Answering the question of whether you need an online presence for your business and how to go about creating one. Hire a professional, do it yourself - guidance for both! Then check out websitedesignbyannadoo.com for a step-by-step video course on how to make a website and do some social media strategy.
According to data gathered by Mashable, Inc between 1995 and June 2011, the number of registered domains went from 15,000 to 350,000,000Statistics from aNeilsen Global Consumer Report survey conducted in June 2010 show that 50% of North Americans that responded frequently purchase from online-only storesWebsite stat from Hitwise US
So, if 74% of Americans are online – what are they doing?Stats by Verisign Inc. comThis means people are searching and interacting. Searching for whatever it is they went to Google to find. That could be you! Your business, your product, your niche.And if you do not have an online presence – you may never be found.Just think about the future too. In August 2010, Americans spent 5 hours and 46 minutes on Facebook. So in ONE year, the amount of time the average American spends on social networking grew by 3 hours. During the month of August 2011, US Internet users spent an average of 30 hours online, visited 99 domains, viewed 3,123 web pages. This shows that users are going online to search, find and be captured for a minute or a few.
How often do you go straight to the Internet for an answer? I look up movie times, restaurant reviews, product comparisons, questions I don’t know the answers to off the top of my head, recipes, etc. The list goes on. So if I’m an “average American” who is “connected” then I’m your market and my habits can be indicative of other average users.
Because even if your product is not tangible to an online market, the traffic a website drives to your doorstep is invaluable. Remember how we find things these days – we Google it.
There are SEO/SEM experts who are able to optimize your website so when a search engine crawls the web it finds your site and offers it as an answer to the search query. This takes skill, patience, sometimes money if you want to purchase ads or page ranking, and is oftentimes a guessing game. Every search engine is constantly changing its algorithm so coders cannot hack the results. This keeps everything on a more level playing field. However, you can purchase pay per click services such as Google AdWords, get other sites to link to yours, submit your site to niche directories, etc.The best practice, and the least expensive, is to create a website with clean code, lots of valid text using keywords throughout the site, and solid writing with a high level of usability.
CMS - A web content management system (web CMS) is a bundled or stand-alone application used to create, manage, store, and deploy content on Web pages. Web content includes text and embedded graphics, photos, video, audio, and code (e.g., for applications) that renders other content or interacts with the user. A web CMS may also catalog or index content, select or assemble content at runtime, or deliver content to specific visitors in a personalized way, such as in different languages
Every website should have a number of basic items visible to the customerEven if you don’t plan to host an eCommerce website, the information contained on the site can lead clients to you. Put up an online gallery of photographs sold in your brick and mortar store with information on how people can physically find the shop to purchase prints. If you are a personal assistant, you can put information on the site about services you offer and if you are available for more clients. Even a tangible product can either be sold online or showcased there to drive more foot traffic to a store front.
Standard websites have a Home page, Contact page, and About page at a minimumDo you want users to purchase an item, call you, email you, sign up for a newsletter, join the cause, donate money? This will help determine the drive for the website, the purpose of having an online presence. Let’s say you are building a online gallery to showcase your artwork. You probably want people to click through your art, spending scads of time pouring over each piece and appreciating the talent and skill it takes to make something so wonderful. But what you really want is for them to call and commission a piece. Or purchase one from the site itself. This is a very important step and needs to be done before you ever begin designing a site or hiring a professional. But, a good website designer can help you determine what it is you want your site to do. So if you need help honing in on the reason to have a site – hire a professional.Do some market research and see what other websites are already out there within your genre. There are thousands of gallery websites, thousands of eCommerce websites and likely ones in your niche already up and running.When doing that research, you are thinking like your customers might. What search terms are you using? Are you very specific (native american pottery new mexico) or general (pottery)? Determining how a user thinks will help with SEO. By being able to include within the text of your site terms that people would search for you by, you increase your chances of being found by the search engines. Researching the web for like-sites will only help in the long run. You’ll be able to determine how to stand apart from sites within your market, but also be able to stay within the boundaries of what a user looking for your site would search for to find you.