Imagine having the ability to get in front of a potential customer when they are ready to buy. If you’re not there the competition is happy to take your place.

How Mobile Apps Help Local Business

Anyone who’s used an iPhone won’t go back to the phone they had before. iPhones are just too useful, especially when you’re out and about and need information. People can use apps to:

1. Find your contact info
2. Get directions to a business
3. Get coupons and find out about deals
4. Send an email
5. Use calculators
6. Make reservations

Giving customers another way to find you and get in touch is nothing but a win for businesses.

Getting into Mobile Media as a Local Business is Easier than You Think

MobileAppLoader is helping local businesses take advantage of mobile media at very reasonable rates. They will help you create an App for your business for a one-time fee of $49.99 and just $4.99 a month after that to keep it up and running. This includes keeping your app compliant with iPhone requirements and changes.

Of course it’s impossible to create a web page free of friction, but you can take steps to reduce user friction. Let’s examine a few ways you can ease the mind’s of your users.

User Friction Reduction Strategies 1:
Make Your Search Box Easy to Find

The search box is one of the first things that users look for on a new web page. That’s because the search box is familiar to most users as a way to quickly find what they’re looking for. Creating a good navigation scheme is actually harder than most people think, but putting your search box where its easily seen isn’t.

Don’t frustrate your visitors when you don’t have to. Put the search box higher up on the page, with a fair amount of white space around it so its very visible on the page.

Another search related friction issue is site seaches that don’t take common misspellings and synonmys into account when configuring results. Make it easy for users to find the information they’re looking for with a fully operable site search incapable of a returning a ‘0 results found’ page.

User Friction Reduction Strategies 1:
Minimize Page Load Time

This one is a no brainer too web developers that understand users like an instant reaction when they click through a page. Long gone are the early days when users would put up with page that takes a minute or two to load.

Just like broken links and 404 pages, a long page load time frustrates users, decreases their confidence in your website and allows them the time to bounce to another site.

It’s the biggest factor used by search engines and readers alike to determine what your content is all about. It makes perfect sense. The title of the page is what grabs the attention of readers when they do a search on the web. It’s a virtual book cover.

Make it easy for others (including the search engines) to figure what your article/page/website is all about. I’m not advocating stuffing every keyword into the title. Just focus it around your highest priority keyword or phrase. (For example, ‘keywords’ was the priority keyword for this post.)

In addition, it is wise to put your priority keyword as close to the beginning of the title as possible. A good rule of thumb is to work you keyword in by the fifth word. (See above.)

Using Keywords in the Subtitle

The second most important place to put your keywords is in the sub-titles (H2s and H3s). Again, search engines are reading more and more like humans every day, and as was pointed out in an earlier post, people typically scan the pages before they read.

Sub-titles are what the eyes scan for as they move down the page, so you’ll want to include your secondary keywords or phrase in addition to the primary one here.

One More Keyword Search Tip

Beyond the titles and sub-titles, placing keywords in the first and last sentences of an article can also be beneficial in helping them rank well in search engines.

Enough time has passed to allow for true analysis of this new thing called Bing. If trends hold steady then Bing just may give Google a run for its money, as its already cornered 10.7% of the search market for a 22% month over month growth rate.

Bing vs. Google Search

Bing was smart to call itself a “decision engine” not a search engine. As far as traditional search results go, Bing doesn’t really offer anything different than what you’d find using Google. That said, there are a few cool features that allow you to get more out of those results.

Preview Window – This little diddy of a tool helps you decide if you’ve really found what you’re looking for by giving you more information on the page in addition to the meta description. Just hover over the orange circle to the right of each result.

Wiki Enhanced View – This feature is an option with Wikipedia results. If you click the Enhanced View link below the Wiki search result you can bring up the Wiki info without leaving Bing.

The search functionality is good, however, it’s Bing’s extra features that separates it from the competition and lends to it’s labeling as a “decision engine”.

Bing Features

Below are a few features that also add value to Bing and are worth checking out.

l Bing Cashback Program

l Twitter Infused Search

l Travel Tools

l Search by Image

Adding your blog is fairly simple. Just go to networkedblogs.com click ‘Add Your Blog’ and you’re on your way.

Helpful Tips for Installing and Using NetworkedBlogs

After putting in the blog information you’ll be asked to verify the blog. You have two options for doing this; you can take the longer method and have friends verify it, or you can use the quicker, more technical method of adding a snippet of code to your blog. If you want to display the facebook widget on your blog use the code method.

The widget comes in really handy, allowing your blog readers to follow your blog on Facebook with the click of a button.

Get your friends to follow your blog. Once you have 11 followers NetworkedBlogs will automatically feed your blog to your Facebook profile page.

Blogtactics.com put together a very useful video that walks you through the steps of registering your blog with NetworkedBlogs.

What they found is now known as the F-Pattern. Using cameras and infrared emitters hidden in a seemingly ordinary computer, the Neilson Norman Group conducted eye tracking on 232 users. Though the types of content ranged from search engine results pages to product reviews, the way users read stayed the same for the most part.

The name F-Pattern comes from the eye tracking heat maps that showed 3 core components of user reading behavior which roughly form the shape of an F.

1. First users will typically read horizontally across the top of the page from left to right. (One reason why headlines matter so much.)
2. The eye will then move down the page a little bit, again moving horizontally from left to right.
3. As the reader moves down the page their eye path stays to the left in a more vertical line just skimming the first bit of the lines.

Of course there are exceptions to the rule; sometimes the pattern resembles more of an E for those who read more than they scan, and at the opposite end of the spectrum the really quick readers will often make a single horizontal sweep across the top then sweep down vertically making the shape of an L flipped upside down.

The takeaway: the title of the content on the page is extremely important since this is the most likely to get read in its entirety, opening lines of the opening paragraphs should grab attention and contain useful information, and content should always be left aligned including sub-heading and bullet points which are easy to scan.

In other words, your conversion pages.

User Friction Reduction Strategies

Unnecessary Info on Forms

People are often leery of giving out their information online, and for good reason. There are a lot of scammers out there in the faceless world of the internet. You can greatly reduce user friction on forms by cutting out all information that isn’t absolutely necessary.

Not only will user feel better about not having to share their sensitive information they’ll also enjoy the reduced effort it takes to fill out the form. As far this element goes, the fewer fields the better. Besides, studies show that users are more willing to share detailed information after they’ve went through the initial sign up process.

Include Security Indicators

These little icons go a long way in reducing user friction because they lend credibility to your site. As explained in the point above, users don’t automatically trust a site unless its a well-known name. Taking the extra steps to reassure your users that you are protecting their information will result in higher conversions when purchasing online, filling out a form and signing up for a user account.

Some suggested security indicators are the Better Business Bureau, McAfee Secure, TRUSTe and VeriSign Secured,

Guest Maps

This neat, interactive tool allows visitors to pin their place on a guest map. Choose from a number of highly customizable maps, pose a question to your users if you like then let them play.

Site Searches

Having a site search box on your website is one of the best features you can add. Site search is so commonplace now that it’s more unusual to see sites without them. Give your users basic features that they expect, especially the ones that help save users time and effort.

Calculators

There are a plethora of different kinds of calculators for the web, and many of them are free. You can find everything from standard add and subtract calculators to complex mortgage calculators, some that even allow you to customize the look.

Google

Google really started the trend of open source, free tools and still sticks by that business model today. Those just beginning to create websites will be surprised at just how much Google gives away for free. Here are a few:

Google Sites: allows you to create and share web pages with others, perfect for groups working to build a website together.

Google Analytics: if you have a website you should have a Google Analytics account. It will tell you more about your site’s performance than you ever knew possible.

Google Sitemaps: this tool is more for speaking to search engines than to users. As the name suggests, Sitemaps is a layout of your web pages which updates to show new pages and changed pages, making it easier for search engines to crawl your site.

Why “How To” Works

Users search for particular subjects and information at a speed that should appall all those writers who painstakingly perfect their articles and posts. That’s where the headline comes in to hook them. A “How To” headline immediate conveys that there’s knowledge to be gained just a click away.

In our busy world people want easy access to quick information that will give them something for their time. You can maximize the affects of a “How To” headline if you focus on this quick and easy mentality.

How to Improve Your Search Rankings Within a Month

This also means that headlines which clearly state the benefit to the reader will likely fair better than those that only imply benefits. For that reason “How To” headlines tend to be easier to write because the benefit is already set up in the “How To” you’ve just got to drive the benefit home at that point.

One last trick for “How To” headlines – put an “and” in their for double the benefits.

How to Work Less and Make More

Just remember, you worked hard to get the click through so make the most of it by producing what you promise in your headline and you’ll get a satified reader that’s more likely to share your work with others.

AdSense Tools

• Use the Quicksense iPhone App to track your AdSense earnings, stats and more from anywhere. Price: $3.99
• The Google AdSense Preview Tool allows you to see what you’re site would look like with AdSense and even test different colors and formats.
• Google AdSense Keyword Tool; this tool is really useful for identifying the most searched keywords based on the pages of your site.

AdSense Placement Tips

• Ads should be above the first fold for the best click through potential.
• Keep your users in mind. Think about what the user is trying to accomplish on the page and what they’re doing when choosing an ad’s position.
• Placing ads near navigation puts more focus on the ad.

Google AdSense Basics

• AdSense to a free program for web publishers, however you do have to submit an

application and be accepted into the program.

• To fully optimize your ads use Google AdSense channels to test ad performance, testing different ads against each other almost always leads to improvement.
• You can further monetize your pages using the AdSense for search, which increase your ad display opportunities.