Difficulty seeing this newsletter? View as a web page. 
{!date dayname+0}, {!date long+0} Dear {!firstname_fix} I'm a bit dazed this morning. Today is my 28th Wedding Anniversary and I can't believe I have been married for more than half my life...! Also, this week my son started "Big School" - where did those 12 years go to? And, of course, tomorrow I am sure we will all stop and remember the dreadful events of 10 years ago in the USA. But didn't that decade pass by quickly as well? Often we are so busy with the nitty-gritty of our daily lives we don't have time to sit back and take stock of what has happened. As a result we get the sense that time has flown by. And it means we don't assess our accomplishments as often as we should. So, later this week why not give yourself a few moments to reflect upon your successes in recent years? You could well be amazed at what you have achieved, but which you didn't really notice because time was flying by so quickly.
YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED: Why do people leave my website? One of the biggest problems companies face online these days is getting people to stick around on their website. We seem to be undergoing a change in our attention capabilities meaning that instead of people giving us their undivided attention for a minute or two, they are now giving us their DIVIDED attention for mere seconds. For an online business that is a real problem - getting people to your website is often difficult enough. But getting them to stay is just as much of a problem and one which many companies focus less of their own attention on. Much of the online marketing advice is about getting people TO your website - pay per click, SEO and so on. But what really matters is that they STAY at your website and don't click away at the merest glimpse of something else they might be interested in. Lack of "stickiness" is a real issue for many business websites. The first thing to do is to ensure that your website is easy to navigate. When people land on a page, one of the first things they do - within 100 milliseconds - is check out the navigation and see if they can use it. If they can - they'll stick around for a while longer. If not, they are gone already. What people are looking for in that first 100ms of landing on your page is a horizontal menubar somewhere near the top of the page. The next thing they look for is whether or not this page is really what they wanted. So they look for a headline or a graphic of some kind of visual device which confirms this is the page they wanted. If they wanted a page on "accountancy for florists" they need to see the words "accountancy", "florists" and a picture of some accountancy books and some flowers together, perhaps. If all they see is "Welcome to Jones and Co Accountants" they are out of the website faster than you can say "double entry bookkeeping". Indeed, it only takes a further 200ms for people to determine whether the page they have landed on is what they are really interested in. Otherwise, they are gone. So, stickiness - avoiding "bounces" out of your site - is partly determined by two factors: an obvious, horizontal, top of page menu AND a clear sign that this is the page the individual wants to see. But, of course, there is more to site stickiness than just these two factors. Another issue that your visitors look for are signs of recency and frequency of update. If your website is recent and if your updates are pretty regular, then people do stick around for longer and don't bounce out quite so quickly. So the third strategy for stickiness is regular and frequent updating of your site. Images help, of course, as do the "furniture" of your site - such as bullet points, section headings and so on. But don't fuss yourself over them. The "basics" are much more important. Get them right and you will have more people staying longer on your website.
WHAT I LEARNED THIS WEEK: Play with people better than you None of us really like losing. Even when parents deliberately let their children win a board game, for instance, there is still some sense of "I could have won" inside them. And when you are beaten to that last seat on the train, no doubt inside your head you mutter a swear word in defeat. This week my son had a golf lesson after playing in his first tournament. His playing partner was a young lad of 17, with a handicap of 6. My son has only been playing golf seriously for a year and only just got his first handicap - 48. So, clearly his playing partner was better than him. But as the golf professional started to teach Elliot a surer way of putting, they chatted about his last game. It was then that Elliot pointed out he had been watching his tournament partner and had worked out what he was doing better. "You only learn to be better if you play with people better than you," said the Pro. Of course, in reality we'd prefer to play with people worse than us - that way we can be sure of winning...! But the Golf Pro is right - and it is not just sport in which playing with better people matters. If you want to be better at email marketing, for instance, then mix with people who do it better than you. If you want to be a great blogger, go to events where you will be amongst the worst bloggers there. Only my mixing with people "higher up" than you, can you possibly ever hope to learn enough to be like them.
THIS WEEK'S "MUST BUY": Iomega Network Storage - Home Cloud Edition  
The chances are you have heard of "cloud storage". It is the notion that you put your files and documents on a server somewhere in the world and you can then access them through a web browser anywhere, anytime. There are several popular cloud storage systems such as Carbonite, iDrive, LiveDrive, Mozy, SugarSync and ZumoDrive. But there is a problem; in order to store more than a relatively small number of files, you need to pay. In my case the annual cost of storing all my data was anything between $234 and $948. And even then, I couldn't back up everything because some services have a cap on the amount of data you store. But this week I bought the Iomega Network Drive Home Cloud Edition and haven't looked back. Fantastic - problem solved. This is a £140 device which stores 2 Terabytes of data. You connect it to your broadband router and it comes with its own web interface which means you can log in from anywhere in the world, just like any other cloud service. Just leave it switched on and you have your own, personal cloud. To find out more please visit: http://uklik.me/homecloud Well that's it for another week, Kind Regards
Graham Jones Web:
grahamjones.co.uk Tel: +44 118 336 9710 If you like this newsletter - please share it..! Thank you. If you no longer wish to receive this newsletter than you can delete your name from the mailing list by clicking this link: {!remove_web} Affiliate Links: Some of the links in this newsletter are affiliate links providing me with a small commission when you purchase the item. However, I only use affiliate links for products which I personally value. |
