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Just very recently the ASP.NET team from Microsoft launched a new Microsoft Ajax CDN (Content Delivery Network) service that provides caching support for AJAX libraries (including jQuery and ASP.NET AJAX).  The service is available for free HERE, it does not require any registration,
and can be used for both commercial and non-commercial projects.

What does a CDN provide?

Content delivery networks (CDNs) are composed of “edge cache” servers that are strategically placed around the world at key Internet network points.  These “edge cache” servers can be used to cache and deliver all types of content such as images, videos, CSS and JavaScript files.

Using a CDN services can significantly improve a website’s end-user performance,  which is important in improving your web conversion rates since users can now experience quicker page load time and content download such as videos or quality images, or product brochures.

In a technical point of view, this will reduce maintainance on your codes since the updates for the Ajax scripts and libraries are done on the Microsoft servers.

The Microsoft AJAX CDN provides an easy way to add jQuery and ASP.NET AJAX script  libraries to your web site projects. and have them be automatically served from one of their thousands of geo-located edge-cache servers around the world.

As an example, to add jQuery from the Microsoft AJAX CDN you can
add a standard script tag to your master page or regular page like this:

Code block

<script src="http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/jquery/jquery-1.3.2.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

The browser requests the contents from the nearest ‘edge-location’ servers, closer to the
client’s requesting the contents.

This will allow the following benefits:

• The request will be processed much faster than if it had to request from your own webserver or hosting.

• If you’re doing cloud computing you don’t have to worry about paying the bandwidth for the files here since it’s sitting on MS edge servers.

• Since the scripts can be easily cached across multiple web-sites the client don’t have to download it again since

the request to these servers been done sometime ago.

The full listings of the JavaScript libraries (and associated URLs) are already loaded on CDN Cache here

Scott’sGu’s blog covers the whole deal, to read more click Here

Finding out what your customers or target audience are doing inside your site can be a saving grace for your marketing efforts, here are 5 quick ways to improve your website’s conversion rates.

1. Is your site fast enough? one thing that discourages visitors is if your site takes too long to download images , or loads a particular page.  Make sure that the images that you use are lighter (I would suggest PNG formats) and if you’re using dynamic pages, there are tons of tips and tricks on how to optimize them programmatically.

2. Is it complicated? try a walk through on your own site and put yourself in your customer’s shoes for a second or target audience’s, find out if you’re having a hard time following links and buttons and gauge your total experience as a user.

3. Does your title tabs or menu navigation makes sense? this is the most common mistakes small business website’s make is to confuse their visitors with navigation.

4. Do you have contact information visible and on the right spot? sometimes a visitor or your target audience wanted to call you instead of browsing through your products, make sure their in the right section of your pages and visible to your users. I suggest placing them on top like headers or leftside panels.

5. Can your website be trusted?  especially for e-commerce, if you are selling products online, make sure your visitors are comfortable giving out information or even browsing to your pages, one way of doing this is to show triple B logo (Better Business Bureau) or get coverage from Thawte Securities, or have SSL (secured layer) on your web pages.

If you need help with optimizing your pages for increased conversion rates and SEO please visit http://www.webandmediaplus.com.

A week back we had a chance to meet with folks from yourreality3d.com, they presented a new concept of design and planning software,  and the most interesting feature that they have was migrating it online with your existing website. So how does this benefit your sales and marketing effort through web?

First off, let’s talk about the core feature of the system, they have what they call ‘the visualizer’  that  renders the images of your product into a very detailed 3d model that even a trained eye can make it look like original photo, the visualizer helps your customer customize a particular model, as an example, a fireplace can be designed to fit into your room or wall specification, you can add different options such as faces or mantels and the system let’s your customer upload their own room images to give that true feel of how the product looks like in their actual room. They can re-size a particular model, rotate it or zoom in and out which in my opinion makes a perfect visual helper before deciding to buy a particular product.

So what’s this all got to do with increasing your website’s Conversion Rates?

Based on recent studies, most websites produces only 5% conversion rates, this means that if you have 100 visitors ,only 5 of them clicks on ‘buy now’ or ‘contact us’ , 95 of these visitors we’re not persuaded to take further actions and decided to leave the site.

Using an application like Your Reality 3d, it will provide a great tool for your customer to take further actions and give them better experience in terms of shopping for a new or familiar product. And in the world of online marketing this is imperative, the battle of better services has never been so paramount, the better the user experience the more you persuade visitors to go further and reach your online goal.

For more information visit http://www.youreality3d.com/

If you need help with improving your website’s conversion rates and SEO go to Web and Media Plus, affordable pricing plans that will get you results.