How do I get my business on the internet? This is one of the most frequently asked questions by small business owners. They are feeling the pressure from their customers and competitors, yet for many business people it is a daunting task, as they don't understand the whole process. In fact, many ... Review of Online Website Builders Online website builders are becoming more and more popular. Online Website builders enable the average HTML-Challenged person to build (dare I say...cool) websites online without having to code a thing. These time saving tools come with some features ... Score BIG With The Search Engines - Maximising Your Site's Potential I often get asked, "How do I improve my site's performance in the search engine's." or "I have a small budget, how can I compete with the larger sites." It can seem daunting when you type in your key search term and you see Google returning 200,000 ...
"Let Your Little Website Shine" Part 6 (Final in series)
Thanks for joining me this one last time for the sixth and final part in this series. One final note about the site mentioned last time: www.websitesthatsuck.com Not only does this site serve a great purpose for you as a website designer (or final decision-maker on how your website looks), but it is also an example of a site you'll not soon forget. It's hilarious in some spots and useful in others. You don't necessarily have to agree with the authors of the book about design elements, but you can learn a thing or two. You can also see some of the worst websites ever by following their links to the "Daily Sucker". I often feel bad for the author of those websites, but it does motivate them to improve. It should also motivate you not to make the same mistakes. It'd be pretty embarrassing to be known as a company that created one of the worst looking websites on the WWW! I hope it never happens to either of us! 11. Does not use email addresses obtained from the site to SPAM the people you got them from. This is another one of my pet peeves. If you sponsor a contest or sweepstakes on your site, or you ask visitors to answer a survey, PLEASE don't see their email address as "fair game" to SPAM them to death with sales letters! It's one thing to sponsor an email newsletter and have them sign up for it. In these newsletters, you can put short sales pitches and links to sales sites. Internet users find this to be acceptable. They figure that you're providing them with information, so someone has to pay for it, right? There's nothing more annoying to me than to get a bunch of sales junk in my email box just because I entered a contest. Allowing visitors to willingly sign up for ezines* or to click on banners on your site is acceptable. Sending them sales junk by email just because they visited your site causes them to lose trust in you. 12. Has some kind of newsletter so that its visitors can keep in touch: I mentioned this item briefly in Element number 12, but now I will expound on why the email newsletter, or ezine as it is called, is an effective method of marketing if it's used creatively. If you would like to start an email newsletter that you can use to keep in touch with visitors to your site, you can create one free here: www.listbot.com Create a link to your newsletter on your site to allow visitors to sign up free. As long as your newsletter has some content, they'll stay subscribed. I despise email newsletters that are nothing but sales pitches all the way through, with links to go buy something. I unsubscribe myself pretty quick from these. Make sure you have clear instructions at the bottom of each newsletter ezine that lets them unsubscribe if they want to. There's nothing worse than someone being subscribed to your newsletter long after they want to be. They tend to get VERY angry! Listbot automatically puts this information at the bottom of every newsletter you mail. One of my most successful ezines was a jokelist. (If you also decide to do a jokelist, make sure you have a disclaimer about it being possibly offensive and only intended for those over 18 years of age) I usually had 4 or 5 good jokes in it, with a few sales mentions at the top of each issue. The sales mentions were not hard sell. They merely mentioned that my online store had a new item or was having a sale. I rarely had anyone unsubscribe from this newsletter. Another really successful one was a recipe newsletter. People love recipes. Try to think of a newsletter you could write that you could be really creative and interesting with. If you're an expert at something (most everyone is an expert at one thing, at least!), create a newsletter that targets people who are interested in that one thing. Keeping in mind who your target subscribers are and what they are interested in helps keep the newsletter on track. 13. Has clear navigation: I get the giggles everytime I think of this subject because of the way it was handled on one of my favorite websites. I'll get to that in a minute, but let me just mention a few things about navigation. Just take a look at some of your favorite websites to get an idea of how simple they make their navigation links. If they're into some depth in your site and want to know what page they're on, put page number links in a corner somewhere. Put simple boxes across the top or down the side with links that tell them how to get back home. Plan your website on paper first if you like, kind of like a logic flowchart. You can use Microsoft Frontpage 2000's navigation and hyperlinks icons to do this also. Then test, test, and more test. Have others go to your website and tell you if it's confusing. Now, I will let one of my favorite sites explain the concept of what they call "Mystery Meat Navigation" to you. You'll come out laughing, but you'll remember the lesson well. Go here to check out their discussion of this topic: http://www.websitesthatsuck.com/badnavigation.html Well, that's the end of this series, and I thank you all, from the bottom of my heart for joining me. I wish you great success and fun besides!
About the Author Lynne Schlumpf is the CEO of Route 66 Cyber Cafe, Inc., http://www.r66cci.com, a Web hosting and design company specializing in promoting websites for new owners, building affordable e-commerce sites, and providing reliable web hosting solutions as an affiliate of Virtualis Incorporated.
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