By: Fredrick Townes | Source : isedb.com

There are plenty of reasons visitors convert and even more reasons they don’t. The site’s layout, color choices, word choices and call to action, button/anchor text, layout, nomenclature and similar factors all have an impact on a site’s conversion rate. These are factors that  you can manage and control.

You can make changes, tweak and refine your site to limit visitor attrition, but if your web host isn’t helping, all the tweaking in the world won’t give you the nice bump in conversions that you’re looking for. If your host doesn’t partner with you for success, you’ll never fully position your site for optimized conversion rates.

The Impatience Index

The easier and more convenient your site is to access, the more it will be accessed by visitors. However, in this Digital Age, we’ve become impatient. Any perception on the part of web users that time is being wasted will hurt your bottom line. Call it The Impatience Index. There’s a direct correlation between download times and visitor attrition.

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By: Loren Baker | Source: searchenginejournal.com

This morning Yahoo! announced that its new search marketing platform, Yahoo Search Marketing ‘Panama’, is now available to advertisers that wish to open a new Yahoo! sponsored search account.

U.S. based accounts can now sign up online to begin marketing products through Yahoo!’s completely redesigned system. Previously, the system was only open to Yahoo!’s existing search marketing customers that wanted to transition from the old system over to the new platform. Yahoo has been helping its current advertisers migrate from the old YSM to the new YSM over the past month or so, and hopes to complete all migrations in Q1 2007 .

Read more at searchenginejournal.com

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By: Michael Arrington | Source: techcrunch.com

Yahoo has been trying to buy Facebook for a good while now, with the most recent rumored amount being for $1.62 billion. TechCrunch has obtained documents on Yahoo’s valuation of Facebook, and expected advertising revenue growth over the next 10 years.

We know that Facebook has been pursued almost since the beginning of its existence. They narrowly avoided a $10 million acquisition by Friendster in mid 2004, just months before they took their first round of financing from Accel Partners. Former Friendster execs say that the deal was close to closing, but last minute negoations over control ultimately disrupted the deal. Since then, Facebook has certainly been approached by every major Internet company.

At Yahoo, the long running courtship has lasted at least as long as this year, and is internally referred to as “Project Fraternity.” Leaked documents in our possession state that an early offer was $37.5 million for 5% of the company (a $750 million valuation) back in Q1 2006. This was rejected by Facebook.

Read more at techcrunch.com

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