Low Price Web Design – Advertising and Marketing

Huge Mistake #1: Creating a Website with Flash — Did you know in a recent study, top internet marketers discovered that having a website created with Flash, actually DECREASED the response from prospects and customers by as much as three-hundred-and-seventy percent?

Here’s why: Your prospects and customers are most likely visiting your website using all types of different computers, connection speeds and internet configuration settings…

What may look GREAT to one visitor, may not even appear for another! You could very easily have shelled out hundreds or even thousands of dollars to have a website created using the Flash technology, only to find out that some of your visitors will never see it! (not to mention the loading times can cause your visitor to close your site, never to return again.)

Huge Mistake #2: The “Internet Catalog” Approach — You see this everywhere. Good, honest and hardworking businessmen and women get online to sell their products or services, and have a site created for them that contains a link to just about everything they offer on one page. Their thinking goes along the lines of, “…well, I don’t want to leave anyone out. If they come to my site, I want to make sure I have what they’re looking for…” — This way of thinking could not be further from the truth.

Here’s why: There’s an ancient rule that goes back to the very beginning of direct-marketing on the internet, taught by the richest, most legendary and well-respected internet marketers of all time…

“When you give your prospects too many choices, they become confused and aren’t sure what to do next. Confused people never buy anything.”

Huge Mistake #3: Optimizing Your Sales Site for the Search Engines — You’ll see this taught in nearly every “internet marketing” course, manual or eBook out there… “You must optimize every page of your website for the search engines!” — In fact, this false teaching is accepted as ‘gospel truth’ so often, that most web designers will offer to do this for you at no, or little extra cost…

What they DON’T understand is that certain words and phrases must be either re-worded (to make it “keyword rich”) or taken out completely, just to be looked upon highly by the mighty search engines — and this could KILL your sales, literally overnight.

Here’s why: When you or a hired web designer optimize your SALES page (i.e. any web page designed to sell your products and services) to get a higher listing in the search engines, you’re going to have to sacrifice the pulling-power of your sales copy (i.e. written sales material) just to get those higher listings. Sure, this can bring you more traffic — but what good is all the traffic in the world, if your visitors arrive at your website and aren’t compelled enough to read why they should order your product?

For years, it has been taught that you should always try to find a “balance” of SEO (Search-Engine-Optimization) mixed with promotional copy designed to sell your products and services…

WRONG AGAIN! — The truth is that you should NEVER optimize your sales page for the Search Engines. Instead, you should create tiny “entry pages” for each keyword related to your product or service, (highly optimized for the Search Engines) and have them link to your main sales site! (we can show you exactly how to do this quickly and easily and get *massive* targeted traffic from the Search Engines – without ever *touching* your sales site!)

Huge Mistake #4: Having a “Graphics-Based” Website — Sure, graphics can certainly help us to visualize a particular situation or circumstance, product or service… But did you know that having a graphically-driven website can actually DISTRACT your visitor away from your sales message?

After all, your sales message (or “web copy”) is THE #1 most important factor in a website that makes money. If your visitors are paying more attention to your “professional graphics” than your sales message… you’ve just lost another sale.

Here’s why: You’ve got approximately seven seconds from the time your visitor arrives at your site, to the time they decide whether to buy your product, get more information or LEAVE. If you’ve got a graphically-intensive website, your website will most likely still be loading past your seven-second time limit.

That’s a “customer-killer” in and of itself – however, the real reason lies within the fact that the bigger, brighter and more beautiful your graphics are, the more they will distract your visitor from your sales message. And if your visitor is distracted even for one second, it could mean the difference between getting a sale, and losing a customer.

Huge Mistake #5: Designing a Website with ZERO Marketing Experience — Most web designers have no idea how to make money on the internet, with anything other than their design services. It’s not their fault – they simply have no or very little marketing and sales experience. After all, they’re just website designers…

However, having your website designed by someone with ZERO internet marketing experience is like buying a street-car without an engine… it won’t go anywhere, and it’ll just waste your time and money!

About The Author

Jason Mangrum is CEO of ImmWebDesign.com, a Joint Venture specialist, contributing author to such #1 bestsellers as “The E-Code”, “Desperate for Money”, “30 Days to Internet Marketing Success”, author of “The Path of Manifestation” and creator of the “Instant Marketing Miracle – Automated Joint Venture Software.” He has also been a featured speaker at prestigous events such as Marc Goldman’s “Joint Venture Summit of the Century” and the world-famous “Spiritual Marketing Super Summit.”

RIVERSIDE, CA August 4, 2004 — “Historically, small business owners have had a limited number of options to choose from when it comes to the development of an on-line presence,” says Pat Spinelli, owner of The Web Site Tutor, a Riverside, California 1. web site design and training firm.

According to Spinelli, “Until now, small Southern California business owners have had two choices. They have had to out-source the development of their web sites to a professional or sign up with a hosting company offering ‘free’ on-line templates. If they have an unlimited source of funds and the need for a dynamic, interactive site, outsourcing is definitely their best bet.”

“Entrepreneurs who are working with limited funds, however, have a need to look at less costly alternatives,” she says.

“Until now the only real alternatives to costly outsourcing have been on-line templates,” she says, “but most on-line templates have three major drawbacks. To use them one has to sign up for a year’s hosting at three to four times the ordinary cost, most templates offer limited functionality, and most cannot be optimized for search engines without a knowledge of HTML.”

The Web Site Tutor offers an interesting alternative. “We believe we are the first company in Southern California to offer on-site tutorials and on-going marketing assistance which can save undercapitalized business ventures not only a great deal of money but provide them with a far greater degree of control and flexibility,” she says.

According to Spinelli, web design is child’s play. “We can teach anyone who is reasonably computer literate how to design a functional web site in four hours or less and at a fraction of the cost of outsourcing,” she says.

Building a functional site, however, is only the beginning of the process. According to Spinelli, “A well designed site has to be optimized as it is built and that is probably the most important part of our training program.”

“All too often, small business owners hire someone to design a web site, get their sites marginally optimized and then registered with search engines. And the process ends there because they have been led to believe that this is all that needs to be done to build a successful on-line business.

“Successful sites are driven by on-going promotional campaigns that go beyond these essentials,” she said.

“We keep our clients abreast of the latest promotional strategies that will drive traffic to their sites both in the near and long term,” she continues.

Before business owners spend a penny on a web site, Spinelli recommends they review 10 key questions designed to help budding entrepreneurs decide whether a web site is a wise investment. See Key Questions.

The Web Site Tutor’s tutorial program carries a no risk guarantee. After the company’s initial tutorial session and 30 days thereafter, if a business owner decides to abandon the in-house development process, they will take over the site and credit the cost of training to its completion.

At the present time The Web Site Tutor’s tutorial services are restricted to Southern California. They start with a four-hour training session and are followed by 30 days of on-going technical and marketing support.

Copyright 2002 Ron Scott, The Web Site Tutor, www.websitetutoring.com. This article may be reproduced in any form whatsoever as long as it is attributed to the author.

So you have an excellent product or service. You know how to sell it and increase sales by traditional methods – word-of-mouth & direct mail to name two. Now which of following is you:-

• You know that you should be using the internet to grow your business but you are not sure how. You know that if you don’t your competitors are going to get an upper hand. Or
• You are convinced that the internet is total waste of time as it has already burnt a whole in your budget and wasted a lot of your time. Your internet presence is an embarrassment to your company and detracts rather than adds to the value of your products or services. You want to get rid of it but you know you can’t. You don’t know what to do. Or
• You have a web site that attracts potential customers that you would not otherwise had access to, a good proportion of them become your customers and repeatedly buy from you. You measure results & know how effective your marketing budget is and you are able to confidently spend more on marketing that works.

If the third description fits you – Congratulations. You will Knock Out The Competition With A Web site To Die For! If its one of the first two descriptions that fit then you need to do something about it.

Web site Objectives
Your web site is just one tool in the toolbox of your company that is used to market & sell your product & services. That is, a web site MUST sell. All sales & marketing processes have two simple steps and web sites are no different. For web sites those two steps are:-

• Visitors from your target audience arriving at your web site, i.e. a steady stream of qualified leads.
• Conversion of your visitors into customers – and the web site may only be part of that process.

Miss out either of the above and your web site is ineffective. Everything else revolves around these two objectives. Converting interest into action is the only way you turn a marketing budget into real sales.

Business not Technology
Too often, you will hear web companies preach to you about virtues of each of these areas but as a business owner what you need to know which of these areas should receive your attention and budget to achieve your business objective of getting qualified prospects and converting them into customers. There are no hard and fast rules but one component outweighs all others. And that is content. Good content will have the most effect on both the search engines and you human visitors.

Content is King
Copy writing, is probably the most important item on your web site. It is said that Content is King and it is absolutely true. Why, you have to ask, do so many companies, pay thousands to develop a web site with smart flash animations and graphics and then write the content themselves then? It can only be that they have not grasped the importance of the words on their web site. After all it’s the words that people read, it’s the words that call people to action, it’s the words that sell. The rest helps, but a site with poor words is as bad as a site with no words and that is just unheard of.

There is a plethora of “top ten’s” about building a good web site and there are two themes that run through them all and one of them is that Content is King. Search Engine Optimization Experts may well be able to rewrite parts of your web site to appear attractive to the search engines, appear on the first page of Goggle and get you more visitors. But the resultant text & layout is so unfriendly to the human reader that they are immediately turned off and hit the back button. Content is a double-edged sword because it is used by the search engines to provide search results and the very same content must compel the human visitor in to action.

Let Your Prospects Get To Know You
Earlier I mentioned that two themes run through web site “top ten’s”. The second theme is to develop a long-term relationship with your potential customer. The web is an inherently distrustful medium and you have got to instill confidence into your potential customer that you are a real personable organization worth doing business with. None of this is rocket science but it is so often not done. Some ways of doing it are :-

• Testimonials from previous clients
• Independent Product or Service Reviews
• Awards
• Case studies
• Worthwhile original content

Once the initial confidence is built up you can focus on building a long-term relationship with your new prospect. Again there are many ways to do this where the aim is keep in constant contact with your prospect. Easy and growing in popularity are:

• Regular Electronic Newsletters
• Free Reports
• Free mini-Courses

Once produced they cost nothing to keep sending to your prospects and the technology is in place to allow you to do this with minimal time involvement from yourself.

Foundations
A web site is too often seen as a product, something delivered at a point in time. It is true that there is a point in time when the web site goes live but this is very short-sighted to see it this way. And you can be sure you will never wipe out the competition this way. Beating the competition is a long-term strategy . It takes time and it takes a process that starts way before any discussion about the technology takes place.

Conclusion
You need someone to understand your business, take you through a proven process, talk business not technology and then develop a solution to match. Your business needs to attract the attention of its target market (niche) and then convert them to customers. How do you do that? Be personal, develop a relationship, show them you are real and can be trusted and are worth getting to know. Time is precious and your audience is thinking “Are you worth giving up my time for?”.

Once done, its just a matter of time before they buy. If they are the right audience then time is the only variable.

So the word web site is insufficient. The phrase Internet Marketing Solution is much better. Don’t buy a web site it will cost you. Invest in an Internet Marketing Solution it will reward you. After all, that is your objective to market your product & services on the internet. And you want a solution that provides everything – the core web site design & development, good graphics, copy writing, search engine optimisation, pay-per-click, and Email marketing.

© Rugged Rhino 2005

Jeremy Curtis runs Rugged Rhino – Small Business Web Design Specialists. He can be contacted at http://www.ruggedrhino.co.uk or 0845 201 1946.