Starting
small business on the Internet?
How to effectively plan
your own business web site
There
are two major areas which are often forgotten in the excitement
of starting a small business on the Internet and creating a
new web site:
-
Marketing
Requirements
-
Customer
Friendliness
Before
you start to design your web site
you need to think about marketing. How will you let potential
customers know about your products or services? There are several
methods, but marketing via the major search engines is the #1
method to make your web site known.
Do
not wait until the site is done.
By integrating certain ingredients from the beginning you can
considerably increase your web site's chance of being found
on the major search engines.
1.
Marketing Requirements
Keywords
- Keywords - Keywords
One
of the first and most important steps to get you started in
the right direction is:
Find
the right keywords for your specific site!
Because: If the keyword is not right nobody will find you site!
BEFORE
you talk with any web site designer:
Make
a list of your keywords, at least 50, better 100, depending
how complex your business is. Think about what search words
people would type into the search engine in order to find what
you have to offer.
Think
of 2-word and 3-word phrases which are closely related to
your products or services. Far-fetched ones wouldn't work well
because people would be disappointed when they come to your
site and don't find what they want.
One
word alone does not work very well either because there are
too many web site pages listed for one search word, and your
new site would be lost at position # 25,671.....
For example:
Let's say you've written a book about your grandma's fabulous
recipes to cure common diseases. The first keyword coming
to mind is "health". Type it into Altavista and
check how many web site pages show up. An enormous amount
of 23,600,000 pages. Or try "book" and another enormous
amount of 22,300,000 pages shows up. It would be extremely
difficult, near to impossible, to get your site up to the
top with so much competition.
Now try "health
book" and only 15,000 or "childhood diseases"
and 9,800 pages show up. This is much more promising.
You
see, 2-word phrases are much better than just one word. The
more specific the better.
The
next step is to know whether people will actually use the keywords
you've listed. A keyword efficiency test
will tell you which keywords are right for your site. For more
information write to me:
ama@e-business-consult.com
I
can help you find the strongest keywords that people use. (Great
keywords that no one uses won't help you.) These keywords are
of utmost importance when you start designing your web site.
They need to be part of the domain name - if possible -, in
the title, meta tags, the folder and file names, etc. - they
need to be all over the place so-to-speak.
Next
important marketing requirement:
No
Frames - No Frames - No Frames
Tell
your designer that you do not want a site which uses frames.
Yes, it is a great technology and seems to make presenting easier.
But no, don't use them. With frames, search engines can only
read a small part of your site. This makes marketing difficult.
2.
Customer Friendliness
When
visitors come to your site, it needs to be attractive to keep
your visitors interested and turn them into customers. Each
site needs to be designed with the following requirements in
mind:
-
Fast
downloading of the main page
-
Easy
navigation
-
High
usability
-
Page
layout compliant for PC and MAC
-
Well
functioning fulfilment for e-commerce (if needed)
If
this what you want but you don't want to do it yourself, I can
help you. I can:
Save
you time and money
-
by translating your vision and wishes into the technical language
of an experienced team of reliable and excellent designers and
programmers.
-
by making sure that the incredible tech possibilities will be
appropriately applied to your web site and NOT hamper or reduce
the marketing possibilities of your completed site.
If you would like to contact me please write to:
First
consultation = FREE consultation
