We want to know what you want from Affiliate Summit and hope to hear from you in person about it.
In the next month or so, Missy and/or me will be at eComXpo, SES New York, and ad:tech San Francisco (booth #6452 - we are giving away the coolest shirts ever). Come say hi and share [...]
To continue with (and hopefully build on) the theme of my last post, regarding the importance of website navigation, here are some additional tips on how to build a website that allows visitors to sail through your site, and right into your cash register…
An affiliate marketing website ideally should have the following pages:
The home page;
Content pages, full of SEO keywords and pertaining to the products being promoted;
An opt-in form for collecting email addresses;
A site map page (more on that in a minute); and
Policies and disclaimers pages.
Allowing visitors to access these pages on the web is crucial. (Otherwise, why build them?) Ensuring that access is easy is what good navigation is all about. So how do you create good navigation?
First, consider what is “above the fold.” Above the fold is the part of a web page that a visitor can view in a browser without having to scroll down or to the right. It’s the “high-rent district” of your site, because that’s what the visitor will see first. Above the fold is the place for your most important links, whether the links go to viral content, or the opt-in form, or possibly the all-important merchant’s site.
In addition, most well-designed websites maintain navigational links neatly in a horizontal bar across the page; a sidebar, or column running along the side of the page’s main body of content (preferably the left-hand side in this case); or a combination. (The sidebar also contains other links to content that may not warrant a more prominent place on the site, but that are still important to visitors.) In all cases, the links are separated enough from the main body of text to be seen clearly.
Finally, the site map can be the item behind the glass you break in case of emergency. This page contains links to all the pages on your website, presented either in a single list or a more complex category breakdown. In lieu of a search function on your site, the site map is your last line of defense against the departure of a visitor from your site.
Obvious advantages exist to embedding links within specific content. But links to the most important pages on your site should always be in plain sight. A good navigation system on your site will guarantee that your visitor knows where he or she is going once they arrive.
And, who knows, it may help persuade them to purchase.
Lee Dodd has announced the launch of Earners Forum 2.0 with new tools and features, including an articles section, group blog, marketplace, and more.
Earners Forum focuses on affiliate marketing, SEO, SEM, hosting, social media and other issues relevant to Webmasters.
In addition to the enhancements at the forum, Lee also has a contest that started this [...]