Welcome to the fifth issue of the Carolyn Hasenfratz Design email newsletter.

Contents:

• I Have Entered the Blogosphere


• Does Banner Advertising Still Work?


• Featured Craft Project: Petroglyph Card

My employer, Webinar Resources, has begun a new blog. We're using Compendium Blogware, which among other features, allows us each to have our own individual blogs. Blog posts from the individual blogs are also posted on the main Webinar Resources blog. My individual blog is here - Carolyn Hasenfratz's Blog. I'll be writing about techniques and strategies for web site owners to improve their web sites, increase visitors, generate more leads, and use a web site as a tool for marketing over multiple channels. I hope you come by and visit!

One of my own personal web sites, Carolyn's Stamp Store, was built with the open source software package osCommerce Online Merchant. It includes among it's many features the ability to show banners on your e-commerce site and a banner manager tool to show you how the banner is performing. I've had the same banner on my site for a long time. I made some money off of it early on, but it's been awhile since I've had any conversions - in this context a conversion is a click that results in a sale.

Traffic on my site is up - so why are conversions from the banner down? Common sense would tell me that the banner is stale, I need to change it more often. Since a three-month period ended recently and it's a convenient time to look statistics, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the statistics for the banner and see if they back up my initial thinking or lead me in another direction. Here is a table showing what I found out:

Conclusion: I should indeed expect better results in the future if I change the banner. The orginal banner was supplied by istockphoto.com, where I make available some of my photos as stock images. Looking at the available banner images on their site, I decided to add a banner to a side column that is geared toward photographers and designers, and redesign the one I'm currently using in the footer that is geared toward the photo buyer, since there is not a new one available on the site.

Here is the old banner:


Here is the new banner:

In a future issue of this newsletter, after some time has gone by, we'll find out if changing the banner made the click-through rate go up!

In this Petroglyph Card project, you'll learn how to make a stand-up card with a mini-booklet inside for writing messages. Free template available for download. Go to: Rubber Stamped Petroglyph Card Tutorial.

Until next time,

Carolyn Hasenfratz

• Volume 1, Number 1
• Volume 1, Number 2
• Volume 1, Number 3
• Volume 1, Number 4

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