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Studies done by Jakob Nielson the man touted as the, “King of usability” by Internet Magazine showed that people do not read on the web like they would normally read offline.

So what does this mean to you and why should you care?

Visitors to your web sites are in a rush, they want the information you promised and they want it NOW.

If they don’t get the information they want they will leave and this means you lose the sale, the opt-in or whatever action you want the visitor to take while at your site.

The following 3 tips will help you give your visitors what they want and in a way that will increase your web sites usability.

1. Concise Text

By keeping your paragraphs down to one single idea you can help speed up how your visitor absorbs your information.

For example, instead of:

“In today’s market place many people tend to become overwhelmed with the over hyped and highly charged writing that most web sites employ to gain visitors business. This causes people to be turned off by the sites language and ultimately they will click the back button on their browser and leave.”

Why not say,

“Today more than ever people are turned off by over hyped marketing language of websites they visit and because of this frustration they will end up leaving your site.”

See how that short, to the point paragraph says the same thing but quicker?

Go through your home page first and take out long, multiple thought paragraphs and edit them down to be precise. One idea per paragraph once you finish your thought (in 3-4 lines) start another paragraph.

2. Scannable Text

Web site users do not read online text. They scan it.

Use short bold text, for example in the form of a hyperlink, to make important information stick out from the page.

Bullet lists are an invaluable tool as well. Put your important sets of words in bullets. For example instead of,

“You will learn how to create your own web site, design pages that load faster, pick the right color scheme, and improve your sites navigation.”

Use this,

“You will learn:

How to create your own web site

Design pages that load faster

Pick the right color scheme

And improve your sites navigation.”

Use Subheadings through out the page.

As you go through your pages pick out the important points and put them in heading tags. Heading 2 and 3 work the best but the heading 1 tag will also work.

This will break the page up for the reader and they will be able to get the information they want simply by scanning your pages.

3. Be Objective

Far to many web sites are “me” oriented. In other words your site is about making money for you and you want your visitor to stay at your site and buy from you.

So what do you do?

You force them to stay at your site even if they are not interested in your product or service any longer.

Doing this only serves to damage your reputation and cause visitors to leave with a bad taste in their mouth.

Being objective means putting links to other related sites through out your web pages and allowing the visitor the free will to either stay at your site or leave and find the information they are looking for somewhere else.

In the end this is not a bad thing because you, as the site owner, can direct them to the sites you want them to go to.

However, seeding your pages with a bunch of recommendations to other sales sites is not the smartest way to do this.

Offer them free information along with sites that you receive compensation from as well.

This way you are being objective and offering your visitor valuable information they can use at the same time.

In Conclusion

Take a few days and walk through your web site and find the long paragraphs and make them more concise.

Bold important text, create subheadings for extremely important points and create more bullet lists where needed.

Finally, add more out bound links to your information and show them you are objective and care about their needs.

Internet users are getting tired of the hype and they are speaking out with their browser’s back button.

By taking the time to make these changes you will improve your sites usability and your visitors will thank you for it by doing business with you.

About the author:
Jason Mann is a profitability consultant for online businesses who specializes in finding untapped profit areas and showing business owners how to increase their revenues by tapping these unseen resources. For more web business articles visit: http://www.majorprofitmargins.info

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Let’s face the facts!

Almost everyone online today is looking to make or save a buck any way they can. In the past, most of the people who clicked on your affiliate links used to purchase without a second thought… but, as times get tougher online, it seems a growing number won’t!

As money gets tighter and product prices rise, people who know how to manipulate the system will sometimes replace your affiliate ID with theirs and “hijack” your commissions.

Here’s an example:

Let’s say your affiliate link is www.ebookaboutcats.com/?live-well.

Say the highjacker uses the affiliate ID of captain-hook. What he would do is replace your ID with his, and buy from the URL www.ebookaboutcats.com/?captain-hook.

The bottom line: the hijacker puts your money in his pocket.

In other cases, they can’t stand the thought of you “making money off them” so they bypass you by simply chopping off the end of your affiliate link that contains your ID.

Instead of buying from www.ebookaboutcats.com/?live-well, the bypasser will simply “chop off” the affiliate ID at the end and simply buy from the plain URL www.ebookaboutcats.com –without your affiliate ID attached!

Either way, you get cheated out of your rightful commission.

To help you fight these affiliate link hijackers I offer a couple of my best (proven and battle tested) tips, which will at least confuse these “hijackers” and, in many cases, often defeat and disarm them completely.

Side Note: If someone really, really wants to steal your affiliate commission, they will find a way; however, most hijackers are just opportunists who will only act if they see an easy buck.

The first and cheapest way to hide your affiliate links is using a javascript redirect page. This is where you hide your affiliate link in a page on your site using a simple javascript that redirects people to your affiliate link.

It works great not to expose your “naked” affiliate link in your actual email messages and ezine ads, but, once people get redirected to the true affiliate link, many affiliate programs expose the affiliate link along with your ID in the browser address bar.

Here’s an example of a redirect script in action. Click => http://www.ebookfire.com/esejs.html

Notice how the link takes you to a page where you can see my affiliate ID, ebookfire, in your web browser’s address bar.

Like it or not, someone can replace my ID with theirs and “hijack” the commission… but at least the redirect script keeps them from immediately seeing my “naked” affiliate link (http://hop.clickbank.net/?ebookfire/ebksecrets) when I publish it in my newsletter, email, or on my website.

You can get free redirect scripts just about anywhere you find free javascripts. Here is the script I use http://www.ebookfire.com/jrs.shtml.

A better way to hide your affiliate links is using a zero-frame or “invisible” frame that masks the affiliate link by making it appear you are sending people to a page on your website. In reality, you are actually sending them to your affiliate link.

This is the technique used by those “sub-domain” redirect services that provide you with urls like http://ese.ebookfire.net.

While giving someone a link like that is much better than using a “naked” affiliate link such as http://hop.clickbank.net/?ebookfire/ebksecrets, there is a problem. As soon as someone does a “view >> source” in their web browser they’ll see your naked affiliate link plain as day… which instantly blows your cover!

Currently the best way to protect your affiliate commissions from ruthless hijackers is to use a combination of a zero- frame page along with URL encryption. This involves sending someone to URL that looks like a page on your site, but actually pulls in your affiliate link like those “sub- domain” services. However, there’s one critical difference…

If someone does a “view >> source” in their browser, you have added protection in that all they will see is a jumble of computer code instead of your naked affiliate link.

Check out this example of a zero-frame with URL encryption in action. Click => http://www.ebookfire.com/ese.html

Side Note: Beware of cloaking scripts that use javascript to mask your affiliate link because they could malfunction in some web browsers.

Here’s the bottom line: if you are going to sell through other people’s affiliate programs, never send a “naked” affiliate link… you’re just asking for people to hijack or bypass you if you do.

If you want to get paid more often through your affiliate links, make sure it’s not obvious you’re referring people to an affiliate link. If they can’t easily see how to hijack or bypass your link, a lot more people who would have taken the money out of your pocket will just go ahead and buy through your link - which is, after all, the whole point!

Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the co-author of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how to use fr^e articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website or affiliate links…

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