How To Enhance Your Online Classified Posts Using HTML
By: Michael Janzen | Posted: 31st May 2006
Learn how to enhance the effectiveness of your free classified ad posts with HTML without going over board. Also introduced is a web marketing strategy, ad broadcasting. Combining these two practices will give you more exposure and improve the effectiveness of your free classified posts.
HTML (hypertext markup language) is the simple scripting language used to build web pages. Its primary function is to define the structure of content, like the way you might structure a term paper and its table of contents. It has evolved to also be used for text formatting (look and feel).
Some free classifieds websites allow you to include HTML in your ad posts. This allows you to enhance the look and feel of your post, include photos and links, making it more effective. You can use too much of it too and unless you are a graphic or web designer you may not know exactly how much to use.
Web Usability
The first thing to remember and keep in mind while creating anything for the web that it is easy to use. Web users will quickly revert to the back button if they encounter anything confusing and unfamiliar. After conducting hundreds of web usability tests on financial service web applications I learned that less is usually more when it comes to web design.
You see when you give users less clutter and only the important information it allows them to focus on what they are doing. It also gives them fewer things to click on. In the case of a classified ad post your business goal is to simply get them to click on the link to your website, product, or email link.
Less is More
When you first start enhancing your posts with HTML use it sparingly. For example, since your business goal is to get a use to click a link start with adding a bold link. Here is the HTML.
ClickableTextHere
Place the link right after the text description. This is the most logical placement for the link because it follow the text the user would need to read before knowing if they are interested in what you are offering. By making it bold you simple make it easier to spot. Links are easier to spot by nature because they are usually blue and underlined. By making it bold too you add a little more visual distinction, making it easier to see.
Add Interest
Before any user will click a link though you need to get them interested in what you are posting. A picture is really worth 1000 words, but only if it is of the item you are posting and it is a good photo. Stock photos and poor quality photos often have the opposite effect on the web. They make your ad look unprofessional and don't build trust with your reader.
Taking good pictures is getting easier and easier. Buy or borrow a digital camera. This gives you instant feedback on the quality of the photos your are taking. It also gives you a cheap way to take a lot of photos so you can pick only the best.
Lighting is essential for a good photo. Taking photos outside on bright overcast days is best. You see direct sunlight will create glares and distort colors. Taking photos in the shade is the next more preferable condition. But don't do it in the shade of a tree because trees let bits of light through. I often look for an exterior wall of a building to photograph against on sunny days. If you are photographing a large object like a car drive to a shopping center, you'll probably find a big enough wall against a grocery store.
Once you've chosen the best photos resize them to approximately 800x600 pixels. Feel free to make it a little bigger or smaller since there is no one correct size for online photos but 800x600 is a good baseline. Many people's web browser windows are about 800 pixels wide so this gives you the best odds that they will be able to see the full photo.
Export (save) the photo as a JPG (JPEG) file format. This is the best file format for a photo used on the web. If your image software give you a quality choice save it at 80%. This will give you a smaller file size without much detectable loss in image quality.
Some free classifieds websites allow you to upload images. Others allow you to add HTML that includes images that are hosted elsewhere. By hosted I mean photos that have already been put n the Internet. Any photo that is online can be included on a web page. Here is the HTML code that allows you to include a photo on a web page:
 in the code. This is the location of the photo online. It is just like the location of a web page except instead of linking to a web page it links to an image. If the classified site you want to post on doesn't allow you to upload photos use a free image hosting service like http://flickr.com/.<br />
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I've also written up a short how-to article on one of my free classifieds sites that covers more HTML styles. http://www.emptum.com/html-how-to.php<br />
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Ad Broadcasting<br />
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To get your ad seen it is best to post it on as many websites as possible. Don't post it more than once on each site, this is considered spam and many sites remove duplicate posts so you are just wasting your time. A better strategy is to get your ad onto as many sites as possible. <br />
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My free classified website http://GETitSELLit.com makes it easy to broadcast ads. The idea is that you post once and then use the HTML of TEXT provided automatically to past onto other free classifieds sites like http://craisglist.org. It is a time saving free feature.<br />
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You can also save your own html post into a text editor. I recommend text editors like notepad because word processors like Microsoft Word tend to add strange garbage characters like fancy quotes that can't be interpreted by web browsers.<br />
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Good Free Classifieds<br />
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Here is a short list of free classifieds sites. For a longer list of free classified websites see my blog http://TheTruthAboutFreeClassifieds.com.<br />
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http://craigslist.org<br />
http://GETitSELLit.com<br />
http://emptum.com<br />
http://olx.com<br />
http://geebo.com<br />
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Tags: web design, web pages, web designer, important information, web users, table of contents, free classified ad, free classifieds, web applications, clutter, web usability, markup language, scripting language, business goal, term paper, text description, service web