Getting Your Business Online - 5 Tips for a Profitable and Productive Web Presence
Taking a new or existing business to the Internet is not easy. It requires a lot of hard work, patience, and even a little luck to make it work successfully. Here are a few tips to help get you started down the right path:
1. Get the right domain name. - Your domain name is one of the first major factors to consider when you decide to take your business to the web. You want something easy for your customers to remember and find, something sharp, and something that conveys the overall appeal and approach of your business. A good domain name is short, preferably less than 10 or so characters at most, easy to spell, and creates a strong brand image in the minds of your potential customers. Keep in mind that while sites like Monster.com and Google.com etc have great, memorable domain names, names like these are a lot more difficult to brand without substantial market saturation. You will have to work a lot harder to build and maintain your brand if you call your carpentry business “zamopow.com” than if you simply call it “johnscarpentry.com.” Both approaches can work, but ultimately it is up to you to decide what is the best approach for your particular company.
2. Get the right web host. - Competition in the web hosting business is fierce. Hosting companies have come to accept razor thin profit margins in order to offer the cheapest service possible and undercut their competitors. It doesn’t take much to figure out what happens to quality and service as a result. This may be perfectly ok for the average Joe who wants a website with a few family photos on it, but for a professional and reliable web presence, you will need a professional web hosting provider. There are a variety of things you should expect from your web host to ensure that your website isn’t “here today, gone tomorrow.” First things first, make sure they have a 99.9% uptime guarantee. 99.9% is the number to shoot for. It CANNOT be 100%, and any service that promises this is taking you for a ride. The reason for this is that servers need maintenance, and they need to be updated from time to time. A 99.9% uptime guarantee from the hosting provider means that your website will not cut out for hours or even days at a time and cost you valuable business. Also very important is the service team of the hosting provider. Do yourself a favor and call or email them BEFORE you even make a purchase. See what they are like. Poke their brains, ask a few questions. See how fast it takes them to respond (for email), and how well they answer the questions asked. Believe me, you don’t want to get stuck on the wrong side of the contract with this one.
3. Market to your customers, not the search engines. - I know a lot of you will start to moan and groan about this. Search engine rankings seem to be king in today’s excessively competitive online market place. Everyone is gunning for that Top 10 ranking on Google or Yahoo. Companies dish out millions of dollars for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) services, and seek to create a robotic website that surfs the tides of the vast ocean of search results. You can do this without freaking out about the minutia of your website. Start producing content! Write informative pieces and include them on your website, start a blog, churn out information that people want to read. Google (plus the rest of the pack) places high value on frequent, unique content production. So as people come to read all this great information you are providing, your ranking with the search engines is increasing, AND your product/service and brand is being marketed. Yes, still optimize for the crawlers, but relax! Produce content, gain a readership. Books upon books can be written on this, but for the sake of brevity I will move on to my next topic.
4. Find a niche. - This ties in with tip #3. It’s all about the niche. You need to find a cozy little spot on the web that’s just yours. This can be a daunting task, especially for businesses in highly competitive sectors. It can be done, however, for any product or service. Understand the target audience for your product or service, and tailor the entire structure of your web presence to fully engage that audience. Keep a watch on your competition, and keep your company one step ahead of the pack. You don’t always have to undercut and bully the competition to get sales, and that’s the beauty of niche-based marketing. Stay focused on your audience, and stay focused on what it is that your company does. Quality targeted traffic and leads are key.
5. Design a compelling website. - Let’s face it, everybody and their brother thinks they are a web designer. The key to having a successful and compelling website has nothing to do with how many flash animations you have, how many keywords you can string together in a sentence, or how sophisticated your backend is. Put yourself in the shoes of the customer, and design a website that you yourself would love to visit. Make each page a logical progression from one to the next, and organize everything in a clean and precise manner. The customer only knows what you tell him and what you show him, so make this communication as efficient as possible. Keep everything relevant, and don’t try to cram the kitchen sink into each page. Space it out, keep it manageable, and keep it engaging.
On a closing note, I hope you learned a little from this article. The web can be a land of ample opportunity and prosperity if you play your cards right. Be patient, and remember that you need to build a solid foundation before you can build the house. The first six months of any website are by far the hardest. In fact, just to get a single sale sometimes seams like an impossible task! Persevere, and success will follow.
Copyright 2006 Joe Stec
About The Author
Article by Joe Stec of Monster Web Online (www.monsterwebonline.com) - Monster Web is one of the premier hosting and web service providers for small and start-up businesses.
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