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How Do You Know if Your Web Site is Good for Your Company?

admin — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 08:22:31 +0000

How do you know if your web site is good for your company?

By first answering the question: “Why do you have a web site?”

If you are in business today you do need a web site. It may be only to provide a “lookup” presence – equivalent to a (nearly obsolete) phone book listing. But there is no longer any doubt that without a web site you have no credibility as a current, active, enterprise. At a minimum, you need a one page web site that provides contact information and a summary of what you do or sell.

Where you go from there, in terms of web site development, depends on the rest of your answer to the question: “Why do you have a web site?”.

A few of the most common reasons are:

To generate leads.

To get sales.

To save on printing costs.

To provide customer support.

To reduce nuisance phone calls.

To qualify leads.

To provide/establish credentials.

To educate.

To satisfy your ego.

Leads

If generating leads is the top priority for your web site then Search Engine Optimization has to be your #1 overriding factor when designing the web site and creating the content. You cannot get leads from a web site that gets no traffic, no matter how beautiful the design or how perfect your grammar.

Sales

Contrary to first impressions this is not the same as, or even a necessary follow on, to leads. Many companies will never be able to make a sale directly from their web site. Some products or services just do not lend themselves to a “self service” model. By the same token, you may not need to generate leads with this web site – even though you are making sales. You may be generating your leads in another way and just handling the sales transactions online.

If you are selling on your web site, then you must concentrate on making that experience the best it can be for your visitor. Every page, the design, the function, and all of the content is there solely to assist in the sale.

Saving on Printing

Catalogues, brochures, portfolios, instruction sheets, etc., can be very costly to print and to distribute. They also have the annoying habit of being out of date the instant they are printed. Your main reason for a web site may be to save time and money by providing materials (that would have otherwise been printed) to your visitors. If this is your priority then the organization of your web site and the ease of finding and printing off the materials will be most important.

Customer Support

This can be as simple as providing driving instructions and business hours to your place of business, and as complicated as a fully automated help desk. Providing (at least some) service to your clients 24/7, is a task that your web site can do at very little cost when compared to hiring people to be available around the clock. To be effective you need to put yourself in your client’s shoes and ask yourself what are they going to want – that you can provide easily – on your web site? Better yet – ask your clients!

Reducing Nuisances

Providing customer support on-line (as above) can help reduce the number of calls your staff many need to field. But it may be that your company is strictly wholesale – and you currently get a lot of unwanted phone calls or emails from the public. If done correctly your web site could identify you more strongly as wholesales only – or better yet direct your nuisance leads to a company that wants them! You may even be able to work out a referral deal for the leads you send their way.

Qualify Leads

Perhaps your challenge is not too few leads but too many leads that go nowhere. Your web site could be put to work qualifying your leads for you. A questionnaire, a test, or a “referred by” form could be used to your advantage. Or some well written text that describes what you do not do – or who you do not serve will satisfy this requirement.

Provide/Establish Credentials

Many service oriented companies and professionals live or die based on their credentials. Often these credentials are complicated and lengthy and need to be added to, or updated frequently. A web site is the ideal place to expound (ad nauseaum if need be) on your experience, training, affiliations, certifications, memberships, published work, samples, past projects, research, etc.

Educate

It may be that providing information is your best bet to business success (at Back2Front we sure think so). Or maybe you are an educator by trade and providing some for free is your best way to sell more for a fee. Either way, a web site based on education will likely grow over time, and could end up being a very large web site – so plan for this in advance. Consistency in style, naming, and presentation, as well as a good navigation system will be necessary for success in this type of web site.

Satisfy Your Ego

I put ego on the list because its better to acknowledge and prioritize it than to pretend it doesn’t exist. Let’s face it, if you are the owner of the company, it is your baby and you are justifiably proud of it! Your company is a reflection of you, and your web site is a reflection of your company. So of course you want it to be impressive, beautiful, unique… as awesome as you are! OK, feel better now? Just prioritize the needs of your ego appropriately with your other goals and make sure your ego does not get in the way of the success of your web site. For example: if lead generation was your highest priority – then you would decide not to include that impressive, animated, flash, intro-page that prevents the search engines from indexing your site properly, no matter how much your ego wanted it.

There is usually more than one reason for having a web site, and therefore the web site may have to satisfy more than one set of requirements. Identifying your reasons and then placing them in order of importance will help you prioritize when resolving conflicts between requirements.

Knowing why you have a web site in the first place will go a long way to helping you decide what kind of web site you need, or whether or not the web site you already have is good for your business.

For more information visit: www.back2front.ca

By Candace Carter, Back2Front – The Web Site People, 2009

Targeted Web Traffic – How to Get Web Site Traffic With Free Resources

admin — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 18:14:04 +0000

Targeted Web Traffic is getting visitors to your site who are interested in what you have to offer. These visitors have to be able to find your web site first. The two most common ways visitors will find your site is by typing in a word phrase into a search engine or linking to your web site from another web site. There are several ways to get your web site on the search engines results page and on other web sites. Many of these ways are free. Here are three free resources you can take advantage of to get targeted web traffic to your site.

Writing articles and publishing them on article web sites is a great way to bring attention to your web site. And sometimes these same articles will quickly rank on search engine results pages. This gives you another opportunity for visitors to find your site. These articles should have keywords or search phrases in them that visitors use to find information on your website topic. For example, if you have a website on aquariums. You would want your article to have phrases in it about aquariums or fish. These keywords should be considered in all three ways I discuss to get web site traffic.

Keep in mind, one article will not get the amount of targeted web traffic you are looking for. You will need to write and submit several articles focusing on the topic or niche of your web site. Most article web sites do not allow you to put links to any web sites in the body of the article. However, they do allow a bio box about the author to be used and a link can be placed in this text that points to your web site. Before publishing any articles, review each article web site’s policies.

Social media sites like Squidoo or Hubpages are sites where the members create and provide most of the content for the site. These types of sites allow you to directly link to your web site. So, you can create a page on the site that discusses the topic that your web site is about. You can include links to your web site allowing the visitor to the social media site to follow the link or click through to your site. This then brings targeted web traffic to your web site because the visitor wants more information on the topic of your web site. As with all 3 of these web site traffic ideas, these social media sites want good content and not one big advertisement. Being spammy and not providing any useful content may get your page deleted. And there goes all your hard work.

Blogging and Microblogging are similar and are both ways to get targeted web traffic. Blogging can be done by having your own blog web site or using a community blogging website. Wordpress has both types. I believe it is better to have your own blog so you are in control of the blog contents. Blogging is a platform that encourages the question “What’s on your mind?” to be answered. This type of site allows you to put in your own content, create links to your sites or other sites, similar to social media sites. Updating your blog weekly is a must. The search engines love new content. These updates can be short. Microblogging are sites that encourage very short entries, some only a couple of lines. One of these sites is Twitter. If blogging asks, “what’s on your mind?”, microblogging asks, “what’s on your mind right now?”As with blogging, you can link to your web site with microblogs, but be sure to provide good, informative content.

Using all three of these traffic generating ideas together will help bring in a steady stream of traffic. All of these ideas should be done on a consistent basis to keep the flow of targeted web traffic going to your site. Although I have only listed a few resources, there are almost unlimited resources that can be used to get web site traffic.

Get a Surprise and Find Out What a Business Web Site Hosting Facility Provides

admin — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 20:12:34 +0000

iness Web Site Hosting Facility Provides Valuable Service

A business web site hosting facility can provide many benefits to businesses large and small that will help to generate increased profits. A business web site hosting facility provides access to a business for people all around the world. A business web site hosting facility can expose a business to potential clients in Hong Kong and in Houston. There are many businesses that now do a great deal of their business via their web sites accessed through the internet. Sales figures for business done completely online continue to skyrocket.

These hosting services also offer great advice. Many of the business web site hosting services have many different businesses using their facilities. The managers of these sites have valuable information on the strengths and weaknesses of the web sites on their services. Many of these managers provide this information to those using their facilities.

Business Web Site Hosting Facilities Offer a Variety of Features

Not all business web site hosting facilities offer the same features at the same prices. Each business manager looking for web site facilities should check out the possibilities with great care. A business web site hosting facility might offer email addresses and accounts for the employees of the business. This could vary from one account to hundreds of accounts. This feature might be included in the price, or it may be an additional feature at an additional charge. This could make a significant difference in the costs of a web site posted on the internet.

The careful business manager will check on the amount of space that is allowed from a business web site hosting facility. The amount of space allowed could mean a difference in the amount of information that can be included about the important products. One product may require more information than another. The web site hosting facility could severely limit a good sales and marketing team. The amount of available space could also limit the type of interaction a company might have with the clients. In a store, the sales team talks with the customer directly. This is not readily possible on a web site. The important information communicated in person in a store must be communicated in a written monologue on the web site.