Arthur Browning |
Arthur Browning began his career teaching technical writing in a small
Midwestern university for 15 years. He later edited and published a
national professional journal for some ten years. He is now an
investor. His interests include art collecting, web marketing, writing.
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Arthur Browning
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Advertising with a Webpage for Internet Marketing ProfitsArthur Browning
November 21, 2006
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Businesses
can benefit from a web presence. Even the smallest business can use a
"business card" website. Planning your webpage for profits - both now
and in the future is the trick.
First you
should look at your budget. What percent of revenues or what dollar amount per
year have you budgeted for advertising and/or marketing? Considering a website
can be much less expensive than many other forms of advertising, and that a
website can produce a higher profit margin than many other forms of advertising
you almost certainly have to have a webpage.
For most
small, local and regional businesses, the only form of advertising that might
take a higher priority in your budget would be a telephone listing in the
Yellow Pages directory. White Page listings may be free in your area with a
business account.
Are your
customers younger, urban, professional, technical, or students? All of these
tend to be highly net-literate and net-focused. Yes to any of these questions
means a website is essential.
Can your
products/services be shipped or transmitted easily? If so you can gear your
webpage to national and international business. Multilingual websites or texts
are necessary in some areas.
Do you have
many small transactions or fewer but larger transactions in your commerce? This
may direct you in deciding whether you want an ecommerce style "shopping
cart" and "credit card acceptance" built into your website.
Are you
selling in a specialized niche or collectible area with antique, original, or
even rare pieces of merchandise? If you need enhanced communication for
high-ticket items then an ecommerce page is less important than rapid and
expert communication with clients or potential buyers.
Do your
sales depend on cultivating customer relationships or are they for the quick
resupply of mass produced stock? This will factor into the amount of time a
buyer should be held within your webpage - or be quickly processed through your
webpage.
The assets
vs costs of a webpage are important when you want to pay for the design of a
webpage. You can create a blog, or photo site, or webpage free of charge if
your budget is nil or your market has zero needs for website amenities. You can
also create an expensive but more effective website if necessary.
The design
of the webpage must focus on: Content (clear descriptions and excellent photos
of your products/services) Layout (arrangement of elements in the webpage is
easy to understand and pleasant to see) and Functionality (the webpage is
easily operated by the visitor to effectively and quickly communicate your
messages).
Ideally,
your webpage loads in 4 seconds or less, looks immediately interesting, invites
the visitor to check out his/her interests in your site, gives info quickly and
esthetically, anticipates the lack of web-savvy in many visitors, makes the
visitor feel that transactions are easy and safe.
From a
technical point-of-view your website should: look good in all browsers, be
easily edited or expanded for product changes and be easily found by search
engines.
Once your
website is on line you want to increase the number of people/customers coming
to visit the site. Begin by printing your website address on all cards,
stationery, vehicles and signboards that you print. Telephone directories and
newspaper ads should also show your web address.
You can
list your website with directories, many of which are free, especially the
market-related directories that are most visited by your potential customers.
You can contract for pay-per-click listings to get exposure from various online
sources.
You can
exchange links with related websites. You can bargain to place small banner ads
in various websites related to your business. After a short time you will
select the most productive places for advertising your business webpage. You
don't have to commit large amounts of money to run these experiments in traffic
generation.
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