The WordPress defaults are “plain vanilla”, ordinary, and, some might say, ugly. If you want to make your website stand out from thousands of other WordPress sites, you need to beautify it. Of course, beauty isn’t at the heart of your site; the heart is your content. And, of course, in websites, as in life, beauty is only skin deep. But the appearance of your site matters. That’s what makes people stop and take a look at your content. If your site uses the same Arial font everyone else uses, that doesn’t attract attention. If your site is all text, that limits people’s... [...]

The latest ‘Web Marketing Today’ blog post is titled “8 Design Trends for 2014”. Drew Coffin says, “With 2014 one-half complete, it’s time to look at emerging trends in web design. Some trends have been gaining popularity for several years, while others are more recent. If you’re a professional designer or online marketer, keeping up with web design trends can help your site or your marketing efforts. Responsive Design Responsive design is less of a “trend” and more of an increasingly effective response to the variety of Internet capable devices in use today. Users no longer... [...]

The latest ‘Econsultancy’ blog post is titled “44 reasons why people don’t trust your website”. Chris Lake says, “Why do people trust – or distrust – a website? What is it about the content, the design choices, or the usability of a website that makes it seem untrustworthy? Last month I spotted this great thread on reddit, where people explained what makes them trust / distrust company websites. I thought I’d extract some of the suggestions, and a few quotes, and I’ve added a bunch of my own. The usual caveats apply: all rules are there to be... [...]

The latest ‘Econsultancy’ blog post is titled “The website segmentation and personalisation game”. Chris Gibbins says, “On Monday 12th May at our Marketing Automation Forum, the last session of the day involved all tables (each a mix of job roles from many different sectors) battling it out in our website segmentation/personalisation game. By this time the audience was already warmed up by some great sessions including one from Econsultancy’s very own Heather Hopkins on “The changing market place – marketing automation means more than just email””. The... [...]

The latest post on ‘Copyblogger’ Blog is titled “Easy Design Tricks That Will Lift Your Web Sales”. Demian Farnworth says, “Advice about web design, as a rule, either concerns itself with established conventions like “design for humans” or arcane tips such as creating responsive images with the “srcset” attribute. Tricks of conversion, however, don’t typically appear in the ordinary design presentation … You know, those little design secrets that make all the difference between something beautiful and something beautiful and profitable. Until now”. Easy Design... [...]

In less than a week, Peter Garety has sold over 4100 copies of his new P1 Traffic Machine software and the upgrades for it. A lot of marketers are voting for it with their credit cards. People are seeing the potential found in money-making sites, like the ones this software makes. The enterprise license of this new tool allows you to build 100 sites complete with a silo structure that visitors and the search engines both like. The sites you build are properly SEO optimized, Silo structured and fully monetized. so you can quickly, with a push of a button, launch dozens of money sites and reap the... [...]

The latest article on ‘MarketingProfs’ is titled “Is Your Website Dead or Just Sleeping? A Vital Six-Point Checklist for Your Site”. Matt Gagnon says, “So you’ve asked for a yearend report on your website, and you don’t like what you see. Numbers are falling off? Conversions are plummeting? Core audience is bouncing off the site? No new leads? If you find yourself in that situation, or you’re not where you need to be, chances are very good your website is sleeping. (Let’s hope it’s not dead…) You can take charge and turn things around by giving your... [...]

Peter Garety is releasing new software at Noon EDT today, called P1 Traffic Machine. It turns your website into a silo-based site. Silo-based sites are good for your visitors and for search engines. when you create Silo architecture for your site you divide your content into categories and link all the posts in a category together, and the whole chain of linked posts is linked to a header record on the home page. This structure makes it easy for visitors to browse through a topic (so they stay longer on your site), and it helps Google and the other search engines determine the theme or niche your... [...]

The latest ‘Econsultancy’ blog post is titled “Adaptive web design: pros and cons”. Graham Charlton says, “Responsive design may be the more popular option for business right now, but that doesn’t mean that alternative approaches like adaptive design shouldn’t be considered.  Today sees the release of our Mobile Web Design and Development Best Practice Guide, which looks in detail at mobile site design and development. This taster from the guide looks at the pros and cons of an adaptive web design”. Adaptive web design: pros and cons ‘Econsultancy’... [...]

“Pillar Traffic” comes a long-forgotten term in the internet marketing world, “pillar content.” The idea was popular with bloggers several years ago and referred to traffic campaigns where bloggers would create specific types of very engaging content that their audience would share with their friends. Eventually, this dropped from most people’s radar. However, in part because it is no longer overused, it’s even more useful in bringing in new traffic now than ever. Chris Munch and his team are reviving this once popular traffic method. They have developed software... [...]