What is website optimization? To me, it’s how you can improve your website so that it works better.

I know I have some very loyal readers here at IncomeSup.com and I would hate for you to miss out on some great website optimization techniques and simple tricks and tips that can make the difference between 10 website views and 10,000 website views so here we have a huge list of what I feel are the best lessons you could learn TODAY.

Remember that as online entrepreneurs and website owners, we run the risk of being left behind because the internet is a very fast paced industry to work within. That being said, these neat website optimization tips and resources should have you up-to-date and ahead of the game. I hope these all help you massively, and if you know some blog posts that should have been featured in this post then please do leave them in the comments and we will add them!

How Website Optimization Can Increase Your Sales and Traffic

#1 Reduce Your Website Bounce Rate

Your website bounce rate is what percent of people left your website without visiting more than one page. The lower your bounce rate, the better.

If website optimization is important to you, this is something you need to be improving.

Here are my top tips to get started:

• Interlink blog posts
• Reduce adverts
• Improve readability
• Keep content up to date
• Increase website speed
• Add related or popular posts to the bottom of articles
• Test different anchor text for website navigation
• Reorder posts on category pages to show most popular
• Improve featured images for posts

You will notice that improving your bounce rate, is also going to help your search engine optimization.

#2 Optimize Your Website For Search Engines

Search engine optimization is one of the best ways to spend your time if you want to increase traffic to your site. With literally millions of other people and blogs to compete with; you have to work hard to stay ahead of the game.

So many people manage to cover most areas of importance when starting a blog with the exception of SEO. This can be disastrous for your blogs future and because of this, you need to learn as much as you possibly about the subject. Get clued up on the best SEO tools and techniques, this will put you one step ahead of the competition! Make sure to follow these 10 SEO blog publishing steps that most bloggers forget.

Here are my top tips that I focus on when it comes to optimizing my website for search engines:

• Do keyword research
• Reduce bounce rate
• Fix broken links
• Increase page speed
• Make sure my pages have over 2000 words
• Get more backlinks
• Add a sitemap

From this list, you will probably notice that search engine optimization isn’t just about writing great content, but it’s also a lot about how you user friendly your website is. It makes sense really, the better your website is, the more Google wants to link to you.

#3 Split Test Your Website

Split testing is another topic that can dazzle blogging newcomers and can leave them dazed and confused in the wake of a ton of supposedly informative articles. The problem with many of the articles you may read on this subject is that they are usually aimed at the more advanced bloggers which can really hinder those with little to zero understanding of what split-testing actually is.

I feel it is my duty to you my readers, to aid you in understanding this mysterious subject matter because I want you to succeed and to succeed as well as possible. Check out these posts on conversion optimization.

Not sure what to split test? Here is some of the things we are testing:

• Headlines
• Colors
• Button text
• Design vs Design
• Borders
• Images

#4 Increase Your Website Speed

Increasing website speed will increase conversions and search engine rankings, that’s why it’s one of my favorite website optimization techniques. It amazes me to this day that there are so few people out there that actually help their websites and blogs to run faster; the majority of people tend to create pages and posts and continue in doing so without any second thought to how their site is performing in speed. This can be a very major issue at times and it is one that I think you will great suffer from if I do not aid you in understanding how to make your website or blog run faster.

I’m sure a great deal of you reading this will have at times, been patiently waiting for a website to load only to click the ‘Back button’ and search for something different instead? If you have, and you HAVE clicked that button; what makes you think that your readers will not do the same if YOUR site is running at a snails pace?

Here are 18 Things Making Your Website Slow.

#5 Optimize Your Email Marketing Signup Area

This is another major question that a lot of new bloggers ask and while it is a valid and important question it is also very simple to put into effect. Some bloggers give up when they are unable to find new subscribers and this should not be the case, instead it should make you even more passionate about your blog because you want it to be the best it can be.

Subscribers are definitely the way forward for numerous reasons and loyal ones will aid you greatly whether by spreading the word about your blog by mouth or by a review on your site or maybe even a YouTube video, there is no question that subscribers are the life support that your blog needs in order to stay top of the ladder.

Our top tip for getting email subscribers? Use PopUp Domination.

So you have created your blog, you have traffic heading to it on a daily basis and you have even started to build up an email list; how do you go about marketing via email? These great posts should help:

• 10 “Fill In The Blank” Email Subject Lines (That Made Me The Most Money)
• 12 Powerful Tips to Dramatically Increase Email Open Rate
• 14 Ways to Get More Clicks In Your Emails

A big part of website optimization is about how you keep visitors coming back to your website. Make sure to also read: 11 Email Marketing Campaigns Every Business Should Be Running

#6 Offer Amazing Customer Service

Customer service pays for itself in so many different ways.

Firstly, it will increase your conversion rate because it’s something people care about when they buy a product. If a customer has a problem with your service, they want to know that they can get help straight away, not wait days for each support response. Given the option between two similar products, one with live support, I’m going to take the one with live support.

Secondly, if your customer service is amazing, customers will cancel and refund a lot less.

And thirdly, if your customer service is amazing, they will buy more products from you.

Our support hours are weekly from 7am till 10pm GMT. We offer email support, live chat and we have documentation for our software. It’s important to us that you are happy.

#7 Add Upsells To Your Sales Funnel

Launching your own product is a great way to make more money online.

To make even more money from your products, add upsells. An upsell is a one time offer that is shown directly after they purchase your product. If you get this right, you can double you income with this one tip alone.

When we first launched PopUp Domination, we had no upsells. After a few months we noticed that our customers were requesting multi site licenses and more popup designs, so we started selling them. But what made the biggest difference was adding them as an upsell, directly after they purchase.

Think about it, they already put their credit card details in, they are in buying mode, converting someone to buy something right after they bought your product, is a lot easier than doing it later. This one change saw us increase sales by 100%.

#8 Increase Your Affiliate Sales With Coupon Codes and Comparison Tables

Affiliate marketing is a great way to start earning money with your blog or website.

When it comes to increasing affiliate sales, some of the best advice I can give you is to offer a coupon code. Customers like to think they are getting a good deal and if they see a coupon, they will think they are getting a better deal.

Another reason why this will boost conversions is because often when someone goes to buy and lands on the checkout page, they see a coupon code field. This makes them think, I could get a better deal if I could get a coupon code for this product. So they go to Google and find a coupon and end up buying through someone elses link. You can prevent this by giving them the coupon code in the first place.

The other big thing I suggest is to show a comparison of prices and features. This lets them see that your recommendation is the best choice and if they decide to use a different product, you will also earn.

#9 Increase Your Income By Using Multiple Monetization Techniques

It’s important to diversify your income in order to make more of it, it sounds simple and in reality it is a simple thing to do; however there are a lot of people out there blogging that simply stay focused on just one stream of income and this can be detrimental to what they are trying to achieve. Maybe you are one of these people? Have you started to make money in one certain way and just stuck to that technique?

If you have I commend you in taking action and giving yourself a great head-start; the problem is that you are too focused on that one stream of income to see that there are probably a dozen other ways to make even more money online. Some of those ways may even be 100% more effective.

Read: 14 Ways To Actually Make Money From a Website

#10 Keep Your Website Up To Date

Keeping your website up to date will improve your search engine rankings, reduce your bounce rate and increase conversions.

No one wants to read out dated blog posts. No one wants to buy a product they don’t think is still relevant. Everyone coming to your website wants to know that your site is the best and it’s worth them spending time on it.

Here are a few things you need to make sure are kept up to date:

• Copyright date
• Mentions of dates in posts
• Blog content
• Fix broken links
• Keep social media accounts up to date

#11 Make Sure Your Blog Is Secure!

Hackers, Spammers they are all out to get you, no matter who you are, what niche your blog is involved in or even how long you have been online. It can feel as though it is a personal vendetta against you but don’t take it personally it happens to the best of us.

This is why it is important to look after your blogs security so that you can continue to give your readers valuable content without being constantly attacked by an unknown force. Spammers are constantly sending emails to just about every blog on the planet and although they in themselves are not damaging, the messages that they can leave all over your blog can be.

#12 Optimize Your Website Design

This is yet another topic that brings with it numerous amounts of daily emails; a big part of website optimization is improving the design of your blog, it’s right up there with SEO. Sure the SEO does all of the hard work, bringing the traffic to your site; but the design can be just as important.

I’m sure most of you have had the experience of clicking on a top ranked result in Google for one of your searches, only to find that once the website has loaded the design is absolutely dire! So what do you do? You go ahead and click on the ‘Back button’ yet again, and this is something that your very own readers could end up doing.

That’s why it is important to get the design just right from the word go; this isn’t to say you should pour thousands of dollars into it (you can do that later when you are ready to upgrade) it simply means that you should try and stand out from the crowd and become a shepherd instead of a sheep.

#13 Optimize Your Website Code

I think this is something that 80% of bloggers know nothing about; and it is a shame really because improving the code on your site can be very rewarding. The internet is built on the foundations of thousands of codes and algorithms, so are the search engines and believe it or not so is your blog or website.

It may sound a little confusing but by making your coding look ‘beautiful’ you can really get the best out of your blog; the question you may have on your lips is “How can code be beautiful?” a very valid point. Beautiful code is what helps; the search engines find you, the browsers to correctly display your content and your readers read your content. So when I say make your code beautiful I mean it.

#14 Improve Your Website Credibility

When someone comes to your website, it’s important to give them confidence in your business.

You can do this by:

• Showing testimonials
• Showing press logos
• Showing press mentions
• Having HTTPS in your domain
• Proof reading your content
• Having an about page
• Having active social media accounts

#15 Improve Your Website Content

Fresh ideas are sometimes hard to come by, it’s not that you have lost passion, or that you care less its that you feel you have ran out of things to say, or how to make them jump out the page to your readers.

This can all be remedied with a couple of articles (below) and some good old fashioned elbow-grease. Remember that blogging is not just about adding page after page of content, it is about inspiring people, aiding them in their daily tasks, showing them the pitfalls so they can go around them. It’s also about creating content that simply appeals to the masses; whether that means adding fewer or more images, a video or maybe an mp3 audio file on your posts. Never worry about a lack of content it’s all there you just need to find it and make it interesting.

17 Writing Tips For Bloggers Who Think They Can’t Write!

How To Create Viral Content Your Readers Will Love

#16 Improve Your Website Funnel

When someone visits your website, you want to take them through a journey. It may take 5 page visits before they buy and you want to help them as much as possible to effortlessly go from page to page.

Here is an example of what I’m talking about:

Blog Post > Next Blog Post > Subscribe Page > Free Video > Checkout Page > Upsell Page > Product Download Page.

You want them to go from page to page without leaving. It’s important to plan out how you want your visitors to use your site and make sure each page along the way is optimized for what you want it to do.

#17 Optimize Your Website Design for Mobile Devices

Nearly 50% of IncomeDiary traffic is coming from mobile. If our site wasn’t optimized for mobile devices, people will leave quickly.

This doesn’t just mean they don’t buy, but because our bounce rate will increase, Google may decide our website isn’t as good and decrease our traffic.

Make sure to read 15 Best Practices for Responsible Responsive Web Design.

#18 Tracking and Analyzing Your Traffic

Again this is something that a lot of bloggers fail to do, or fail to understand the importance of doing it. Tracking and analyzing can help you with your blog or website in a plethora of ways; all of which can bring in a great deal of income.

Do you understand how the average user of your site reads your content? Do you know how many times that ‘Click Here’ link has been clicked? If not then how can you have a definite idea of where you are going right, and more importantly where you are going wrong. If you are able to track and analyze your blog or website then you can find what you are doing wrong, change it, and keep doing so until the problem no longer arises. you see, with website optimization, tracking and analysis, comes real opportunity to make your blog better, which is what we all want isn’t it?

There you have it, my 18 top tips for website optimization.

Read more: ‘9 ‘Set and Forget’ Ways To Increase Sales On Your Website’

The post 18 Website Optimization Tips For More Traffic and Higher Conversions appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

In 2010, Google confirmed that site speed is one of over 200 indicators that impacts search rankings. Their data shows that when pages load slowly, people spend less time. Yet most of us put little focus into making our websites faster.

Maybe fine-tuning the inner speed triggers of your WordPress website is too daunting.

To shed light on cutting your load time in half, we invited Stavros Papadakis to lay out his process for speeding up client websites.

If your load time is more than 3 seconds or your page size is over 2MB, that can be a big problem that’s costing you money, both in lost sales and server fees.

There are many free online tools such as WebPageTest, GTmetrix, Google PageSpeed Insights and Pingdom that can help you identify issues that cause slow loading times and bad user experience for your site.

Here’s how to take charge of your website’s performance.

1. Enable compression

Compressing your CSS and Javascript files will help browsers download them faster.

Gzip compression can easily reduce file sizes from 200+KB (non-compressed) to less than 40KB (compressed). As long as your server has compression enabled, take advantage of it.

You can be sure that your users will experience a drastic speed up of your site for both desktops and mobiles by enabling compression at your server.

Add the following snippet of code at your .htaccess file in order to enable compression for static files.

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-httpd-php text/php text/html text/plain text/css text/xml application/x-javascript text/javascript application/javascript text/x-js

BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip
BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html
Header append Vary User-Agent

2. Optimize your images

Images are the main culprit for slowing a website. Always optimize your images (especially those above 50KB) before uploading them to your website.

The optimal way of optimizing them is to use Photoshop or any other image manipulation software. Save images for web with image quality up to 60%.

You should also use progressive images for JPG files because progressive rendering of images provides a smoother user experience.

Please check the following two images, they look the same but the left one is non-optimized and is 80KB and the one to the right is optimized and it is only 18KB, 4 times smaller.

Non-Optimized Image

Optimized Image

3. Move Javascript files to the footer

Although Javascript libraries such as jQuery, Mootools and Prototype are awesome because they extend your website’s functionality, they can also block the rendering of your pages.

Browsers don’t start loading the content until all the Javascript files in the header of the page have been downloaded.

An easy way to solve this problem is to move your Javascript files, those which are not required during the initial page rendering, from the header to the footer of the page.

If you use WordPress, you can move script calls from header.php to footer.php at your theme and use true as the fourth parameter whenever you use the wp_enqueue_script function.

Move JS scripts to the footer of the page

4. Make sure that you have KeepAlive enabled

Apache (the most commonly used server for shared hosting plans at low-cost hosting companies) has a great “feature” called KeepAlive which keeps connections open for more than one HTTP request.

Make sure KeepAlive is activated at your hosting company.

If you have access to your httpd.conf file, enable KeepAlive by making sure that you have “KeepAlive On” in it, otherwise just add the following piece of code at your .htaccess file.

<ifModule mod_headers.c>
 Header set Connection keep-alive
</ifModule>

Enable KeepAlive for your site

5. Merge CSS files – Inline small CSS files

Browsers only handle so many HTTP requests at the same time. When this limit is reached, some files wait while others are downloaded.

By merging all your CSS files into one CSS file only, the page renders much faster.

If you have CSS files which are less than 2KB, then you should inline them instead of making an extra HTTP request.

WordPress has a few great plugins such as Autoptimize and Better WordPress Minify that can be help you merge or even inline your CSS stylesheets.

Merge CSS files and Inline them

6. Enable caching

Caching drastically improves the load time of pages that do not change that often.

By enabling caching at your site, your code doesn’t keep generating the same page over and over again. This way the user experience is much better and your server can handle more traffic.

W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache and WP Fastest Cache are just a short selection of free WordPress plugins that provide different kind of caching e.g. page caching, database caching and object caching among others.

W3 Total Cache plugin provides page, DB and object caching

7. Use a Content Delivery Network

Whether you use a CMS like WordPress, Joomla, Magento, Drupal or a custom-made PHP or HTML site, I highly recommend configuring a Content Delivery Network (CDN).

A CDN is a distributed system of servers deployed in multiple data centers across the internet.
When a client visits your site, static content like images and CSS files are served from the server that is geographically closest them so they are rendered much faster.

By the way, the load on your server is also drastically reduced thanks to a CDN.

CloudFlare is a free CDN and DNS provider among others. MaxCDN is also a great and affordable option to optimize the loading time of your site. They are both as good as they can get.

CloudFlare is a free Content Delivery Network

8. Minimize the number of HTTP requests

The more HTTP requests you have, the slower the loading time of your site will be.

Combine your CSS files, merge Javascript files, and combine images in data sprites among others to make as few HTTP requests as possible.

When I work on a client’s site, one of my major goals is to minimize the number of HTTP requests loaded per page.

Merge CSS files, use data sprites or data URIs in order to reduce the number of HTTP requests

9. Choose the correct file type for your images

Use JPG as your default. It’s the smallest and fastest loading file type.

Use PNG only for images with text (JPG rasterizes text which makes it blurry) or if you need a transparent background.

Minimize or even eliminate any heavy GIF files because they can drastically slow down the loading time of your site.

Although the following two images look the same, there is a huge difference between them. The one to the left is saved as a png file and weighs 102KB and the other one is a JPG file with a size of 18KB, that’s right, 6 times lighter!

Image saved as PNG

Image saved as JPG

10. Fix your 404 errors

Believe it or not, any missing file generates a 404 HTTP error and will definitely slow down the loading time of your site.

Always check for any 404 errors during the rendering of your pages to achieve the fastest loading time.

If your “waterfall” (the way the browser renders your site) looks like that (watch out for any red rows), then 404 errors are ruining the loading time of your site.

404 Errors Can Ruin the Loading Time of your Site

11. Take care of your page size

Although it is tempting to display a lot of content in each page, you should try to keep your page size to the minimum.

This is even more crucial for mobiles. Having to load a 2MB site via mobile in a 3G connection is a recipe for disaster. Take into account that users do not like to wait for more than 2-3 seconds for a page to render.

Does a new image add value to the site? If not, then you should not add it to your site. Simple like that.

Reduce the Page Size

12. Scale images

Never scale images on the fly in HTML. Create a thumbnail of the image that you need at the exact dimensions that it will be used in your pages.

For instance, if you have an image that it is 1200px x 675px and you want to use a “scaled” version at 480px x 270px, create a new resized version of the original image and use that instead.

This image links to a “big” version of the image using a scaled thumbnail instead of changing the dimensions of the image in HTML.

Thumbnail (Scaled Image) Links to Large-Size Image

13. Leverage Browser Caching

Google recommends a minimum cache time of one week and preferably up to one year for assets that change infrequently.

Set a caching policy for all server responses to static files (images, CSS and Javascript) so the browser can determine whether it can reuse a previously loaded file or not.

This is usually done by adding this snippet of code at the .htaccess file for shared hosting plans

<ifmodule mod_expires.c>
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresByType text/html “access plus 7200 seconds”
ExpiresByType image/gif “access plus 864000 seconds”
ExpiresByType image/jpg “access plus 864000 seconds”
ExpiresByType image/png “access plus 864000 seconds”
ExpiresByType text/css “access plus 864000 seconds”
ExpiresByType text/javascript “access plus 864000 seconds”
ExpiresByType application/javascript “access plus 864000 seconds”
</ifmodule>

14. Optimize your database

As long as you have a database-driven site (which includes WordPress and all other CMS-based sites), then be sure to optimize your database.

Monitor your code for slow queries. If you are on a VPS or dedicated server, enable query caching and optimize your database server configuration.

Although full database optimization can be a really tricky and time-consuming process, phpMyAdmin offers you a few basic optimization options by “optimizing your tables”.

Optimize your Database via phpMyAdmin

15. Select your hosting company wisely

Choose a hosting plan that meets your site needs.

Most hosting companies apply limitations to their shared hosting plans and host hundreds of sites per server to keep the fees to the minimum.

You get what you pay for. If you have an Ecommerce site, a heavy CMS, a lot of traffic or traffic spikes, avoid shared hosting plans.

I highly recommend WPEngine managed WordPress hosting company for any eCommerce WordPress site or any WordPress site with traffic spikes.

16. Hire an expert

My goal is to give you enough information to get started optimizing your website speed.

But as you know, it’s best to hire an expert when it’s important to get it right.

One of my clients contacted me in order to optimize the loading time of his website. The website pages were taking a long time to load and visitors were complaining because the user experience was bad.

I updated WordPress to its latest version, migrated the website to a reliable hosting company and applied speed optimization tweaks to achieve the best feasible loading time.

The loading time went from 8.2 to 2.6 seconds. The first byte and start rendering time was optimized down to 0.147 and 0.384 seconds respectively and the number of HTTP requests was reduced from 96 to 78. Google PageSpeed Insights was also optimized to 88%.

Bounce rate decreased by about 10% within a few weeks. The client and more importantly the website users were happy and maintaining the site became a great experience.

To sum it up, optimizing the loading time of your site is a win-win situation for you and your potential clients.

Imagine how happy your users will be to see super fast loading times!

If you want to hire me, I’m happy to help. See my portfolio and contact me on AwesomeWeb today!

Conclusion

Everything improves when your site loads faster.

Google ranks you higher. Users are happier. Bounce rates decrease. Conversion rates increase. And you make more sales.

Stop losing traffic and money. Start optimizing the loading time of your site today.

Today I’m offering a $497 package special for IncomeDiary readers. This is half my normal rate. If your site meets my minimum qualifications, I’ll take care of everything listed in this post. Mention IncomeDiary in your message and I’ll be in touch with you shortly. Start off 2015 with the fastest website you can possibly have!

Hire me here or find other speed optimization freelancers on AwesomeWeb here.

The post 16 Ways to Speed Up Your WordPress Website Today! appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

Namely:

How Do I Get Products For FREE to Review On My Blog?

I have already done an interview for IncomeSup, but today I want to give you my complete blueprint to review blogging.

How To Get Products For FREE To Review On Your Blog

With the recent fire from the FTC in the United States requiring full disclosures from bloggers on their relationships with firms in regards to product reviews – product reviewing on blogs has gotten its 5 minutes of fame. The thing is that in reality, legitimate product reviewing on blogs and other media outlets has been going on since the beginning, and they can be a tremendous source of traffic, subscribers and revenue for your blog.

If you take a minute and scour your favorite blogs on the web, you’ll find a very high percentage of those blogs review a product related to their niche periodically. As you look around, you might find that your favorite blogs are reviewing products a lot more than you originally thought! Before we jump into the how…let’s look at the why on both sides of the fence.

Why Do Bloggers Review Products On Their Blogs?

As a blogger, this is an easy question for you to answer, but lets break it down to the basics. Why do you want to post product reviews on your blog?

Useful, Quality Blog Content – Product reviews are a source of quality content for your blog. Your readers want to know what you think about products and services that relate to your niche. Your blog is their resource for topic related information, and – by providing this resource – you can assist your readers by providing useful information that impacts buying decisions. By offering product reviews on your blog, you are expanding the resourcefulness of your content for your readers.

Search Engine Gold – For quite sometime now, I have been calling product reviews search engine gold for a reason. Properly written product reviews can bring a massive amount of new visitors to your blog. By writing product reviews, you are targeting long and short tail keyword strings that have very low competition. Over time, you will create a massive library of content that is extremely search engine friendly. On top of that, product reviews are attractive link bait as other bloggers, forum users and general internet emailers will link to your review articles as a resource for information.

Increased Blog Revenue – Product reviews are still the number one way to increase affiliate revenue on blogs. Want to increase your affiliate sales outside of the pennies you are generating from banner ad placement? Review that product on your site and include your affiliate link at the bottom of your review to increase conversions. Little tip: Honest reviews that outline both the good and bad on a product convert at a much higher rate than glorified advertisements.

Why Do Companies Give Bloggers Product To Review?

Now we know why you want to review product on your blog, but why do manufactures, firms and service providers actually want to give you their product to review for nothing (or even for a fee!)?

Cheap, Long Lasting Advertising and Promotion – Once a newspaper or magazine hits the newsstand, you see the ads and then throw that mag away until the next issue comes out. That advertisement is only good until the next issue. With the web, your product review stays on your blog unless you decide to shut it down. The company that provides you with the review product get the increased benefit of long term promotion by giving you something to review on your blog. Future readers will find the article in the archives, search engine users will find your review in the results and you will refer back to your product reviews over time. For the company in question, you – as the blogger – provide more value with a product review over the larger media competition.

Did I Mention Cheap? – What many bloggers fail to realize is the true cost of the review product provided to the blogger. For the company involved, their true manufacturing cost is the cost to them. What did it cost the company to product the product for review? Not nearly what it costs off the shelf for the typically retail buyer. When you convert this to software and services, all of their costs are in the back end development, so they are even more willing to work with bloggers to get the word out because the true cost is an email!

Social Media Is Changing The Retail Environment – If someone would have told you 10 years ago that Amazon.com would be the largest book retailer in the world and the iTunes music store would be the largest music retailer in the world, would you have believed them? The online world has completely changed how people shop and make purchasing decisions. Firms, companies and service providers know this and they want to tap into your audience. Free review product is their ticket to the big show that converts into increased sales.

How Do I Get Free Products To Review On My Blog?

Unless you are an internet hot shot who already has a huge amount of credibility online, you are going to have to cold call, email and fax your perspective review product companies. For many bloggers, this can be a nerve racking road as they have little experience in the corporate sales and marketing world. Here are a couple of tips to get you going…

Research Before Contacting – If you are just starting out in review blogging, do some research and see which companies in your niche will be receptive to giving out free product for review purposes. Check out other blogs in your niche and look for patterns. Is there one or two companies that seem to have reviews on every site? Contact those companies first with your idea and try to look for one of their products that is not well represented online (not a lot of reviews). This will be a great starting point to get things rolling and increase your chances of success on the first go ’round.

Contact Perspective Companies By Email – Email rules the world at this point in time, so you are going to have to research the company and find a valid email address. Many times, this email address will go to a default inbox, so it is essential that you cut the fluff at the beginning of the email and get straight to the point to insure it gets on the right computer screen. When contacting companies about review product, 100% honesty about traffic, subscribers and expectations is essential to success. With a little research, web savvy companies are going to be able to tell if you are stretching the truth and your credibility is shot. Even small blogs can get a ton of review product if they are creative and stick to the honest truth.

Do Not Limit Yourself To Email – Especially with larger companies, your email can get trashed without even being read. If the companies website lists contact information for sales and marketing professionals within the firm, contact those specific people via fax or snail mail with what you would like to accomplish on your blog. Most bloggers are not doing this and it will show your dedication to targeted results.

Stay In Contact – Once you have reached an agreement, stay in contact with updates. Send an email when you receive the product, when you finish the review process, once the review is posted and a follow up email with educated results. It is your job as the blogger to keep them informed, so take that part of your job seriously.

Reviewing Tips That Equal Affiliate Conversions

There is a misconception among bloggers and other review naysayers that there are glorified advertisements on the web to convert into sales even when the product is terrible. The truth…those glorified advertisement convert at a rate that is much lower than an honest review from a blogger. As a blogger, the credibility of your content is everything. New and old readers are going to absorb your content and present their own educated opinions based upon how you presented the facts. If you throw up a review that is blatantly positive in an attempt to increase revenue on your blog, the reader is going to see straight through it and leave your site (without clicking your affiliate link).

The #1 best way to increase affiliate sales is to be completely honest and fact based in your reviewing.

Spell Out The Perfect Consumer For The Product In Question – A perfect way to convert visitors into affiliate income is to spell out exactly who you think the product would be perfect for! Is there a certain group in your niche that would greatly benefit from that product while another might not see any benefit? Lay that out for them. Your readers want to know if that product will work to fill their needs…so tell them!

Show The Good And Bad – There is no such thing as a perfect product. By specifically stating the good and bad points, you are showing that there is also room for improvement. The side affect to this is that companies eat this information up as constructive feedback to make their product better in future revisions. By stating what you think the high and low points are…you are adding value to your review process.

Keep Things Fact Based – Your opinion is your opinion, but it needs to be based off of fact. If you throw up a review that is a bunch of opinion with no reason why…you are going to have a difficult time with review blogging. Every one of your opinions on the product need to be backed up with facts.

Review Blogging – The Big Picture

Review blogging is a great resource to companies within a niche, the blogger and the readers when done correctly. As with most things in life, when you stay honest and work hard at completing a task, good things result. The reason for the FTC disclosure regulations is from black hat techniques that are completely monetary focused by questionable internet marketers. As a blogger, you should want to continue to provide valuable resources for your readers and your niche. By providing 100% honest product reviews, you are achieving just that.

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If you have not already done so then you should check out the recent announcement by the FTC in the USA that Amateur Bloggers must Disclose Freebies when doing a review or be fined (Actually, there is much more to it than this one point)

I know many of you are thinking, well I am not in USA, so this does not apply to me. My view is that is is good practice to have Full Disclosure in any case no matter where up are located.

Here is helpful link that goes into more details:
FTC Tells Amateur Bloggers to Disclose Freebies or Be Fined

I should also here do my usual Legal and Financial disclaimer – namely, I am not qualified to provide such legal or financial advice, anything you read here is merely discussion, you must do your own due diligence before making a decision.

The post How To Start A Review Blog and Get Free Review Products appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

It doesn’t matter if you are just starting out or if you already have 100,000’s of people visiting your site, I find that most sites are forgetting at least a few of these tips, when it comes to creating the best websites possible.

My Top Tips For Creating and Running Successful Websites

1. Your website should load quickly. (Because Google and users loves it!) Watch out for memory intensive plugins or conflicting plugins etc. Here are 16 ways to increase website speed.

2. Security from hackers is important. I lost my first big site because I didn’t have any. More embarrassingly I didn’t have a Back Up! Fortunately these days, most hosts will do automatic backups for you (although I believe you should always keep a fairly up to-date back-up of your site offline also) Additionally never pick a web host that hasn’t got 24/7 live support. When things go BAD, you will want their help. Since we added Sucuri website security to our website over 2 years ago, we haven’t had any problems. I highly recommend that you get it.

3. Always use a .com and unless there really is no alternative don’t use a DASH / Hyphen in between words in a domain name.

4. Build an email list from day one. Go get Popup Domination.

5. Websites do break! Sometimes for what will appear to be no reason, pages will stop displaying as they should or even links will get messed up. This often is caused by a conflict with one of the plugins we use. With regards to internal and external links becoming broken, I recommend you use Broken Link Checker.

6. Facebook, Twitter & Pinterest. Pick one and dominate it, stop sucking at all 3. Or alternatively hire someone to look after your social media and make them responsible for the outcome.

7. Have a plan for your business (website) – I mean a bricks and mortar business without a business plan is pretty silly! Why should it be any different for your website? Have a plan for the coming month, 3 month, 6 months, 12 months! Where do you see you and your website 5 years from now? Do you have an exit plan? Do you have a revenue plan?

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

~ Benjamin Franklin

8. If you focus on one traffic source, you are missing out. Google, Social Media, Email Marketing, Podcasts, Videos, Affiliates, Info Graphics & Linkbait are all important.

9. Consistency is key when publishing content. Daily, Weekly, Monthly, you choose how often to post and stick to it. (Gee, I am not always great at following this Rule myself – but really it is essential!)

“It’s not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives. It’s what we do consistently.”

~ Anthony Robbins

10. Make it easy for people to contact you. What is more, be open to some criticism or less than positive comments about your website. Sure some comments will come from generally negative people but my overall experience is that people want to help. For example I have received 100’s of emails from people notifying me of bugs and spelling errors.

11. The early bird catch’s the worm, a saying you’re probably heard often before. Take for example someone who bought Business.com in 1997 was able to sell it for $7.5 million 2 years later. OK, perhaps you can’t do that everyday but don’t think this is an isolated case, opportunities are all around us. Take for example Twitter.com – the first few marketers who got on it were able to take advantage of it before new rules came into place to slow you down from adding people. When you see a opportunities, take it!

12. Never retaliate to comments or emails. People will disagree with you and you might even think they are dumb, but they are entitled to their opinion. Frankly we don’t have the time or energy to prove them wrong. It’s also not so important that you need to waste your life trying to prove yourself right and someone else wrong.

This is one of my fathers favorite quotes – not everyone will get it first time, but think about it!

“Do you want to be Right or do you want to be Happy”

13. Ask! You can get a lot of things by just asking. When I was 18, I caught Glandular Fever in Ghana and spent a horrific week in hospital in Ghana before returning to England and spending a week in hospital here in the UK. I had to rest for months after that and decided I had nothing better to do then ask people to do interviews for Retireat21. I spent days emailing hundreds of top internet entrepreneurs for interviews. Three of the top 100 websites in the world came back to me and said they would do an interview, plus over 50 other successful CEO’s and entrepreneurs.

14. Regularly ask yourself – If in 10 years (or in one day, 6 months. I year, 5 years) you were to look back at your actions today what would you have changed? Do that. From my good friend Craig Ballantyne

15. These days there is an increasing trend that the people who make the most cash online, buy a high percentage of their traffic (pay for advertisements). Basically they have learned additional skills based on lead generation and Cost Per Acquisition (CPA). If you are not also learning these skills, you are missing out. I now include bought traffic in my online promotions.

16. Top list articles still bring me 80% of my traffic, although it only took 20% of my time to create them.

17. In my experience, it’s easier to start a day productively then end it productively. (Well… so far today I’ve done nothing, I guess I will try harder tomorrow..)

18. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket – in particular with how you monetize your website.

So often, people have only one or two methods of monetizing a website such as banner advertising. But advertisers come and go and no month is ever the same. Diversify your income with different methods such as affiliate marketing, email marketing, coaching, ebooks etc! And with affiliate marketing, promote multiple offers.

Also, don’t presume what you are doing right now, will be working in years to come. Keep innovating & educating.

Nothing is for sure in life or business, just because something has worked today, it doesn’t mean it will work again tomorrow. This applies to marketing, selling, traffic, advertisers. There really are No Guarantees – the only Guarantee you can rely on when it all comes down to it, is yourself!

19. Surround yourself with successful people. Retireat21, IncomeDiary & PopUp Domination all came from ‘hanging out’ with other like minded people.

20. Always have a written and signed agreement with your partners / Joint Ventures. People will rip you off for less money then you would imagine. Greed is a crazy thing. Read: 11 Essential Lessons From Going Into Business With People

21. What you Focus on is what you get – so if you want money, FOCUS on it! Always be aware of who owes you money, check that the payments you expect to receive are arriving in your bank account (Paypal account) at the correct time. If you still get paid by a cheque – bank it straight away and don’t leave it hanging around for days.

22. Don’t be afraid of highly competitive niche! The reason they are competitive is because there is money in that niche!

23. When negotiating, often it is more powerful to say nothing. I find that people don’t like silence and will want to say something, often lowering the price.

24. Keep moving forward. Don’t give up – The biggest difference between success and failure is not giving up.

“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time”

~ Thomas Edison

“The difference between greatness and mediocrity is often how an individual views a mistake.”

~ Nelson Boswell

Read more: ‘9 Best Ways To Increase Sales On Your Website’

The post 24 Rules I Follow When Creating Successful Websites appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

Is there anything better than a beautifully designed website?

Actually yes, there is.

A beautifully designed website that converts.

Chances are, you might be using a website or landing page that just plain sucks at converting visitors into completed goal actions, or in simpler terms – conversions. As the old saying goes, “you can have all the traffic in the world, but if your website can’t convert that traffic, then you have a crap website.”

I’m not actually sure who coined that saying, and I might have just made that up. But, it’s true nonetheless.

If you’ve been wrestling with your website, trying to improve it’s conversions and you’ve found yourself hitting a brick wall then I want to help you fix it.

Today, I’m going to reveal my all-time top 5 design ‘hacks’ that are guaranteed to boost sales and conversions, and make your business look amazing in the process. And best of all, you’re going to love them.

But first, who am I and why listen to me?

I’m not here to talk about me, so I’ll keep it short. I’ve been designing high converting websites and landing pages and everything in between since 2005. I own and operate Boost Design, a successful design studio that focuses only on high-converting design. You can see my AwesomeWeb portfolio by clicking here.

Over the years I’ve learned and experimented with tonnes of design tricks and ‘hacks’ that can seriously bolster up conversions and help improve a business’ bottom line.

Before we dive into the meat of this post, let me ask you a few quick questions.

What would a 20% increase in email list subscribers mean to your business? What about an extra 1% on top of your salespage conversions, or a 150% increase in lead inquiries?

I’m not sure about you, but I know these figures can be business changing.

And, of course, I’m not guaranteeing you’ll see the same results, but if you follow along and implement these design features into your website and business then you’ll be well on your way.

Before we move forward, I just want to say that you don’t need to be a design pro to implement these features into your websites and landing pages. The design customisation level in many WordPress themes and page builders is at an all-time high and you should be able to do a great job with those alone.

However, I am biased and I do totally recommend hiring a pro designer to do this once your business has reached a certain level.

Now with that said, let’s dive into my five top design hacks and features:

1. High-Converting Typography

Typography and the fonts you choose to use on your website can have a huge impact on readability, which directly ties in to your conversion rates.

We’re at a time now when choosing fonts has never been easier and the volume of good, clean fonts – both free and premium – at our disposal has never been higher.

Free fonts sites like Google Fonts and Font Squirrel and premium font marketplaces like TypeKit and MyFonts means you’ll never be stuck finding the perfect font for your brand and website.

But when it comes down to it. Selecting typography for your website can be a fine art in itself.

You need to consider font families, sizes, weights and whether or not to use a serif or a sans-serif font.

It can all be a bit daunting, but luckily I have a few pointers for you.

Typography Do’s and Don’ts

• Don’t use anymore than 3 font families on your website. Choose one for your headlines and subheadlines and one for your body text and paragraphs. You might also wish to use another font family sparingly, such as a script font for use in promos and secondary graphics.
• I recommend using a clean sans-serif font as they’re optimal for screens and hand held devices like phones and tablets. Serif fonts, the fonts with ‘hands’ and ‘feet’ extruding from their characters are better suited for long-form reading, that’s why you’ll only ever see serif fonts being used in print books and e-readers.
• For screens, a good font size for body and paragraph text is between 15 – 18px. At this size it’s not too small to be uncomfortable and not too big to have your users scroll or swipe unneccesarily.
• Visit your favourite blogs and websites and take note of the font families they use. A good tool to find out what font a website is using is a plugin called Fount.

Body and paragraph fonts I recommend

Proxima Nova

A common reasonably priced premium font, but absolutely perfect for body text. If you want something slightly different and less common, I’d suggest the Proxima Nova Soft alternative.

Calibre

An exquisite font and one that will set you back $50 per font style (eg. Regular, Bold). Calibre embodies professionalism, modernism and if you’re business is brand-savvy, it’s a great option to consider for both body and headline typography.

Roboto

The ‘official’ Google font and one that’s similar to well known Helvetica, Roboto is a good standard font, although there’s nothing particularly special that I like about it, it just does it’s job.

Droid Serif

Sometimes you can get away with using a serif font on screen, and very rarely can you do that. But the free Google font Droid Serif does just this. If you must use a serif font on screen, this is the one.

Circular

If you have a spare $1,000 lying around to spend on one font family, then you can’t go past Circular by Lineto. Outrageously expensive, but all the more beautiful, Circular is gaining traction as a popular font with it’s use in the Air BnB logo.

Body and paragraph fonts I recommend

Oswald

Another free font and one that’s as common as a rainy day in London, Oswald is thin, stylish and allows you to squeeze a lot of characters on one line making it great for long sales page headlines.

Gibson Bold

A premium font that you can buy or sync from TypeKit, Gibson Bold is fantastic for big, bold, in-your-face headlines. However I wouldn’t recommend the other weights in this family, they just don’t look that great.

Sofia Pro

Another premium font, this is one of my favs. It’s clean, modern and perfectly balanced for headlines. I’d go with the Black weight for headlines.

Montserrat

Another free, and as such, over-used font, Montserrat is another one of those Google fonts that does it’s job, however I’m put off by how common it’s used.

You now have an education on typography and some options to consider when it comes down to font selection. Implement the advice and the fonts discussed here and I’m sure you’ll see some nice lifts in conversion and readability which will reduce your bounce rates too.

2. Killer Color Combinations

Ahhh colour. Who doesn’t appreciate colour, apart from goths?

When it comes to choosing what colours to use in your websites and landing pages, there really are no hard and fast rules. Choosing your colour palette is completely up to you, your brand and your target audience.

But there are a few do’s and don’ts to keep in mind.

Color Do’s and Don’ts

• Never use more than 5 brand colours, unless your branding is rainbow-centric, which it probably isn’t. A good number of colours to use is four, with a shade and highlight for each colour. Your brand colours should be made up of a primary colour, a secondary colour, background colour and an accent colour.
• Consider your target audience. If they’re predominantly male, you should probably steer clear of pinks and purples. Health industries work better with calming colours and smart use of whitespace, whereas fitness is can be quite open ended depending on demographics. I could talk about colour psychology until I’m blue in my face, but the rule of thumb is this, common sense prevails. You wouldn’t use a pink colour palette on your male body building website would you?
• Always take note of the colour codes you use. At a bare minimum, you should have your HEX code recorded, and if you plan on using your colours off-screen you should note your Pantone and CYMK codes too. Failure to do so leads to an inconsistent brand over time. A big no, no.

Creating a Killer Color Combination

If you don’t have a creative bone in your body and couldn’t coordinate a colour palette to save your life then don’t stress. There are tools and apps out there to help you.

Here are a few of my favourite places to find inspiration when I’m designing a new brand for a client:

Adobe Color

Previously known as Kulur, you can explore a library of cool user submitted colour combinations. Be warned, this can be a massive time suck because it’s just so much fun to browse.

Color Hunt

Similar to Adobe Color, but easier to use, color hunt features beautiful colour combinations each day and allows you to even submit your own.

Coolors

A super cool app for any budding colour enthusiast. Just hit the space bar to load up a new palette until you’ve found “the one”.

Colors by HailPixel

This simple app is like an oversized colour picker that let’s you move your cursor across the screen to change the colour. Simple, beautiful and great for inspiration.

3. High-Converting Photography

We’ve come a long way since the days of cheesy, over-used, cringe-worthy stock photography.

You know the ones I’m talking about, a corporate team sitting around a boardroom table with big, perfect, teethy grins and picture-perfect formal business attire.

Thank the stars we’ve moved on.

Nonetheless, the right photography can be a powerful weapon for increasing conversions in just about any medium. Your Facebook ads, websites and landing pages can all benefit from a strategically placed photograph.

When choosing your photography you need to consider where you’re using it. If it’s for your main website ask yourself, does it support your brand or does it cause disparity?

If you’re choosing photos for Facebook ads or landing pages, try and use one where the subject faces towards your headlines or prominent copy. This has the ingrained pyschological effect of forcing your users’ eyes to where the subject is facing or looking and has been proven to increase conversions and engagement.

Just take a look at this Sunsilk ad for example:

But how do you go about getting your stock photography? What website should you use? There are so many options out there and so many pros and cons of each that it can be a tad bit daunting in itself.

Let me try and unpack it all for you by recommending my favourite stock photo sites and the pros and cons of each.

Deposit Photos

This is my goto stock photo site. Their range is massive and their quality is pretty good. It’ll take you a little longer to find the right image compared to the more expensive sites, but in my opinion it’s worth it.

iStockPhoto

The grand daddy of stock photo sites. Their range is huge and their quality is impeccable. But expect to pay a premium for just one photo. A great option for agencies or those working with high-end clients and projects.

Stocksy

If I had to choose my favourite stock photo site based on quality alone, Stocksy would easily be my first choice. Their range is super modern and relatable. However their prices are still on the high end of the scale.

Unsplash

Perhaps you don’t have any cash to dish out on stock photos? No problem. Checkout unsplash for a beautiful range of free to use photography. The only problem I see with unsplash is their photos can be a bit impractical at times as they predominently feature landscapes and urban scenes, but I do believe this is starting to change.

Pic Jumbo

What? Another free stock photo site? Yes, yes indeed. Pic Jumbo has a great selection of practical free to use photography but their volume isn’t quite as big as unsplash’s.

When it comes to stock photography, again ask yourself, does it compliment my brand and is it strategically positioned to compliment any content or important copy features within the medium?

4. Your High Converting Home Page Layout

Chances are pretty high that you have a ‘hub’ website that acts as a central holding silo for all of your content and links to landing pages and squeeze pages. Chances are also pretty high that your website layout isn’t optimised to meet your business goals in the form of completed conversions.

Below is a wireframe of a conversion-focused home page layout. [A wireframe is an image or set of images which displays the functional elements of a website or page]

5. Website Navigation

A simple header with your logo and no more than 6 menu options and optional social icons works best. Don’t get tempted to use trends like the ‘hamburger’ menu on desktop sites – This will hurt your conversions and user experience.

Every website is different, but I’d recommend the following pages to include in your navigation.

Start here page:

If your website and blog is content heavy, you can use this page to introduce new visitors to your website and direct them to the most popular and relevant categories using a stylised, user friendly sitemap.

Alternatively, you can use this page as a squeeze page that provides a lead magnet related to their problem and your solution.

Products / Services Page:

Next item along in the navigation would be the perfect place to showcase your products or services page and link out to any external (or internal) landing pages you may have for each product or service. If you have multiple products and services, a drop-down menu would be ideal for this.

Case Studies / Testimonials / Portfolio Page:

Your customers and clients want to know your solution works right? Depending on your business, place a case studies, testimonials, results or portfolio page in your navigation menu to build trust with new visitors and show them that you actually deliver value.

About Page:

Yep, the infamous about page. This is your chance to talk about yourself, your company, your products, services and any awards and accolades you’ve achieved and is a must for your navigation menu as it builds trust and reduces friction.

Blog Page:

Almost any business can benefit from content marketing and doing so will result in long-term website traffic, and if done correctly, lead generation in the form of content upgrades, opt-in widgets and so forth. If you blog (which you should!), it’s a definite must for your navigation.

Contact Page:

An absolute no brainer, your contact us page should always be in your navigation. If it’s missing, expect trust and conversions to go missing too. Give your visitors multiple ways of contacting you. Think email, phone, Skype, business address, social media, homing pigeons… You get the idea.

The Hero Area

Not to be confused with a full-sized homepage screen, your hero area should take up a large chunk of the fold and it should strategically make it entirely clear about what it is your business does, whilst acting as a vehicle to collect new leads via a lead magnet.

As you can see, the headline is short and sums up exactly what the business does. There’s a space for a professional image if this is for a personal brand website, or it can be replaced with any other image or even an intro video.

The next feature you will notice is the area for the lead magnet. The idea is to display an ecover of your lead magnet with a short headline, some supporting text and finally a button that when clicked will open a popup with your opt-in form. There are many tools out there that can do this such as Popup Domination.

The ‘Authority’ Bar

A common design feature you’ll notice on many websites owned and run by authority marketers is the ‘Authority Bar’. The purpose of this bar is to obviously build trust, authority and credibility. It’s there to say “Hey, I know what I’m talking about when it comes to [TOPIC] and I have the trust of these major publications and networks to back me.”

If you’ve been featured or guest blogged for any respectable website, blog, magazine, newspaper, or publication then this area is your chance to demonstrate your expertise.

The ‘Most Wanted Actions’ Box

So by now you’ve made it clear about exactly what you do and the problem you solve, you’ve provided an opportunity for visitors to join your tribe and you’ve showcased your expertise with the authority bar.

Next step is to direct visitors to your Most Wanted Actions (MWA), in order of the easiest action to take, such as a lead magnet download, to the higher-level actions such as joining your high ticket coaching programs.

Each inner MWA box or icon should link out to it’s corresponding landing page or squeeze page that then takes over and encourages your visitor to take that particular action or conversion.

The ‘More Info’ Box

Some website visitors need nurturing before they trust you with access to their inbox or their hard earned money. The ‘More Info’ box is designed to provide further background about your business and the problem you solve for your avatars.

A good combination for this area would be to provide a video, sub headline and a paragraph or two of supporting copy to speak to your visitors and provide a more thorough insight into your business, products and services.

Blog Posts

Again, if you’re using content marketing as a channel to reach your audience, it’s a no brainer to include your most recent blog posts somewhere on your home page. There are many ways to aesthetically present your blog posts and multiple layouts to choose.

My favourite however has to be the card-style grid layout. It provides a space for a feature graphic, a title and it allows visitors to quickly scan your blog posts to see which piece of content is most relevant to their immediate needs.

Testimonials and Short Case Studies

To back up your authority, influence and value you should consider adding an area to your homepage that includes 4 – 6 testimonials from some of your existing customers or clients. This will only contribute towards building more trust and demonstrate that the work and products you provide actually deliver results.

Bottom Lead Magnet Box

According to many heatmap studies, not many visitors will scroll down this far on your homepage. With the boxes and modules already listed above this area your visitors should be well on their way to exploring your products, services and content.

However, you still shouldn’t neglect this last effort to encourage visitors to join your tribe.

This bottom lead magnet area will help you do just that. Use this space to showcase your lead magnet, provide a headline and two or three paragraphs of supporting copy alongside a lead magnet cover graphic and call to action button that opens a popup opt-in form.

The Website Footer

Ahh, what can I say? We all know what a footer is so it goes without saying that it should be the final box or area on your website.

As standard practice goes, adding your logo and relevant site links alongside SEO links, contact information and social media boxes and icons is the way to go when crafting your footer.

So that’s a typical high-converting home-page layout in a nutshell and it’s suitable for almost any kind of business model. If you take the time and investment in setting your website up this way, I can almost guarantee you’ll be seeing a huge increase in your bottomline within a few months time.

Keeping Design Consistent with a Style Guide

So far we’ve discussed typography, colour, photography and your high-converting home page layout. Once you’ve nailed down all of these creative elements you then need to put the effort in to keeping it all seamless and consistent.

That’s where your brand style guide comes into play.

A style guide is a document that explicitly states how your brand should be represented visually in terms of logomarks, typography and brand colour palettes.

If you’ve never used or adhered to a style guide before I’m sure you’re well aware of the degenerating process your website and other creative material take. The first month everything looks great, but 12 months in and your brand has taken on a Frankenstein appearance and nothing is consistent or matches up. It’s in shambles.

The way to avoid this is to create a simple brand style guide that lays out strict rules and criteria for your logo, colours and typography.

Below is an example of a simple style guide template.

In your style guide you should include all of the different logo variations you use, including inverted logos and black and white logos, along with up to 5 brand colours (and their shades) and the fonts you’ve chosen to use in your branding.

Once you have your style guide built out, don’t let it sit on your hard drive to collect cyber dust. Instead, whenever you hire a new employee or contractor who are tasked with any creative work, make sure your style guide is the first thing they see.

When you, your employees and contractors work with your style guide your brand is guaranteed to stay consistent, seamless and beautiful for many years to come.

I sincerely hope you’ve enjoyed reading this post and that you’ll implement one, two or all of these design features into your own business and websites. If you do, I can guarantee you’ll only see positive results.

And remember, when your business reaches a certain level you should definitely consider hiring a pro designer to help you with all of this. I’m currently available for design work myself so please feel free to checkout my AwesomeWeb profile and reach out with any questions you have.

Read more: ‘10 Design Elements All Big Blogs Have In Common’

The post 5 Design Features Guaranteed to Boost Sales and Conversions appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

It’s about delivering one website countless ways depending on the width of the screen.

What to add? What to remove? How to prioritize what’s most important? What are the implications for search rankings? And how do you do all of that with just one code base?

It truly takes an expert to responsively code a website.

So we asked Tim Cross, one of AwesomeWeb’s finest responsive web designers, to give you insight on what it takes to build a proper, responsible, and responsive website.

Whether you hire Tim or decide to add responsiveness to your website yourself, keep this as a resource to know what needs to be done.

1. Hidden navigation menus.

On smaller screens hiding the main navigation menu is a good way of keeping layouts simple. An icon, text or combination of both indicates to the user where the menu is.

Your options include a simple drop down menu where the menu slides down and covers the main content below or the overlay method where the menu expands and covers the whole screen.

BBC Sport uses a drop down menu that expands when pressed. As they have multiple collapsed menus on the same page, they use different calls to action to help the user understand the hierarchy of the page.

Huge uses an overlay menu. They also use this menu style on the desktop view, keeping the burger icon visible and simplifying the content on the page.

2. Horizontal swipeable menus.

Another way to show menus on smaller screens is to keep it visible but let the content overflow off the edge of the screen. Showing part of the text cut off indicates that they can swipe to reveal.

The Guardian uses a clear, horizontal scroll menu, with an extra call to action to see “All” – this appears as a drop down menu when pressed. A good example of applying different methods in the space available.

The horizontal scroll menu on Google is a list of plain text links, that overflow off the edge of the screen – a simple way of indicating more content to the user. Each text link has drop down menu that appears when pressed.

3. Give buttons and links large, clickable areas.

Rather than making buttons smaller on mobile, make them larger, so that they are easier to tap. In fact this doesn’t just apply to small screens, it’s good for them to be large whatever the device – from touch screen tablets to desktop PCs.

Large buttons improve usability. As well as making buttons larger, text links benefit from being larger. If, for example, you have a grid of news headlines, with a text link that says “Read More” inside each of them, rather than making this the link, make the whole content block a link, so that the user can click anywhere.

Easier to use. Better experience for all.

The Add to Basket button on the Oliver Bonas site is large, clear and stands out from the page with it’s contrasting colour.

The Pretty Green Energy site has big buttons, and large, clickable areas on content list items.

4. Balance font weights and sizes.

The size ratio between headers and paragraph text should be well balanced. Large headers don’t look good on mobile, especially if they stretch over a few lines. Everything should be resized appropriately.

Newer mobile devices have high-resolution screens, which makes text more legible and easier to read. You can afford to go a little bit smaller on mobile screens and increase the font sizes when you get to a larger display.

Nike use a chunkier weight of font on desktop, which works well in the banner. On mobile they lighten the font and reduce the size so that it fits on one line.

No Drama reduces it’s H1 titles on mobile so that they fit on the screen and don’t over power the page.

5. Optimal reading widths.

While making a layout wider on larger screens, it is important to consider the line lengths of your content.

If a line of text is too long it’s harder to read because it’s difficult to follow line-to-line. Similarly, having lines that are too short breaks the rhythm of reading as the eyes have to move back-and-forth too often.

Common practise is to keep line lengths at about 60-75 characters. This can be achieved by setting your text areas to have a max-width of approximately 500/700 pixels wide.

99u keeps their pages well balanced with optimum reading widths, simple share links and a well positioned sidebar that doesn’t detract too much from the article.

As well as having the right reading widths, The Guardian’s article layout is uncomplicated, with lots of white space and a clear, clutter-free sidebar.

6. Put important information near the top on mobile.

Show telephone numbers, contact info, buy now call to actions, etc. at the top on mobile. Mobile users want information quickly, but this also works well on any device.

Even with browser sizes being so varied now and the idea of the “fold” not really existing anymore, putting key call to actions at the top of the page is still important. For example, on a ecommerce product details page it’s good to have the “Add to Basket” button visible to the majority of users, without them having to scroll.

Metris Kitchens places it key information near the top on mobile as it is important for their users to see contact info (find a showroom) and conversion actions (request a brochure) clearly and quickly.

Ebay makes sure that the price and the buy it now button are clearly visible on mobile.

7. Change the order of content blocks when they collapse on smaller screens.

Decide what is more important to show first on a small screen, then change the content order around – this can be achieved through CSS (and sometimes JS if the layout is too complex).

If on desktop there is a text content block and an image block positioned next to one another, decide what is more relevant.

Or a sidebar and a content area on a page – on mobile if this collapses then the sidebar would be first, and would push all the content down the page, therefore it would be good to swap this around on mobile.

In this editorial content piece from Brown Thomas, the product info is positioned first on mobile. On desktop the content order is swapped around so that a lifestyle shot appears next to the product.

The Melanie F product details page places the product image first on mobile, then pushes up the product info to sit side by side on desktop.

8. Hiding content on smaller screens.

On mobile you can simplify the layout by hiding content that would be visible on larger screens, either by hiding it completely or using tabs and accordions to show/hide content. This declutters the page on smaller screens and lets the user see all the key info, with options to view more if they wish.

This product page on christianlouboutin.com simplifies it’s header and reduces product info on mobile, leaving the product image as the first content block.

On Selfridges the carousel of thumbnail images is removed on mobile, leaving just simple left/right arrows to swipe through.

9. Showing more content on wider screens.

Having a wider screen allows you to push more content further up the screen. More content is visible to the user straight away, before they have to scroll. Layouts can expand and accommodate more columns.

This portfolio grid view on Jimmy Gleeson increases it’s number of visible items as the screen gets’ wider, allowing more more content to be shown further up the page.

Smashing Magazine’s navigation layout is quite complex and changes a lot across different screen sizes. This is a good example of really thinking about the layout and maximising all space available per device and screen size.

10. Don’t forget about tablets in portrait mode.

Sometimes this orientation either falls in with the small mobile layout, which is more basic and not utilising all the screen space available, or it gets lumped in with a desktop layout which can make the content all squashed up.

Better use of media queries in your css can get the layout just right.

The layout on this Protest product details page still has a lot of information in a smaller space, without upsetting the proportions and spacing of the layout.

The Firebox product details layout doesn’t compromise anything in table portrait mode. Everything that appears on desktop is still there and the content is presented in a well balanced and simple way.

11. Replace enlarge image functionality with long scrollable gallery pages.

On small devices, having an enlarge image window doesn’t work if the image you are already looking at fills the screen.

For image galleries, use a long scrollable page, or a swipeable carousel with left/right arrows. The long scrollable gallery also works well on tablet and desktop.

This image gallery on Apple uses a long scrollable page on desktop as well as mobile. The captions are removed on mobile to simplify the layout even more.

This product gallery on UrbanEars appears on the same page and expands down after pressing a link. It’s keeps the fundamental good parts of a popup, ie. not going to a new page, but then presents the images in a better, more usable way.

12. Optimise the UX for touch screens.

Add swipe gestures to banners, menus, image galleries etc.

Touch screens are by nature intuitive to use, therefore we can be more subtle with navigational aides, e.g half an image off the screen on a carousel suggests that there is more content to come.

Hover events are inconsistent on touch screens. Disable these and replace with touch events. If the content to be displayed on hover isn’t critical and just fancy embellishment, then disable it on touch screens all together.

The hover states on the Born Group’s portfolio page are animated on desktop, and show the title of the project. As this information still needs to be accessible on touch screens the hover events are replaced with touch events – one tap to view info, then another tap to view the project.

The Made site added swipe events to it’s home page banner. They clearly thought about their users and utilises these touch events on the rest of the site, on places where it is natural to swipe – for example, on a carousel of products.

13. Use less images.

A lot of effects, like background gradients and button hover states, can be achieved by pure html & css. Pages load faster, which is especially good for mobile, and less time is wasted creating lots of graphics.

Using fonts for your icons means you don’t have to create images. They are scalable, have cleaner edges, load faster, and are good for retina displays. This optimisation works great on all devices and screens.

The desk.com site uses icon fonts well. Adding colour, which is as easy as changing a font colour, is a great way to add more impact to your page.

The Pretty Green Energy site uses large icon fonts for it’s section headers. Increasing the size of icon fonts is straightforward and does not require editing images.

14. Responsive videos.

This method allows for videos of any size to respond to device size automatically, without having to set explicit heights or widths on the video itself.

It’s achieved with only a few lines of css. This works well with videos inserted directly on the page and in iframes.

The videos on Anyilu stretch across the page and fill the whole space. This gives the page great impact. They respond and resize automatically on different screen sizes.

The embedded video’s on Brown Thomas use iframes and are fully responsive. No heights or widths are specified, allowing easy content management and quick page creation.

15. The fold no longer exists.

Devices are smaller, taller, wider, and longer.

It’s not important to cram everything at the top of the page. Let pages breath and expand with long, flowing content blocks and generous spacing.

People naturally scroll. By giving them more content below the “fold” you’re actually inviting them to be more engaged with the page and to read your content.

The iMac product page on Apple is a long, flowing page, with lots happening as you scroll. The experience pulls you in. They also utilise a fixed nav, so that the key call to actions, i.e. Buy Now, are still visible as you move down the page.

The Sonos product pages have a good balance between fixed width content text blocks and wider, full screen image panels. This keeps the page interesting and more engaging as you scroll. The spacing is well balanced without it being overcrowded.

Wrapping Up

Check your Analytics. I bet mobile traffic is a higher percentage than you think. And I bet it’s growing month-to-month.

If your site isn’t responsive, every single mobile user that comes to your site is having a bad experience.

Even if it is responsive, I’m sure there are a number of areas where it can be improved.

Responsive web design is my specialty. I can work on any website, WordPress, Modx or otherwise. My clients typically have at least 10,000+ monthly visits and I charge $1,500 – $3,000 depending on the complexity of your site.

Hire me once, I’ll do the job right, and you’ll never have to worry about a bad mobile experience ever again.

If you have questions, check out my portfolio and contact me here.

The post 15 Best Practices for Responsible Responsive Web Design appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

But if you take your blog seriously and you want it to visually stand out, the first step is understanding the principles of design. Once you understand what makes a good blog design, you can work on it yourself or find and qualify a talented designer.

Here are 13 expert-level blog design tips that I’ve gathered from three years of being a freelance web designer. To help illustrate these tips, I’m going to use HelloBar.com’s design as an example.

1. Make Goal-Driven Design Decisions

The purpose of design is to get your website to convert towards your goals. That’s it. Everything else comes secondary.

How do you do that?

You need to have a visual hierarchy that leads to a call to action. In simpler terms, feature a headline or a series of headlines that end in a call to action. Then put this headline/call to action duo in the places that people see the most (i.e. top of homepage, top of sidebar, bottom of posts, etc.).

The goal of Hello Bar’s homepage is to get you to “Sign Up” or “Try it Out” and their design makes that obvious.

2. Use 2-3 Fonts, Max

At most, use one font for your logo, one for your headlines, and one for your body content.

Any more and your blog’ll look messy.

Hello Bar has a distinct logo font, Pacifico headline font, and a sans-serif default body font.

3. Use 2-3 Colors, Max

Your blog should have a primary color, a shade of grey, and a call to action color.

The primary color is the first color you want people to see and the last color you want them to remember. For Hello Bar, it’s light blue.

The shade of grey will help you subtly emphasize and de-emphasize certain aspects of your design.

The call to action color will be used sparingly as, you guessed it, the color you want people to look for when they’re deciding what to do next. For Hello Bar, it’s orange.

Hello Bar uses light blue, various shades of black/grey, and a bright orange to draw your attention.

4. Pick Perfectly Matching Color Schemes

Along with limiting your color scheme, your primary and call to action colors should complement one another.

To find scientifically matching color schemes, start with your primary color and find supplementary colors with ColorSchemeGenerator.com.

Hello Bar’s blue and orange are perfectly complementary.

5. Cherish Subtlety in Gradients, Shadows, and Textures

Web design is like makeup, less is more. With your gradients, shadows, and textures, make them so subtle that you have to look closely to tell that they’re there.

Subconsiously, you’ll notice that it looks good. But you’ll have to take a closer look to realize why.

If you’ll look closely, there’s a texture in the background, the logo has a shadow, the headline has a shadow, and the buttons have a subtle gradient.

6. Apply Global Light Angles for Gradients and Shadows

A common goal with art is to make it seem as life-like as possible. Web design is no different. One way to do that is to maintain a global light angle across all gradients and shadows.

Think about it. If the sun is shining on a table full of buttons and raised letters, they’re all going to have the exact same gradient-effects and shadows.

Hello Bar uses a 90 degree global light source. The logo shadow, headline shadow, and button gradients are consistently at 90 degrees.

7. Embrace White Space

Aside from effectively using padding and margines, the best way to embrace white space is to simply get rid of everything that doesn’t contribute towards accomplishing your goals.

Do you really need that tag cloud? No, you don’t. Nobody uses those.

Hello Bar uses “white” space to eliminate all distractions and draw attention to their call to action buttons.

8. Separate with 1-Pixel Borders

Borders help to clean up your design and to visually separate different sections. Use 1-pixel borders because they’re clean and crisp.

Hello Bar uses a bunch of dashed and solid, 1-pixel borders to separate their content.

9. Implement Grid-Based Alignment

This is one of the more complicated tips. Jacob Cass, from JUSTTM Creative, introduced me to the 960 grid. It’s a Photoshop template that helps you align your design perfectly and precisely.

Whether or not you use the 960 grid, the different sections, parts, and text blocks in your design need to line up vertically.

I’m not sure if Hello Bar was originally designed with the 960 Grid, but everything aligns perfectly all the way down the page.

10. Implement Subhead Hierarchies in Your Content

If you want to communicate a series of thoughts or a process (i.e. a blog post), use subhead hierarchies coupled with short body copy to make it easy to move down the page.

From a design standpoint, subheads break up the content but they also make it scannable and easier to consume.

Hello Bar uses a series of well-designed subheads in the “How it Works” section of their homepage.

11. Design with CSS

The process of taking a design and putting it on your website is more complicated than you’d think. In essence, you take the images from your Photoshop file and set them as the background of certain areas with HTML and CSS.

If you have lots of intricate background areas, then this means that you website will need to load lots of images which will lengthen your loading time.

One way to get around this is to design the simple details with CSS. Here are a number of design elements you can add with CSS:

• Borders – {border: 1px dashed #CCC;}
• Frames – {border: 1px solid #CCC; padding: 1px;}
• Text Shadows – {text-shadow: 1px 1px 1px #CCC;}
• Box Shadows – {box-shadow: 10px 10px 5px #CCC;}
• Rounded Corners – {border-radius: 5px;}

You can also use CSS to create gradients, transitions, animations, font-faces, etc., but these start to get complicated and don’t show up in older browsers.

Hello Bar uses padding, borders, and a box shadow to add fast-loading CSS styling to their testimonial photos.

12. Speed Up Your Design with Small, Repeating, Background Images

If you use images to create your backgrounds, make them as small as you can so that they load faster. Then use CSS to make theme repeat-x/repeat-y.

This is the actual background image that repeats horizontally in the Hello Bar background to make the site load faster.

13. Maintain Consistency in Your Calls to Action

My final tip for you is to maintain a consistent design in your call-to-action buttons. This helps people find what they’re looking for. Plus, if they see the same button three times on a page, they’ll notice it and think, “I should probably click that.”

Hello Bar has three primary call to action buttons on their homepage and they’re all styled exactly the same.

If you’ve never checked out Hello Bar, I encourage you to do so. I use it on my blog and it seems to be working well.

The Final Word

If you’re not a designer or coder, I don’t expect you to implement these tips right away.

But once you want to upgrade your design, you’ll be able to ask your designer questions like, “When you convert your PSD to HTML, which design elements do you recreate with CSS so we don’t bog down the site with a bunch of bulky background images?”

On another note, the only rule here that’s unbreakable is #1. The rest are based on best practices and my personal thoughts on design. Bend them as you wish.

As always, if you need more guidance with any of these tips, leave a comment below and I’ll try to help you out.

Read more: ‘What to Put on Your Blog’s Homepage’

The post 13 Expert-Level Blog Design Tips for Beginners appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

The same applies to your blog, except, you control every element that makes up the environment.

One of the easiest ways to improve the quality of your blog is to increase the readability of the design.

I’ve already made my point about the importance of subheads and lists. So now I want to tell you about seven other rarely-used, blog readability design tips.

1. Lure in their Eye with a Drop Cap

If you flip through a magazine, you’ll likely notice that many of the articles start with a drop cap.

They do that to draw your eye in to the beginning of the article. The easier it is to find the beginning of the article, the more likely you are to read.

How to Create a Drop Cap

Put this code in your theme’s style.css (or your theme’s equivalent):

.drop_cap { color:#888; float:left; font-family:Georgia; font-size:3em; font-style:normal; text-shadow:#333 1px 1px;}

Adjust the CSS to fit the colors of your theme. That’s just a good starting point.

Wrap the first letter of your posts in:

<span class=“drop_cap”>I</span>f you’ve ever…

2. Help them Start Reading with Big Intro Text

Once you lure in their eye, you need to make it as effortless as possible for them to slide into the content. One way to do this is to simply enlarge the text of the first paragraph.

This, coupled with the drop cap, will give your post intros a magazine-style professional touch.

How to Post Intro Text

Put this code in your theme’s style.css (or your theme’s equivalent):

p.intro { color:#333; font-size: 1.4em; line-height:1.4em; }

Again, adjust the CSS to your theme, but this will get you off to a good start.

Wrap the first paragraph of your post in:

<p class=“intro”> <span class=“drop_cap”>I</span>f you’ve ever…</p>

Note: I chose not to include a drop cap or intro text in this post because it wouldn’t be consistent with the rest of the posts on IncomeDiary. Consistency trumps fancy.

3. Keep Short Paragraphs

I know this advice is slightly redundant, but I think it’s important enough to mention again. Looking around the web, it’s as though we all had teachers who told us that paragraphs are comprised of 8-10 sentences.

Writing for the web is different than writing for paper because people are constantly being distracted. You need to keep somebody focused by helping the breeze through the content.

Solution: 1-3 sentence paragraphs.

4. Choose an Easy-to-Read Font

It’s a general consensus that sans-serif fonts, such as Arial and Verdana, are best for the body content of a webpage because they’re clean and not as cluttered as their serif counterparts.

I know, typography purists will argue why there’s no such thing as a best font for every situation, but here’s what some of the world’s top websites use for their body content:

• Google: Arial
• Wikipedia: Sans-Serif
• CNN: Arial
• Yahoo: Arial (home), Georgia (content)
• MSN: Arial
• New York Times: Georgia
• Wall Street Journal: Arial

When choosing your body font, you can be creative or you can go with what big sites have tested and found works best. Personally, I use Arial for almost every site I build.

5. Keep a Minimum 14 Point Font Size

A couple of weeks ago, Derek Halpern wrote a data-driven post about how the size 14 is the new size 12.

In the post, he cites a few of studies that revealed how fonts affect people’s ability to follow instructions and how they perceive your brand.

Just know that 14 pixels is the absolute minimum for easy-to-read body content.

6. Set Golden Ratio Line Height

Once you set your font size, you need to establish your line height based on the golden ratio. The golden ratio (1.618) helps you determine the optimal amount of space between lines.

Chris Pearson created a nifty tool to help us determine these numbers called the, Golden Ratio Typography Calculator.

How to Set the Golden Ratio Line Height

Use Chris’s tool to determine the optimal line height based on your font size and content width.

Let’s say your font is Arial, your font size is 14 pixels, and your content area is 600 pixels.

Put this code in your theme’s style.css (or your theme’s equivalent):

.format_text p { font-size: 14px; line-height: 23px; }

7. Pick a Light, Calming Background Color

A few months back, Neil Patel changed the background color of QuickSprout from a medium-grey to a calming yellow.

His reasoning was that as you scroll down the posts, the background area becomes more predominant. So it’s important that you choose a soothing color if you want your readers to respond positively to your message.

IncomeDiary follows suit with the light grey patchwork pattern in the background of the site.

How to Change the Background Color

Your theme likely has some built-in functionality to control the background color. If not, you can put this code in your theme’s style.css (or your theme’s equivalent):

body { background-color:#FBF7D1;}

Once again, adjust the color to fit your site.

The Final Note

As a blogger, I’m sure you spend a great deal of time creating content for your site.

That’s good, but spending a few minutes implementing a few of these tips will drastically improve the readability of every blog post you’ve written.

If you have any questions about making any of these changes, let me know in the comments and I’ll try to help.

Read more: ‘11 Ways To Dramatically Boost User Engagement On Your Blog’

Image: Stuck in Customs

The post 7 Quick Tips to Make Your Blog Design More Readable appeared first on How To Make Money Online.