Selling Your Business – Why not to Network
Comments Off
Read every book on marketing written since the 1960's and they'll tell you to work a room and hope for sales. Here's why they're all wrong.
Posts Tagged ‘small businesses’
03
Dec
2009
Dec
2009
01
Dec
2009
Dec
2009
How to Make Your Product Sell – Be Different
Comments Off
Selling your product to consumers involves taking the time educate the marketplace about your product and how it's different than others in the same space.
25
Feb
2009
Feb
2009
Build a Website
So you want to build a website but you don’t know where to start? Surprisingly building a website is a fairly straight forward process and while you’re going to need to know a few things to get started, creating the actual website is a piece of cake.
The Domain Name
Your domain name is your branding on the web. Domain names are an important part of your online identity and should be choosen carefully. Apple Computers for example uses the domain name apple.com while Microsoft uses microsoft.com, a domain name should be easy to remember for your clients, ideally end with .com (you can also own .net, .org etc) and be related to your business.
Hosting
Once you have a domain name, building a website is easy except just like running a restaurant you’ll need to put it somewhere. Small businesses don’t really need to be all that concerned with hosting, a simple web hosting package will meet the needs of most businesses, which is why I recommend BlueHost. Web hosting is like renting space on the internet, it’s about making sure your website is always online.
Build a Website
Now that you have a domain name and hosting, you need to look at building a website for yourself. Throughout my website you fill find everything you need to build a website so I don’t want to repeat myself too much but needless to say, the most important part of building a small business website is content. That’s why when I build websites for customers I stress that before we push a single pixel around the screen, we have:
- An approved Sitemap (a list of all the pages on the website)
- A summary of the text, photos and graphics for each page
Sounds funny but in grade school these days, kids are trained how to build websites better than most professional web designers. Before kids can write a story, they first have to create a Story Web. This is a basic structure of a story which shows the key elements of a story. To the right, I’ve created what might be the lamest story web in history … but it’s still better than what a lot of business owners created for their website.
So, here’s the secret to building a website:
- Write down ten objectives, if you can’t think of ten … try harder
- Throw out five objectives, ten is too many
- Pick your main objective … that’s your homepage
- For each objective, add three points that makes your website special
- Turn each point into a paragraph
Congratulations, you’ve just built a Story Web (or sitemap) for your website.
Now, give me a call if you’d like me to build a website for you, or take a look at these great articles to build one yourself:
28
Jan
2009
Jan
2009
10 Ways to Protect WordPress from Hackers
Wow, Smashing Magazine beat me to the punch with a killer article on how to protect your installation of WordPress from hackers. The 10 ideas are spot on, and easy tweaks for most users of the tool. It reminds me of an article I did months ago on improving the speed of your WordPress install, both very simple processes which every body should follow. As a shameless self promotion, let me point out that if you lack the technical skills or time to do these simple tasks yourself, I’m available as a consultant to small businesses around the world.
Also, I found a great collection of jQuery plugins for WP. If you don’t already know what jQuery is … shame on you. OK, honestly I didn’t know a few months back either but shame on you for not spending a few hours a night reading technical documents. On the other hand, noupe.com just uploaded a list of 25 awesome jQuery WordPress plugins for you to check out.
20
Jan
2009
Jan
2009
Free SEO Tool for small businesses
Ever wonder what popular search engines see when they look at your website? I know I do and that’s why I built an SEO Checker as part of my arsenal of tools for helping clients.
The SEO Checker is online at http://seocheck.getawaygraphics.com/ and can be used for free to get a general idea of what popular search engines see when they look at your website. Is it perfect? No but it does help strip away the clutter and take a look at the real content found on a website.
14
Jan
2009
Jan
2009
Top 10 Web Site Mistakes That Businesses Make
Many small businesses fail to take advantage of the great, low cost marketing opportunities found on the web and make costly mistakes which can be easily avoided.
Where are you?
I don’t get it but a lot of small businesses think hiding their contact information is a good idea. I could get into why your contact information on every page is good for localized search engines, or how it could help regional linking but you know what? It’s simply common sense for a business to want prospects to be able to find them. If you’re a public facing business (retail, restaurant etc) your address should be on every page, it’s that simple. Other companies need an easy to find link, clearly labeled to a contact page.
What do you do?
Honestly, I’m a web designer and half the time I can’t figure out what companies do based on their website. Does your website over think the process? Most do. If you’re a restaurant, post a menu. If you’re an inn, show me your rooms. Post your product or service in the easiest, clearest way possible.
No Images
The only thing worse than a website without contact details? A boring, stale, dull one with lots of text. Pictures say a thousand words right? Well, stop typing so much and buy a $100 camera. Take pictures of your products and people, let me see your lobby, reception area, board room and then I’ll feel better about spending money with you.
Your Company is Run By Robots
Web site are not about technology, stop worrying about fonts and colors. Let me see your people, this goes back to the picture issue above but honestly, it’s worth a second point. Who’s won awards this month? New hires? Experienced professional? Let me know! By the way, having a video on your website is brilliant, people love videos.
Fire and Forget Web Sites
Nothing ticks me off faster than a business who launches a website and ignores it. The Internet is the first place your prospects are going to go to, and they’ll simply move on if ignore them. Answer every email, provide updated content, add a blog to keep content fresh and follow up on every comment on your site. Prompt service wins business.
Outdated Content
If your business wants to succeed, respect your website is an extension of your physical business. Look at it all the time, assign it to somebody in your office or if you can’t afford the time, assign it to me but for the love of all that is digital … Christmas is over in December, make sure your website isn’t promoting St. Nick by News Years. The same goes for the big trade show, holidays, news events and staffing requests.
Butchering the Brand
If your website doesn’t look like your brochure, fire your web designer. Honestly, there’s no reason for your logo to be different on a website. There’s no reason you don’t look as good no, scratch that. There’s no reason you don’t look BETTER on the web than you do in print or in person. Think about it, full color printing costs money but on the web, it’s free.
Broken Down Sites
A 404 Error is the technical term for a website page that no longer exists. 500 is the error code for sites which failed to execute a PHP script from your site … if your clients ever see this, you have no business running a website.
Web Sites Designed by Friends and Family
If your cousin is an award winning designer, hire her but if she’s a database administrator or makes a living putting monitors on desks for a living … walk away. Your website is an extension of your brand, it’s about marketing not technology so hire a designer with a proven track record building quality sites.
Typo’s and Mistakes
Broken images, grammatical errors, poor spelling … these are signs of a business owner who doesn’t care about the company and that tells me that they’re not going to care about the product they sell. Before a website goes live, make sure it’s done.
Effective online marketing is easy, it’s cost effective and it’s a key element of the marketing program of a modern, success business.
If you’re already running a website, take a few moments and ask yourself:
- Does my website look better than my business card?
- Does my website tell my clients what I do?
- Does my website tell prospects how to reach me?
- Is my website easy to use?
- Is my website’s content fresh?
Once you’ve asked yourself those questions, ask 20 other people those five simple questions about your website and really listen.
20
Oct
2008
Oct
2008
Free SEO WordPress Theme for Small Business Web Sites
As part of my goal to create and upload five WordPress themes that are Search Engine Optimized, I’ve finished my second theme, it’s a simple website design for small businesses.
The purpose of this theme was to create a simple, clean, professional website design for companies who need an online presence without the clutter of a normal blog. It’s not a very exciting theme, actually it’s a little on the plain side but it does feature a simple single column design with widget ready footer and nice big text which will help people read the site.
I’ve also taken the time to include a lot of SEO features for beginner website owners, these search engine tools are built right into the template and will auto generate headers, META and titles suitable for Google to index effectively. It’s an ideal blog design for a church or community group, or a small business on a budget.
You’re welcome to download the template for free. If you like this theme but would like to have it customized or installed for you, why not contact me? I’m available for WordPress consulting, theme customization and freelance development.
