Create A Splash Page
One of the facts of life of traffic exchanges is that people view your website only because they can have their own website viewed in exchange. They don’t want to spend any time actually reading your web page, and usually will only see it just as it opens and then once more after the time expires when they close it.
So sending them to the Marketing Pond website will not get you signups.
A splash page is an eye catching web page that has very little text, has some nice graphics, and is designed to get a viewer’s attention as quickly as possible.
Here’s an example of a splash page I use to promote Marketing Pond.
Now here’s a secret…I am horrible at creating splash pages. Luckily, there are free splash page creators out there that make it easy. The one I use is at TEToolbox.com.
TEToolbox provides two main services: splash pages, and URL rotators. We’ll use only the splash page feature for promoting Marketing Pond (we’ll use a different URL rotator). If you’re not already a free member sign up now. Do not upgrade to paid membership, since for our purposes the free membership gives us everything we need. You can always upgrade later, if you decide you need to for some reason.
Inside TEToolbox, select Splash Pages in the links across the top of the page (after you’ve registered and logged in) and then select to create a new splash page.
The visual editor that displays looks like this:
In Splash Page Title, put something that will remind you what the splash page is about (i.e. Marketing Pond). The splash page title does not display to viewers of the splash page.
The visual editor is a bit like a simple word processor. Create your splash page in it, using the following guidelines:
- Use large text
- Use graphics
- Use color to highlight important phrases
There’s a link across the top of the editor page to free clip art that TEToolbox is making available for your use. That’s where I got my frog pictures.
If you’re absolutely stuck for splash page ideas, feel free to steal mine and recreate it. It’s not the best, but it works better than no splash page at all.
Once your splash page is created, copy and paste the web address of it somewhere. To find the web address of your splash page, click Save Changes at the bottom of the screen to save the splash page. Then click the splash page title in the stats list to go back into editing the splash page.
You should see a link across the top that says “Preview”. Click Preview to open your splash page in a new window. The address bar of your web browser will have the web address of your splash page.
We’ll need that as we setup the traffic exchanges.