Forms are one of your primary points of contacts with your visitors. While many visitors still use email or even the telephone to contact you or to place an order, the vast majority will contact you first via your web forms. Forms that are broken or improperly implemented cause frustration and can greatly reduce your conversion rate for leads and sales.

It is up to your design and development team to test your site's web forms as thoroughly as possible in order to eliminate any errors. While no site can ever be 100% error-free, finding and fixing errors sooner, rather than later, is important to maintaining a usable website. When user and usability errors do occur --and they will-- it is important to employ the right safeguards in order to ensure visitor satisfaction and reduce exit rates.

Data entry

Forms should provide flexible options when entering data such as phone numbers and credit card info. Don't be too rigid in the proper "format". Allow spaces, dashes, dots etc. to be accepted in these fields.

Field labels

Field labels should be clear and unambiguous. Do you want a first name, last name, full name or business name? Make sure your visitors know exactly what you're asking.

Information gathered

Do not request more information than is absolutely necessary. Request only the information you need to fulfill the request. Requiring too much information turns people away from contacting you altogether.

Minimize instruction

Keep form instructions at a minimum. People tend not to read instructions which can then cause frustration if they do something "improperly". Make it easy for them.

Provide choices

Providing options with radio buttons, selection boxes or drop downs are a good way to ensure you get the information you need while not requiring too much extra thought. But be careful. Using these can prevent visitors from providing the correct answer, if it's not an available option.

Required information

Note any field that requires a response with an asterisk (*), preferably colored red.

Submission errors

Forms submitted with improperly complete fields should return user to a page listing instructions on how to correct the error. Such instructions must be clear and obvious.

Data preservation

If a user leaves required form fields blank causing an error, preserve the information already filled in. A system that forces users to re-input all their information creates additional frustration and creates an easy exit point for a would-have-been conversion.

Progress indicator

Forms spanning multiple pages must show a progress indicator so visitors know where they are in the process and how many more "steps" are required to completion.

Progress navigation

If a form spans multiple pages, allow users to navigate back to previous pages in order to change answers or fix mistakes.

Site navigation

It can sometimes be helpful to remove all site navigation elements once a lengthy form process is started. This can prevent distractions and encourages visitors to complete the process.

Privacy

Providing privacy assurances near the email field or the form submit button can create additional trust in confirming that the shopper's information is safe.

Information verification

After a form has been completed and submitted, provide all submitted information for final review and verification.

Confirmation pages

After submission of data, take the visitor to a confirmation page that explains what can be expected to happen next. Provide as much detail, including time frames, as possible.

Error messages

Error messages should not use technical language and must never assign blame. Keep them simple and polite.

Custom error page

Broken or improperly formed URLs should send user to a customized 404-Redirect page with helpful links back to the site?s main information.

Once part of the 1980´s Los Angeles Music Scene and closely aligned with the band Guns & Roses (he is holding a wine glass in this picture), Stephen is now a Domain Consultant living in Portland, Oregon.

1) Please give us your background and tell us how you became a Domainer?

I have to admit that after an associate of mine, Darryl Brooks, the husband of the author of “The Domain Tax Guide“ Sandy Brooks ( http://www.domaintaxguide.com - she´ll be speaking at Domainfest in 2008 - she´s brilliant), sold a domain for $150,000, I freaked and said “here´s where the money really is.” At the time, I was a live event producer in the fashion industry. However, I left that behind and started buying domains for a college web portal company I started with a few other investors in 1999. The bubble was about to burst in the internet, but not for domains (if you were smart.). We had an email service that utilized catchy domains, more slang style that “defined” the user, and the user could “rent” an email address for a year using a domain that defined them. An example would be “motocrossers.com ” or “snurf.com”. I ended up buying about 1500 domains, all descriptive of people´s interest, hobbies and attitudes, and most were used as email addresses for our customers. So, I immediately saw the value of domain names in 1999. That value was in their “use” as opposed to “resale” or “aftermarket” value. Then in early 2005, Bulkregister.com hired me to redesign their domain management system and to monetize their domain “access” and “control”. My team evaluated over 2 million domains, purchased 15,000 domains and appraised over 30,000. We knew we had done a pretty good job when Enom bought Bulkregister in June 2006, including all the domains we had purchased and appraised. I then was hired by Snapnames to set up their appraisal system and at the same time was hired by Name Intelligence, Inc ( DomainTools.com) to be the Executive Producer of theDomain Roundtable Conference 2007.

2) What traits make a particular domain name valuable?

I always go with the generic descriptive quality of a domain first. Does it describe a niche product/service in under 15 characters? Great! Grab it! Someday soon, all companies will be scrambling to match their catalog products with domain names in the .com variety. If they can´t get them, they´ll go down the TLD´s in this manner if they´re smart: .com, .org, .info, .net (careful there), .mobi, .us. I´m leaving out the ccTLD´s because I´m not an expert in that area, other than saying, get a one word, less-than-7-character domain name that appears more than 2million times on google, could be good buy in any TLD.

The next thing I look for is short, goofy domains that you can pronounce but don´t really mean anything. I have a few, such as “klood.com”and “trickies.com”. Who knows what new toy or game will arrive wanting that name? Think ahead if you are a “gambler” (the real word for “investor”) and try to anticipate trends, moods, needs, and ideas for products and services and match the domains to those areas.

3) How can SEO make a domain portfolio more valuable?

My experience with SEO is that it´s very hard, and most people involved in learning it well or consulting for others are damn patient and more damned smart than I am. The difference in a domain that is parked for traffic revenue and one that is minimally built out for stickiness is the SEO strategy. I EXPECT anyone who is going to build their website and strengthen the power of their domain value to invest in SEO prep and maintenance (P&M) of their website. The difference between the value of a domain that has average recognition qualities with no SEO and the same domain WITH SEO could be in the thousands of dollars, and in some cases, tens of thousands of dollars.

4) SEO & Domaining seem to be converging. Why is that?

More domainers are frustrated at the lack of knowledge business has in owning keyword generic domains. The most likely solution to a domainer with a domain that they know a brick and mortar company should be paying them $10,000 for but isn´t, is -- spend $3,000 on the domain to build a small website and kick in some SEO expertise to push up it´s numbers. If you have a smart domain and a neat idea, you´d be surprised how many returning customers you will get, and how many NEW customers will arrive by just a little jump in your PR.

SEO and domainers, to me, are like butter and eggs. Each has their own qualities, but mixed together, you can make all sorts of great desserts. In fact, most great desserts start with butter and eggs!

5) Domain names can be parked or developed. Can you explain the advantages & drawbacks of each strategy?

Whoa big boy. That´s my money maker you´re trying to tap. Get your own keg! In a nutshell, if you park your domain with some of the great parking services, you´re dividing your income with two other entities (the ad aggregator and the parking service) and you´re fairly limited in the monetization avenues. However, if you decide to take a domain that gets at least 1000 typeins a month and develop it, using SEO as part of your budget, you´re going to have products to sell, ad links, banners, information to provide, bookmarking enhancement, viral power, and a myriad of ways to squeeze dollars out of that website, all under your control. Sounds like fun, huh! Think of writing an ebook on a particular subject you´re experienced in, and selling it on your relevant website for $9.99. The ebook costs nothing to sell. You sell 30 a month. That´s $300 a month, which is $3,600 a year. Now, if you had 10 websites doing this, you´re looking at $36,000 a year, and it´s not that hard to do. Why not get 20 domains doing this for $72,000 a year? Hire a two person team to maintain the websites, and sit back on the beach in your condo doing nothing but sipping margaritas and mojitas while you bank $50,000 a year.

6) One basic domain purchasing rule of thumb is not to buy domain names with hyphens. Can you give us some others?

I get paid a lot to provide this info to my clients. Open your wallets and I´ll start squawking. I´ll give you one other no-no, and also tell you why the "no hyphen" rule has exceptions.

First, don´t buy domains that have more than one numeral in them, such as “zero zero one three beebop.com”Exceptions to this are “360”, “123”, “247”, “4” or “2”. The hyphen rule applies in most cases except for EXTREME POPULAR PRODUCTS. So if you had “Car-rental.com”that would be a valuable domain. Or “Music-store.com”. This only applies to TWO WORD PHRASE DOMAINS OF EXTREME POPULARITY. So “free-poker.com” is good, and “Buskerville-Hills-Biscuits.com” is bad.

7) Can you give us practical definitions of cybersquatting / typosquatting? How can a good faith domain purchaser best protect themself against incidental infringement?

If you´re thinking of buying a domain that has a clear Trademark word in it, such as “porsche” or “dodge”, forget it. Especially anything with the word “windows” in it. I´ve heard of cases where window washers were questioned about using the term “windows”. Anything that has a TM behind it, leave it out of your portfolio. You don´t need it anyways, there are plenty of dumb companies out there that still haven´t grabbed their own catalog definitions of their products/services in a generic sense. (Tip: read a company product catalog, and steal the ad agency´s description of the product that applies itself as “generic”, such as “saltwaterpump.com”. I swear I built 15% of my portfolio on just visiting online catalogs of companies. They´re going to want those domains someday. And YOU will have the power to say “Ummm... who thinks owning this category killer domain is worth $10,000?”. A nice profit from a $8 investment. As far as typos, good grief. I´ve tried to play that game but too many people have beat me to it. I truly think the guys who are making a killing on these typos are obsessed and compulsive to think of every dagnabbed possibility of a word or phrase that people will MIS-TYPE that domain. More power to them. I don´t waste time trying to hunt them down anymore. That game is closed. On the same subject, I also think efforts by large companies to “protect their trademarks” by going after typos is a weak argument. You can´t protect a TM because someone mistyped your company domain. How is “fird.com”like “ford.com”? Or why would Neiman & Marcus think they can prevent someone from owning “Niemenmatkus.com”??? Some of the complaints I´ve seen filed for TM protection of typos is ridiculous. That´s why I steer clear of anything that gets close to infringing on TMs. (if possible)

8) What is a UDRP and what should you do if somebody files one against you?

A UDRP is a filing with ICANN to challenge the validity of ownership of a domain by a person who another person (or company) thinks they shouldn´t own. It costs around $1500 to file a complaint. The acronym UDRP stands for “Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy”. If one is filed against you, seek an attorney. John Berryhill would be my first choice.

9) Can you briefly describe the Cowboys.com controversy & explain why this was a watershed event for the Domaining industry?

LOL - Todd, you would hit me with that one. A close associate of mine was involved in “resolving” the “Cowboys.com” domain issue - he and his pals bought the domains after the Dallas Cowboys... hahahaha... bid on the domain... *snicker*... for about $275,000... muuuhahahaha...*wipes tear from eye*... in a live domain auction held by Moniker at a TRAFFIC conference early this year. Looked like a done deal. But then the Dallas Cowboys representative... *giggle*... actually... oh dear god... thought that... and this is straight from the word of the Domainer Coffee Break Gossip Crew, the domain he bid on, Cowboys.com, was for sale for ... wait, I have to hold my breath to get rid of the hiccups. Okay.. .whew... this guy from the Dallas Cowboys thought the bid was “275.00” as in “two hundred and seventy five dollars”. Rumor allegedly has it that when the organization found out that the amount was really in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for ONE DOMAIN THAT DESCRIBED THEIR TEAM PERFECTLY, they begged to bow out of the DEAL!!!   This is rumor only, don't know if it's true .

What I do know is true is that Eric Rice formed a “posse” and saved the domain by combining cash forces to buy it after the “truly cowheaded” thinking of the Dallas Cowboys backed out of a great deal on an excellent domain.

10) What will the domain marketplace be like in 5 years?

Todd, you don´t want to know. Imagine your greatest sensation right now. Lean back in your easy chair, sip your favorite beer, dream your sweetest dream, and then multiply that by 100 times. We´re in the infancy of a great land grab in the virtual world that EVERYONE is now living in.

“LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION”…Rick Schwartz

If anyone needs any detailed consulting or advice about how to enter into the exploding domain industry and get a piece of the pie, they can reach me or read my posts at http://www.successclick.com. Make a comment there - "please"- the blog is about a month old. I need meat in there!!! You can reach me at successclick @ gmail.com

There are times where it can be difficult for small business to compete in the paid search environment. As the cost of targeting keywords on venues such as Google AdWords continues to increase, many small businesses are finding it difficult to keep pace. They either have to accept the fact that they can afford only a very small slice of the pie or abandon paid search marketing altogether.

We recently encountered a scenario like this with a client's Google AdWords campaign. The main keyword phrases they needed to target had become so expensive that not only were they only realizing a very small portion of actual traffic that could be had, they were paying exorbitant prices for each visitor. We encouraged them to increase their overall AdWords budget, however that was something they could not afford to do at the time. So how could they continue to get the best value out of their AdWords campaign while maintaining a small budget?

While I cannot mention the company by name, I will provide as much information as I can to demonstrate how we more than doubled the effectiveness of our client' AdWords campaign by making two simple adjustments.

This particular client has a budget of around $600-$700 per month which is considered small for the industry they are in. They are targeting about 60 keyword phrases total which are grouped into 7 ad groups. The daily budget is set to about $25 which typically places us where we need to be at budget wise at the end of each month. (Tip: It is a good idea to set your daily budget a bit higher than what you actually expect to spend. You can always reduce this towards the end of the month or even pause the campaign if you have reached your budget.)

In October of this year, Google recommended that they set their daily budget to a little over $600 a day, that is if they want to take advantage of all the traffic that Google and their search partners can send them (this does not include contextual, mobile, radio ads, etc.). That's about $18,000 a month which may not be a large sum of money to most companies but is extreme for many small businesses. Because their budget is so small in relation to their competitive industry, they were only receiving 3% of the actual ad impressions that were being served. If they could increase their budget to what Google was recommending, they would have the opportunity to increase their click-thrus by 2,798%.

In that same month, they received a total of 182 click-thrus on their ads which were displayed a total number of 7,361 times giving them an average click-thru-ratio (CTR) of 2.47% and at an average cost of $3.31 per click-thru for a total of $602.34 spent. A click thru ratio of 2.47% is pretty good and the average cost per click-thru is not exceptionally high. However 182 visitors for the month is pretty low. Because increasing the budget was not an option, how could we increase the number of visitors while staying in the same budget range?

The first thing we looked at is where the majority of the budget was being spent. In the case of this campaign,
$394.16 went towards one very competitive keyword phrase. They received 135 click-thrus at an average cost of $2.92 for that phrase. Add to that fact that we had set the highest amount we were willing to pay for a click-thru to right around $10.00 in order to obtain ad placement in the 2nd to 3rd position range. The problem with this particular phrase is that it left only $208.18 to be spread out for the remaining 59 keyword phrases they were targeting.

Therefore we decide to make two adjustments:

1. For the phrase that was eating the majority of our budget, we lowered the maximum CPC we were willing to spend from $10 to just $1. This may cause us to lose our ad placement of 2nd to 3rd position but it was a move we had to make in order to have a chance to increase total click-thrus.
   
   
2. We increased the maximum CPC for some of the less competitive "longer tail" types of phrases.

Here are the November results of that experiment.

• 569 total click-thrus
• 10,328 total impressions
• 5.50% average CTR (click-thru ratio)
• $1.05 average CPC (cost per click)
• $599.91 total spent.

We more than doubled last month's traffic, cut average CPC by more than half and saw CTR increase by more than 3%.

What about the keyword phrase that was eating up the majority of our budget? You would think that we received little to no traffic related to that phrase, right? Wrong. Lowering the maximum CPC from $10 to $1 still gave us an average position of 3.2, generated 399 click-thrus from ads that displayed 5,013 times, giving us a CTR of 7.95% at an average cost of $0.50 and spending $199.71 total on this phrase. We did not expect these results at all but there they are. Whereas one would think that the more you are willing to spend, the better a phrase would perform, the exact opposite was true in this case.

So, the takeaway from this case study -

If you are finding it to expensive to compete for that highly competitive keyword phrase or phrases, try cutting back on the maximum you are willing to spend for click-thrus and concentrate your efforts on "longer tail" or less competitive keywords. The results may astonish you.

Of course this does not negate the fact that you should monitor your campaign closely to ensure that the keywords you are generating traffic by are producing a good return on your investment in the post click environment (after you get them to your site). However it does show that it is not always the best strategy to chase after high dollar keyword phrases, especially when you don't have the budget to effectively compete.

Recently, I visited my son's school for an awards ceremony. As we walked through the halls to the auditorium, I saw poster after poster on the walls advising the kids not to put up with bullying, and not to become bullies themselves. From what I hear in the media and what I saw at my son's school, it appears bullying is a big problem (or at the very least, school administrators believe it's a big problem).

Previously, I talked about how sometimes we think of our websites as our “children.” So what do you do when your website-child is getting pushed around by the online equivalent of a playground bully?

Maybe a competitor is using black hat techniques, spam or other nefarious tactics, targeting you specifically or simply seeking to gain the upper hand against everybody. Either way, they're not playing fair, stealing your kid's lunch money and generally being, well, a bully.

Just as with our human kids, it's a tricky sitatuion. It's difficult to know what to try in the first place, and what might work great under one set of circumstances can backfire horribly under another.

Don't rush in where angels fear to tread

In the first place — online as well as in real life — I think it's important to make sure you have accurately assessed the situation before you go charging in with both barrels blazing. You don't want to falsely accuse some innocent kid of being a bully, when it turns out your kid actually spent his lunch money on candy bars and comic books and made up the bully story to cover his tracks.

Online, make sure it really is some nefarious technique on the part of your competitor and not something you're doing that's causing your problems.

There are too many potential “oopsies” you could be committing to mention them all: robots.txt that excludes the spiders, unspiderable JS / AJAX navigation, all-Flash no-content splash page, nothing but low-quality links, crappy content with no keywords, same title tag used throughout site, etc.

It could be pretty embarrassing if you start accusing somebody of spamming or using black hat tactics when it turns out the problem was of your own making. So if you think you're in a bullying situation, it would pay to first go over your site with a fine-toothed comb and make sure there are no issues. If you're not sure how, this would be a good time to hire somebody to do a thorough site audit for you.

So what if there really is a problem?

Well, frankly, this is where it gets tricky. I've thought of a number of different bits of advice I could potentially give my son, should he ever find himself on a bully's hit list.

• Take the high road: I could advise him to try to ignore the bully.
  
  The problem is, this leaves my son alone and unsupported dealing with the bully. I want him to learn to stand on his own two feet of course, but I'm not sure I want to give him the message that if he gets in a dangerous or scary situation he can't call on his dad and me as reinforcements. If the bully decides he's an easy target, he could get seriously hurt or worse. And it doesn't do anything to solve the problem.
  
  Likewise online, if you ignore a web-bully, you could find your site falling further and further down in the SERPs, or your online reputation severely damaged. Doing nothing just lets the problem fester until recovery may become impossible.
  
  I'm not sure I'd feel comfortable with this tactic, myself. I guess I just prefer to be a little more proactive.
  
  
• Fight fire with fire: My husband studies martial arts with an internationally-recognized instructor who in real life has won the competition dramatized in the movie Blood Sport. It would be easy enough to teach our son some extremely effective maneuvers he could use to fight back.
  
  Of course, the problem with this is obvious: the bully will likely escalate the violence before he backs down (assuming he ever backs down at all, that is). Either my son or the bully — or possibly both — could end up injured or worse, and if a confrontation took place on the school campus they would both likely get in trouble with the school administration.
  
  Online, launching your own counter-strike black hat campaign to deal with a sneaky competitor might feel satisfying at first... but after both your sites get banned by the search engines, maybe not so much. I'm not saying you should never fight back, but be sure you know what you're getting into.
  
  
• Appeal to a higher power: I could report the situation to the school principal or to his teacher and demand they take action.
  
  While this may help, they can only take action on things they witness. Knowing they're watching, the bully may simply get even sneakier, and find ways of tormenting my son when teachers and administrators are out of the way. I'm also concerned about leaving my child's fate in the hands of others who, dedicated as they may be, probably don't care about my son quite as much or in the same way I do.
  
  Online, you can report the spammers and black hats to the search engines. This may make you feel better for having taken some kind of action, but there's no guarantee they'll do anything about the miscreants quickly — or ever, for that matter. And the other webmaster may simply take his black hat tactics even further underground.
  
  I'd report the spammer, certainly. But I wouldn't make that my only reponse, and I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the search engines to take action based on my report.
  
  
• Learn how to take a punch: One thing my husband's Kung Fu instructor is fond of saying: “The best way to take a punch is to not be there.” In other words, if the bully's jabs never connect, his ability to inflict damage is limited.
  
  So I could help my son avoid situations and venues where the bully is likely to be. For instance, if the bully rides the bus, we could start picking our son up after school ourselves. If the bully is in our son's class, we could park ourselves in the school principal's office until one or the other of them is transfered to another classroom.
  
  Naturally, he probably won't be able to avoid the bully entirely without, say, moving to another city. The bully may misinterpret his avoidance as weakness and beome even bolder. And sneaking and hiding his way through the school day is no way for my son to live. But we could also find it's a case of “out of sight, out of mind,” and the bully moves on to pick on more visible, easily accessible kids and leaves my son alone.
  
  Online, you can stop trying to take on the bully head-to-head, and instead focus on doing an end run around him. Find other directories and search engines where he isn't strong. Identify and target all the “long tail” terms he's ignoring (because I'll bet you when you really start looking, he's zeroing in on just a handful of “money” terms and leaving a lot of lower-volume search terms on the table). Work on improving your conversions, so you make better use of the traffic you do get.
  
  This could work — in fact, it's likely you'll be pleasantly surprised to find you don't really need those high rankings you thought you couldn't live without. Of course, there is a small risk you may find even combined all these other sources don't bring you the traffic and sales you could get from just one of the “money” terms on Google.
  
  So this technique could work, but — as with just about anything in life — there's no guarantee. And there's at least a slim chance it could make things worse.
  
  
• Find strength in numbers: I could encourage him to develop strong friendships with a wide variety of people — try to never find himself in the situation of facing the bully alone. Bullies don't generally like to take on crowds. Associate with other kids to offer each other some measure of mutual protection.
  
  Online, you can become a valued member of the web “community” by linking generously, taking advantage of social networking, and developing useful content, resources and tools that others will naturally want to link to. The more “web friends” you have linking to your pages, the stronger your pages will be, and the more sources of traffic you'll have that don't depend on the search engines. When you get the bulk of your traffic through non-search sites, there's less chance the bully's tactics can hurt you.

So what would I advise my son to do? What technique(s) would I use if my website-kid were getting bullied?

Honestly, I'm not sure. I think it would depend on the circumstances. And in the end, I'd probably go for some combination of tactics.

I'm sure there are other techniques I've left out. What are your favorite strategies for dealing with bullies, online or in real life?