which are much easier than any other flash tool.
Quick and powerful, jQuery can help designers and developers create awesome interactive websites that are appealing and accessible to the widest range of browsers. For your audience, the visit to your site will be both exciting and entertaining. Navigation, galleries and slideshows, are hot points for a site to shine.
This post lists some useful jQuery Plugins and tutorials that focus on JavaScript category browsing.
How to Create a Drop-down Nav Menu with HTML5, CSS3 and jQuery
JQuery drop-down
Check out this tutorial and download to see how you can create a drop-down with HTML5 and CSS3. In this tutorial you will also use jQuery to handle the effects and add finishing touches.
Using CSS3 there is no need to use of several background images and possibly an additional wrapping container or two and it relies (almost) purely on some of the new style properties, such as rounded corners and drop-shadows for example, that are available to supporting browsers. Not all browsers (IE being a usual suspect!) support these new rules, but it is possible to provide provide fall-back solutions for the browsers that can’t handle the new styles.
If you want something really simple then check this one out. This tutorial will provide you with very stripped down code and minimal styling, yet still have all the functionality typically needed.
This tutorial shows you how to create a menu that turns a nested UL list into a horizontal drop line tabs menu. The top level tabs are rounded on each side thanks to the use of two transparent background images, while the sub ULs each appear as a single row of links that drop down when the mouse rolls over its parent LI.
Have you invested in search engine optimistation? Are you pulling potential customers into your site using Social Media? Are your pages now doing well in Google. Yes? Well done! Now take a look at the bounce rate and the time users spend on your site once you have got them there. If your bounce rate is high and your users are leaving quickly there’s still work to be done.
If you are not ranking so well in Google, don’t know what your bounce rate is or haven’t started your Social Media Strategy yet – then maybe you should enrol on our SEO training, Social Media Training and Google Analytics training courses in Brighton, Sussex.
Now with Google instant previews landing page optimisation is even more important. Google Instant Previews often shows images of pages that rank in the SERP (search engine results page). Decisions about the value of a link or site will be made based on the look and feel of a page before they even click. Keep in mind that Flash isn’t supported by Google Instant Previews.
What is a Landing Page?
A landing page is a page on your site that a user is brought to when they click on a link, online ad or any other entry point.
What is a Conversion?
What you want a user to do once he or she reaches a page is called a conversion. This forms the basis for landing page optimisation.
A conversion can be:
A user filling out a form
Downloading something
Buying something
Signing up for a newsletter
In fact a conversion is any action you want your users to take. A microconversion can be something like a click to the next page or time spent on the page this can help you identify which part of the conversion funnel could be improved.
What is Landing Page Optimisation?
Landing Page optimisation begins with tests conducted in a controlled environment. The web developer makes tweaks to the look, layout and positioning of elements on a page, image changes, content changes, call to action changes, headline and title changes etc. in order to influence the ‘conversion’ (user behaviour).
The first step is to choose the landing pages that are most important to your business. Take a look at Google Analytics. Which pages drive the most traffic or conversion already? These pages would be a good place to start.
Now it is time to start testing. One type of testing is called A/B split testing. You need to create two different versions of a Web page. You can do this either at the same time, tracking visitors by IP address so no one visitor receives the same landing page twice, or you can test one page at a time for a specified duration. It is possible to do A/B testing using Google Website Optimiser. See video below:
Another type of testing is called multivariate testing. This is best done after your initial A/B tests. Multivariate testing allows you to test multiple elements within a landing page, and conduct more detailed analyses of these elements to see what creates a successful page.
google heatmap show the hotspots on a web-page
Google’s heat map
A Heat Map shows the most likely areas of a web page to produce click throughs this example was developed by Google for its AdSense program.
Dark Orange – the hottest area of a web-page.
Orange – areas next in importance for visitors.
Yellow - areas of moderate interest .
White – areas with little or no activity.
Grey – neutral areas.
Consumer Behaviour
When people are looking to buy a product online they spend time researching the product first. They then decide on a handful of sites from which to make their purchase. One small change on a landing page can affect your conversion rates. These changes can include:
Shape of buttons
The grouping of related elements
The color scheme – particularly contrast
Color of elements
Size of elements
Speed of page
Legibility
Layout
Alignment
Suggested Benefits
Call-to-action
Types of questions you ask in a form
Confidence building – testimonials and client recommendations
Customer Incentives
Offers are becoming more and valuable for Internet marketing and landing pages. Be specific – the more specific the offer, the higher the response rate.
One of the first things people want know once they have downloaded WordPress and set up their database is how to change WordPress themes. It’s important to look different and whilst free themes are not exactly original there are hundreds of free themes out there to choose from so you can choose one to suit your style.
If you would like to learn more then come along to our fantastic WordPress Training in Brighton, Sussex, you could also brush up on your blog writing skills with our Blogging Training or try a Photoshop Course .
WordPress has made this process really simple by providing a built in theme system. It’s possible to install and activate a theme in minutes, honestly! It’s so much simpler than trying to design a website from scratch!
The first step in learning how to change a WordPress theme is to download and add a new theme. You will have to have give WordPress your FTP details first (that is the server name, user name, and password you will have used to upload your wordpress site to your host) you will only need to do this once, click here to read more about uploading your WordPress site using FTP
To install a free WordPress Theme from the Internet
Type “free WordPress theme” into Google and you will be inundated with choices.
First download the theme from the Internet.
In the appearance section click “add new” at the top of the page
Click Upload
WordPress will then ask you where it is located on your computer. . .
Select the file you downloaded, it will automatically upload the theme to the proper directory on the server where your site is hosted.
Alternatively you can use the built in search function in WordPress -
All you need to do is click on the add new theme link which is found when you selct the appearance section in the WordPress sidebar.
Click the Install link by whatever theme you wish to use. . .
Finally you need to know how to change the WordPress theme that your blog is currently using. This is called activating the theme.
Click on the themes tab in the WordPress navigation menu.
Click the activate link found by the theme you wish to use. WordPress will automatically activate the theme and make it live on your website. That is it! .
If you are using your website to sell a service then you want to make it as easy as possible for potential clients to contact you. Our SEO and PPC courses will help you get visitors onto your site but you then need to turn them into customers. The easier it is for your clients to get in contact with you via their preferred method, the more likely you are to be able to sell to them. 
Regular visitors to the site will know how strongly we believe that the future of technology lies with mobile. Our recent mobile post highlighted how Apple sold more iPhones and iPads in 2011 than they sold computers in 11 years. That is a staggering stat. Another recent figure claims that 1.45 million mobile devices enter the world every day compared to 317,124 births.
We love jQuery! And one of the things its being used a LOT for at the moment is some lovely animated navigation elements.
One of the first things people want know once they have downloaded WordPress and set up their database is how to change WordPress themes. It’s important to look different and whilst free themes are not exactly original there are hundreds of free themes out there to choose from so you can choose one to suit your style.
