Archive for February 11th, 2008

February 11th, 2008
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Special Report: The Top 7 Critical Mini-Site Design Mistakes…

From: The Desk of Jim Edwards
Re: Special Report

"The Top 7 Critical Mini-Site Design Mistakes Marketers Make…  and (More Importantly) How to Avoid Them"

Why should you listen to me when it comes to "mini" sites?

Well, here are the facts…

I’ve made hundreds of money-making mini-sites on everything from
- real estate… to
- mortgages… to
- typing tutorials… to
- self-improvement… to
- chihuahua potty training… to
- back pain… to
- Legal help… to
- Acne… to
- Writers and authors… to
- Self-Defense… to
- Video gaming… AND MORE

I’ve evaluated thousands of mini-sites (many of them terrible – but some of them killer)…

I’ve made millions with simple 1-page and 2-page mini-sites…

I’ve built up 250,000+ targeted subscribers using 1-page and 2 page mini-sites…

I’ve been the TOP affiliate for launches like John Reese’s "Traffic Secrets" and Ryan Deiss’s "30 Days To 10K" launches using mini-sites…

In short, I know what the hell I’m talking about and can prove it about when it comes to designing mini-sites that make money and pull subscribers like a Kirby vacuum on steroids!

Mistake #1 – Butchering Fonts

Let’s just jump right in… Mistake Number 1 that I see marketers making is that they absolutely butcher fonts. 

What I mean by butchering fonts is actually a four pointer. 

a.   The first point is that people use too many font styles on the same page. 

You will see this when you’re looking at pages where people are showing 50 different banners on one site and it’s like they get drunk with their ability to manipulate fonts. 

You see people with Arial, Times New Roman, Jester, Impact, Antigone and all these different fonts that other people may or may not have on their own computer (but you see them using all these different fonts in the same paragraph). 

It’s like they went and got a bottle of Jack Daniels and just got drunk with their new-found power to change fonts. 

The best thing you can do is choose one font style for the main headline and the sub-headlines.  I personally like an Arial-style font.  (That seems to work best for me as far as headlines go.)

Then you want to choose one font style for your body text.  I personally prefer to use a Times New Roman type font, though I have used Helvetica in the past. 

b.   The other mistake I see people making with butchering fonts is that they have too many different font colors on the same page and it looks, for lack of a better phrase, like the circus came to town when you open up their webpage. 

Keep it simple!  As far as colors go, keep it really simple and really basic. 

The consistent color that I see for the main headline is either navy blue, black or red. 

Those seem to be the colors that work the best. 

Then for sub-headlines, the colors I see that work best are royal blue or navy blue. 

For body text, pretty much without exception, the color that you should use in your body text is black. 

With very few exceptions, (I can’t really think of any) your text should appear black on a white background. 

c.   Now, if you need to put emphasis on a word or set of words, either use bold or use italics but try not to use both. 

All these rules are not 100 percent hardened fact (sometimes I break them). 

However, if you do bold italics, especially in a Times-type font, you’re going to have what I call “hairy letters” or “fuzzy letters” and they start looking jagged. 

The other thing you don’t want to do very often is to underline text. 

Make sure if you underline some words that people aren’t sitting there whacking that text thinking that it’s a clickable link. 

Another way to put emphasis on a word or a set of words (again, there are exceptions, but, typically you wouldn’t do this with a whole paragraph.) is to use a yellow highlighter. 

One of the things that people have been taught is that yellow highlighter is something on a printed page that’s very important. 

So, you can use yellow highlighter very effectively to really emphasize a point or to draw somebody’s attention to a specific point. 

But, be very careful not to overdo it… if you overdo any of this stuff… if you overdo the bold, or the italics, or the highlighter… if you overuse them… they will totally lose their impact. 

d.   The other thing that I see people doing as far as butchering fonts is using too many different font sizes. 

When they do their first sales letter they think that if 36-point font is good, than 72-point font is even better!

You’ve come upon those websites before with text six inches high and only one word screaming out at you. 

Typically your main headline is either large or extra large font size. 

It’s not a specific point size, but rather it is a relative size to the other sizes of fonts. Typically, that large or extra large corresponds to a 24 or a 36-point type equivalent. 

Then for your sub-headlines those font sizes are typically somewhere between 14 and 18-point font. 

The most important thing to remember is consistency. 

A sub-headline looks like a sub‑headline all the way through. (As opposed to a sub-headline in one spot that is huge and red and in another spot it’s small and green and in another spot it’s medium and blue.)  That interrupts the flow of people’s thinking and they get caught up in how the message gets delivered rather than concentrating on the message itself. 

Then your body text should be either medium or small. 

 (That corresponds if you were in Word, to something around a 10 to 12-point type size font.) So, again, main headline – large or extra large. Sub-headline – large. Body text – medium to small. 

Another thing that you need to do is pay attention to link colors. 

I try to keep my link colors blue and blue underlined. 

The reason for that is because the vast majority of people who have been on the web for more than about a day understand that a blue underlined word is normally a clickable link. 

So why do I want to try and retrain them on my website and make them guess as to what they should click?  My advice to you is to always use blue underlined links, (text links) to represent a clickable link. 

If you decide you want to do something else, that’s up to you. 

No matter what you do make sure your links are consistent all the way through your site so that if it looks like a link… it is a link.  If they click it, something happens. 

You don’t want people guessing if something is a link or not. 

So that’s mistake number 1, on butchering fonts. 

 

Mistake #2 – The “Tweaker” Syndrome

I will admit being guilty of this one. 

This is what I call the “Tweaker” syndrome… for those of us who like to tweak stuff. 

The “Tweaker” syndrome is when somebody gets hung up fiddling with something that was good enough two hours (or two days ago) and yet they keep tweaking it.  They keep fiddling with it and they get bogged down. 

I can be really guilty of this when it comes to the multimedia audio and video. 

But, once I figure out how to do something that works, then I don’t tweak it anymore. 

"Tweaking" stuff is a really big trap! 

Now, I’m not talking about figuring out how to make something work… all of us spend that initial time getting oriented and learning how to do certain things. 

But, once you know how to do something you don’t have to spend 15 minutes messing around with it. 

Always look for the simplest solution. 

Don’t fall into the trap of trying to find the most exotic, or the sexiest thing that you can find to get something done. 

If a simple link… or a simple graphic… or a simple whatever will do the job; do not look for a more complicated solution. 

All you’ll is waste time trying to make that work when the simple thing would have worked a long time ago.

The other thing people do is get caught up in the minutia of something little instead of keeping their eye on the big picture of why they’re putting the Mini-Site together in the first place. 

And, again, I will admit to being guilty of this. 

I remember spending an entire day fiddling around with a java script that eventually I couldn’t figure out.  It was a script.  I ended up wasting a whole day trying to get that script done. 

I couldn’t do it and I ended up hiring somebody on E-lance for $10.00 who ended up getting it done in 15 minutes! 

The big thing to remember is any time you find yourself fiddling around or getting bogged down with something that’s only a teeny, tiny part of the overall picture, you need to stop in place and ask yourself:

  • “Is this just me screwing around with something because it’s something that I’m going to screw around with?"  Or,
  • "Is this something I could put aside and even if I don’t come back to it, or if I bypass it completely, will that allow me to get the project done much faster?"  Or,
  • "Could I hire somebody for ten bucks to do this for me and save myself 8 to 12 hours’ worth of time?” 

What you don’t want is to end up wasting a whole evening or a whole week on something that didn’t require all that time and even if it didn’t get done, wouldn’t affect the project overall. 

So be careful with graphics or wanting to get anything else "just right." 

Another place where you’ll get into problems with tweaking, especially once you start doing this for a while, is with java scripts. 

You’re better off paying somebody at E-lance ten bucks to install those rather that than trying to do it yourself. 

The same goes for web scripts. 

Again, you’ll hear about PERL scripts and PHP scripts and things like mail forms. 

One of the things I see coming down the pike right now are these interactive sales letters. 

But, I can tell you right now the average webmaster doesn’t need to fiddle around with that stuff because it’s an extra bell and whistle that in most cases you could do just as well without… ESPECIALLY when you’re just getting started into a market and trying to find signs of life.

So be careful of the latest, greatest trend or the latest, greatest script that is going to take you from having to put up a fast Mini-Site with a sales letter (or something like that) and turn it into this ordeal where you’re having to come up with ten different versions of your sales letter. 

Just be really careful of anything like that that requires endless tweaking and endless fiddling. 

The end run objective here, with Mini-Sites especially, is to set things up that run on autopilot. 

If you have things you must endlessly tweak and fiddle with, then all you’re doing is creating needless work for yourself. 

In the end it’s going to cost you a lot of money and time and probably won’t return the amount of money and time you invested. 

So the bottom line here is to keep it simple!  Once something works well enough…  leave it alone! 

Once you’ve got a Mini-Site that’s working mechanically, don’t mess with it!  Stop fiddling with it because honestly, bottom line, most people who are “tweaking” stuff or endlessly fiddling around with one little thing are using it as an excuse to avoid getting down to the real business at hand of making money with their Mini-Site. 

They’re using the fact “I worked all weekend on this script” to avoid getting anything done.

Well, yeah, they worked all weekend screwing around with this one thing and they use that as an excuse for not driving traffic to the site. 

It’s just an excuse.  You want to keep stuff simple, get it up, and keep it running. 

Well, I have beaten that one to death. 

 

Mistake #3 – Lack of Focus or a Consistent Theme in the Site’s Content

The mistake I see most webmasters making is a total lack of focus or a consistent theme in the site’s content. 

Here’s the bottom line, folks…

A Mini-Site is about one topic and it is aimed at one target audience. 

A Mini-Site is not a portal site where you’re trying to be all things to all people like Yahoo. 

I mean, Yahoo’s got finance, it’s got dating, it’s got personals, it’s got search, it’s got every kind of list under the sun. 

They’re trying to be everything and a Mini-Site is the complete and total opposite to that. 

It is one thing to one specific group of people. 

Now, the best example of a Mini-Site, (And the one you are probably the most familiar with) is the one-page sales letter. 

The one-page sales letter has one purpose and one purpose only… To get people to buy.  And it’s aimed at one specific audience. 

An example of a sales letter Mini-Site’s purpose would be to sell an e-book. 

Anything that doesn’t contribute directly to selling that e-book is not needed. 

That goes for everything from text and graphics to other things you can put on it… Multimedia, MP3s, any of that stuff. 

As soon as you start looking at the Mini-Site mindset like that, you realize that a lot of the things that you see on sites, (especially when you can tell they were done by somebody who doesn’t know what they were doing) a lot of things they think will help them make a sale will actually keeping them from making a sale. 

So, it’s important to always have a specific laser focus on your purpose for your Mini-Site. 

Then you’ve got to keep all the content on that site focused on that one specific purpose… which is to get people to take the action that you want.

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