Site Designing For Your Niche

A common mistake that many web site owners make is "over designing" their sites. Let's use a fictitious example of a classic car replacement parts website as a case in point. This company has been in business for 10 years and they enjoy a strong catalog following. They want to increase their sales and expand their business by utilizing the Internet as an additional sales platform. Although not necessarily a home business per se, but a small family owned business that has been highly successful in offering post-war classic car replacement parts. The time has come to expand or stagnate.

The company begins to research web site designers and settles on one that has an impressive portfolio. Lots of flash animation and state-of-the-art design technique. After many weeks of information gathering of product photos and data, design meetings and cost discussions a site is born. It's even been optimized to rank well with the search engines.

The site has been indexed by the major search engines and receives a modest amount of traffic. The site designer assures them that it takes time to get correctly listed and rank well in the search results pages for their top keywords. Almost a year has passed and there is no appreciable increase in sales. The cost to build and maintain the site has not paid for itself.

Should they abandon the site and revert back to a catalog only business? The answer is no, no and no!

What they need to do is understand their internet customer base better. Here's what I would suggest as a consultant.

1. Immediately install site tracking software. This can be accomplished for free by using Google^© Analytics which is part of creating an AdWords^© account. This is pretty simple stuff. You get coding from Google and place it on every page of your site.

2. Create a keyword Advertising program through Google or Yahoo Marketing. This will help to drive traffic to the site and at the same time should help to defray some of the site costs.

3. Allow enough time to analyze site visitors. Another words, wait.

Let's say that by doing the above there is a large enough of a sample to analyze. What did we find?

A. There were hundreds of clicks that landed on the home page or the specific landing page but were abandoned right there. They never bought.

B. The sample showed that many viewers had lower resolution screens, older browser and older flash versions. This is important because of the flash animation on your site. Also the new versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox and Google Chrome have many of these supporting features built in.

C. Viewer loyalty was low (They didn't come back) and average site time was very low as well as page depth (the total number of pages viewed.)

D. There was a high level of abandonment for those that did want to buy, but got to the shopping cart and then aborted before finalizing the sale. ( a form of buyers remorse)

This not what you want to see on a site that sells products that people need and want to buy, why else would they come to the site?

Why did so many viewers drop out after viewing the home page? Let' see if we can make some sense of it all. You know that buyers want your products because they have bought from your catalog very successfully. Then why didn't they buy from your site?

A possible and likely reason for some of the short stay issue could be in the site design. Sometimes simple is better. The reason is not everyone's computer has the latest operating, Internet and Flash software. Your site might not show well in older browser versions and consequently any scripting may cause additional problems. This is not to say that your potential customer is backward it may just mean that they have older computers and operating systems that won't display well. Many viewers get spooked right away if there are any oddities on a site.

Also consider that some one running and older Pentium PC or an older version of a Mac your site with all of its Flash and graphics may take a long time to load. This discourages customers as well and is a deterrent to viewing your site. It's important to understand your customer base first and then add some bells and whistles later. So what is the answer?

Begin by creating a simpler site that is easy for anyone to get around. After all your primary purpose is to open up your market and sell more products to a larger audience.

Make sure you are set up with some analytical software to evaluate your site. Google Analytics is a great choice because it can tell you so much about your viewers and buyers. It even has a function to understand all of the steps someone took before they bought one of your products. This is done through a function called goals and it is a powerful feature to this free service.

In closing, the smart choice is to start out slow and simple and be in the position to analyze everything that goes on in your site.

Rick Carbone is the Director/Publisher of http://www.HomeBusinessResearch.com one of the top home business sites on the Internet. HBR has been helping entrepreneurs start up and successfully manage online home based businesses since 1998.

How to Choose a Web Designer For Your Website

In today's global market, businesses without a web presence are often considered invisible. In a business culture where a virtual world of information and resources are just a click away, inability to make your product or service available via the Internet can cost you millions of dollars in revenue every year. The general store has been replaced by ecommerce and the elemental book of yellow pages has been replaced with Internet search engines, making a consistent and assured Internet web site an absolute necessity. Before you squander your investment dollars hurriedly creating a network existence, be advised that a problematic and lackluster website has more of a chance of hurting your sales, rather than serving them. This is because consumers don't want to filter through annoying nonsense or risk leaking personal or financial information to the wrong people.

Your principle objective is to lead possible consumers to your company web page. On the Internet, there are often thousands of options available, generated from the search query of a single word. Getting your company's website noticed depends on where it ranks on the results page of the search engines. A website that can't be found can't be seen. A good and professional web designer will make your site a prominent presence on the Internet. SEO techniques, if applied properly, can help web crawlers locate and advertise your site, maximizing your efforts to reach your customers.

In this fast-paced, short-attention-spanned advertising culture, some people spend more time surfing the channel than actually watching television programs. Internet marketers are often confronted with the same problem. With so many search engines results, websites need to capture a surfer's attention and keep them interested. The primary page of the website needs to be attractive, exciting and easy to navigate. Page factors that get hung up downloading elaborate video or animation are just frustrating for the users and neon colors or flashing text are intolerable and hard on the eyes. In order to get your message across and direct the customer to the next step, your website should be elegant and simple with look and feel that radiates the style of your company.

The final step is the most important one, making the sale. Online transactions are the next generation in accelerating sales worldwide. A successful ecommerce site offers user-friendly tools and equipments to allow customers to seek out, explore and purchase quickly, reliably and easily. Bringing your resources into the limelight and making successful transactions efficient and trustworthy are what professional and effective web designing is all about.

Business service providers, Business 1st introduces Webclinic Search Engine Optimisation package. The Search Engine Optimisation package provided by Business 1st includes Webclinic web diagnosis reports that analysis the competitor and maintains the website to achieve maximum search engine visibility.

Economics of Web Design For All

Have you tried using these card-making programs ever? Are you aware of the kind that permits you to type in the instance and then take a pick from the pre-designed multiple cards for you to customize and get it printed? Several consumers prefer these because it saves them money as well as time and as the card can also be printed at home or can also be formatted and given the look that you exactly wanted. The similar philosophy can be applied while making certificates. You just need to fill in a form and that would generate a customized and professional certificate.

When you try to think over it, you'll note that there are numerous programs designed only to allow the development of a wider product range that previously required to be purchased individually for each customized order. Try applying this same principle for web design and you'll see why this web builder technology is so very important for numerous business owners. As a business owner discovers how convenient it is to get a site customized according to their preferences and also without any added costs to be associated with the help of a traditional web designer, he would probably wonder why he never ventured this before.

This situation is almost similar to the difference between getting card printed from an existing program or hiring or getting into contract with someone to develop a brand new idea for card design, creating the art work and then finally getting it printed professionally. Does that really make sense? Many of the business that have been using web builder technology are actually amazed to see how easy and quick it is to develop a site using this method. They are really pleased to notice the templates and its familiar usage. The content can also be imported easily. Most of the online businesses using web builder technology are found online the very day they have decided to use the service.

Whenever a new product is made, you'll notice several pessimists and contingents who would be adamant about the new product and its superiority as compared to the status quo products. For example, when consumers' could possibly get cards printed at home with the use of their computers and printers, who would feel that this actually saved time and expenses of the traditional card sending method? That is till the time these card companies decided to embrace the modern technology and took a step ahead and started off the distribution of e-cards. What is even interesting is the fact that traditional web designers are also developing various ways to facilitate you in updating websites without any assistance from them. That's an exceptional idea indeed, except for the fact that the business owner would still be bound to pay similar fees as compared to the period when web designers took great care for each and every changes they made to the site. Is it fair?

It is true that the technology of self directing websites has been adopted by many traditional web designers, but the consumers generally fail to realize savings.

This is possibly the biggest reason why web builder technology makes great sense for business. If you are to make the changes all by yourself anyways, why would you pay something that is more than 500% for this kind of privilege?