Below is a parody of one of my favorite social media news websites.  It of course, like most parodies, is completely exaggerated.   This idea occurred to me as I was surfing through several of the top social media websites, doing research and staying on top of all of the latest marketing news and trends.

It was at this time, that I started to notice all of the things that I have long ignored.   Modern “web counters” are now Facebook Share, Like and Tweetmeme style buttons.  The links to LinkedIn, RSS feeds, and others have replaced the “Netscape Now” buttons.   Social Bookmarking toolbars at Hootsuite, Stumbleupon and Digg have replaced the Alexa toolbar.

It was then that I realized that we have simply reverted to mid-90’s web design fad euphoria in order to be noticed and shared in today’s social media.  Are we so willing to give up usability and user-experience just for a few more visitors?   Apparently yes!   I’ve found that even I have resorted to placing these types of buttons on my sites.  They work, in moderation of course.  The Facebook share / retweet buttons at Youtube apparently work very well.

I’ve been doing Tulsa Web Design now for over 15 years.   I’ve also watched the competition for the last 15 years.  It never seizes to amaze me on what people can come up with that you suddenly need.

I’ve seen sites that cost $500 to sites that actually cost $100,000.  And the funny thing, is that sometimes there’s not much difference.

Business owners want to make a good buying decision when buying a web design.  So sometimes they’ll bring in their IT staff to help them make the decision.  Other times, they’ll bring in someone from marketing or sales to help them decide what to do with this thing they keep hearing about called web site design and Internet marketing.

However, 9 times out of 10… the business owners and the staff simply decide who to go with based on the appearance of the person selling them or some cool thing they haven’t seen before.   The IT staff gets caught up in the technical details and the marketing and sales people honestly…  I’m sorry, this probably seems rude, but they don’t really know about Internet Marketing in most cases anyway.

I actually heard about a business owner the other day who said that he liked what the sales person was saying, but that she showed up 45 minutes early and she was wearing jeans and had a pony tail.

Are you serious?  She was early! That’s a good thing. She works behind a computer all day and you have a problem with her wearing jeans and having her hair up in a pony tail?   Apparently you want to be sold by someone who just sells all day rather than hire someone based on actual hands-on experience.

Okay let’s get off the soap box now, and focus on what really matters.  RESULTS.

When it comes to buying a Tulsa Web Design, you need to know what you’re getting yourself into.

1:  What is the purpose of your site.  Forget about the technology for a moment.  What are you trying to accomplish?   Are you trying to get leads?  Are you trying to make a sale online?  Are you simply providing people with a place where they can go and find documents and forms that they can then fill out online or print out?

2:  How important is this? On a scale of one to ten, how much of an impact do you think this will make to your business?  Is this just an online brochure because all of your friends wonder why you’re not online yet?  Or.. If you’re really going full force and expect something amazing out of your website, are you prepared to work it?  That means, fund it to get daily traffic to the site.  That means, update the content regularly, maybe even daily.  That means… it’s not a magic system sitting in cyberspace, but a real tool that someone in your company logs onto daily in order to build, measure, share, and ultimately make it work for you.

3:  Hype, Hype, Hype! Do you really need all those bells and whistles?  Do you really need splash pages, flash, movies, interactive forms, online calendars, and a cartoon or person that walks onto the screen?  Maybe you do.  Sometimes having a video on your page can make all the difference.  However, don’t get caught up in the fads and whims that designers often fall prey too.  Chances are, they’ve caught your attention and sold you on some expensive system based solely on one or two fads that are going to be annoying and unproductive for you in the near future.  Focus on the basics.  What are my customers looking for and what do they expect to find?

I could keep going…

I build websites all the time.  But I’m not going to build one for you.  I’ve decided to focus my attention on building up my own properties and preparing for long term growth.   I’m also focusing on my marketing consultant services which includes Tulsa Internet Marketing and consulting for your Tulsa Web Design.

However, since I’m not selling you web design, you can look to me as an independent trusted source.

• I don’t have any exclusive relationships with any of Tulsa web design companies.
• I don’t take commission or kickbacks for any web design.
• I get paid the same, whether you go with company A or company B, or C, D or E.
• You get to leverage my 15 years of marketing experience.
• I’ll point out the scammers that make something simple seem something magical.
• I’ll point out whether or not the cool new thing is just a fad or something your customers are looking for.
• I’ll help you find the reputations of Tulsa Web Design companies and see what’s real and what’s the deal.
• I’ll look over your contracts for scapegoats, loopholes, dead ends, and uh oh’s! (though I’m not an attorney)
• I’m not trying to make payroll, so I’m not selling you something and taking your money so you can float me a few more days.
• I am excited to be helping you with this!  You’ll have someone who can help you make the right decision because I know it’s the right thing to do, and not just my job for a project that you wont stop nagging about.   I only take clients I want to do business with.
• Ultimately, at the end of the day, you’ll probably save more money than you would ever pay me.

So, if you’ve found this interesting.  Then before you hire someone to build your website, considering bringing me in as a consultant.  I will sit down with you and your staff and we will draw up a strategy that focuses on your needs today, your action plan for tomorrow, and what you expect to get out of your web site design.

My rates are simple.  I used to charge $550 an hour and had clients lined up for it.  Due to the recession, I’m now charging $199/hr for visits, phone conferences and webinars, with a 2 hour minimum. (Example:  1 hour to consult and research for you plus 1 hour to give group presentation, discussion or webinar.)

I charge $1250 plus expenses (if any) for full day consultations.   Chances are, I can save you $1250 in your tulsa web design expenses, time wasted and loss of income. So this is still a great deal!

- Tony Darrick Baker
- Tulsa Web Design pioneer

Would you like to get your local Tulsa business to the first page of Google, Yahoo, Bing and more?

You’ve heard all the hype from the others.  Let’s get down to business and make real, measurable, and significant results for your local search marketing for Tulsa and surrounding areas.  Here are 4 of my most popular options;

1. Tulsa Internet Marketing and Consulting - If you just need help with Internet Marketing projects in the Tulsa area and you don’t know exactly what you should do next, then my consulting services can help you.  I once charged $550 an hour with clients lined up! However, since it’s a recession, you can have my time at $199 per hour with a 2 hour minimum visit, phone call, or webinar.  Full day live training sessions are now only $1250 per day plus related expenses.

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2. The “Make it Happen” Package – If you want first-page Guaranteed rankings for local Tulsa Internet Marketing and related keywords in Google within 5 days, then I have just the program for you. I don’t spend a lot of time educating you on this, we simply do it. We have a three-tiered approach that focuses on local listings, natural rankings, and sponsored search results to make sure that your have an amazing presence.  The local listings are subject to the time it takes Google to verify and update them.  The natural rankings are never guaranteed, (never guarantee what you don’t own or can’t buy) but we have significant history in getting rankings in the natural results.  Sponsored listings are guaranteed to have an average first page ranking and be online within 5 days of receiving your paid order.  Most companies can get started and have significant traffic, leads, and impressions for less than $400 per month!

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3. National Campaigns - If your business is in the Tulsa area and you market to the entire nation.  I can build a significant Internet Marketing campaign for you that includes search engine optimization, online publicity, and manage your online media buying.  You should expect your budget to exceed $1250 per month plus expenses.

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4. Social Media Marketing Campaigns – Whether you’re looking to reach Tulsans with your Tulsa Social Media Marketing Campaign or reach a national market.  I can help you.  My Tulsa Internet Marketing Social Media Campaign starts at just $799 and includes business profiles in YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Linked In.  Likewise, I’ll teach you how to create, automate and build buzz about your business.

Ultimately it comes down to results. Yes, you can buy into all of the hype from good-looking slick suits with their amazing presentations.  Or, you can find a down-to-earth guy who spends all of his time and resources on producing results for you!

With over 15 years of hands-on Internet Marketing experience, you can rest assured that when you follow my recommendations, you will see measurable results.

- Tony Darrick Baker

I was reading a post from a well-respected marketing person who serves the local area. The post was about how X company that provides local internet marketing is probably a scam because you do not need them and how they must be a scam in order to pay everybody involved.

I certainly don’t want to defend the company mentioned. However, I do have something to say about the network marketing sales model when it comes to creating a local search marketing solution for small businesses.

First, the company should be forthcoming about their methods. For some reason they seem ashamed of what they are doing. And maybe it’s because it’s Internet marketing and network marketing have both earned a bad reputation over the last few years.

They didn’t earn a bad reputation because Internet Marketing or Network Marketing are bad. They earned that reputation because they failed to live up to client expectations that they set.

As a company that directly competes with X company, I’ve have had the opportunity to listen to some of their calls and have had their people pitch me on their services. I’m glad that they’ve finally issued an order to stop saying things like “we have people that used to work with Google” and “we partner with Google to get better deals than you can get.” In all fairness, these types of statements and deceptive hype creeps into any sales channel that doesn’t properly train their sales people.

There was another company that recently sold off that was quite similar. Again, it wasn’t because what they were selling or the model of selling it was wrong. It was because they failed to set and keep up with expectations. Instead of focusing on providing a great service at a great price in a manner that would duplicate itself, they seemed to be focused solely on recruiting. They quickly made some bad assumptions when it comes to Internet marketing and went belly up.

Then X company sprung out of that. Why because they recognized that it was the leadership that was the problem and not the opportunity or the model. This company too will fail unless they realize that they are service providers and consultants rather than a get rich quick scheme.

I don’t believe that this model is a rip off, a scam, or anything of the sort. The fact of the matter is that there isn’t anything that anybody can do on the Internet that anybody else can’t eventually do themselves with the proper amount of ongoing training, desire, and flat out testing over and over and over again. The experiences that a person has and the amount of information they are able to consume and process is often the only difference between one internet marketer and another.

Second, you are right in that most businesses would be better served by hiring an experienced full-time marketing person or even a dedicated consultant. One that would coordinate with a web design firm, a writer, an adwords expert, a local search expert, a social media expert in order to build a wordpress website, add content regularly, promote the site in adwords, participate in social media discussions, blogs, tweets, and facebook pages on a daily basis, manage all of the local search services, respond to reviews, seek out new local link opportunities, write articles for distribution, write and submit regular press releases, seek out directory listings and create, follow through, track and constantly re-evaluate and re-create a link building campaign according to analytics, social buzz and other ongoing changes within the business.

All of this of course while spending 10 to 20 hours a week keeping up on seo and social media techniques, keyword strategies, graphic and flash banner strategies, seo buzz about new products and services, and so much more. For most businesses this still would be inadequate. You would likely have to go through 3 or 4 marketing people on staff, go through a variety of other experts, and constantly be re-evaluating performance.

I know this because I’ve had 15 years in the Internet Marketing business providing creative and marketing services to at least a thousand different companies. Many companies did well with it. They had a liaison that could serve their interest and could actually make marketing decisions. They had established goals and specific requirements that they wanted to achieve.

Other companies had so much red tape that any little change took several weeks to get a reply for. Either because they had a committee approach with no set decision maker or the decision maker was so far up in the company that a decision was never made.

Ultimately, my point is, you can always do more and always do better in marketing, but even with a great marketing company to assist you, that doesn’t mean that you’re going to achieve success.

But for now let’s look at say a local dentist. The dentist has a small office with a staff of 3 to 5 people. At most, the dentist works Monday through Friday from 9 to 6 and is on call for weekend emergencies.

In the mind of the dentist, the dentist is a dentist first and business owner second. The books are outsourced to a cpa. The office cleaning is done by a cleaning company. The advertising and everything else you can imagine is probably dumped onto the back of an office manager that spends their day coordinating staff, handling complaints, setting appointments, making reminder calls, and sending out basic billing.

Back when it was as easy as running a phone book ad, all the Dentist did was look at what his competition was doing, change out the logo and phone number and hopefully add something that made him different.

Today that media is dead. And yet… do you think this Dentist is going to hire a full time marketing person at $36k (or more) plus taxes and benefits, and then hire an outside marketing firm, web designer, and do everything that he or she should (or could) do in order to properly invest in internet and interactive marketing?

Does he have time? No. Does he have the knowledge? No. Has he been hit on by hundreds of Internet marketing “experts” calling, emailing, and otherwise pitching him with their “magic blue pill” for the last 15 years? Yes. Does he trust them? No.

Now if a dentists isn’t going to do this. Then why would the locally owned restaurant, oil change station, dent repair service, auto dealer or attorney hire an expensive Internet marketing expert? Obviously people are looking on their iphones, search engines and web devices for these businesses. So what’s the answer?

And let’s look at your comments. The solution you mentioned might be good for a “Small business that have no desire for long term internet business growth.”

You’re right. This hypothetical dentist has no desire for long term internet business growth. His desire is for new customers to constantly be pouring into his front door. He doesn’t really care how or why that happens. He cares about building his practice and focusing on his retirement.

Your second remark states that it might be good if for “Business that are looking for a short term band-aide to make up for their poor website design and lack of knowledge about adwords and other online marketing systems.”

Ditto to the above. The reason why less than half of businesses still don’t have a website after 15 years of me and everybody else telling them that they need one is that… they really don’t care about the website. They care about the end result. To date every little blue pill they’ve taken has been inadequate to say the least.

Likewise, of the 50% that do have websites, they are stale out-dated electronic brochures built with whatever webmaster fad of the month design tool was popular at the moment, whether it be javascript marquees, flash, ajax or whatever.

The vast majority of these companies rarely, if ever, actively promote their web address on anything other than their print materials or tag it to the end of their tv, radio or print advertisements, etc. Then they wonder why “the Internet doesn’t work” for them.

Now lets look at the traditional model. In a typical marketing agency, you’re going to have a small handful of salespeople, a sales manager, an operations director, and of course the owner. Sometimes the owner of this marketing agency is the sales manager, project manager, marketing director and operations director. But let’s assume that this business does more than $25k a month in sales and must have a staff to sell, fulfill, process payroll, pay taxes, pay overhead, etc.

For each new client, it’s very likely that at least 25% of a job will go to the salesperson. This means that the hourly rate, salary, or whatever guaranteed minimum that most salespeople rely on to get started is included in that plus a 10 to 15% commission as incentive. Then you have bonuses, taxes, benefits, sick days, computer expenses, customer management software, staff meetings, birthdays, related downtime, etc… to factor in.

When all is said in done, it’s easy to come up with 25%, if not 35% to 50% or more of your sales going to a good sales person. If the salesperson could duplicate more, then your profit margin of course would go up. But there’s only so much that your creative staff can handle, only so many articles, press releases and submissions, directory submissions, etc that your staff can handle. Eventually you add more staff, then add more salespeople, then add more staff. Eventually your overhead is a nightmare.

Plus, it typically takes 8 to 10 salespeople to find one decent one. That means that you’ve hired, trained, and wasted thousands of dollars in payroll, time, and frustration to find someone that can help you grow your business. Keep in mind that other than the rare person you meet who you convinced to join your team… most salespeople responding to ads would still be selling whatever they were selling if they were any good at it. Other good salespeople would be entrepreneurs or executives, as most top business executives come out of sales.

You basically have to find a diamond in the rough to get someone who’s trainable and can learn about this unique platform. Don’t get me wrong, there are tens of thousands of people who qualify for this, but it’s not their primary income, desire, or maybe you just haven’t found them yet. Yes, it’s worth the search to find one star salesperson. But it cost money. And once they realize they’re your star, it’s going to cost you more and more and more as they constantly demand more money per sale in perks, commissions, and benefits.

Needless to say, it’s EASY to spend 40 to 60% on building and maintaining a sales staff. The only way to really make any substantial money in this competitive environment is to scale, and I mean scale up dramatically.

You need a dozen salespeople, or even hundreds to really make this worth while and see any profit in it. Henry Ford isn’t famous because he invented a car. He’s famous for inventing a way to re-create that car thousands of times over, year after year, decade after decade.

The boutique marketing agency needs to specialize in a particular niche or they will likely never make a true corporate profit. The marketing entrepreneur at this point is simply earning a paycheck and creating paychecks for his staff.

Yes, it’s possible as a boutique marketing agency with a staff of 10 to 20 people to create a good deal of money. Possibly even a million dollars or two a year. But for how long will this go on? Most agencies that hit this prosperity only last a few years. Their star salespeople burn out or move on, their management dissolves, their goals change, etc.

If you looked at the failure rate of these companies and the thousands of applicants that were hired and trained that never made any real money at it… you’d think that you were talking about a typical network marketing company! Like network marketing, in many cases it’s not the company that failed, but rather its people simply quit, or didn’t truly try in the first place.

To become financially stable or even wealthy, you must do something that can replicate itself. You must do something that can be duplicated. The reason why so many people sell music, books, etc… is because that book can be duplicated 10,000 times over the next 30 years and every time that happens they make money. If you write 30 good books over 30 years, then every time they sell, you make more money, and every sale can lead to more sales of other books you’ve written. This is just one of many possible examples.

Look at people who are financially stable and financially wealthy. In most instances, they’ve done something to duplicate themselves. Even a football star is replicated when the camera that has him on film is distributed to a million viewers live, recorded, and on dvd. He’s not getting paid to throw a ball. He’s getting paid to throw a ball in front of a million viewers!

As a business owner hopefully you are replicating yourself. You hire a sales manager that would manage a staff that can create sales. You hire salespeople that represent you. In a way that’s replicating.

But.. in this instance, the salespeople can become wealthy in one of two ways… they either replicate you so often that they build a nest egg, or they become you. In as such, the sales manager retires, you retire, or they become your competition, etc. Eventually they want to grow beyond the daily sales cycle and start their own company where they replicate themselves, and thus they too can become wealthy, or at least financially stable.

It doesn’t matter if you’re making $10 an hour or $500 an hour. If you can’t replicate yourself, you’re still working by the hour. I’ve heard several professionals lament about this. They can make $250 an hour as a Chiropractor, but their time is still for sale, and ultimately the amount they can make is capped.

In order to make $200,000 a year, which is a comfortable living in most states, you have to make $100 an hour, for every available working hour. If your time is worth $100 an hour, then the 5 hours you just spent marketing yourself on facebook, twitter and your blog this week was a $500 expense. This comes out of that 100% too… so by the time you deduct salespeople, bonuses, overhead, tracking, training and fulfillment, you have very little left.

Unless you are going to pull from your family time, leisure time, self-fulfillment time, and personal growth time, then like most people you are limited to the amount of work hours you have available in a day.

For most people today, the only way that they’ll ever make $50 an hour or $100 an hour, or even $500 an hour is to replicate themselves. That means that they either create something that replicates itself. Or they go out and recruit and train people personally who help them build their business. Those people in turn recruit and train more people who have the same opportunity.

For it to have any traction, whatever they’re doing for their business must have a constant, steady and growing demand. You don’t have this with most self-consumption programs that force you to drink, swallow, or otherwise consume over-priced junk. It’s easy to eat your profits in network marketing just as it is in any other business.

However you do have this with a capitalistic society that requires that the vast majority of small businesses are constantly recruiting, refining, and building their businesses. These companies always have and always will need some form of advertising and marketing.

At BizNdex we know that we can’t be the perfect marketing guy on payroll for each and every business that needs our service. We know that we can’t be the custom web developer that builds a pretty website that constantly needs updating. We know what we can’t be the perfect and ultimate marketing solution.

We do know that we’ve created a formula that is replicable. We have created a system where the average local business can have their vital information available on the web (which is what they really wanted in the first place) and it will attract leads and buyers (which is what they wanted in the first place) and this can be done for virtually any business in any geo-targeted area just about anywhere.

We’ve enhanced it by creating a search engine friendly system that encourages ongoing consumer-driven content creation (which is what search engines really want) and a system that provides consumers with the type of interaction, coupons, videos and so much more that they crave.

Likewise we’ve created a system where the average Joe can easily tell Jane about a simple concept. This average Joe doesn’t need 10 to 20 hours a week in SEO training. He simply needs an understanding of the business and why it works. Jane doesn’t need 15 years of marketing experience, she just needs to know what Joe knows, and Jane can replicate his efforts.

Since the system is based on concepts that are easily understood, along with videos, webinars, and emails that are easily understood. Joe and Jane can tell business owners that they already do business with on how they can get found in Google, Google Local, Google Ads, Yahoo Local, Bing Local and all of those places that people are looking for locally available products, services and brands.

These local business owners aren’t going to trust the average Internet Marketing email, phone call, or advertisement that they see. But they will trust and try out Joe or Jane simply because they’ve been doing business with them for years, they live in their community, go to their church, know their kids, etc.

Network marketing would seem to be the perfect fit for local internet marketing. No, it doesn’t do everything. But it can do enough to get them found in the major search engines. And, it can do so at a price that is affordable, and be profitable for everybody involved.

I don’t like the way that X and Y company do business. But, at BizNdex we are regular people just like you who have always loved and yet hated network marketing. We picked out what we loved, and we’ve dumped what we’ve hated.

BizNdex is a profitable opportunity but it’s not a get rich quick scheme. BizNdex doesn’t offer $1000 in services you may never use when you pay a huge signup fee. BizNdex provides a fair service for a fair price. BizNDex encourages recruitment through sales bonuses rather than encouraging recruitment off of signup fees. BizNdex is the opportunity I would join if I had a hand in building it myself. Oh wait… that’s exactly what happened!

Tony Darrick Baker
Vice President of Marketing
BizNdex LLC

Now that most people are familiar with the Internet and many businesses are building an online presence, the line between professional website design and the work of an amateur is becoming more distinct. There are several mistakes that people new to web design tend to make that can be easily avoided for a more professional look.

Do make your web page titles clear. This is the text that appears in the title bar at the top of the browser window and in search engine results. Viewers use titles as a clue to your website’s content and to orient themselves within your website.

Don’t use page counters. Page counters only tell your visitors information you probably don’t want them to know. Detailed statistics on the visitors to your website can be provided by your web host, without the amateur look and false readings that can be given by embedded page counters.

Do offer “live chat” services for technical/customer support. This depends on the nature of your website, but if appropriate, offering contact with a live person for any technical- or customer service-related questions can make your company feel more approachable to your visitors. If 24-hour support is not available, be sure to put operating hours on your website and stick to them.

Don’t try to fool the search engines. A well-known tactic to try and improve keyword rankings was to put hundreds of keywords on the website in “invisible” text—text formatted to be the same color as the background. Although tricks like this one never worked well, search engines have become much more sophisticated in the last few years. Attempts to fool the search engines into higher page rankings may result in your website being blacklisted.

Do keep Flash media to a minimum. While over 99% of computer users are capable of viewing Flash movies (as of 2002 according to International Data Corporation Online User Forecast), the ‘skip intro’ button is the 2nd most-clicked button on the web. Consider smaller Flash movies incorporated into the website rather than a long site intro.

Don’t use “Under Construction” pages. If the page isn’t ready, don’t link to it. If your page has ready content but is still being updated, consider posting an “Updated On” date or an icon by the link that symbolizes new or updated content.

Do keep a theme throughout the site. Having your company logo and the same navigation on each page lets your visitor know he is still at the same website.

- Tony Darrick Baker & K. L. Russell

You know what I’m talking about.  A jerk is someone who’s being difficult on purpose.  They could be nice and show you the way, but they just don’t feel like it.  Well ask yourself.  Are you being a jerk?  Does your website make it easy for people to find what they are looking for?

The oldest rule of web design is “content is king”. The content on your website needs to be of interest, navigable, and accessible to your visitors.

Watch Your Readability: Research has shown that most people read text on a computer screen at about a quarter of the speed they read text on paper. This suggests the actual text of your website should be kept short and to the point.

Update Frequently: Websites are in constant need of upkeep. Check your copy for grammatical and spelling errors and monitor all your site links. Visitors have a tendency to poke in all the dusty corners of a website, so be sure to keep yours organized.

Customize your Footer: Your website probably already has a text-only navigation menu as its footer—this is pretty common practice. You could also incorporate other useful information as well, like your contact information (email, phone and fax numbers, etc.) to be more accessible to your visitors.

Create a Site Map: A Site Map is a categorized link index of your entire website. Visitor use them to find specific information quickly, and search engine “spiders” can “crawl” your site map to help classify and rank your website. If you are seriously interested in search engine optimization, consider looking into specialized “spider maps”.

Use Custom 404 Pages: A 404 error appears when a visitor types in a URL incorrectly or uses a link to a page that has been moved, deleted, or renamed. Rather than a cookie-cutter “Page Not Found” error page, consider using your site map or a special search page instead to guide your visitor to the content they are looking for.

- Tony Darrick Baker & K. L. Russell

Good navigation design is essential for every website. If you want your website to be explored, it is critical that you have simple and easy-to-use navigation.   If your visitors can’t find what they’re looking for, they’ll get lost, frustrated, and eventually leave to explore other areas of the Internet.   To design better website navigation, there a few simple steps to take.

Establish a Crossroads
Your website’s home page should act as a crossroads for your website, telling your visitors where they can go and how they can get there. This is usually done with a navigation bar set to the top or side of your webpage.

Be Consistent
Besides keeping the same look and feel throughout your web site, you’ll also want to keep your navigation consistent. If you have a navigation bar at the top of your home page, keep your navigation in the same spot on all your other pages. This will make it clear and easy for the visitor to go to a different part of the website or back to your home page without repeatedly hitting the back button or getting lost.

Be Clear
Although it may be tempting give your web page links cute or clever names, you might confuse your visitors. It’s best to give your links clear, concise labels.

Navigate with Text as well as Images
Never rely exclusively on icons for your navigation. Without a label to give the icon context, your links can easily be misinterpreted. Also, some people surf with images turned off or with text-only browsers. With text navigation (usually found at the bottom of a website) and “ALT” text in your images, every visitor will be able to navigate your web page.

While there are many different formats and styles for website navigation, it’s important that you provide your visitor with a simple and easy way to explore your website.

- Tony Darrick Baker & K. L. Russell

Once you’ve designed an eye-catching banner ad, the next critical step is to use it as an effective marketing tool. It can be most exciting banner ad on the Internet, but it won’t do your company any good if your target audience never sees it.

Tip #1: Target Your Banners

Put your banner ads on websites that reach your target market. By taking advantage of the Internet’s ability to target specific demographics, you can increase the effectiveness and efficiency of your banner advertising, generate leads, and build your brand. You can deliver your message to specific industries, include or exclude specific geographic regions or cities, and target by user interest. By targeting your banner ads, you can be sure that you are reaching your target audience.

Tip #2: Location, Location, Location

As well as choosing the most-visited websites to advertise on, also negotiate the placement of your banner ad. According to research, banner ads that appear on first page load are more likely to be clicked on. The best possible scenario is to have banner ads placed at both the top and bottom of a page. Also make sure your banner ad doesn’t appear on pages as part of a group of banner ads together. These areas usually have clashing graphics and readers’ eyes instinctively look elsewhere.

Tip #3: Linking

While the home page usually gets a good response, certain banner ads may need to link to a different page. If the banner ad is promoting a specific item, consider linking to that item’s page instead of asking a potential customer to browse through your website. By carefully analyzing your results, you can discover which of your web pages elicits the best response from your banner ads.

Tip #4: Rotate your Banner Ads

Even the best banner ad eventually stops delivering. The more an ad is seen, the fewer click-throughs it will receive and the lower your Return on Investment. Controlling the frequency of your banner ads maximizes your advertising dollar and helps you reach more targeted readers.

Tip #5: Measure Your Results

Accurate measurement of your banner ad campaign’s effectiveness depends on what your goals were for the campaign. If you want to increase traffic to your website, pay attention to your click-throughs. If your goal was gathering leads, look at how many people clicked through and filled out a lead form.

The design of your banner ad, where you put it, and where you link it to are critical elements that need your attention. Once you begin to market effectively, you can measure the results to learn what works and what doesn’t for your banner ads.

- Tony Darrick Baker & K. L. Russell

A web banner ad can be a seizure-inducing block of flashing color cluttering up a perfectly good webpage or an excellent vehicle for bringing targeted leads back to your site. To make sure your banner ad is the good kind, here are some nine tiny words.

Seven
Mantle’s number, the lucky number, and the maximum number of words you want to put on your 468×60 banner ad. This not only gives you more room (read: bigger font size = easier to read), but gets your message across in less time.

Time
It’s at a premium. An animated banner ad has THREE SECONDS to grab the viewers’ attention. Don’t overestimate the patience of your audience.

GIF
Get Images Fast. Minimize frustration and build your banner ads as animated GIF files to reduce their loading time. Your colors will be more limited, but your audience won’t have to wait on a website bogged down by a slow-loading banner ad either.

Free!
Amazing! New! Affordable! Power words can immediately communicate a benefit of clicking on your banner ad.

Prize
Step right up! Click on the banner ad and win a prize! Everyone’s a winner! Give people an incentive to visit your site. It could be as simple as a discount or a chance to win.

Ask
Don’t tell you’re customers what they need, ask pointed questions and offer a solution back on your website, only a click away.

Fresh
Banner ads can get stale and moldy too after awhile. Rotate your banner ads or create new ones to keep them fresh and eye-grabbing to viewers.

Brand
No need to stick a red-hot iron to your banner ad; most people assume they already know everything they need to know about the brand and totally ignore the banner ad. Add a little mystery to the relationship (without compromising the truth).

Link
Zelda’s boyfriend, delinquent-turned-Mod-Squad, or your website’s best friend? Link your banner ad to the subject it sells (i.e., a banner ad for washing machines should link to the washing machine section of the home appliance website).

- Tony Darrick Baker & K. L. Russell

I made a quick 2 minute video tutorial today for a client who needed help changing their Twitter background.

I thought that it might be of benefit to everybody.  So here you go.

It’s made the video with JING and it is available at:   http://screencast.com/t/kv0b3BeWvP

- Tony Darrick Baker