Frequently Asked Questions

Define your goals and objectives for the site. What do you want your message to the visitor and customer to be? What do you want them to do? Are you selling a product or service? What do you want your image to be? Statistics reflect you have less than 15 seconds to capture the attention of your audience, so make sure your message and your direction is clear and concise. Also, people are visual. You need colors, logos, graphics to create the look and feel you desire to “captivate” your audience. Be consistent throughout the site, you want to be visually consistent to be remembered. Keep that look consistent with all of your marketing materials. This is your image that you’re displaying to your customers. Look at your competition for ideas.

Your company’s web presence begins with your web address. If possible, your company’s name should reflect what your company does. It takes creativity and time, but above all, make it easy to remember.

When choosing a website developer, make sure it’s a company you trust. Talk to their current customers and get opinions. Once you feel the company is trustworthy and dependable, spend time discussing your ideas and choosing options. This is your image and face to the world. The company should be as concerned and dedicated as if it were their very own. Test your site with friends and family. Get feedback before your site goes live.

We’re all guilty of it. We hunt for customers like kids hunt for Easter eggs or when it’s been announced Thanksgiving dinner is ready. Only the strong survive, right? Businesses spends thousands of dollars attending trade shows, conferences, seminars and networking events in order to develop a new client relationship. The way of sales calls, post cards and blast e-mails are losing their effectives and now the business culture turns to the Search Engine as its source of connecting with potential customers. The internet has grown into the primary shopping tool for customers as 85% of internet users state they find businesses through search engines. Google is still the number one search engine, however, Yahoo, Bing, AOL, ASK.com and many others still maintain strong search engine results. It’s vital for your business to have a strong web presence and raise your natural web position (where your web address lists from a keyword reference search). Here are a few recommendations:

Blogging – by adding a blog on your website, you can add a well written, concise comment on your website and the websites of others within your industry. By creating and participating in this dialogue, you have opportunity to talk about your company and its industry. In the meantime, you are heightening your web position. Another great way is to participate in building Wiki information in relation to your industry. It helps build your visibility and your credibility. And it costs you nothing!

Join online networks - Creating a profile within business networking sites such as LinkedIn, Fast Pitch! and others, the business community establishes not only a network with other professionals, it helps build that ever important web presence. You can also join the popular network such as Twitter in order to escalate your daily activity with your company.

Add slides or YouTube to your website - Almost everyone has viewed a slide show or YouTube at some point. Entertaining, right? What not add this capability to draw in your audience? Slideshare.net can be consider the “YouTube for Power Point”. It allows comments and even the ability to choose their favorite. Slideshare is coded so that it’s easy to incorporate into your pages. It can also be copy/pasted onto other blogs and websites. But every time someone views your presentation, Slideshare keeps track of it. Your presentation may even show up on their homepage if you receive enough “hits”. Imagine the exposure your business could receive from that kind of promotion!

YouTube, iPods and business - Believe it or not, it’s not just for high school and college kids anymore. This marketing tool has become very main stream and if you don’t embrace it, you will be leaving a huge market share. The social networking site, YouTube receives over 100 million film clips a day and it’s growing…rapidly. Many businesses are starting to utilize YouTube as a way to reach new audiences as well as enhance their natural web position.

iPod has not been dismissed by larger businesses and corporations. Content for businesses is being changed to adapt to the iPod for professionals on-the-go. And we are on the go, aren’t we? It’s important to pay attention to how people receive information. As technology changes and it changes constantly, so must our ideas on how to reach them.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a vital method in helping you get the search results you’re looking for from search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, AOL). By placing specific keywords, search engines filter the user’s typed in search by processing websites with the same keywords or subject matter, therefore, to get your website’s link into natural web position (towards the front page of a search engine), it is critical to utilize search-engine-friendly keywords, phrases, tag lines and great web designs in order to maximize user searches through applicable information. Remember, even if you have all the right tag lines, keywords and phrases; search engine results typically produce 10s of 1,000s of results. With that in mind, it is important to ensure your website is built in a search-engine-friendly web design built on a framework that is easy for search engines to read. This enhances your websites’ ability to gain a better position on search engines. One of the most important factors to consider is your content must be relevant and updated.