By David Lucht (Edited by Karen Di Piazza)

This morning was my granddaughter’s birthday. She came running up to me, all dressed up, and obviously excited about something. She began tugging upward on her sleeve, exposing her armpit. She said, “Look, papa!” I had no idea what she was trying to show me. She proudly showed me her other armpit. I was still dumbfounded, but thankfully, her mom and grandmother explained that she was showing off wearing deodorant.

Everyone commented what a big girl she was. She walked off brimming with pride.

I thought to myself, I wear deodorant every day and never get special attention. I thought about why, as children, we get so much attention for the smallest of details. As adults, recognition for the smallest achievements seems to go away. Or does it?

Let’s take your website design

You’ve just finished your site design and published it to your hosting company. It’s drop-dead gorgeous. You know this because you designed it or oversaw the development. The entire site is designed using Flash and the show itself is breathtaking. It moves, shakes, has a lot of cool features and has great audio, too. Everyone you give your domain address to say it’s beautiful.

Those are the compliments you hear, but what’s deafening is that no visitors are finding your site; Flash is pretty much invisible to search engines, especially content—the most important thing. Although your site is ‘pretty,’ visitors who stumble across it leave without buying or contacting you.

It’s amazing how many sites are designed to look good but fail miserably to monetize. Techie nerds—design masters—rarely have strong business sense. We all need computer technology engineers, but sometimes it’s best to consult with a website marketing expert before, during and after site development.

Five important, often neglected site development tips

The very first thing is choosing the domain name. Website names, like marylewisrealty.net, are generally a tough task to place in the search engines. Why?  Because people aren’t likely to search the words Mary Lewis when they’re looking for residential property to purchase or to sell. However, people are likely to search, say, ”Los Angeles homes for sale.” Your domain name should answer viewers’ questions and describe your products or services. 

Content is king! Most sites fail to offer good content. We live in a what’s in it for me world. You have to offer something that’s worthwhile in the visitor’s eyes; you only have seconds to capture their attention. Content must be up-to-date and proofread, a common mistake website managers miss.

Make sure that all links are working. Dead links will chase away viewers forever: search engines will penalize your site.

I once had a client come into my office who thought being able to clip a floppy disk on to someone’s shirt pocket was his ticket to wealth. Mine was the electric fork to go with the electric knife found in so many households. I suggested that he should first try to sell his clip-floppy disk idea to 10 people. He said that he was having trouble selling it locally. I told him that on the Internet I could show it to millions of people that won’t buy it. He soon realized that spending money on a product that no one wanted was a waste of money and time. Do research and find out if there’s a demand for your offering.

Don’t get too high-tech crazy. Don’t overuse graphics and animation on your site. Keep it clean; help each visitor stay focused on the desired outcome, a sale or contact. Think twice about sound, too. Some people surf the Web while at work and will close your site at the speed of light when it’s revealed to everyone that they’re goofing off.

Lead the viewer through the process, and don’t forget a call to action. Ask for the sale!

Search engine and site optimization is critical, which isn’t a one-time occurrence. Many site owners pay SEOs (search engine optimizers) to get them placed on the top 10 pages of Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. The SEOs will achieve this task but usually with keywords or phrases that really does nothing for the site. Smart search engine optimization (SEO) is a science; it requires good content, creative thinking and making all the right moves. There are so many little mistakes in site design that will penalize your site’s ranking. Most site owners, designers and hosting companies are unaware of land mines.

I always suggest getting a SEO expert involved in your site development from the beginning of the project, which includes hiring good, professional writers and editors. When your website produces great results, it’s the best compliment your visitors can give you.

By the way, I put on deodorant today and I did feel pretty good about myself.

To contact Dave Lucht, visit www.Tech-Line.com.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

The World Wide Web has become the ultimate and most convenient source of information for people all over the world, which explains why a lot of internet marketers are striving hard to earn a stable income through their online businesses.  Trends of all kinds have evolved, been adopted by hundreds of online businessmen and women, and are constantly being used to make sales and break quotas for many years.  But there is a new trend that enables internet marketers to actually expand their businesses and services even more, and that’s through offline internet marketing.  The term sounds like an oxymoron, but it is possible and has proven to be very lucrative to many internet marketers already.

Internet marketers all over the world are now learning how to making of internet marketing skills to make money offline.  They do this with the help of outsourcing services and automation in terms of advertising their businesses to offline customers.  This enables them to save time and effort on the actual work with regards to the website and at the same time can appeal personally to their clients the services and benefits they are going to get through their internet marketing skills.  For example, an internet marketer can set up ads about his or her business all over his or her area in order to get the potential customers’ attention.  They place the website of their business, contact numbers, email addresses, and wait for the calls and emails to start coming in.  They then hold meetings, rendezvous, and all kinds of get-togethers to be able to explain how the system will go, how the website will bring in the benefits and profits, and how much they are going to be spending every month.

Your clients will probably be wondering what they are going to get from the websites, which is your cue in letting them in on the possibilities that internet marketing can provide.  For instance, if the website you are building is for a restaurant, customers who are interested can easily access the official website, read through the content, and if they are interested can sign up in the mailing list to be able to get updates such as events, promos, new menus, etc.  Not only is traffic going to build up but sales will be booming through several well-written emails alone.  This scenario is internet marketing working at its best already. 

When it comes to making of internet marketing skills to make money offline, personality and communication skills are also very important.  This is so because you will be dealing with clients who more or less do not have an idea of how much they will be spending for internet marketing services, how much they are going to earn from the websites to be built, and the like.  By offering them a price that they cannot refuse and are very affordable as compared to the expenses on actual advertisements, you can easily get your clients hooked on to you like never before.  What’s more, you don’t have to be the one working day and night in creating websites and hosting them up online since there are very trusted outsourcing companies all over the world who can do that for you.  All it takes is a few hours per day monitoring the system and progress of your clients’ websites and you’ll be earning over $18,500 per month.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites