Web Guides 4 U

In a down market it is more necessary than ever to consider how to cut costs. You look at every penny spent and trim the fat so much that sometimes you trim the meat as well. In this case, the meat I’m referring to is hosting your website—or having a website at all. Losing the power a properly designed and marketed site can provide you in today’s marketplace would truly be a tragedy, so before you even think about putting the carving knife to your hosting; consider this.

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With three to five seconds to capture your potential customer’s attention, you’ve barely any time to work your magic. This is why it is absolutely vital that in addition to proper site design you take the time to really develop your copy.

Imagine your site’s visitors as wild animals. You’ve set out the bait by marketing your site properly, by submitting your site to search engines, by practicing your SEO training (or paying someone else to do it for you), but a wild animal’s curiosity only takes it so far before its instinct is to bolt. If you don’t make the risk all that much more enticing, the wild animal will sniff at the offering, but they won’t stick around. Before you know it, you’ll be staring at their furry little hindquarters as they bound back into the dense cover of the World Wide Web. This is where igniting their interest comes into play.

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There are two sides to this website debate. On one hand everyone you speak with insists that you need to have a site in order to be competitive in today’s market—even the blue-haired old lady who lives down the street and swallowed a fly has a blog, right? On the other hand, you’re wondering why you should spend the time and money developing a site that you feel will just get lost in the plethora of websites being hosted by millions of people worldwide. After all, won’t your efforts be just another small fish in a big pond?

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The process of building a website can be a daunting one, especially if you’re building one for the first time. It raises questions like, “What kind of information should I provide?” and, “What pages should I include?” just to name a couple. If you’re not asking these sorts of questions…well, my friend, something’s already wrong.

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What a wild time we’re experiencing as businesses these days, eh? What was strong before—what seemed impermeable—is no longer, but what was once an afterthought, or a tertiary method, is now not only a necessity, but one of the most successful methods for continued success a business can attempt.

Folks, the people have spoken. Oddly enough, even with previous studies indicating that the majority of people don’t believe everything they read on the Internet, the Internet has taken second place in media as the preferred news source (according to an article on eMarketer.com). In addition to this, more business put their marketing money to work through online avenues such as search marketing using services such as GOOGLE AdSense (up by 23.6% in the first half of 2008 according to eMarketer.com). Were you part of that group? If not, you need to reconsider where you’re spending your marketing money.

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Everything about a professionally built site can potentially cost you money: hosting, design, development, special functionality, branding…everything. You know what? It’s worth it. You wouldn’t buy from some guy selling out of the back of his van in a dark alley wearing a stained trench coat no matter how inviting his smile was, would you? Well, your potential customers aren’t going to take your site seriously if you don’t dress it up a little. This is why it is so very important that you understand what to look for in a designer—you don’t want to be fooled into believing you’re hiring a miracle worker (because there’s no such thing) when, in fact, you’re hiring some fresh-faced, high school student who picked up a copy of Dreamweaver and figured out how to use templates.

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When the advent of a website occurred they were simple documents that delivered information to the end user, usually through overkill. There was nothing else to put on the page until people started using BMPs, JPGs, and GIFs, and that’s when the mistakes began to roll in. Everyone was so excited that it was possible to create something fantastic looking on the Web they forgot the actual reason most people needed a website. Caught up in making their site “fancy” they overlook that which will make their site a success, and websites became a place to showcase design skills, get “Flashy”, and again, over stimulate their end users with excessive content.

Well, my friend, most sites are being hosted for one reason and one reason alone: to incite customers to action. Your site is a marketing tool, plain and simple. The development of your site should be focused on this effort, and how you do this will determine your success. There are some tricks to marketing, and believe it or not, most marketers don’t even know how to properly utilize a website in their marketing campaign.

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