Here is a realistic view of what is involved in getting a web site up and
running successfully whilst hopefully avoiding some of the many pitfalls. It is the personal opinion of David Heasman. It is based on my experience of launching The Wholesaler UK and getting it
found by its target market and being extremely well positioned in the major search engines. If you have any comments or anything to add, please do not hesitate to contact me.If you are unsure of
the meaning of any word underlined in green within the text, just click on it to see the jargon buster. Watch out for those scams! Watch out, there are thousands of scams out there in internet
land, people will happily tell you that you can make a fortune in your spare time, without working too much or they tell you they will deliver 1000's of new customers to you, FREE! Of course this
is the same stuff that has been advertised in magazines & newspapers for years, now they are just virtual scams as these operators have found that the internet is a much cheaper way to reach
far more people. So let's postpone the retirement party for the moment and look at how the internet can help you grow your existing business or develop a new on-line venture.The internet is not
magic! Don't waste your money. Many companies are generating new business whilst saving themselves £1000's in printing and postage costs by producing a well thought out website and including
their catalogue or brochure on the site. Yet many people waste time, money and effort by putting a website on-line that amounts to nothing more that a hideously coloured leaflet and then sit back
and wonder why the orders aren't flooding in! If you are going to do anything on line, do it properly and put the same thought & effort into it that you would any other marketing exercise. It
is probably easier to look at what makes a bad site, bad as to what is a good site. This isn't the definitive guide, just my own observations...Brightly coloured backgrounds and text. Of course
if the rest of your company literature is Turquoise print on bright pink paper, you would be right to continue with this corporate image, however, if it's not... Clip Art Graphics &
Animations. All the basic web design software packages include loads of very tacky images and animated pictures which do nothing to enhance the image of your company and take ages to load, so
visitors will have left through boredom before they have seen what you've got to offer. Little or no content. If I want to look at a leaflet, I'll wait for the junk mail to arrive in the post! If
I spend time on line I want to find some useful information, unfortunately many sites don't do this. Difficult to navigate. A visitor needs to get to the information they want as quickly and
easily as possible, and to be able to find their way back to where they started. If they can't they'll give up and go somewhere else.Frames. This is may be getting a little technical at this
early stage in the development of your site but you will have seen them. They are the parts of a page that move separately and often have scrolling bars on the page. Frames are rarely worth the
trouble they cause. They can be an absolute pain, taking up space, making it difficult for a visitor to work out where they are on a page let alone the site, not all browsers display them
properly and they may not be found by a search engine. Any site that takes ages to download, my boredom threshold along with most others is about 30 seconds, then unless it is something really
interesting I've given up & gone. So keep those graphics small, especially on your front page.Any site designed by a 'techie' without any input from the marketing department or sales people.
Remember you are putting all this effort into producing a document that will promote your company / sell your products, not to show what a clever computer boffin you have! As I said, these are
just my humble opinions, with some research you will no doubt find many more examples of bad design. It all boils down to the fact that you have to design your site with your visitor in mind all
the time. Now you need to start thinking about naming & hosting your site...Making money from your website Even if you are launching your site to promote an existing business it is worthwhile
looking at accepting a certain amount of advertising especially if it compliments your own contents. Assuming you generate a decent number of visitors it will at least cover some of your
expenses. If you are setting up a new on-line venture affiliate advertising will be of much more importance. Using Affiliate Advertising to promote your site. It is worthwhile looking at any of
these agencies if you are looking to promote your own site. The big advantage of advertising this way is that you only need to pay for the results of your advertising after someone has visited
your site or has spent some money with you. Domain Names The World & his Dog seem to out there selling domain names and telling you you need short names, long names .com, .co.uk, .org...the
list is endless and the offers are mind boggling so we've got together a few UK based providers which should be plenty of choice.If you are going to get the name supplier to host your site as
well, stick with a local one, a help line call to the USA when you just can't get that one graphic uploaded isn't very cost effective! .com .co.uk .org.... Think about your market, is it
important to be seen to be UK based or do you want the impression that you are a global enterprise. Choose a name that the search engines will like. What are the words that will promote your
site? Can you include them in the name whilst keeping it short & catchy? Many search engines put a lot of weight on keywords being in the domain name, so unless you've got millions to spend
on advertising, don't come up with one of those zany names that has no relevance to what you do. Multiple website names A lot has been said of the advantages of buying many different domain names
using your keywords so you get found by the search engines, usually said by the people who have an interest in selling names! It can definitely useful, but don't go mad, if for no other reason
than the time involved in keeping these up to date and in front of the search engines. Another reason for buying all the extensions of your brand name is when considering intellectual property
rights. Okay, so you've got the ideas, the name, you've built a great site that gives visitors loads of useful information, now you have to make sure it's found! As I have said before, the
internet is not magic and just publishing a site is not going to ensure you get found. Not only have you got to design your site with potential customers in mind, you also have to design it with
the search engines in mind. Dealing with search engines is a 'weird & wonderful' art, they are all different and need to be treated with care.You will have seen adverts on the net for
services that will submit your site to 1000's of search engines for very little and sometimes for free. Beware! You will get inundated with junk mail! If you insist on signing up for one of these
services, make sure, at the same time, you sign up for an on-line e-mail address that you will only use for this service. Within minutes of them submitting your site you will be inundated with
e-mails offering you every hair brained get rich quick scheme you could imagine. And when I say inundated, I mean it, I mean hundreds, if not thousands of e-mails. Oh and by the way, don't expect
much in the way of visitors coming to your site! . |
