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Subscription Website Publishing

Introduction to Website Design for Publishers and Authors

Usability and design are two key factors in publishing great websites. You may have a clear strategy and great content, but if your site is unusable and unattractive, it will be difficult for users to find what they’re looking for, difficult for you to get users to do what you want them to do and

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Subscription Website Publishing

Top 10 Reasons Why Visitors Resist Subscribing to Your Membership Website

First impressions really do count, especially online. If the look of your site doesn’t immediately gain the respect of visitors, you are in trouble.

Studies have shown that visitors decide within the first 10 seconds whether they will investigate further or move on. That’s how long it takes to run the look of your site through

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A Landing Page for the Opportunity-Seekers Market Doesn’t Demonstrate Much Copywriting Expertise

The fundamental mistake made by many entrepreneurs is the classic chicken-and-egg scenario in which the inventor first creates a new product and then seeks a market for it.

Experienced product developers do the opposite. They anticipate the changes in society. They assess the evolving problems, requirements and desires of consumers, and look for opportunities that have

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A Website Design Example of What Not to Do

Media experts tell us that the average consumer is bombarded with hundreds of advertising impressions every day. That’s a lot of competition for our attention. As a result, most of us have developed an anti-advertising defense. We tune out when we sense someone is trying to sell us something. Even when we’re actively searching online

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Five Tips for Improving Your Landing Page Order Mechanism

Posting a landing page with a confusing or inadequate order mechanism is like opening a new Wal-Mart, but forgetting to install cash registers. What’s the point?

In direct mail advertising, one of the two most important elements of the package is the order form (the other being the outer envelope). If you get everything else right

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My 12 Most Important Beliefs About Marketing

These pithy statements about the psychology of buying and selling did not originate with me. Most were gleaned over the years from my various teachers—from their books, seminars and audiotapes.

I owe a debt to many, and at this juncture, it’s almost impossible to know accurately which of these “truths” to attribute to whom.

Among the many

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Four Website Design Tips from TMZ.com

On December 8, 2005, AOL’s expected press release announcing the launch of the new entertainment site, TMZ.com, hit the buzz-makers.

The commentary? Only that AOL needed a massive influx of traffic, and that even in the crowded online entertainment space the subsidiary of Time Warner should be able to put up enough interesting new tidbits to

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Make Sure Your Landing Page Bears More Fruit Than GardeningSecretsandTips.com

With gardening season upon us, it seemed like a good idea to have John Clausen do a landing page review of GardeningSecretsandTips.com.

John points out that there are few hobbies or avocations that rival gardening when it comes to the need for secret methods and helpful tips. And there are few activities that attract more avid

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Four Tips for Designing Aesthetically Pleasing Landing Pages

How can you decide on the right design for your landing page?

Beauty is relative, cultural, genetic and ever-changing. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and aesthetic judgments are subjective.

The answer is to know your target market and create an appearance that conforms to your visitors’ expectations. We call it the “user’s mental model.”

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Three Website Design Tips from WritersMarket.com

In a recent website design review for the Mequoda Library Mequoda Editor-at-Large Peter A. Schaible takes a look at WritersMarket.com.

WritersMarket.com is a pay-for-access, online database for freelance writers that cross-sells print publications and other products owned by its publisher.

Peter notes that online databases sold by subscription are big business for LexisNexis, R.R. Bowker, Thomson and

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Three Landing Page Optimization Tips from the Motley Fool’s Stock Advisor Landing Page

n our Motley Fool Media Network Case Study, we chronicled the company’s admirable history from its humble beginnings as an America Online discussion forum in 1994. And we cited the Gardner brothers’ remarkable business model change in 2001 after the dot-com bust, which enabled the publishing company to rise like a phoenix to do $23

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Website Design Guideline #13: Designing Aesthetically Pleasing Websites

Usability and design are two key factors in publishing great websites. You may have a clear strategy and great content, but if your site is unusable and unattractive, it will be difficult for users to find what they’re looking for, difficult for you to get users to do what you want them to do and

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Three Integrated Media Strategy Lessons from Consumer Reports

Consumer Reports revenues top $190M in 2005 by pursuing a simple integrated media strategy driven by three simple concepts and the world’s largest membership website.John Sateja is a happy guy. The man in charge of information products for what may be the most trusted media brand in America is on a roll.

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Twelve Ideas for An Effective Affiliate Marketing Program

The idea behind affiliate marketing is simple.

The concept is basic “pay for performance.” You recruit other Internet marketers to help you sell your website’s products or services in return for a portion of the gross.

When an affiliate enrolls in your program, you give her an affiliate identification (name or number) that she uses in the

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Analyze Successful Subscription Websites for Clues on Designing and Marketing Your Own

Here’s a shortcut to membership website success: find online businesses that are working for other people and model them. Study what they are doing correctly and do likewise. To help build and maintain your own successful site, make a habit of analyzing other sites for form, function and design.

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Website Design Tips and a Lesson in Online Publishing from DailyCandy.com

Sharply focused on a niche market of hip, young, women shoppers who reside in major cities, Daily Candy proves that publishers can make money selling online advertising.

In a recent website design review of DailyCandy.com, Mequoda Editor-at-Large Peter A. Schaible outlines the site’s business model and shares a few website design tips and suggestions he pulled

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Avoid the Landing Page Optimization Mistakes Made by the South Beach Diet Newsletter

In a recent landing page review in the Mequoda Daily, John Clausen asks: is there any subject more mulled over and carefully considered than our health and appearance? If you can do something to make the population more slender and likely to live longer, you should be able to make a fortune—shouldn’t you?

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Four Tips for Using Fresh Content and Urgency to Increase Landing Page Conversion Rates

Few things destroy the credibility of a landing page sales letter more quickly and effectively than content that’s out of date.

How can you expect the prospect to take your message seriously if you’re not even interested enough in the content to keep it current?

It’s also important to remember that some of your potential customers may

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Choosing the Right Colors for Your Subscription Websites

Why do all the top websites seem to use the same four colors?

There is a really good reason—one that can affect your membership website success if you don’t follow their lead. If you take a close look at the most visited sites on the Internet, you’ll see an interesting phenomenon. Almost all use the same

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Six Website Design Tips from VanityFair.com

VanityFair.com caught our attention because of a comment by Jason Oliver Nixon on Women’s Wear Daily that VanityFair.com got 1,000 new print subscribers on the first day that the site posted the magazine’s cover. We immediately asked Terri Edmonston to do a website design review of VanityFair.com to ascertain what they were doing so well

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Personalize Your Landing Page and Increase Landing Page Conversion Rates

For decades, direct marketers have been using personalization to increase direct mail response rates. When you send out a laser-printed sales letter with the prospect’s name in it, you gain his or her attention.

In a recent Mequoda Daily landing page review, expert copywriter and contributing editor Bob Bly points out that personalization works equally well

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Five Tips for Improving Landing Page Readability

f a landing page is comfortable and easy to read, your prospects are more likely to keep reading and respond to your sales message. Much of this is the responsibility of the copywriter, whose job it is to keep the message flowing in interesting and easily assimilated (bite-sized) chunks, but there are other factors that

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Three Website Design Tips From Investors.com

Terri Edmonston, a Mequoda Daily contributing editor, recently did a website design review of Investors.com, the online edition of Investor’s Business Daily. Terri pointed out numerous website design tips we can all learn from. First we’ll provide a little background on the website, then we’ll list three website design tips Terri offers in her review.

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Four Landing Page Optimization Lessons to be Learned from the Legacy of Corey Rudl

It wasn’t long ago that Mequoda Daily contributing editor and copywriter John Clausen reviewed the landing page for the Internet Marketing Center, a very long and very well done sales letter developed by late Internet marketing guru Corey Rudl. When John had heard of Rudl’s tragic death in an automobile racing accident, he figured he’d

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Five Tips for Writing Landing Page Copy that Increases Conversion Rates

Writing effective landing page copy that increases conversion rates is a technique every Internet marketer aims to master. We understand that there are hundreds of variations available and that the only way to truly discover what works is to test, test, test. But we must remember that there are a few solid copy principles that

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Website Design Guideline #12: Speeding Up Website Load Time

Slow-Loading Pages Will Cause Losses in the Number of Readers, Page Views and Advertising Impressions, and, as a Result, Losses in Revenue

Usability and design are two key factors in publishing great websites. You may have a clear strategy and great content, but if your site is unusable and unattractive, it will be difficult for users

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Press Releases Subscription Website Publishing

Mequoda Group Announces the 2006 Media Website Design Award Winners

Mequoda Group announced today that Atkins.com and Better Homes & Gardens (BHG.com) tied for the highest score in the 2006 Mequoda Media Website Design Awards, each earning a 3.86 grade “A” rating on the Mequoda Scorecard.

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2006 Mequoda Media Website Design Award Winners

During 2005, our intrepid research team put the Mequoda Website Design Scorecard to work by using it to perform expert reviews of 48 media websites. With a high score of 3.86 (a tie between Atkins.com and Better Homes & Gardens (BHG.com) and a low score of 1.57, the scoring system validated its ability to help

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Website Design Guideline #2: Webifying Content to Maintain Interest

Content Webification is Determined by a Website’s Functionality in Two Areas: Promotion: How Easy is it to Find the Material? Implementation: How Easy is it to Use the Material?

Publishing on the Internet is different from publishing a book, magazine or newspaper. And it’s different from presenting content/products on TV, at a live event or in

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Website Design Guideline #3: Building Relationships with Email Capture

Website Success Depends Largely on Providing an Incentive—i.e., a Free Email Newsletter—to Encourage Visitor Registration and an Email Address.

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Website Design Guideline #4: Increase the User’s Connection to your Site by Promoting Community

The Mequoda criteria for community building expect visitors to feel enthusiastic and loyal to the site. Are they inspired with feelings of belonging and encouraged to contribute?

Websites that encourage a feeling of belonging among users, that offer mechanisms for being involved in the site and that motivate them to become involved are good at community

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Website Design Guideline #5: Keeping Navigation Intuitive, Persistent and Consistent

While Persistent Navigation is Now Rather Common, Site Owners Mustn’t Become Complacent. Users Must be Crystal Clear About Where They Are, Where They Can Go and How they Can Get Back to Somewhere They’ve Been.

Usability and design are two key factors in publishing great websites. You may have a clear strategy and great content, but

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Website Design Guideline #6: Encouraging the Next Step with Effective Task Completion

User Task Depth is a Critical Step that a Website Owner Must Succeed In—If a User Can’t Accomplish a Simple Task on Your Website, the Frustrated User Will Give Up and the Sale is Lost.

A user commonly will want to complete just five or six tasks on a website and those tasks account for 80

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Website Design Guideline #7: Ensuring Links and Buttons Do What They Afford

Usability and design are two key factors in publishing great websites. You may have a clear strategy and great content, but if your site is unusable and unattractive, it will be difficult for users to find what they’re looking for, difficult for you to get users to do what you want them to do and

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Website Design Guideline #8: Applying User-Centric Labeling and Language

Usability and design are two key factors in publishing great websites. You may have a clear strategy and great content, but if your site is unusable and unattractive, it will be difficult for users to find what they’re looking for, difficult for you to get users to do what you want them to do and

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Website Design Guideline #9: Improving Readability and Content Density

Usability and design are two key factors in publishing great websites. You may have a clear strategy and great content, but if your site is unusable and unattractive, it will be difficult for users to find what they’re looking for, difficult for you to get users to do what you want them to do and

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Website Design Guideline #10: Organizing Homepage Real Estate Logically and Profitably

Usability and design are two key factors in publishing great websites. You may have a clear strategy and great content, but if your site is unusable and unattractive, it will be difficult for users to find what they’re looking for, difficult for you to get users to do what you want them to do and

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12 Ways to Increase Landing Page Conversion Rates

What criteria would four of America’s most successful copywriters use to create better sales letter landing pages? And how would 26 landing pages from a variety of large and small publishers and authors hold up under their intense scrutiny?

Over the past 12 months, John Clausen, Peter A. Schaible, Robert W. Bly and Peter J. Fogel

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2006 Resolution: Test Long Copy to Increase Landing Page Conversion Rate

After years of using light copy landing pages to sell subscriptions, one health newsletter publisher increases his landing page conversion rate by 31 percent with a long copy sales letter landing page.

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Publishers and Authors Flock to Name Squeeze eCommerce Conversion Architecture to Fight Rising PPC Costs

As PPC advertising costs continue to increase, more and more savvy publishers and authors turn to Name Squeeze eCommerce Conversion Architecture to hold onto PPC profits and keep PPC as a cornerstone of their 2006 Internet Marketing Strategy.

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Website Design Guideline #11: Providing Urgency and Content Freshness

Usability and design are two key factors in publishing great websites. You may have a clear strategy and great content, but if your site is unusable and unattractive, it will be difficult for users to find what they’re looking for, difficult for you to get users to do what you want them to do and

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Mequoda System Habit #3: Build a Mequoda Website Network

When it comes to website publishing, some publishers have a clear strategy and others are still confused. But all website owners can increase conversions and improve the user experience. The solution lies in the Mequoda Website Network—the all-important centerpiece of the Mequoda Marketing System—which defines and determines the organizational architecture required for a 21st Century

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Order Button Factors that Increase Landing Page Conversion Rates

Discuss how landing page order button design can depress or increase landing page conversion rates for information marketers like Agora’s Early to Rise.

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Mequoda Landing Page Headline Contest Call for Entries

Try your hand at creating a landing page headline that excels at the four Mequoda landing page guidelines for writing brilliant, clear, engaging and truthful headlines that increase landing page conversion rates, sell more stuff and will make you a happier person.

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Press Releases Subscription Website Publishing

Sudbury, MA – November 22, 2005—Don Nicholas and Mequoda Café Daily Release Complimentary eBook: 5 Deady Membership Website Mistakes

Mequoda Founder and Membership Website Expert Don Nicholas announced today the release of 5 Deady Membership Website Mistakes, a free eBook available at the Mequoda Daily, a free website and newsletter about best practices for Internet marketers, publishers and designers.

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Using Your Page Footer to Increase Magazine Circulation

Learn how one special-interest consumer publisher increased his magazine circulation with a simple change to the page footer on every page of his print magazine.

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Steve Laliberte’s 14 Quick Tips for Improving Web Page Load Time

As webpages grow in complexity, page load time can take longer and longer and translate into a loss of readers, page views, advertising impressions, click-throughs and ultimately revenue. What can you do to create great webpages and fast page load time?

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Subscription Website Publishing Website Design Reviews

AmericasTestKitchen.com Website Design Review

America’s Test Kitchen Website, a Network Hub Positioned to Extend Visitors from the Television to the Web to the Printed Word, Demonstrates Extraordinary Website Architecture in Satisfying Users’ Need for Added Value and Publisher’s Desire for Additional Revenue

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How Age Impacts Website Usability for Teens and Seniors

While humans are humans, age is a major consideration in designing usable websites that will allow the targeted users to have an efficient and fulfilling user experience.

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How to Increase Search Engine Traffic with Search Engine Friendly Website Navigation

Learn how one publisher redesigned his website navigation to make his site ultra-search-engine-friendly and dramatically increase search engine traffic.

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