Simply purchase any new Web or Email Hosting product, starting from only $9.90 per month* – and you will receive a gratis domain! Hurry, offer ends on March 31. You already have a domain with us? Renew it before March 31, buy any Virtual Hosting service from the products below, and pay $0!

Choose from our great range of products, and grab your free domain name today! Call us NOW on 1300 665 491 or visit our website for more information.

* The minimum contract for monthly hosting products is 3 months. Customers with existing hosting products need to renew their hosting service before March 31 for 12 months to benefit from this promotion.

Telephone and email support will be unavailable on Friday 21 March and Monday 24 March 2008 as our office will be closed for the Good Friday and Easter Monday public holidays. We will resume our normal operating hours of 8.30am to 6pm AEDT from Tuesday 25 March 2008.

All the products that you want to sell online are ready. You have already signed up for a Google AdWords campaign. Your mind is now set to being the next most successful online businessperson. Is there anything else that you might have forgotten to prepare? Maybe none. But how about your landing page? Is it all set for your business?

What is a landing page?

Landing pages are simply web pages where visitors are directed to whenever they click a result in a web search or whenever they click a web ad. Landing pages are, at most times, nothing really different from other web pages in a particular website, especially if the said website is an e-commerce site. Some online businesses would even use the homepage of their websites as the landing page for their ads. Are these businessmen making a big mistake? Or should you follow their method in creating landing pages for their ads?

Do you need a landing page?

Well, you can always follow what most online retailers do, directing their potential customers to the homepages of their websites. But if you want to achieve something more from your online business, and if you want to earn a lot of profits, you better create a special landing page for your web ads. Why? Here are a few reasons why you need to use landing pages for your web ads and why you need to create a great landing page.

Reason no. 1: It is the only way you can track conversions.

With an Online Marketing campaign, you pay on a pay per click basis. Basically, all you have to do is sign up and let your supplier create an ad for you, based on the right keywords. Your ad will then be shown on the relevant search engines, eg Google and Yahoo. Whenever your ad is clicked, a visitor will be directed to your landing page and you will have to pay for each click.

You have to determine what counts as a conversion for your business. Is it an enquiry? A sell? A visit? Having determined this, you are faced with the question how to track these conversions. Does your website offer an enquiry form, or even something as simple as a phone number at first glance? If not, you won’t know what your visitors did when they visited your site.

Your advertisement may be enticing enough to encourage people to purchase a product, but without the landing page, how will they know how to purchase the product?

It is therefore important to have landing pages for your ads because it is the only way for you track conversions. Without landing pages, you might end up spending money without knowing what you are getting in return.

Reason no. 2: Other web pages may just not be enough.

Many people make the mistake of using their website’s homepage as the landing page for their ads. The same is true for those who make use of other pages like a “contact us” page or a product page. Homepages are often designed to serve multiple users and contain a lot of links to other pages or to other websites.

When choosing a landing page, you must always have the customer directed to the exact page that sells the specific product or service. Therefore, your landing page must be relevant to the keywords and the contents you placed on your ad. It is also important that the landing page can induce your visitor to take action β€” that is to purchase your product or at least provide leads for potential customers.

Final Word

You probably entered into a Google AdWords program with these things in mind: to save on advertising expenses and to gain more profit. But if you get into Online Marketing without actually having a landing page, you’ll end up paying too much without getting anything in return. So if you still don’t have a landing page for your ads, you better start creating one now. Make sure it’s a great landing page too, to ensure you provide your potential customer with a call to action.

Need help? We create custom designed landing pages that work – for only $500! Call us now on 1300 665 491 or visit our website for more information and examples!

Setting up a website is the very first step of an Internet marketing campaign, and the success or failure of your site depends greatly on how specifically you have defined your website goals. If you don’t know what you want your site to accomplish, it will most likely fail to accomplish anything. Without goals to guide you in developing and monitoring your website, all your site will be is an online announcement that you are in business.

How successful is your Website?

If you expect your site to stimulate some form of action, whether it is visitors filling out a form so a representative can contact them, or purchasing a product, there are steps you can take to insure that your website is functioning at peak efficiency. One of the first indicators of how well your site is working for you is finding out the number of visitors in a given period of time. A good baseline measurement is a month in which you haven’t been doing any unusual offline promotional activities.

It’s all about conversion

However, just because hoards of people have passed through your gates does not mean your site is successful. Usually, you want those visitors to actually do something there. It is equally important to monitor the number of visitors to your site who made a purchase. This figure is called the site conversion rate, and it is an essential element of the efficacy of your website.

To find the site conversion rate, take the number of visitors per month and figure out the percentage of them that actually performed the action your site is set up for. For example, if you had 2,000 hits to your site, but only 25 of them purchased your product, your site conversion rate equals 1.25%. To get this figure, take your number of buyers and divide that figure by the number of visitors. Then multiply that result by 100.

If your website is set up to get visitors to fill out a form, make sure to then figure out what the difference is between your site conversion rate and your sales conversion rate. This is because not everyone who fills out your form will actually become your customer. However, whether your site is set-up to sell a service or product, or to get the visitor to fill out a form, the site conversion rate will measure the success or failure of your website whenever you make changes to the site.

What next?

You may find that you need to implement some additional marketing strategies if you find that traffic to your site is extremely low. There are several effective methods to improve the flow of traffic to your website, particularly launching a search engine marketing campaign. This campaign is targeted at increasing your position in paid search engine results so that consumers can find your pages faster and easier. You can either research the steps you need to take to improve your paid search listings, or employ a Pay Per Click (PPC) company to do the work for you.

Make it easy

Another factor to examine is how easy it is for someone who visits your website to accomplish the action the site is set up for. For example, if your goal is for the visitor to fill out a form, is this form easily accessible, or does the visitor have to go through four levels to get to it? If it’s too difficult to get to, the customer may just throw in the towel and move on to another site. Make sure your buttons are highly visible, and the path to your form or ordering page quickly accessible.

Professional Evaluation

Finally, have a professional evaluate the copy on your website. The goal is, of course, to get your visitor to make a purchase or fill out your form. Website copy must be specifically geared to your online campaign and not just a cut and paste job from your company brochure. The right copy can make the difference between profit and loss in your online campaign.

If you are not sure, call us on 1300 665 491 and our Online Marketing experts will do an evaluation of your site. This will help determine whether or not changes are in order. Do you want to run a specific campaign without changing your website? Call us and get a landing page including an enquiry form for your Google AdWords campaign for a standard rate of $550.

Ladies and gentlemen, coming to you live from the Internet Arena: the WWW Client-Conversion World Championship.

This month, we’ll uncover the best tool for making the transition turning visitors into customers seamless by pitting the E-Mail Link against the Contact Form in the ultimate face-off.

A 7-Round Showdown: Forms vs. Links

In the red corner, the former featherweight junior runner-up: the E-Mail Link.

In the blue corner, the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world: the Contact Form.

Let’s get ready to RUMBLE!

Round 1: Spam

Posting an e-mail address can invite spam. Spammers write software that works the way search engines do: they “scrape” the Internet looking for e-mail addresses. When you use a form, the e-mail address isn’t visible; it lies within programming code that spammers can’t grab.

Round 2: Specific info

Wouldn’t you like to know more about your leads from the get-go? What are their interests and concerns? Do they prefer phone or e-mail contact? You can gather key information from Web site leads if you just think to ask. An e-mail link doesn’t make requests, but a form can ask for anything.

Round 3: Saving

Ever had a problem with a misplaced e-mail? Did it get blocked by your filter? Problems with your disk quota? Server issues? E-mail just isn’t 100% reliable. But everything submitted on your site can be saved. It’s a great backup. Every now and then, you can take a look and make sure you’ve seen every entry.

Round 4: No e-mail program required

We’ve all done it: You click on an e-mail link from a computer you don’t usually use, and an unfamiliar e-mail program pops up on your screen. Suddenly, you feel out of place. You close the program and forget the idea of contacting that Web site. A form, on the other hand, requires nothing beyond a browser. It’s a friendly, functional tool for any visitor working from any computer.

Round 5: The thank-you page

When a visitor fills out a form and clicks Submit, you can show your gratitude with a thank-you page. This is another chance to mention your company’s products or services. But beyond the opportunity for additional marketing, this feature makes something else possible:

Round 6: Tracking

How many visitors clicked on that e-mail link? Hard to tell. How many visitors filled out that form? Just look at your traffic stats. Every visit to your thank-you page started as a submission to your contact form.

Round 7: Polish

Any high-school kid can make an e-mail link. But established, qualified firms do things right. A form is a clear, clean way to establish your professionalism and simplify communication.

Do you smell what the Form’s got cookin’? After all, while the Contact Form may not be the most important page on your site, it is the page that pays the bills. It’s the hinge point where visitors are converted into clients.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have our winner. And the next move is yours: scrap the E-Mail Link, enlist the almighty Contact Form, and smackdown your competition.