One of the first things that you must learn when your
are trying to have a successful home business, is that
you have to find the way to make people return to your
web site, and a book mark favorite or the inclusion
of your site into the Internet Explorer favorites could
be one of your biggest allies.
Why?
Because people do not trust 100% of what you say in
their first visit, and trend to trust you more if they
have repeated contacts with you.
How can you have repeated contacts with them?
Many ways:
Create an ezine and ask them to sign up free to it
Create
an affiliate program and send them updates about the
news in your program
Create
such a good theme-based content that they want to return
to your site
etc.
You need to have their authorization to send them e-mail
or you need to make them desire to read what you write
( if you build your site following up How to Sell
on The Web's step by step instructions you won't
have any trouble with this issue).
But there are billions of sites on the Internet and
most probably people won't find your site again or will
forget about it, once they leave it. So you need to
ask them to create a book mark favorite.
Not everyone is going to book mark your site and add
it to their Internet Explorer favorites, but your chances
of being bookmarked will increase a 100%
Now that Internet Explorer has most of the browser
share, I can teach you an interesting marketing tool
that consists in adding a web site to the Internet Explorer's
favorites, that will create a bookmark favorite with
an icon, that will stand out from the rest.
FIRST: You need to
create a bookmark favorite icon of only 16 pixels by
16 pixels.
For this bookmark favorite icon, simple
shapes and bright colors work best.
You can create your icon with any icon
editor. Programs like:
If you want to use your logo as the
bookmark favorite icon, make sure to have it in 16
x 16 pixels size.
SECOND: Save your
bookmark favorite icon with the name:
favicon.ico
and upload it to the root site of your domain, for example,
www.yoursite.com/favicon.ico
THIRD: Just ask
the people to add your site to their bookmark favorite's
list as I do here:
Just click over the above link and you'll see what
happens.
Every time an Internet Explorer user (it has to have
MSIE 5.0+) reads his bookmark favorite's list, your
icon will show up in their favorite bookmark's list.
The bookmark favorite icon will show up in the favorites
menu and in the address bar. It has no special server
requirements and it's a great way to add brand recognition
Each time that one of your visitors creates a bookmark
favorite from your web site, the Internet Explorer automatically
searches for the favicon.ico file, and places the icon
next to all the favorites and quick links originating
from your site.
If you don't have access to the root site
of your domain, you can save the favicon.ico in the images
folder, but then you will have to add a line of HTML code
in the head section of your Web document. This HTML code
line should include a tag that specifies the location
and name of the file, and you have to include this link
tag in all your pages:
<HEAD>
<LINK REL="SHORTCUT ICON" HREF="http://www.yourdomain.com/images/youricon.ico">
<TITLE>My Title</TITLE>
</HEAD>
Note: The only
way that a bookmark favorite shortcut icon will appear
on one of your user's Bookmark Favorites menu and Address
bar, is if the user has chosen to add your page as a
favorite bookmark.
Written by Dr. Roberto A. Bonomi
