Business Online

I left off the Designing your online website for $0.00 series to write on a few other things but now I’m back to it. As usual I’ll try to tackle the challenges one at a time.

In this post I’m going to discuss how to select a free web site template . There are probably thousands of these available online now and in my next post in this series which you can read here, I’ll give you a lot of links to websites and blogs that offer these free web templates.

Usually people are a bit wary of the usual free stuff you find available on the internet. Especially if you are going to be using it for something as sensitive as your online business. There are very good reasons to be wary, especially if you are looking to grow your web site over time.

Below I’ll give you a list of 5 tips on selecting the appropriate web template for your web site. If you follow these tips carefully, you are likely to find a template that will not only suit your needs but will enhance your online business by attracting the right kind of surfers to your web site.

• Define a clear-cut image for your online business web site . Like with most free things on the internet where it seems that there’s a whole lot of choice , its possible to get confused. It will save you a whole lot of time if you have a clear cut image of what you are looking for in a web site template. This may sound unlikely, but its easier to find what your looking for if you’ve made up your mind that you want a white HTML template scheme for your web site, rather than having to go through every web site template that catches your fancy. By going through this simple process you’ll be able to reduce the amount of time and effort that it will take you to come up with the appropriate web site templates.

• Research your demography . Your demography will determine the look and feel of your online business web site . What are the new trends? What visual cues are more attractive to your prospective clients? Would a simple plain template work or do I need to use the latest photoshop effects? You can even go as far as studying what specific colours appeal to your demography and using this to build the basic concept of your website. Sometimes paying attention to little details like this will pay out in the end. Understanding how to appeal to the sub conscious tendencies of your visitors is a sure way of getting them to stay on.

• Don’t pick a web template from the first page. Usually the templates are ranked by the number of downloads, or most popular, or most reviewed. Whatever the case first page templates are usually a no no. Its likely that almost everyone who’s been to that site has seen that template and probably likes it as much as you do. It gives a funny not-too-nice feeling to your visitors when they stumble on another site that has exactly the same template as yours. You definitely don’t want this happening. Usually go throught the first three pages before you start to pick possible choices. The fact that a template is not in the first three pages doesn’t mean a thing. Usually the first few downloads determine how things play out, not necessarily based on the quality of the templates, but on the preferences of an arbitrary user. So someone downloads a template, it gets to the top of the ‘most downloaded’ list and someone else who doesn’t care to go through simply downloads it from the first page. The avalanche effect that this can have is pretty obvious.

• Look for an SEO optimized template, even if its not as ‘pretty’ as your preferred choice. There are a lot of cool looking templates, very attractive ones, where the owners have really done a good job with the images. Problem is search engine bots cant read what’s written in images. So take the time to notice exactly how the content on that template is formed. It’ll eventually be better for your google rankings if you stick to templates that have already been optimized for maximum exposure to search engines. You can’t play down the effect of having your web site do well in its search engine rankings.

• Always keep the expected growth of your online business in mind. Pick a scalable web site template. Don’t forget that eventually your hoping that your online business will grow. Always have this at the back of your mind when picking a template. It may seem to work for you now, but what happens with an expanded customer base. Will it be able to appeal to a larger set of people or are you boxing in yourself a little too much? If your hoping to go mega, you might as well start off with a template that reflects this. It will save you the extra cost, stress and time of having to do a web site redo anytime soon.

My next post (which you can read by clicking here) is a compilation of some of the best free web template sites around. I’ve also included some blogs that’ll give some more tips and help in this area.

Nugget:
“Hold their attention, whatever the cost”

James has put up his new online business site. He’s gone through the pain of setting up a google analytics account and is looking forward to seeing a high number of visitors. He is overjoyed when his dreams begin to come through and his stats show that he is getting a lot of visitors. he notices another stat - the bounce rate - its also high. He decides to find out what that also means. To his chagrin it means most of his visitors don’t go past the landing page. What is he doing wrong? How can he handle this problem?

The above scenario is one that a lot of online business site owners face. They’ve heard so much about getting the needed web traffic to their sites, but no one has told them the other side of the story.,

Its one thing to draw the visitors to your site, but another thing entirely to keep them there.

Your visitors will decide whether they’re going to stay on your site withing seconds of getting to your landing page. As a matter of fact if they don’t find anything to keep them there they’ll be off, faster than they got there.

Having taken the pain to get to your site (most of them searching for something specific, or at the very least something to hold their attention) they deserve to find reliable information, good content, or useful products and services .

It isn’t enough just to have good content. Good content is as good as those who eventually get to read it. No matter how good your content is you’ll still need to get your readers interested enough to read through.

One of the ways of doing this is by creating headlines that arouse interest . This alone on its own is an art that any one who wants to reduce their bounce rate, and keep their visitors around long enough to sell them something must learn.

I’ve put together 4 tips that will help you come up with the right headlines for your pages.

• First you must ask yourself the question, ‘What words are likely to have drawn visitors to my site?’. Your visitors are not likely to have typed in your sites url mysteriously into their address bar to get to your site. Its clear that one way or the other your visitors would have come across specific keywords that would have aroused their interest enough to visit your web site. By focusing on these words and using them tactfully on your landing page to lure your visitors into reading the important content about the products and services you offer, you’ll be able to get your visitors to read more of your content, and get to see more of your products and services.You can also note here that if you treat each page as a landing page and ensure that you apply this tip to each of your pages you are likely to have your visitors reaching more than 3 of your pages at a go. this will give you more exposure and increase the likelihood of selling a product or service to each visitor.

• Use links within your content. A link takes you from one page to another - obvious fact that could change your fortune. The link is your friend. By linking in as many pages to each peice of content , and by making it easy for your visitors to reach other pages within your site without necessarily having to click some button or the other, you’ll increase the probability of your visitors getting to your other pages. The trick is to make sure that your content are related to each other one way or the other. As long as you keep your content interesting, you’ll be able to add links to products that are related to that content, without looking like your just bent on selling a product or service.

• Do a simple profile of your likely visitors. You don’t have to be a genius or guru at this. Simply put your self in their shoes and ask yourself “What would arouse my interest?”. Using the normal approach may not work for you. By profiling your visitors and future clients you have a better idea of how to phrase your headlines to hit the right note with them. Depending on what you are offering you may realize that a reassuring and caring tone would send across the right message, or on the other hand a strong and assertive tone would arouse the right amount of interest. By profiling your clients you can usually narrow down your list of possible web headlines to a limited few.

• In selling your products and services, always look at them from a clients perspective. Avoid gatting carried away with all the wonderful things YOU think your product or service incorporates. For most of your clients there may just be one or two appealing benefits. Rather than trying to make them see things your way it may be better to highlight these benefits ( you can always figure these out from user feedback), and maybe point out your enhancements to these specific benefits. If you feel strongly that there are certain features that are not so obvious but distinguish your product or service, link to another page where interested visitors can get this information, without loosing the attention of uninterested ones.

I’m sure these few tips will go a long way in helping you come up with the right web headlines for your internet pages. There’ll be more information on this as well as other related topics.

I came across this very interesting post by Lauren Hobsen. I found it really interesting because I realized most people, especially people running small businesses tend to make certain mistakes, killing their much needed web traffic.

The amazing thing about the internet that a lot of people fail to realize is simply that it plays out to some extent as level ground for every online business. While you may not be able to pay for office space in expensive business zones in the finest cities around the world like Yahoo,Google, or TimeWarner can, you definitely can build a website that matches those of these companies.

This very little but powerful truth can have a tremendous effect on your online business. Truth is that most people design their web sites with the small-business-office mindset. Not willing to go at it with everything they’ve got, or put in that little extra that gives you the proper online presence.

So, back to Lauren Hobson’s post. In her post she mentions 5 mistakes most people make with their web sites. Of the five of them I’d just want to deal with the most obvious and yet most powerful of them - CONTENT.

She states that most small businesses put minimal content on their site, probably throwing in a “contact me” link or putting in a contact us page .

I’ll advice that before you put up your site that you visit a web site of some of the biggest companies in your niche, whether it online shopping,r internet, web design, entertainment etc. You’ll discover that alot of the content on these sites can also be on your site. Whatever difference there is as far as web pages go is minimal.

Another funny fact is that you too can make the very same claims made on these sites, and any one’s that you can’t make will give you an idea for an equivalent played down version for your own site.

i promised that we’d be going into developing a web site for 2 streams of online businesses. These posts will help you with coming up with the content that will give your site the much needed rich, quality content.

Nugget:

“The more the merrier”

Web traffic, Web Traffic, WEB TRAFFIC !!!

So whats all the hype about? How come everyone seems to be talking about it. Whats this whole cat and mouse game about ? How come everyone’s an expert and seems to have some wonderful way to get everyone scrambling for your pages? Is there really a clear cut, step-by-step method to increasing web traffic?

Truth is after reading so many articles on the internet about this subject I’m sure I can’t post any ground breaking discovery here. Driving web traffic to your site is a lot of work, it takes patience and you must be willing to learn, and learn and then do some more learning.

I’ve learnt that with this subject - like with every other subject on the internet - you must be willing to learn new strategies, apply them whole heartedly, be willing to stick with them for a reasonable amount of time, but most importantly be willing to re-evaluate or totally drop them if they’re not coming up with the desired results.

It can be a daunting task deciding on how exactly to come up with traffic. Especially if you feel that the competition seems to be light years ahead of you. Truth is as far as traffic goes there’s definitely enough to go round and to spare.

To have a clearer understanding of what web traffic is I’d advise that you read about it on wikipedia by clicking here. Its funny how much information you can get by simply going to the most obvious of places. At the very least you’ll have a clearer idea of what you’re trying to handle.

Like I said rather than trying to sound so smart by writing my own ideas about getting web traffic (and I seem to have a lot of these), I’ll do the hard work of looking for articles that already have all the information you need and do comparisons, analysis and reviews. I’ll put up the my subsequent posts.

bottom line is that I think everyone will have to come up with their own strategy based on the demography their online business is supposed to attract, and the amount of extra time they have to actually go after the traffic.

In picking the articles and blog posts to be linked , I’ll try to make sure everyone finds an approach or strategy that best fits their own peculiar online business. I really don’t think there’s a hard and fast rule, if you’ve read all the stuff I’ve had to in preparing for this series you’d discover that, the goal may be the same but the strategies really do differ.

If you turn up something interesting you can put it in your comments so that others can have a look at it.

Nugget :
” That little extra can make a lot of difference ”

If you discover that your preferred domain name you can try this tip. By adding an ‘i’, ‘e’ or ‘v’ you may be able to come up with an avialable version.

In the last few years these alphabets give your business the added advantage of being recognized as being an online business or concept. Basically these three prefixes when placed before any domain name , immediately identify it as being related somehow to the internet.

This web site is an example of this., I needed to find a way of indicating that this site was specifically made to handle online businesses. By prefixing my domain name with an e , I effectively found an available .com domain and also branded my site as being online.

The wikipedia search result for domain names which can be found here indicates that adding these prefixes may some how create a more valuable brand in the long run. Somehow this is tied in to the fact that once you have any of these prefixes, you can take out the TLD (top level domain), i.e you can simple put ‘ebiznuggets’ without necessarily adding the extra appendage.

Once you’ve picked up your domain name then the next step is to put up the actual web site. Usually there are all the offers by proffessional web designers and graphics people to help you do this fo a fee. If you can afford it then go for it, the next series of posts will deal with a real life situation where a particular online business plans to set up its own web site. I’ll assume that all they can afford to do is pay for decent hosting platform. The designing and uploading of the web site is left to them and they’re looking for a do-it-yourself solution.

A lot of online businesses have to face this challenge. Usually people have excellent ideas but are at a loss on how to get these business ideas unto the in ternet without having to pay through their nostrils.

Clearly if you can afford it then pay for it, that way you don’t have to get your hands dirty. But there is also often a stronger sense of ownership when you’ve worked the arduous road of designing your own web site.

I am definitely not asking you to start learning all the snazzy stuff that makes that really cool site look so cool. Truth is , if you are planning to run an online business you may not need all those cool graphics. you can take a look at my 10 tips to an excellent site series, you’ll discover that most of what you need to come up with your online business site wont cost you a dime.

I’m assuming that most people reading this have no knowledge of html, css, or anything of the sort. I’ll avoid all the technical stuff and go straght to giving information about web sites, free stuff and anything else that’ll help you put up that site.

I’m actually going to design a simple online business site using only stuff that can be obtained for free on the internet. That way anybody anywhere can simply follow me and come up with a pretty cool online business site.

The next posts are going to be really interesting , so please hang around .

Technorati Profile

Nugget :
” Avoid Confusion ”

Sometimes adding a number to your domain name may seem like all you need to do to solve the avialability dilemma. But using numbers in a domain name presents its own problems.

Irrespective of how your visitors came across your site most peolpe simply store names in their ‘audio’ form. So that fourlife.com,4life.com and forlife.com may all seem the same to a visitor on hindsight. By looking at the example above, its clear that someone visiting fourlife.com will be quite different from another surfer visiting forlife.com as the two clearly are pointing to different things. Therein lies the problem with numbers. By using 4life.com it becomes difficult to attach the name of your site to its specific context.

Remember we want to make it as simple as possible. In most cases where numbers are used , except in situations where the domain name is already attached to a product or service which clearly has the numeral as part of its name, I’ll go with looking for another domain name.

As usual you dont want your hard earned traffic ending up on some other site.

Nugget :
” They’ll need to remember it to come back ”

There are many perspectives to determining the ideal length for your domain name. A lot of them relying on very diverse techniques, some also delving into the study of human behaviour.

I choose to look at it from a simple point of view. As far as naming your domain is concerned the length is a pretty relative context.

The reason for this is that people may find it easy to remember a domain name that merges two ‘everyday’ words together (eg insidetechnology.com) as against a shorter but less obvious word.

So if your domain name consists of two words that average internet users should be familiar with then of course you’ll be able to use a much longer domain name than someone who’s trying to come up with a new but less familiar domain name.

In determining the ideal domain name length , every online business has a unique length. By asking yourself the following questions you probably will be able to come up with an appropriate range :

1. What age group do the bulk of my clients and customers fall into ?

Younger people will obviously be able to remember longer names and are more likely not to be bothered by them especially if your site offers them some form of value.

2. Are they likely to be internet savvy?

Such things as bookmarking relevant or interesting pages help the savvy internet surfer avoid having to type out long url’s, so they really dont mind making their way to your site the first time, since they probably won’t have to do all that typi ng again, but for clients that cant use these tools, having to type in your url all the time might be very dissuading.

3. Am I relying heavily on chance visitors?

If your site relies on chance drop-ins by visitors, then a shorter domain name will go a long way , since they’ll be able to look at it and remember it more easily ( especially if the name of your site is on the top banner on all your pages) . As an aside use visual cues to ensure that they pick the name of your site.

These questions give you an idea about the kind of people your online business will probably attract. Since your goal is to attract and keep these people, then picking a domain name based on their collective tendencies and proclivities is probably wise.

Nugget :
” Go with the crowd “

This nugget is one rule that everyone doing online business has probably had to learn. They either learnt by burning their fingers or by listening to others who got their’s burnt.

As far as naming your domain is concerned, stick to the .com’s as much as possible. I’m not going to bother going into any details over this one because it seems pretty obvious. Do any listing on top sites in any field and then it becomes clearer. Its not too likely that you are going to find too many sites that don’t end with .com .

Like I said in #1 it wont hurt to be unique, the difference here is that most of your visitors and clients may just go as far as memorizing the actual name of your site. As far as domain level names are concerned everyone assumes or presumes that your’s will end with a ‘.com’. Problem here is that you’ll keep losing traffic to whichever site that has the .com equivalent of your site. If the site is half as good as your’s , chances are that your clients’ll most likely never discover that their in the wrong place, especially because having the same name means you are both probably within the same niche.

So as far as this one is concerned I’ll advise you to stick to the .com url’s.