Posts Tagged ‘marketing’

When planning to design a website many considerations should be thought about. You get what you pay for, and cutting corners is definitely the wrong way to succeed. There’s no reason to design a website that needs to be scrapped and redesigned 6 months down the road. Your web design plan should be thinking years ahead towards business goals and potential growth.

Even with a small business you want to promote a professional image online, and it’s rare that you’ll find a product or service that doesn’t have competition. Unless you have something that’s absolutely unique, there’s always competition out there, and people tend to pick the top websites that give a great first impression. Do it right the first time instead of pulling your hair out later.

When you’re in a business with little competition, you corner that market, but when there are great numbers of others that do the same thing you do, you may not be in demand. Your website needs to give the first impression that you’re the biggest and best at what you do, helping you obtain credibility. The idea is to compete with all the other businesses that are in your same business niche. It’s not who you are and what you do, but it’s the PERCEPTION of who you are and what you CAN do for someone when your potential customers find your website online.

Online shoppers want to go with the top website for what they need, and these are usually larger companies or corporations. They want to spend their money wisely and already know what the competition offers. Anyone shopping online has done research and gathered information on the product that interests them before they even get to your website.

Marketing sales and strategy is what it’s about. Let’s say your competition has a 500 page website online for the same products or services you offer on a 5 page site. Online visitors would probably find your competition first unless you have a well-developed, growing website. If all your budget can handle for now is a 5 page website, perhaps further development as your business grows could be an option.

Bookmark my blog and website for tips and advice in the world of website design. Contact me today with some ideas for a small business website today. Review some of these Business Marketing Tips and Advice as well.

Review these social media networking quick tips for a successful experience connecting with your peers online. Avoid making common mistakes many people make and get the most of your experience on social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter.

It’s always a bad idea to seem like a spammer while social networking so keep your business related posts to a minimum when networking on social media websites. If you want to be avoided like the plague, seeming spammy while socially networking may be a good idea. If your intent is to promote your business and keep your friends from blocking or deleting you, my advice is to limit the promotion of your business and don’t hit everyone who seems interested with that “hard sell”. A simple mention from time to time is good enough, and will keep you from making your online aquaintances think you’re like the door-to-door salesman of Facebook or Twitter.

When interacting with your peers on social media websites, keep it friendly and informal. A simple mention of your business is good enough to give an impression like “I’m here if you need me”. When you have updates in your business or on your website, it’s customary to post them to your social media circle. With business related posts you allow your social network to become aware of your company and the services you provide.

Offer free tips and advice to your friends and followers on social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter. A great way to attract potential customers is to offer something for free such as presenting tips and advice. Helping one person out could be a possible referral for another, and providing useful suggestions for your readers is an effective way to do so.

Consider these business marketing tips and questions when you want to advertise your business to potential clients. Why do they buy from you? What do you have to offer that your competition cannot? The answers to these questions are your competitive advantages that make you stand out from your competition. They may be related to price, location, attitude, responsiveness, professional skills or your own personality.

Focus on the aspects of your business that display reasons a potential client should be drawn to utilize your services. Think about what you really do for your customers and what skills and advantages you have before you contimplate how to approach your audience. Give concrete examples from personal experience to your customers and back up your points so they will be able to relate to the information you provide.

The key is to deliver the right message to the right people as often as your budget will allow. Put forth a message that proclaims why your target market should do business with you. Speak in a language that your target audience wants to hear. Your message should represent the strengths of your business since that is what you do best, so put it in terms that will interest your target market.

The comparison between Pay Per Click (PPC) and search engine optimization(SEO) brings up the question of which one would be more profitable to use. Choosing the proper way to drive traffic to your website involves research, although I tend to lean towards Natural Methods of Search Engine Optimization.

Pay Per Click advertising is used on websites to increase traffic by paying for keyword phrases related to a target market. Advertisers pay their host only when their ad is clicked on and usually use a fixed price per click rather than a bidding system.

Using natural methods of search engine optimization tends to be a more permanent method to have a website that is indexed well in search engines. By obtaining the proper keywords, keyword density, updated original content, inbound links and avoiding duplicate content in your website, there is no need to pay for PPC advertising. These natural methods could far outweigh using paid advertisements in order to get more traffic to your website.

Although there are hundreds of Pay Per Click search engines to buy traffic from, search engine optimization could be a better choice for getting traffic to your website. However, should you decide to go with Pay Per Click advertising, here is the top 8 search engine list you could consider:

7Search
ABCSearch
Google AdWords
Marchex AdHere
MIVA
MSN AdCenter
SearchFeed
Yahoo! Search Marketing

Social media is a popular way to promote your business, help you receive online popularity and connect with potential customers online. Twitter is a useful online tool to help your company succeed online.

When you get a large following on Twitter, a single post that you send out could potentially become viral. Research topics within your business niche to invite other small business owners to follow you. Finding new connections that offer tips, updates and possibly new customers. By investing some time into Twitter and networking with other business owners, you could increase your chances of having a successful enterprise.

If you use Twitter professionally for business, you could find yourself generating more business online. Read my entire article on Twitter: How and Why Should We Use It? on Earticlesonline, or read my blog post entitled Twitter-A Powerful Networking Tool.

Also have a look at these other tips on my blog:

Tips Designing a Fast Loading Website
Tips on Writing Blog Posts
The 7 Best Website Optimization Techniques

Projecting a positive business image is important when interacting with your potential customers online. You should define an online presence that is both professional and attractive. You want your online peers to take you seriously and want to contact you to enquire about your business.

When using social media, be sure that you use the most professional photo possible for a positive first impression to potential customers. Use an appealing background to attract your online peers to be interested in doing business with you. Don’t use pictures taken in such a casual setting that your potential clients will think you are lacking a business demeanor.

This concept even applies to a basic implements such as a voicemail message.  If you’re expecting to receive calls from prospective employers or clients, a professional voicemail is a necessity.  Speak in a clear, articulate voice, annouce who you are and that you’ll get back to your caller as soon as possible.  Doing business on the phone is no time to lack professional business skills.

Projecting a positive business image allows your online presence to be taken seriously. You never get a second chance to make a first impression, and if you make sure that your photos are professional, you might have an easier time attracting potential customers to your business.

Besides writing blog posts, adding website pages and submitting to directories for inbound links, it could be to your advantage to write articles to promote your website. By writing articles about your business niche you can get more backlinks to your website, increase visitor traffic, and receive more exposure for free.

Write often to increase traffic and keep it interesting for your readers. Give your website visitors a reason to visit regularly. When you constantly offer new content, your website growth shows. When you write articles to be published by online article publishing companies, your website gets more exposure, more links to you are avaliable online, and you may find you get more traffic than usual. Growth in online traffic is to your advantage because chances are that with more exposure, you could get more business by potential customers.

I’ve been writing more articles lately because I notice the backlinks I get from it is growing more and more. It’s important to write within your business niche about things your potential customers would like to learn about. Keeping them interested in your website could get you referrals to other potential clients as well. The more you write, the more exposure you could get.

Some Great Websites to Submit Your Article:

Acme Articles / Articlebliss / Articledashboard / Articlefeeder / Articleland / Articlerich / Articlesbase / Articlesnatch / Articlesrightnow / Amazines / Earticlesonline / Ezinearticles / Ezineseeker / Ideamarketers

By having multiple glossaries to reference for terms you may not be comfortable with in website design, you may better comprehend when reading up on subjects your competition won’t bother to. Use my Enormous Glossary Reference to stay on the leading edge in website design terms in a multitude of categories.

These lists of over a hundred website design glossaries cover a series of subjects ranging from CSS, HTML, marketing, SEO, social media and software. No matter what definitions you may need in these website design categories, this list of glossaries will have your answer.

The categories of terms covered by my Enormous Glossary Reference include:
CMS Glossaries
CSS, (X)HTML, DOM and JavaScript Glossaries
Graphic Design Glossaries
Marketing Glossaries
Print Design Glossaries
SEO Glossaries
Social Media Glossaries
Software Development Glossaries
Twitter Glossaries
Typography Glossaries
Usability, UX and IA Glossaries
Web Design Glossaries

Under each category is an entire list of subcategories as well. Use this as a reference or bookmark my Enormous Glossary Reference as a favorite for your researching endeavors in website design.

Have a look at these other Resources for Web Design:

Website Design Tools
Web Browser Add Ons
Useful Web Design Resources
Website Design Webmaster Tools
Other Free Useful Resources Online
Useful Computer Maintenance Tools

Tracking website statistics is important research for any small business website owner to make choices about the interests of the buyer. By analyzing traffic data such as how people arrive on your website, how long they spent on your page, the volume of traffic and trends for your visitors, small business website owners can adjust their online marketing strategies.

If visitors tend to “bounce” quickly from your site, the reason may be because your website doesn’t have enough .“Stickiness”. This could mean the website doesn’t answer the question, “What can this website offer me?” The website needs to fulfill a need for the visitor, and give them a reason to inquire in your services.

If you see that most people arrive on your website on Tuesdays and Thursdays, perhaps it would be a good idea to write posts on those days, or just before, and link those posts into your site. This could draw more of your traffic in, and give you more of the edge against your competition through proper online marketing for your website.

Use Statcounter to track website stats, visitors, traffic, time spent on each page, where visitors are referred from, and use this data to adjust marketing strategies. Your results could include more traffic, potential customers, and clients being lead to your website.

For more on tracking website statistics, this article could be helpful:
“The Importance of Tracking Stats”

Statcounter Visitor Traffic Tracking Site

Why visitors “Bounce” from your website involves understanding the term first. Bounce rate percentage represents initial visitors that “bounce off” to another website rather than continue to other pages within the website. Bounce rate means the number of people who land on a website and didn’t give it one single click.

Bounce rate helps understand how and where to change your website to improve stickiness. By lowering your bounce rate and increasing stickiness of your small business website, you can turn visitors into return customers. The higher the “bounce rate” is determines that visitors come to your website, see nothing of value and move on, probably to your competition’s websites.

Keep your bounce rate low by strategizing what needs to be improved with your website to increase stickiness, and most likely find that more of your potential customers may contact you for your products and services on your small business website.

Stop Bouncing Tips For Website Success

What is Bounce Rate and Why it Matters