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Web Business Basics - The First Stumbling Block Every New Webmaster EncountersRichard Adams
Set a new, green website owner up with a domain name, some web hosting and a piece of web design software and you'll likely find the following situation occurs... The new owner spends days or even weeks putting together the world's most attractive site. They spend days making it "theirs". Stamping their personality on it. Making it so it's somthing they're proud of. Something to show to their friends. It's a piece of art. No denying - the thing is beautiful. But there's also a big problem. As the weeks and months go by the newbie webmaster finds that nobody is turning up to their website, except maybe a few friends and family members. And there's no point in a website that nobody visits. And of the tiny handful of people who do visit, of course none of them buy anything or click an affiliate link or an Adsense ad. So soon enough the newbie webmaster is complaining that the Internet is all a pipe-dream. That the only people making any money are the people selling the domain names and hosting to suckers like them. The website sits there lonely and unloved in hyperspace until the time the webhosting needs to be renewed, at which point the site vanishes into the ether - just a distant memory - and another page on Archive.org. But it needn't be that way. You see, the first stumbling block every new webmaster encounters is this... They design a site from the point of view of a web designer, not a marketer. These sites tend to be difficult to rank highly in the search engines, so free traffic is unlikely, and don't tend to convert visitors to buyers. It tends to be a case of "style over substance". Highly attractive yes, but with little useful content. And little or no decent sales copy. And the most common cause is generally a lack of suitable, proven information. But it needn't be that way. You don't need to spend weeks building your first site then months wondering why you're not getting any more than a handful of visitors and why the few that do arrive don't buy anything. What you need is education. You need to start at the *end* not the beginning. Do your research first - what target market are you trying to enter? What keywords do they search for? What do they like to see? How are you going to get visitors to your site? Once someone arrives at your site what do you want them to do (be specific)? Once you know the answers to all these questions you start working backwards working out what your site needs to succeed. You'll be able to work out how to lay it out. What features to include. Consult books, courses and videos to link these plans to an actual, proven, actionable plan to build the site best suited to what you're trying to achieve. And whilst you'll likely spend as long (if not longer) planning your site than actually building it, you'll end up with a site that whilst is no doubt not quite as attractive as your first attempt is perfectly suited to what you're trying to do. Indeed, many of my friends are thoroughly disappointed when I show them my websites and there's no "wow factor" in how they look. Then I show them the results they're generating and they rapidly come round to my way of thinking! So let me ask you - which type of site would you rather build?
Copyright 2006 Richard Adams |
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