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If you look...
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What does your website say about your business?
what does your website say about your business?
Wherever you are doing business, online, or offline you need to
present a professional image.
You can have the best product in the world, the most targeted
advertising campaign dragging people to wherever it is you sell
your product, but when they get there if you don't look like
someone who takes their business seriously why should your customer?
For an online business owner, the cost needn't be a reason not
to look as professional as anyone else.
So ask yourself if you need to address any of the following
to bring your website up to professional standards.
Firstly, what is the url to your business homepage?
The url is the address you type in to get to your website.
If it looks like http://www.somefreehost.com/123/yourname.com
you are in need of a domain name immediately.
Domain names are a great first step to creating a professional
looking website, and are simple and cheap to setup. I
personally use http://www.godaddy.com for my website at
http://www.cashinonline.info
as a domain for 1 year there only costs $8.95 and is easy
to administer to point at an existing site (forwarding)
or to a hosting service.
So there's no excuse not to have a domain name for your business,
unless it's already taken, but Godaddy will even offer alternative
names containing your name so even that's taken care of.
Go and find your domain name now, and then continue reading.
The next big question is where you host your site, at first
free hosting can seem like a good idea, but your business
could quickly outgrow their offerings. Most free hosts only
offer very low bandwidth and may have high demands placed
by hosting lots of sites. This means your site will load
slowly, and your potential customers will move on before
it loads.
The next problem is the amount of download (transfer) the free host will
allow you. If your site gets lots of hits (which would be great)
they could pull the plug to conserve their own transfer limits.
Then your website will not be seen.
My reccomendation for web hosting would have to be
http://www.Host4Profit.com/cgi-bin/home.cgi?67213
host4profit has an excellent package for businesses, and offers
plenty of space for your site and more bandwidth than
most will ever need. Your site will always be available.
But even better is that as a host4profit user you can
refer others to the service (with a clear conscience too) and
receive commissions each month, and with just 3 people referred
using the service you are into a profit.
A slightly cheaper alternative which gives you both a domain
and webhosting for $10 a month is available from
www.Movie.ws/dougyt
which would be more than good enough to host most
Associated Websites
startup
sites, and also has a business built in.
So now you have an easy to remember address, your business site has
ample space and bandwidth to make sure it's always available, what
else could you do to improve it?
Well how does it look when it opens in your browser?
There are some terrible examples of business sites around, but
yours needn't be one of them.
Here is a basic checklist for your website.
Does your site resemble a Banner farm?
Let me clarify that a bit, do you have too many banners
either selling other products, or to try to create traffic
through banner exchanges?
Either way they will slow down your site, and distract your visitors.
Lose the banners, and add some content about your products and look for
traffic from other sources.
Are words Poorly spelt?
It's up to you to proofread your website copy, and even pros can
make mistakes. If your website has spelling mistakes your customers
are going to think you don't care or worse aren't smart enough to
be able to advise them properly.
Does it all make sense?
Sometimes, a comma, or other punctuation can change the whole context
of your sentence. Make sure you read every line back, and that it all
reads as you want it to. Then get someone else to check it again. My
own proofreader is my wife, and she spots plenty of mistakes before
I publish, and make a fool of myself.
Lastly, how do you tie it all together into a nice good looking package?
If you are like most small businesses, you won't be able to afford the
high prices of the web designers the big boys use. It is however still
possible to have a an eyecatching webdesign for little cost by using
templates.
A great source of low cost professional looking templates can be found
at http://www.cashinonline.info/info/sitetemplates.htm
If you don't know about website building and html, it's worthwhile
learning the basics and/or using a free wysiwig editor with the template
you buy. If you don't want to do that, you can always find someone
who is doing a course on website design at a college who may do it for
low cost or even free as part of their coursework, or portfolio for
when they're looking for a job afterwards.
So go take a look now and see what your website is saying about
your business, and use this article as your guideline to a better
looking online presence. It doesn't have to be expensive to look
professional, and it will make your potential customers more
likely to do business with you.
About the Author
BIO
Doug Titchmarsh runs several sites including
http://www.cashinonline.info and
http://www.titchmarsh.com and publishes
an e-zine for marketers online and off
which you can get by sending an email to
douglastitchmarsh@getresponse.com
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