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In this Issue we conclude examining the top 10 essential questions to answer when you are ready to take your site to the next level with questions eight through ten.
8. What colors and images or logos do I have that can be used to keep my BRAND in front of people?
Brand. Brand. Brand. It really IS all about brand. We’ve worked with several small businesses who started out saying that they were too small to need a brand. As they saw it working though, they realized that even their small business benefited from having a brand.There are lots of good resources for building your brand and understanding how to build your brand. Here’s the first video in a series of videos on branding your small business.
Are you saying “But I don’t have a brand”, let’s stop and think about it for a minute. Pull out your business cards. Take a look at your brochure. Point your browser to your web site. And ask yourself these questions:
- What images do you see?
- Are there similar or identical images?
- Do those images / pictures / clipart resonate with you?
- What colors are you using consistently? Do they represent who you are?
- Are there other images that more accurately reflect your business?
- Are there colors missing from our schemes?
If you need help with your brand we can help you and partner with some of our colleagues who specialize in this area. Give us a call if you’d like some help or a referral. Once your colors and brand are determined, make sure that you integrate it or have your web designer integrate it into your web site.
9. Does your site need a shopping cart?
For the most part this seems like a simple question. If you sell stuff, you should have a site. If you sell any kind of product it makes sense. This includes video and audio that can be downloaded. We recently finished a suite of sites that includes http://www.mythicyoga.com. From this site you can purchase real books but you can also purchase ebooks or audio downloads.So anything that can be downloaded can also be sold.
- Pictures? Yes, you should have a site.
- Maps? Yes.
What if you’re a non-profit? Absolutely. Why wouldn’t you want to make it easy for donors or potential donors to contribute to your cause? In this case the beauty of the Internet is that it makes it easy for people from anywhere to help support you. If you build wells in Aftrica, you want to be able to accept donations from Texas or Tanzania or Tasmania. If you’re saving whales in Alaska, you want donors from Mississippi or Mauritania or the Maldives.
What about if you offer a service instead of stuff? There are still several reasons you should consider taking payment online through a shopping cart on your site. If you offer packages with set prices then it is a no-brainer. Yes you should. Even if you charge by the project or by the hour you can still set up your shopping cart so that you can accept payment. Depending on the cart you use and how you configure it, you can have invoices available online that the customer pays or you can have the customer enter the order total.
10. How Can I Use Word-Of-Mouth Marketing to Improve My Web Site?
The 10th question in our 10 questions to ask when you’re ready to take your site to the next level is probably THE most important question around today. Word of Mouth marketing. I’m a pretty good customer. When I’m happy with a business, I will go out of my way to tell others about it. During any given month I might tell five to ten others about a business I like.But we can translate Word Of Mouth Marketing onto the web in all kinds of powerful ways. Welcome to Web 2.0 and in particular the social nature of 2.0. There are lots of ways you can interact with others on the Internet in a meaningful way. When I say meaningful, I mean actual interaction with others, not just logging on, spouting off your sales pitch and logging off.
Here are three sites you can log into, create a profile, and find others of similar interests: Visit the sites above to connect with others. Make sure you spend FIVE minutes a day logging in and communicating.
Here are three sites that have a slightly different focus that those above but allow you to establish your expertise on a given subject: Take some time on a daily or weekly basis and share your knowledge with the world. And be bold about putting your name or site address or product out there as you write.
Here are three social bookmarking sites you can use to generate additional buzz about your posts in the links above and about your own site: At first some of this might seem a bit arcane but if you spend just a “wee bit” of time on this on a regular basis, you’ll be very pleasantly surprised to see how the traffic starts beating a path to your web site.
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