BUILD A WARM FRIENDSHIP WITH YOUR READERS!
Common Web Design Faults - Your front page is like the face of a woman. It must be beautiful and it must smile. And it could even sizzle a little! But where it counts, it must DELIVER THE GOODS!
THE FRONT PAGE we know, has to be the the magazine's TABLE OF CONTENTS. It is strictly an INDEX PAGE but it's your job as a designer to keep it from being boring! Each 'story' or article available there (as a live link to another page), must have the most tantalizing fragments of reading with part of it a LIVE LINK, to get people to click on the page/article and go there.
Like "WANT MORE MONEY? Secrets of wealth are right here!"
See
how the sentence contains the live link, or URL? See how you can smell
the fragrance of the rose you are invited to grab? SO punctuate that with
a graphic!
If objects are what you're selling, paintings or jewelry, you should have a sampling of the best pieces. But it must have FURTHER SAMPLES TO SEE available by clicking so you'll go to your gallery, your jewelry box, etc.
It must not have ALL your merchandise visible,
like jewelry, paintings, graphic pictures or BOOKS FOR SALE or any signs
saying PURCHASE THIS HERE. No signs saying "Get your market cart ready",
Or "GO HERE TO BUY". NOTHING like that! Just little pretty samples of the
merchandise. People turn away when they get to your spot and there's
nothing interesting on that front page. Samples or visuals, or fragments
of the stories, the written merchandise there, beautiful art, gems, cute
graphics. When they walk into a store, the beauty or humor or livlieness
of what they offer is visible. You must be able to walk around that front
page and view things of riveting interest and not be bothered or hustled!
You want price tags on everything, in clear sight so you can grab or leave.
If you walk around for a long time looking at
interesting things, and they provoke, naturally you will later find a place
where you can buy and maybe click on that order blank. But you must, as
a visitor, be free to walk around for an hour staring, touching things,
or in a bookstore, reading things, without brushing arms with an avid salesgirl
and being told every second BUY here, PURCHASE here. It is inhuman, greedy,
repellant and will cause visitors to LEAVE. You must keep them there, and
keep fascinating them. So don't hustle the visitors!
Instead, the front page of your website MUST
HAVE beautiful, glittering, fascinating articles, offered up for reading.
This after all is what we offer on the NET. Info! And each picture must
have an UNDERSCORE saying, THIS BEAUTIFUL SeaMaiden
Anklet is 30$ from the MERMAID
LADY* Actually I don't sell bracelets. What I do is run a "HOW TO BE AN
INTERNATIONAL IMPORT/EXPORT CEO and DEVELOP DYNAMIC DESIGNS. " It's a free
seminar.
MAKE THEM WANT TO READ EVERY PARAGRAPH!
Each article must have a BULLET,
a one line description like: YOU
ALSO can MAKE JEWELRY LIKE THIS, Investigate
the SEA GLASS FINDERS CORPORATION
in MAUI, HAWAII, and then you give URLS. Or turn the corporation's name
into a LIVE LINK. I didn't as SEA GLASS doesn't exist yet. But if you're
near a beach, you start it! Get a tumbler from ROCK
&
GEM
magazine,
one of the best out...and start a beachcomber business.
Or if you have a MILLENIUM SURVIVAL WEBSITE, and I do... You'd feature an article with a formatted bullet: "HOW A MOUSE CAN BE COOKED SO THAT IT IS DELICIOUS AND NUTRITIOUS." and an URL inside it, maybe in the word 'MOUSE' And if they put their mouse on your mouse recipe, suddenly on bottom task bar they see a flash and they realize this is a LIVE LINK and these starving people in the future know they're gonna be tastin' that delicious mouse that tastes like bunny rabbit, exactly, and getting that weird recipe if they click! IMMEDIATE satisfaction.
Very important at luring clients is to keep them happy and dazzled and fascinated with what you have. And tickled as they see things revealed. Secrets, unknown info, revealed! HOW IN THE HELL DO YOU COOK A MOUSE? Well, I have a recipe. Write me at astrology@earthlink.net and I will actually provide you with a fantastic recipe in case this war torn country has hard times. Mice, as you know, are like rabbit. A white meat, totally delicious. Shepherd's pie is the way.
NEXT, you know how to create a sentence with a live link in it, don't you? Use the CHAIN LINK icon at screen top when DESIGNING your website! Website design is easy cuz it's in microsoft word which we all had loaded at the factory. It's also in netscape composer. On your browser. So use the chain link. It's that easy! So it's MOUSE-READY- PRE CLICKABLE, UNDERLINED IN BLUE, and that is obviously a live link.
MORE groovy stories. "HOW TO SURVIVE
a COMET even if it hits your side of the planet:"
SURVIVE IS UNDERLINED IN BLUE ergo it is a live
link and your reader's mouse reveals it is a LIVE LINK OR URL and they
can click and go there! EZ?
I visited a site recently and the main page was
all ads, buy this, add this to your shopping cart, etc. The website was
supposed to be about new age conspiracy theory. I became impatient. What
a junky site. I tried one other page there. I don't know why I did it,
cuz I no longer cared but it too was all ads. UNBELIEVEABLE! People are
DUMB. They don't realize that their PURE, ELEGANT PROFILE is all they need.
No penny a click crap.
JUST be a teacher. That money is enough. Make
bracelets, that income is enough.
OTHER WEBSITES ATTRACT TRAFFIC WITH EMPTY PROMISES. I went to this site that supposedly Google said, was about ALIENS. ALL ADS. I couldn't figure it out. So I right clicked on the page to view its CODING, its source and saw the meta words that they left embedded to attract the robot spiders that were coming from search engines. Well, these words "alien abductions, poisons in our foods, oligarchs stealing politicians, Comet due, REPTILIAN POLITICIANS, IMF policies that steal from the people etc.. THEY WERE WAAAY MORE INTERESTING THAN the WHOLE SITE! Yet nobody but a tekkie could see them!
So I wrote the web owner, "Sir, Why not have those divine and alluring words right in front! And each time a visitor CLICKS on a word, they go straight to a sample article. put the ad for the book at the end of the reading experience they will have at those pages. NOT on the front page. How simpleminded. You shot yourself in the foot and you didn't even know it!
Say to your tourist, your viewer, your visitor, "HOT INFO IS HERE ON SAUCERS in SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA." It links to an article with a first hand contactee experience, and THEN an ad for the book is at the end of that article. People are more likely to want to buy your book after they've seen that article, no? That article will tickle their fancy bigtime!So stroll them thru the shelves, picking up things, reading, touching the merchandise before you hit them with a sales clerk!
Then let me get back to the rest of the wonderful words I found in that list. BOUGHT POLITICIANS? My mind reels when I read a thing like that. It doesn't compute for me, the average viewer. So the website designer has to give a little more on the front front page. They hae to say this is what that means. OUR POLITICIANS ARE PAID OFF BY THE WEALTHIEST MEN IN AMERICA. That's a little better. meatier. More info-carrying. You put that statement there, I will click on that BLUE UNDERLINED PART which is the URL. Otherwise, 'bought politicos,' hell, what does that mean? One in twenty will click there, or be moved to do so.
Now if it says OLIGARCHS PAY POLITICOS and state how, Maybe I will click on it, but then, Mr.Designer, PUHLEEZE can I please go to an article that tells how the oil-o-garchs bought Bush Sr. and owned his ass ever since JFK got murdered? Way back when?
So website designers, USE that wonderful set of words you're offering spider robots. I know you thought it over carefully when you created it. You listed all the goodies you have, invisibly for robots to find, then forgot to put any of it on your front page for your visitors.
Every single word in that juicy list must have a live link to an article, an URL set right in that sentence like a diamond in a 24k setting. EVERY SINGLE WORD an article! FREE ARTICLES must be there. Can't you do that? Even if it's not the definitive article... just a smattering, then at end of article THEN you can say want to order book on this, GO HERE, And an URL that takes them to the shopping cart section, the order merchandise page, either separate or right on that page.
I actually wrote the guy with the spider robot
goodies but nothing for tourists and I told him, "sir, If your front web
page were a magazine it would have long since folded. It is dull. You have
ten to
twenty different books for sale and nothing to
make us buy them. USE articles that show how relevant this info is! How
important! Make it mysterious, exciting. This whole process is just like
meeting a gorgeous girl and having a first date. Being alone together
for the first few minutes. If it isn't a joytrip with the shared laugh,
the first sit down meal and then the first hand squeeze, well you can be
sure the kiss won't come. And if the kiss and squeeze do not come, why
would one go all the way and marry her and buy the book? YOU ARE IN THE
BUSINESS of making the date so hot with the first look, the first shared
laugh that he will proceed down the tunnel of love into the last little
room where THE WEDDING RING must be delivered to get her to lie down. I.E.
where you have the shopping cart located and expect someone to pay hard
money to get hold of something they desire!
So, NO MENTION of selling things in front. If you do, YOUR FRONT PAGE IS Pasadena. Overwith. Click and goodbye. Cuz honey? It's GREEDY AND DULL. Nobody buys the bride. Putting a graphic of a flying saucer and or a PYRAMID with an eye on top does not help it out. Been there, done that. But you gotta have the meat. WHERE's the BEEF? The article on how ALIENS are visiting us and can be called in by you!
It should be TICKLE. DELIVER. TICKLE.DELIVER. Nobody marries the girl when every interesting squeeze on a knob yields no thrill, no meat, no laughs, no response, no words, no ideas, nothing. I click on something provocative like the word ALIENS ARE VISITING and if what comes up is unreadable, a boring blurb trying to get me to buy this dry looking book on AREA 51 with NO tales of fascination, no INFO...I LEAVE. The idiot who did that site thinks he's getting hits. He doesn't learn. I don't get it. WHY waste time? HOW can you get lucky when every page is a turn off??? TURN THEM ON, INFORM, TEACH, MAKE THEM YOUR FRIENDS, later worry about selling something.
PUT AN ARTICLE on every single page, fully informational and then the sales pitch at the end of that passionate 'read,' Attempt to do these things and you will get rich, have property, orchard, pool, vacation home, boat. The basics for good living. Move into MERCANTILISM and you can become hugely rich.
OFFER SERVICES. OFFER INFORMATION. Even, though I hate it, offer a pamphlet with information for sale. I hate it as I'd rather just put the information on my website for free. But, I do have another gig going. I do your horoscope, your kid's birth chart, his destiny reading. Pick your marriage hour. Give you tricks to handle that relationship that's out of hand. I'm a modern day witch. So, some homework for you. Create a webpage. Study how to do it at webmonkeys . That's where my friend the RICH guerilla capitalist underground NEW YORK PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHER learned to do his websites. He cashes checks at the client's bank, keeps cash buried in a box under his roses in the garden. When he has l00thousand cash he's going to buy a barn in the Hudson River Valley and convert it. Grow apples, make his own wine. If he were paying taxes, if he were licensed, or if he had a brick and mortar studio, the landlords, city, county and state and NATIONAL government would have the mansions in the Valley, the vinyards. NOT HIM. As for medical coverage and Social Security. While he eats organically from his gardens and follows the PREVENT DISEASE PERMANENT LIFE REGIMEN, he will never need MEDICARE, HMO's or Social Security benefits down the line. So why let the gov drain him dry from now til the exit gate? Say it's 2020 and he's old? He rents one room at his farm to a single mother, he gets a housekeeper, gourmet cook and some rent money to pay his property taxes til he's old. And as he has no children, the housekeeper and her brood inherit the farm. Just a JESUS LIFE by my way of thinking. Doing good for the humble and poor. Some say 'oh give to the gov, they take care of everyone.' Lie. You pay into social security, you pay plenty and they're making us pay for HMO's each person adult or child will be paying 1300$ a month into their prepaid HMO by mandate. Fail to pay you get fined. See page where I collect NEWS on this: THE HEALTH CARE INDEX.
OR THERE IS ANOTHER GREAT WEBTRAINING SITE
HOW TO MAKE AN ANNOYING WEBSITE:
http://users.nac.net/falken/annoying/common.html
VERY USEFUL as it teaches you to scorn all the gizsmos offered in WEB
DESIGN SOFTWARE!
GO SIMPLE
How about a WEB TUTORIAL MADE FOR CHILDREN -- google those search terms to find the newest. Web Monkey used to have one. I believe the name was sold though. But google around and you can let the kids make you your website! You can always polish off any rough edges, later, if the kid will teach you how!
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