The bigger the heading, the more important it is

Are you using headings effectively on your website? Over at buildInternet,  Zach Dunn has written a quick article about how to use the HTML Header Tags properly for headings. Header tags are numbered starting at 1, with h1 being the biggest and most important. He created the great graphic above, and you should read his article here.

A newspaper is a classic example of heading hierarchy. The name of the newspaper is biggest, boldest, and at the top of the front page. Then, a bit smaller in size is the front page main story’s heading. And the other stories have smaller headings – the smaller the heading, the shorter and less important the story appears to be.

I’ve added arrows and boxes to this photo of a newspaper’s front page to illustrate the point.

Headings in a newspaper

If this newspaper was a website, the headings in the newspaper would follow this hierarchy:

H1 – White

H2 – Yellow

H3 – Orange

H4 – Blue (same size as orange but not bold)

H5 – Green

If you look at this website below, you’ll see that the headings get smaller for each subsection:

Website headings

Is your site very user-friendly for your visitors? Do you have your information neatly organized under proper headings and subheadings?

More resources on headings/headers:

Variety in Heading and Body Fonts

Optimal HTML Headings for Proper Information Hierarchy in WordPress Blogs

You find yourself at a website that looks interesting, but just not completely trustworthy.

But you’re worried about handing over your email address in order to get the download link. If you sign up for the freebie, by default you also end up subscribing to their mailing list. You already get enough spam, and who knows how much junk will flood your inbox if you enter your email address and click that shiny ‘Subscribe’ button?

The answer is to use a free throw-away email address from 10 Minute Mail. It’s your email inbox’s new best friend. The email address lasts only just long enough for you to get your download link. If you like the special report enough, you can would then feel safe enough to subscribe to the site’s eZine or RSS feed. If it’s a load of doggy poop, at least you haven’t sacrificed your inbox to the spam gods.

BUT…

What if you’re one of those website owners who use a downloadable freebie as an enticement to subscribe to your eZine? Isn’t the disposable email address your bitterest enemy? Are you hating me for recommending a service like 10 Minute Mail? Please don’t. I have some tips for you (and for myself, as I plan on doing exactly this).

1. Make sure your website projects a polished and professional image. Avoid the common web design mistakes. I’m thinking along the lines of multi-colored text, yellow highlighting, and lots of exclamation marks and gratuitous emphasis!!! But simple things like not using enough ‘white space’ in your layout – especially around the margins, choosing hard-to-read fonts, and cramping up the elements on your page also hurts. Look as professional and trustworthy online as you are in ‘real life’.
2. Under-promise and over-deliver. Avoid sounding too hyped-up and ‘too-good-to-be-true’ in your content. Be specific and truthful about what you have to offer.
3. Convince your visitors that your eZine is also a fantastic resource, not just a sacrifice they have to make to get your freebie. Your visitor should believe that signing up for the freebie plus the eZine is a double blessing (rather than dreading that the eZine is the ugly old chaperone that puts a real damper on your date with the drop-dead gorgeous super-model).
4. Include links to your website and to your eZine subscription form in your freebie. It should be a ‘standalone’ marketing tool in its own right. Not only could your visitors use a service like 10 Minute Mail to avoid getting your eZine, but subscribers who really enjoyed the freebie might pass it around to their friends (that would be a great thing – it’s called ‘viral marketing’), and bypass the subscription process. You want to make it easy for them to get on your subscriber list now that they feel safe enough to do so.

I know of a success coach who tried to stop people from passing around his free eBooks because he wanted everyone to subscribe to his eZine first. He made a point of saying that if you shared the free eBooks with your friends, you were engaging in copyright violation and piracy.

I reckon he shot himself in the foot. Who wants to email their friends a link to a subscription form instead of just sending the PDF file? I’d feel embarrassed.

Encourage people to spread your freebies around – just make sure your freebie brings people to your site and persuade them that your eZine will be genuinely useful and interesting to them.

What do you think?

Negative headlines arouse curiosity

Here’s a great article about writing compelling headlines…

It’s the reason people love NASCAR and read National Enquirer.

We don’t want to admit it. We’re not supposed to feel that way. But secretly buried, deep down inside, we all want a front row seat to the wipe out of the season.

Read the whole story at copyblogger.com/train-wreck-blogging/

photo credit: hyperscholar

When you make spelling/grammar mistakes on your website, you risk annoying your visitors (at least the ones like me who actually care about spelling and grammar). You lose credibility. And that results in lost sales when your prospects click away and go elsewhere.

Here is a great set of tips from Copyblogger…

Do You Make These Mistakes When You Write? | Copyblogger

And just for fun, here is a paragraph that makes all those mistakes. Can you spot them?

You and myself both don’t want to loose credibility online. Your website should of been different than other peoples. If I could of, I would of written my copy, two new posts and hired an editor, e.g. someone who proofread’s, last weekend.

photo credit: davitydave

Can You Write an (Almost) Unbelievable Headline? | Copyblogger

photo credit: gruntzooki

“[Our beta testers] would sit in front of the Google screen for 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 45 seconds, a minute…Google was perplexed.”

Interested in what the problem was and how easily it was fixed? Read the article:

What You Never Noticed About Google

If you have been creating web content for many years, you must know the tricks of the trade, and must be able to craft extraordinary content with just a little effort. But, if you have just started and you are relatively new in the world of creating web content, you might be writing content that screams, “I suck!”’

Read the whole article at: How To Write Web Content That Does Not Suck

photo credit: plugimi