William Charlwood

If you are running Google AdWords campaigns you may want to know what a good CTR  or Click Through Rate is for your ads.

The answer will depend on a number of factors. First if there is little competition in your niche so that few other advertisers are showing ads then your click through rate is obviously going to be higher than in an area where there are loads of ads showing.

Second, it will depend on where you ad is ranking. An AdWords ad in the first position is almost bound to attract a higher CTR than an ad that ranks in 7th position.

As a guideline I like my ads to get at least a 2% CTR (meaning that for every hundred impressions it gets 2 clicks) but of course the critical thing is the profitability of the clicks. I’d rather have a 1% CTR and be profitable than a 5% CTR and be losing money.

As with many aspects of AdWords, whenever you change one aspect of your Campaign there will be side effects. Increasing the bid price is highly likely to increase you ranking and thus increase your CTR. And the converse applies too.

One thing to bear in mind with CTRs though is that by using strong copywriting skills to write AdWords ads that get the clicks, you can afford to let you ranking drop by reducing your bid price because a well-written ad will naturally attract more attention than a poorly written one.

I bought XSitePro version 1 ages ago and found it to be an excellent website designer, publisher and content management program. I bought XSitePro2 about 2 months ago the day it was released and have been using it ever since because it is so easy and simple.

But I am very conscious that you don’t just want to read a sales pitch about a new product so instead I thought I’d set out the key features of the product so that you can decide if it can help you in your own AdSense business.

1. It comes with a vast range of high quality templates that you  can edit. This means that if you want to start a new site fast you can without hunting around for graphics. The templates are grouped into sales pages, article pages, graphical, stylish” and “blank” or plain.
2. You add content to your site simply by typing or by pasting it in. The interface is WYSIWYG so what you see on screen is what your site will look like.
3. It AUTOMATICALLY builds 3 site maps for you: One is alphabetical, the second is in page order, the third is actually a Google Sitemap which is a nasty XML page that Google uses to make sure that all your pages appear in its index (This gives you a much better chance of having your pages show up in searches.)  XsitePro helps you submit this page to Google as well.
4. It lets you add AdSense to any page with just 3 clicks. The code is then installed for you.
5. If you want to add AUDIO or VIDEO to your pages it is very easy – you just follow the in-built wizard which takes audio or video files and uploads them to your web server automatically and generates control buttons such as Play, and Fast Forward that appear on your site.  You can also specify whether these videos or audios should start playing when the page loads or when the viewer clicks the play button.I tested this feature last night and in literally 2 minutes had both a video and an audio on a web page complete with controls. Stunningly easy.
6. It includes an automatic Search Engine Optimisation system that products page by page reports that tell you exactly   what you need to do to optimise your pages to get them ranked well.
7. It includes READABILITY scorers that tell you whether you have written copy that is too difficult for people to understand if they are in a hurry.
8. It includes wizards to help you build smart looking subscription forms.
9. It includes scripts that let you generate real time date and time displays, future dates and so on.
10. It includes scripts that make it easy for your visitors to print a page or add it to their bookmarks
11. It includes scripts to PASSWORD PROTECT pages.
12. It includes an interactive and helpful(!) HELP manual
13. It generates a MOBILE version of your website automatically. If you think how common it is becoming for people to view web pages on their mobiles now you’ll see how significant this is.
14. It lets you include global scripts on all pages. These are scripts such as the Google Analytics script that you want to include everywhere. By adding a global script to your site XSitePro2 will automatically place it in every page  on your site.
15. It includes an AFFILIATE WIZARD. This lets you set up and store information about affiliate programs you are a member of so that to add an affiliate link to a phrase or image on a new page is a single click.
16. Do you want some GRAPHICS like arrows,guarantee logos, credit card logos etc, or do you want some designer text boxes? They are all included and take a click or two to add to your site.
17. Ever wanted to add an RSS feed to your site so that you get continually updated content but didn’t know how to do it? with XSitePro2 it takes about 10 seconds. Click the page, select RSS Feed Wizard and follow the instructions. Dead easy.

Seriously, there are loads of excellent features that I am sure you will find useful in XSitePro2.

In some ways one of the biggest is the one-click publishing feature that makes keeping your website up to date so easy.

Add in the fact that it also has facilities to help you keep track of your hosting companies, your affiliate accounts and so on and you’ll see why I think it is such a powerful tool.

XSitePro 2 WEBINARS and $100 discount
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To give you more info, there are actually a couple of webinars coming up that will demonstrate and explain more about the design and function of XSitePro2.  There’s also a special $100 discount available during the launch phase. XSitePro webinars

What do you want someone to do when they are on your website?  Whatever answer you give, it is your Most Wanted Response. It is that action that you most want people to take when they are on any specific web page.

Do you want them to click an order link, or to subscribe to an email list or to click on an ad? Whatever it is, you need to design your page so that it pushes your visitor in that direction as hard as possible.

There are really only 5 things people can do on a web page.

1. Go away again
2. Give you their contact details by subscribing to a newsletter or list or by buying something
3. Store or bookmark your site to come back again (although most won’t)
4. Download or listen or watch something
5. Navigate to a different page that you want them to go to

Most businesses not only fail to design their websites around their Most Wanted Response, they don’t even really consider in details what their Most Wanted Response actually is.

This is why you can see commercial websites splattered with links to other sites or with too much Flash Animation that actually makes the process of navigation – or even getting into the site in the first place – slow or difficult.

For most businesses, and especially those that do not actually sell directly off their websites, the most wanted response should be to generate and capture sales leads. For businesses that do sell online the most wanted response is usually to generate a sale.

If you are in the business of selling online, then it pays to examine your most profitable business lines and to push visitors on your site towards those lines in order to drive up overall profitability.

By considering what your most wanted response is before you design your website you can successfully avoid the expensive mistakes that are made by most companies. If you want people to ‘phone you, put your ‘phone number in big print on every page.

If you want people to buy from you, make sure it is very easy for people to navigate the purchasing route and provide assurances on the way that their financial details will be processed securely. If you want people to sign up to a newsletter then consider putting a subscription form on as many pages as you can and provide strong incentives for signing up.