As a business owner, you are constantly bombarded with people trying to sell you stuff that is suppose to make your establishment more money and run better than ever. Unfortunately a lot of those salespeople who are trying to make you rich, get rich themselves at the expense of yourself.

Many businesses will get visits from web development firms, they come in to sell you their services and guarantee a multitude of outlandish promises. Some things to watch out for are;

1. Top 10 in Google right away! If those words come out of the mouth of anybody trying to sell you a website, laugh in their face. Unless you are in a very uncompetitive market such as Custom Clothing for Ostriches, the odds of you being able to capture the top 10 spot is not very likely. Quality rankings with keywords that actually generate traffic take a lot of time, and a lot of effort. Anybody can promise a top 10 ranking with uncompetitive keywords that generate no traffic. A quality firm will explain the time and efforts needed to achieve a quality ranking.
   
   
2. The site will pay for itself in one week! Although possible, especially if you are selling products or services with a high profit margins, be keen on this sell. Competition on the web is huge and being able to capture a significant market share in a short time frame is very unlikely. Although websites are investments and DO pay off in the end with a quality firm to back it up, don't be suckered into somebody who promises to deliver the world on a weekend.
   
   
3. Get a website for $300! Many firms will offer a website at very little cost to you upfront. This sounds great at first, but in the end you will owe more than ever. Be sure to carefully read any contracts they may give you, this can be very limiting to your ability to access and change content your own site. After the small initial amount, they can charge you as much as $1,000 a month for upkeep and service and as much as $200 an hour for any changes or alterations you need for your site and if they have the only access to your server, you must pay the price.

If the sales rep at any firm tries to sell their services to you, make sure that they can back up their claims. Demand that you see examples of past clients and see if their claims are justified with past work. If they can't, show them the door.

A quality firm will not promise you more than they can deliver. They will be open and honest towards your needs and explain what will be needed to achieve your goals. They will not need to promise anything, their quality should speak for itself in the work they have done for previous clients.

All websites are investments, they will flourish with time when they are backed by quality web firms. Your website should not be something you need to keep dumping money into. If you do not see positive results to the money you spend, stop that service and look for somebody who can help.

Use your best judgment when you come face to face with somebody who is trying to sell you a website. If something sounds too good to be true, it often is. The bottom line is read the fine lines, research the company, view work done for previous clients and justify the amount you are going to spend.

Labels: buying a website, web design services, web development services, websites

Posted by Phil Antonson at 6:52 PM | Permalink | Comments

When people search for websites, they generally are looking for answers and information. Visitors will quickly skim over a site and find what they are looking for or simply leave a move to the next website on the list. The attention span of the average user is extremely short, studies have shown that the average attention span on a website is 10 seconds (or 26 words). So, as soon as the link is clicked, the clock is ticking and you need to capture your visitor.

Targeting your content

Each page within your site has one message (or should) that message should be very apparent and made clear on the first line of content. If that message is lost, say goodbye to your visitor. To make your page's message clear and targeted, use quick, captivating and bold words in the heading of your page. The heading should be clear and apparent to what your visitors are looking for. When the user notices that the heading is relevant to their search you will have successfully gained another couple seconds.

Simplify

Content is such a downer in many websites, people simply are not willing to read long drawn out articles on the internet, they want brevity and a level of being straight to the point with no frills. The first step is to cut the fat out of your content, especially if you are trying to promote the sale of a product. Bullet points are fantastic tools in organizing a lot of information into easy to follow points.

• See?
• Quick
• Simple
• Information

When you cut out over-detailed content, make sure you have it on a separate page for already 'hooked' users! The information should always still be available if the user desires to read it.

Bold is also a very positive tool used to attract the visitors to certain areas of the content to push key points without going over every little detail. Take the little bit of time to highlight keywords or key phrases in your content. This will not only promote SEO efforts, but will allow visitors to find exactly what they seek.

Flash and other multimedia

Flash and interactive media within a site can be cool and functional, but can also easily scare away visitors. Intros are horrible on basically any site, not only is it horrible for SEO, but it allows users to quickly leave because of time of loading, unsupported formats or drawn out animations that don't allow users to go where they want.

Music on any website is such a dumb idea, especially with no way to turn it off. Having music playing on a website will not only increase load time, but it will also quickly scare the visitor away when it starts playing. If you must have music, have it stopped unless the visitor chooses to turn it on!

Avoid overly interactive content and make everything easily accessible as soon as your page loads. Menu options (navigation) should be clearly visible on the top or top left of your web page.

Long load times = free ticket to leave

Long load times will be your worst enemy in your attempts to keep your visitors at bay. Avoid overly detailed or large graphics on your web template. All of your images should be scaled down properly to promote quick loads. Remember, not everyone has cable internet! You still need to cater to those with <100kb style="font-weight: bold;">

Overview

So there you have it, simple ways to get your visitor to stay! These are invaluable tools and methods that can drastically improve your conversion rates in sales!

Labels: increasing web sales, optimizing web content, website content

Posted by Phil Antonson at 5:07 PM | Permalink | Comments

How much should a website cost? That question is like asking how much should a car cost? On one hand, you have the discount lower quality KIAs and on the other, quality and expensive Mercedes Benz, they both get you from point 'A' to point 'B', so why spend more? Well, thats not the whole picture. Like cars, websites and web design/development firms offer different levels of quality, performance and support. In a nutshell, you typically get what you pay for!

When shopping for web designers, you need to look at many different factors such as;

• Quality
• Price
• IT
• SEO
  
• Turnaround time
• Support
• Design
• Experience
  

1. Quality - Quality, is a very broad factor and basically covers all realms of functionality, appeal and programming back-end. When you shop for a media or web design company to create your website, look at their previous work and see if it has the face appeal that you are looking for. Spend time on their previous works, click through the pages, look for a continuing effect through all of the pages. Check the support on various browsers such as Internet explorer, Safari and Mozilla Firefox to name a few. Some websites will look well in one browser, but not the others and if it looks bad on any browser, you could lose a lot of visitors and business!

2. Price - Price is going to probably be the first thing you will look at and will probably be the main factor in who you decide to choose. This is a very touchy matter because there really isn't a set or defined rate for web design and development services. Here is a general breakdown for a cost of a 10-15 page, custom designed, standard web page with no heavy programming and development.

• Large, highly qualified, experienced firm: $5,000 - $10,000+
• Medium sized, experienced firm: $3,000 - $4,000
• Small, skilled, experienced freelancer: $1,000 - $2,500
• Skilled, unexperienced freelancer: $500 - $750
• New, unexperienced, low quality: $200 - $400
• Indian or similar outsourced: $100 - $400
  

Those figures are very broad and there are definitely exceptions to those numbers. Under the $1,000 mark you will typically get unpolished, quickly developed, and end up with a website that poorly reflects your business efforts. Like most things, you get what you pay for! Up past the $1,000 range you will have a much more effective and targeted site with qualified people to back it up. For a basic 10-15 page website, I would advise not to spend more than $5,000.

3. IT - IT is the technology and back end of the site created. A qualified firm or freelancer will develop your site with the latest and most efficient languages and be valid in all W3 standards. This is typically a problem in inexperienced freelancers or individuals who have not been trained in web development. Poor efforts in this realm could result in bad indexing within search engines and unreliable compliances in various internet browsers.

4. SEO - SEO (Search Engine Optimization) efforts are essential in quality web sites. Although strong SEO marketing tactics are not common in "standard" web site development, it is extremely beneficial that your website is SEO ready and has the basic elements of SEO incorporated into your website, no matter how standard or basic your website is. When you communicate with a potential web developer, be sure to ask if basic SEO elements will be placed in your site for future compliances.

5. Turnaround time - Turnaround time is the time it takes for your developer to create your web site from beginning to launch. Turnaround time is not a direct factor to the quality of the web site, but it often a factor in the overall cost of your project. Typically, a larger, qualified firm will develop a site quicker, but that is not always the case. Very commonly, slow rate of completeness will come from outsourced firms such as India due to communication barriers. For a basic web site consisting of 10-15 pages, it should be completed in one to two weeks.

6. Support - Support is severely overlooked factor in web development service. When a development firm or freelancer creates your website, you need to insure that they will assist in all aspects of launching and maintaining the site. If you need a change done to your site and you don't have the technical knowhow or software to change it, you should be able to contact your development firm and they will make the changes within 24 hours or in emergency situations, much sooner. Before you deposit any money to your group, make sure you understand the rules of their support policies.

7. Design - Design is the face of your website, clearly. It is what people will see first and will have the strongest impact to your visitors about your company. A lot of weight goes behind a web site's design, a poor design and visual appeal quickly will indicate a poor company. Although a bad design may not always mean a bad company, visitors think that.

Design goes far beyond visual appeal, it digs psychologically into the visitors and reflects the business it represents in a dignified matter. The smallest hole-in-the-wall shop can appear to visitors as a fortune 500. Only qualified firms or designers trained in online marketing and general marketing can effectively harness this power - not cheap, unexperienced freelancers or outsourced designers .

8. Experience - Experience reflects the overall knowledge that the freelancer or firm has. Some freelancers will have loads of experience from previous work, but larger firms can be a sure bet that your website is truly quality work.

Recap

So, there you have it, a quick and easy guide to hiring a web development firm. To sum it all up in one easy sentence; You get what you pay for. A quality website cannot be found for under 3 digits. A website is an invest to yourself, and your company and should be the last thing you should be pinching pennies on.

Labels: development, how much should a website cost, websites

Posted by Phil Antonson at 3:23 PM | Permalink | Comments

Starting and operating a successful and profitable business is extremely difficult, time consuming and rewarding. Failure is imminent, I don't care who you are, you need to fail to become successful. When you fail you learn, you get better, you try new things and in the end you are more knowledgeable in the end and can apply your mistakes to better yourself and your company.

In order to grow from your mistakes you must first identify your mistakes, if you can't identify and admit your mistakes, you will never improve. If you never improve, you will never run a successful establishment.

When your mistake is identified, you need to brainstorm why it went wrong and how you can make it work. What tactics can be implemented to improve your problem?

Failure comes in many forms from management, products, marketing, sales to the way you present your business. Here are several aspects to look at in your establishment to improve your growth from failures.

Identify your message - When in business, you need to think about what message you want to send to customers and clients. If your message is jarbled and does not stand out amongst competitors, in what sense do you believe that people will turn to you?

Improve your communication - Inter business communication as well as communication to your customers is crucial to success. As an establishment will multiple employees, you need to open up your communication between each other, if something is amiss, you should have no problem identifying this problem to co-workers. When there are problems within your company, address the problems and improve them immediately. Stubborn management will destroy a company.

Plan your marketing strategy - There are hundreds if not thousands of mediums of marketing. Not all of them will work for you and you shouldn't continue trying something if it does not work. If a marketing campaign fails, do not continue with it. As simple as it sounds, companies will continue to push a campaign that is not financially wise; if your conversion rates are bad, try something new. Hiring a media company to analyze your market and create effective marketing material and marketing campaign may be the best investment that you can make.

Manage your money - Poor money management is almost certain death within any business or organization. Spending money that doesn't benefit the company is simply a leak in the bucket; it will drain out eventually. When you spend money effectively, it will grow your company.

Spend money where it will make money - This is similar to money management because the message is the same; spend money wisely and spend it when you have it and spend it so it will in the end benefit your company. Examples of spending money wisely is hiring professionals to help market and scale your company. Spending money on consulting work may seem daunting but when you weigh it out, it is an extremely valuable investment.

Don't feel hopeless if you need work in these fields. Like this article is all about, failure is a learning tool, a sometimes very expensive learning tool, but the knowledge you gain is invaluable.

Labels: business failures, business scaling, consulting

Posted by Phil Antonson at 1:45 PM | Permalink | Comments

Guerrilla marketing is the most effective methods of "outside the box" marketing tactics that rely on whits, time and imagination. These tactics are perfect for smaller companies who just don't have the financial resources to out-pay the big dogs in the industry.

The word guerrilla derived from a method of warfare that used smaller, mobile armies who practiced unconventional combat methods to out-whit, and destroy larger opponent forces. It's no surprise that due to its effectiveness, nearly all modern warfare uses guerrilla tactics. The same principal applies to guerrilla marketing.

Anybody has the resources to perform guerrilla marketing tactics, all it takes is time and a little imagination - however best results are often obtained by using skilled online marketing specialists such as Revived Media.

There are no guidelines to guerrilla marketing, there are no rules, and no mercy - whatever you can do to bring in customers/clients works.

To begin, I will cover the simple founding steps to effectively assemble and perform guerrilla marketing tactics. From there, I will outline several specific forms of guerrilla marketing.

• Step 1. Create a marketing plan, start with the objectives of your company and identify who you need to target and by what means. This is the foundation to all marketing practices, identify, visualize - attack.
• Step 2. Identify yourself and your company, what is your message, what is your intent? Part of your identity goes from your image visually such as stationary, business cards, and apparel to your business practices emotionally such as, your focus, patience, flexibility, efficiency and quality.
• Step 3. Set goals and time frames, lay out times you can commit to performing your marketing tactics. Move too slow the impact may be lost, move to quick and the message may come off harsh and desperate.
• Step 4. This step is the actual tactics you intend to implement. There are hundred upon hundreds of tactics to use and choose from, you just need to pick which ones will be the most effective.

Below is a list of only a few guerrilla marketing tactics out there:

1. Posters
2. Website
3. Webinars
4. Blogs
5. Newsletters
6. E-mail
7. Post cards
8. Flyers
9. Guys in costumes
10. PPC
11. SEO
12. Door hangers
13. Forums
14. Networking
15. Myspace/Facebook
16. Workshops
17. Contests
18. E-Books
19. Ebay/craigslist
20. Goodies

I only listed 20, but there are hundreds of other untapped methods. It's not limited to your wallet size, but limited by your imagination and commitment to your company!

Labels: guerrilla marketing tactics

Posted by Phil Antonson at 2:46 PM | Permalink | Comments