In the beginning of the Internet, not many people created their own website for the simple fact that the Internet wasn’t that popular back in the days. As time passed by, the Internet gained more and more popularity and in the present the number of Internet users is simply incredible not to mention that the numbers are still climbing.
This is why having a website can help you and your business; having a website is the best marketing tool available in the present at a reasonable price. Why is it the best? The answer is quite simple, due to the fact that on a recent study, 1,244,449,601 Internet users were registered. If this doesn’t convince you, here are some reasons why you/your business should own a website:
1. Don’t let competition eliminate you – other companies already own a website so it is advisable to have your own website otherwise your competitors will “steal” your customers although maybe your products are better;
2. Customers/potential customers are on the look – as I have mentioned in the second paragraph, more than 1 billion people are using the Internet, many of them are searching for some products that you have to offer;
3. Business promotion – having a website will offer you 24 hour / 7 days a week world-wide business promotion;
4. Easy accessible online products – customers prefer purchasing products online for the fact that it will take less time, the prices are lower in comparison to the prices regular shops impose ( as a matter of fact, it is estimated that it costs 8 times more to sell a product from a regular shop in comparison to the Internet ) and we all want to purchase products at the lowest price possible;
5. Advertising – Owing a website has many benefits in the advertising area: you can have many pages of detailed information regarding your company and the products your company has to offer not to mention that changes can be made very easily ( price changes, products availability changes and similar things );
6. Money – having a website will save you a great deal of money for the following reasons: lower printing costs – less printed brochures & letters; lower postage costs – the e-mail service is a cheaper distribution method; lower advertising costs – your website will be online every single day at an affordable price.
These are only a few of the reasons why you should own a website for your business, I have stated only the most important ones, the ones that are critical for a growing business and let’s face it, all business owners want their business to keep growing so why not do it fast and easy using online promotion.
The morale of the story is : whether you are a small business owner, entrepreneur, inventor, author, artist, musician/band, you need a website. Nowadays more and more people are searching the Internet to find products, information about products and other similar issues. If you aren’t active online your competitors will surely have more success due to the fact that you will remain anonymous although you might have a better offer than your competitors but they make a statement on-line which is determinant; in fewer words, Internet = promotion & advertising = success.
Understanding the type of people who visit your site is a very important task because you can use that information to enhance your site to suit them. As a result, you will gain more loyal returning visitors that come back again and again for more.
What is the age level and what kind of knowledge does your audience have? A layman might linger around a general site on gardening, but a professional botanist might turn his nose at the very same site. Similarly, a regular person will leave a site filled with astronomy abstracts but a well educated university graduate will find that site interesting.
Take your audience’s emotional state into consideration when building your site. If a very irritated visitor searches for a solution and comes across your site, you will want to make sure you offer the solution right up front and sell or promote your product to him second. In this way, the visitor will put his trust in you for offering the solution to his problems and is more likely to buy your product when you offer it to him after that.
When you design the layout for your site, you have to take into account the characteristics of your audience. Are they old or young people? Are they looking for trends or are they just looking for information served without any icing on the cake? For example, introducing a new, exciting game with a simple, straightforward black text against white background page will definitely turn prospects away. Make sure your design suits your site’s general theme.
Try to sprinkle colloquial language in your sites sparingly where you see fit and you will create a sense that your audience is on common ground with you. This in turn builds a trusting relationship between you and your audience, which will come in useful should you want to market a product to your audience.
A lot of successful websites depend on returning visitors to account for a major part of their traffic. Returning visitors are easier to convert into paying customers because the more often they return to a site, the more trust they have in that site. The credibility issue just melts away. Hence, keep your visitors coming back to your site with the following methods:
1) Start a forum, chatroom or shoutbox
When you start a forum, chatroom or shoutbox, you are providing your visitors a place to voice their opinions and interact with their peers — all of them are visitors of your site. As conversations build up, a sense of community will also follow and your visitors will come back to your site almost religiously every day.
2) Start a web log (blog)
Keep an online journal, or more commonly known as a blog, on your site and keep it updated with latest news about yourself. Human beings are curious creatures and they will keep their eyes glued to the monitor if you post fresh news frequently. You will also build up your credibility as you are proving to them that there is also a real life person behind the website.
3) Carry out polls or surveys
Polls and surveys are other forms of interaction that you should definitely consider adding to your site. They provide a quick way for visitors to voice their opinions and to get involved in your website. Be sure to publish polls or surveys that are strongly relevant to the target market of your website to keep them interested to find out about the results.
4) Hold puzzles, quizzes and games
Just imagine how many office workers procrastinate at work every day, and you will be able to gauge how many people will keep visiting your site if you provide a very interesting or addicting way of entertainment. You can also hold competitions to award the high score winner to keep people trying continuously to earn the prize.
5) Update frequently with fresh content
Update your site frequently with fresh content so that every time your visitors come back, they will have something to read on your site. This is the most widely known and most effective method of attracting returning visitors, but this is also the least carried out one because of the laziness of webmasters. No one will want to browse a site that looks the same over ten years, so keep your site updated with fresh bites!
In the beginning of the Internet, not many people created their own website for the simple fact that the Internet wasn’t that popular back in the days. As time passed by, the Internet gained more ...
Understanding the type of people who visit your site is a very important task because you can use that information to enhance your site to suit them. As a result, you will gain more loyal ...
A lot of successful websites depend on returning visitors to account for a major part of their traffic. Returning visitors are easier to convert into paying customers because the more often they return to a ...
