Is your website getting great traffic? Are pageviews and other metrics improving or stable? How many pages does the average visitor read on your site? If the answers to these questions are negative, you need to find ways to boost page views and increase website traffic immediately.

More pageviews means more opportunity to advertise products & services.

There are a few ways you can improve your website’s pageviews. These tips are not blackhat or unethical in anyway. They’re simple solutions that become force multipliers.

With the expense and time involved in driving raw visitors to your site, you need fixes and updates that can be done once and allow your site to capitalize on it’s user base overtime.

Increases in page views can greatly increase income or even jump start earnings where there weren’t any. What usually stimulates multiple page views is relevancy. The more specific and targeted a website, or section of a website is, the more likely there will be a click on a similar page. It’s instinctive and impulsive for highly related pages to have an appeal to users.

Interlinking, popular pages and related pages

Always link to other pages within the body of your content. If this is a blog or article type site, and the site is highly targeted, there will be plenty of opportunity to link to related pages within the paragraphs. This is called interlinking and is pretty much common practice among the pros.

Related pages can be displayed just below the article or somewhere close to the main content of the page. These pages must be similar in topic to the current page’s content but with a slightly different focus. This will take advantage of users who are generally interested in the broader topic.

Popular pages, especially for article sites, can be displayed on a sidebar or footer area. This is a great way to drive hits to already successful pages. I would recommend having a tabbed box on the sidebar with one tab for popular pages and another for Editor favorites. This is great for promoting pages with lower page views. If it’s a simple corporate site, then a main nav is a must on all pages.

If there is sparse opportunity for interlinking, try displaying small summaries of current pages on the sidebar, footer or header areas with a link to read more. This will work great for services, testimonials and other rich content pages.

RSS Feeds & Other Syndication Channels

To draw the user back to your site, display a synopsis of articles in RSS feeds and make the user click to view the full article on your site. This is not recommended if you are tracking RSS views and have RSS ads.

When syndicating entire articles, making sure the links within the body has an absolute URL. This means that the entire domain is included in the link. If this is not in place, then links will point to the current syndication site or simply be dead.

Other types of syndication includes content scrapers, article directories, product databases, etc. The main thing here is making sure your inner article links are in place and pointing to your site. You also want to make sure that there is proper attribution with a link back to your home page.

Member Profiles, Author Profile and About Page

Your site may have a good amount of steady users and participators. Require membership for social interactions and give a profile with a backlink as a benefit. This allows you to get additional content for your site that’s user driven. This will greatly increase page views.

The same for Authors, if there is more than one author, allow profiles and make them public. As for the About page, that’s like the profile for the website. Create a great about page. You will be surprised that a large portion of users read the about page intently. Use it to highlight content, and link to that content.

Categories List, Archives and Search Form

3 of the most powerful ways to increase pageviews is with an easy to access categories list, archives list and a search form. These make it easy for users to find the content they’re interested in, thereby increasing site traffic.

A categories list is the lazy mans search. All content is neatly arranged and users can find something their interested in within seconds. Place this on the side bar or a separate page for maximum effect. Usually blogs will have a link to the category the post is in. Utilize this built in feature to increase hits to that category.

Take it a step further and provide an archives list that’s well presented, and arranged by date. This will compliment the categories list and drive pageviews up. Put the archives on the sidebar or a separate page like the categories.

Another very useful item is a search form (and technology to accompany). Most blog software have search technology built in. Utilize this to satisfy users with immediate needs. The search form should be clearly visible and provide a clean, easy to read list of results.

Social postings, Sharing, Emailing a Friend

Use Facebook, Twitter and other social networks to spread the word about your business. Post about every new article or page on twitter. Chat about casual related information and offer promotions on Facebook.
Use share and like buttons. Every time someone clicks one of those buttons, there entire friends list can see a post about your page. This also applies to email a friend buttons. People love sharing content, encourage them to.

Conclusion

There are many ways to boost pageviews without spending more time or money driving raw hits. Provide links to other content and especially if it’s related to the content the user is reading. Syndicate your content and let other websites promote your pages.

Make sure to add links to older pages, popular pages and user profiles. Also social buttons and interactions will increase website traffic because this is part of the search algorithm now.

5 Ways to Increase Website Traffic by Boosting Pageviews is a post from: WebDevStar.com | © WebDevStar.com

Too many people rush into the development of their website without any initial planning. I will offer some advice and insight into the way you prepare your goals for a website setup project.

The first thing you need to consider is demand. What kind of demand is there for what your website will be offering. This is called the market. Rarely does a new company create a market for their product or services. Most enter an already established market where others have proven success. You will want to spend some time researching and tweaking your offerings to match.

The next thing to take into account is promotion. How will you promote the site. Do you have an advertising budget? If you don’t, do you have the time or man power to do free promotions? Think seriously about this, because it will make a any top notch site fail miserably or achieve great success. You have to promote it. You will often not get free love from search engines. If you do, then the market you chose above is seriously under served.

Another thing to consider is site features. Please do not think that all the fancy buttons and slick sliders is what has to be on a site. Think practically about what your visitors will need to do to convert for you. Adding filler features may do more harm than good. Often it’s the users that will request certain features added to a site. Only then will you truly know what they want. Weigh that against what you want and come to some kind of balance that benefits both parties.

Now this is not nearly the complete list of things to consider before website development starts. But they are the core of the pre plan faze and spending some time on this will only help you towards your ultimate goal of having a successful online business.

How to Pre Plan a Website Before Development is a post from: WebDevStar.com | © WebDevStar.com

User Interface Design refers to the production of the system Users will interact with. This can be a website, a content management system, applications, software, wireless devices and more.

I will cover 5 common mistakes website developers make when designing the user’s system. Although this topic is extensive with many advance principles, I will try to cover these mistakes generally when related to website design. Principles for software and physical gadgets will not be touched on in this guide. After identifying problem areas I will outline several improvement techniques you can use to increase usability on your website.

Navigation

The navigation of your website is difficult to understand. Various items are not related or collated properly and seems jumbled. Users are often frustrated when moving through the site and bump up to screens they didn’t expect. Often there is a learning curve which increases demand for support.

Labels & Messages

Labels are confusing. success and error messages are vague and not informative enough. Users don’t understand what is being asked or what is being stated. They are stuck making guesses about what just happened or have to take a risk when moving through screens. This makes users feel like they have no control.

Color Schemes

The screen is hard to look at and strain the eyes. The background color is too bright or the text doesn’t stand out enough. The color combination seem ugly and displeasing. Indicators and sections are not properly marked and distinguishable.

Simplicity of Use

Users find it difficult to get to the areas they want. Often moving through several screens and moving back and forth to complete a simple task. The system is hard to learn or understand even after several visits. There are no quick routs to important and commonly used areas. There are also no apparent guiding instructions or labels.

Misuse Considerations

When a user makes a mistake there is no recovery or fallback options. Double clicking on payment buttons create double charges or create duplicate entries. Sometimes the use of a character throws the whole system off or causes warnings. The abandonment of forms for previous screens is almost impossible. The system locks up with hyper movement through screens.

These are 5 common mistakes Developers make when creating a User Interface. It is important that these problems are addressed before production begins. Understanding how your system will be employed by your users is critical to success.

Next I will expand on these points and provide some solutions to help improve the overall usability of your website or web application.

How to improve usability of a website, have happy users and increase revenues.

The point of a good design is to make the interface easy to use and fulfill the users needs. Moving through your website or web application screens should be simple. Using the system should not be difficult or leave a person frustrated. The movement from one item to another should be logical and almost predictable. The physical layout should conform to Western standards; that is text is done from left to right and top to bottom.

When designing the navigational structure of your application, several considerations must be taken. The movement of the users as they go from one screen to the next. This is called flow. Drawing a flow diagram will allow you to visualize the necessary steps a user must take to fulfill the use of the system correctly. Build the navigation in a way that directs the user from one item to the next. Group similar options together and enforce a Hierarchy or separation of controls. Clearly defining main sections from subsections. It it also important that the navigation options are easy to see and use.

This leads into design of the labels and messages. When something happens based on the users input, give some sort of signal that it was a successful change or an error occurred. These signals must be properly communicated and fully understood by the user. All items must be properly labeled so the user knows where they are in the program. This entails not just adding labels and messages, but making it clear and not vague.

As for color choices, this is usually obvious but mistakes are common. Colors should contrast or balance each other. Dark background demands light text, and dark text needs light backgrounds. Some people may have problems seeing colors, in this case another way of making colored items stand apart is critical. One set of colors should be used through out the site. This helps maintain consistency.

Making commonly used and important tasks easy to complete, navigate to and understand will effect the overall ease of use of your system. Menus and screens should be logically presented and predictable to some degree. Guides and instructions must be presented for complex transactions between the user and the system. And also simplification of forms and multi-screen processes.

If a user should make a mistake there should be an attempt to provide the ability to undo changes. Double clicks should be suppressed and ignored unless intended otherwise. There must be some advance filtering of input data to reject special characters that may throw an error or produce undesirable results. Users often abandon forms and try to go back to the previous screens. This must be allowed to some degree, but not forgetting security considerations. Sometimes a user will hyper surf, jumping from screen to screen above normal speeds. Some kind of cache should be in effect to reduce server loads for screens previously loaded in the same session.

This is just a general overview of how to improve your User Interface design. Make it easy to use, easy to understand and this will improve usability. Consider the user and their movements through the system. Provide clear labels and messages and provide a fail safe for misuse.

User Interface Design Improvements in 5 Critical Areas is a post from: WebDevStar.com | © WebDevStar.com