The Search Box is an indispensable part of a website, especially large ones that contain several number of pages. Apart from primary and secondary navigation, the Search is an important navigation medium that lets users find instant and precise information with the least number of clicks. Internet users, by virtue are an impatient lot and therefore would not care to browse through the various pages of your website to find information. They will just look for the Search tab and if they don't find it, they'll just choose to leave.
That is why it is very important to devote quality time and design a user friendly Search. Here are some tips to design Search features and deliver effective search results.
Provide Relevant and Timely Search Results
The two important features of effective search results are – Relevancy and Timeliness.
Relevancy is very important to ensure usable search results. The results of the search should be relevant to the search query that is entered. If the results are not relevant, users would not be able to find solution or acquire information that they need to. Efficient searches are characterized by highly relevant results.
Timeliness is another features of efficient search results, especially when it concerns the internet and the web. This is because users are generally interested in the latest news and happenings so that they can be up to date with their industry.
Also, allow your visitors to sort the results by relevancy and timeliness so that they can get information according to their requirements. This is especially useful in websites that have many updates on regular basis.
Refine the Results
There are cases when search results provide too much information that it becomes difficult to find data that is actually required. This is a common case with e-commerce website, social networking websites etc. because the results can fit into more that one category. For example, if you run down a search for someone on networking websites, you would get a list of users, communities and groups, or even links to content that has that particular word. Thus, it is important to allow users to refine the search results so that they can find what they exactly need.
Provide Multiple Fields
Generally searches consist of a search tab where users enter a query and are provided with the results. However, there may be cases when you would need to know more details about their concern in order to get them relevant results. Therefore, provide them with multiple fields that they can fill out or choose from a drop down menu, in order to specify their query . However, filling these additional fields should be strictly optional and not a necessity
Offer Visuals
While this is not mandatory, it can help if you provide visuals along with your search results. This may not work with your regular information based website but can work exceptionally well on e-commerce websites where users are searching for a product and they get to see a snapshot alongside the results. This will make it easier for them to find what they are looking for.
For the sake of this article I will assume that you have just purchased a plr ebook publishing package and want to know how to prepare the sales pages for your plr ebooks and upload them to your website. I am also assuming that you have a basic knowledge of HTML code and are also familiar with Paypal (http://www.paypal.com).
When you download a basic plr ebook package to your hard-drive and open the folder, you will usually find several more folders inside that contain the ebook, graphics, webpages, information documents about distribution rights.
Before you upload everything to your website you will need to modify the sales page.
Modifying The Sales Page
Open the sales page in your browser and read through it to find out what needs to be changed. The parts you need to modify will probably be in bold text and in a different color from the main sales copy. They will most likely be placed in square brackets. For example:
From the desk of [Your Name]
[List Bonuses Here, If Any]
You can easily modify the sales page by clicking on the "view source" option on your browser. Copy and paste the source text to a new file in your html editor. Now, simply delete the square brackets and everything between them and type in your own information.
With a plr package you can probably change the sales text, the product price and the bonus offers to suit your own requirements, but check the terms and conditions first to make sure.
The next big thing to deal with is the payment button. I am assuming that you want your customers to pay through Paypal.
Log in to your Paypal account, click on the "Merchant Services" tab and make a "Buy Now" button. You will need to set the price and give the product a name. Make sure it is a name that you will understand so that you know what is being sold once purchases start to come in!
Next, if the product designer has made a nice "Buy Now" button graphic that you would like to use, click on the "Use your own button image" radio button in the "customize button" section. Now enter the url of the graphic. (You can do this even if you have not yet uploaded the graphic - just type in the intended url!) It might look something like this:
Now click on "Step 3 Customize advanced features (optional)" and set the first three radio buttons to "no" and then check the two boxes that read "Take customer to a specific page (URL) after checkout cancellation", and "Take customer to a specific page (URL) after successful checkout". Now enter the url of these two pages on your website, for example:
Don't worry if you have not yet made those pages! I'll talk about them in my next article. All we are doing right now is setting up an plr ebook sales page.
When everything is set, press the "Create button" button and copy the code. Now go back to your HTML editor, find the place where the "Buy now" button should be located in the sales page and paste the code into the page.
One other thing you will need to do is to make sure that all the graphics will appear on the sales page when you upload them and it to your website. Go through the HTML code and locate all the images. If necessary, change the url of each image to the url where the images will be located on your website. It is a good idea to make a separate directory on your website for the graphics and place them all in there.
All you have to do now is to save the page and upload the sales page and the graphics to the appropriate directories on your website. Once that is done, type the sales page url into your web browser and see how it looks. If all the graphics are there, you have done a good job! Check the "Buy Now" button. If it looks good, click on it and make sure that you are taken through to the Paypal purchase page and that the details on that page are all correct.
Now that you know how to upload a plr ebook sales page to your website, the next stage is to get the product and the "thank you" page uploaded, and also the "order cancellation" page. Let's deal with all that in the next article.
Both Kabir Bedi & Darrell Howell are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Kabir Bedi has sinced written about articles on various topics from Web Development, Internet Marketing and Web Development. Kabir Bedi works as a senior web consultant with LeXolution IT Services, a reputed the caters to its clients with seamless and cost effective. Kabir Bedi's top article generates over 9900 views. to your Favourites.
Darrell Howell has sinced written about articles on various topics from Web Development, Make Money Online and Internet Marketing. Darrell Howell is an Internet Marketer and Blogger. Check out his Blog at . Darrell Howell's top article generates over 18100 views. to your Favourites.