Website Marketing

One of the most basic but often overlooked aspect of Internet Marketing is the corporate website. I have come across sites that are just plain hideous, menus that are hard to find, flash animations that take ages to load and broken links everywhere.

Your website is the online version of your physical store. Not only that, it’s “open” 24 hours a day and customers can come in to learn about your product and make a purchase too - websites are so powerful! Now, would you walk into or buy from a store that looks dirty and smells bad, where the whole place looks suspicious and the products are hard to locate? I’m pretty sure the answer’s NO! The same goes for websites.

Features of a website that you should pay attention to:

1) Flash Animation
- unless you’re in the “creative” business, forget about fancy flash animations that take ages to load.

2) Web Design
- having a pleasant design is a given but you must also ensure that your website projects the correct image about your company. Menus should be visible and self-explanatory for easy navigation - consider adding “breadcrumbs” so your visitors know where they’re at. There should be proper meta titles and page titles on every webpage so your visitors (and search engines too) know what the page is about.

3) Webpage Content
- most people don’t actually read webpages but scan across the content. Hence, use a condensed version (short paragraphs are good too) and give them options to learn more, e.g. Click Here For Details, Download Product PDF, View Powerpoint Presentation and Watch A Video.

4) Web Hosting
- web hosting is cheap these days so there’s no reason not to get a proper hosting plan. The idea is to ensure your pages load fast enough for a smooth surfing experience for your site visitors. Infact, if there’s heavy internal use like lots of big email accounts or an Intranet, you should just go for dedicated hosting - check out Questnet Hosting for a sample of what’s included.

5) Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- ok, there’s no point in having a fantastic website but no visitors. Sure, you can advertise but doesn’t that costs money?! SEO is optimizing your website for search engines like Google and Yahoo, in order to rank high in their search results for a set of targeted keywords - I know it’s a mouthful so read it over a couple of times until you understand. Of course, there’s no guarantee with SEO but for a slice of the 1,000,000,000 searches/month and a chance at free, targeted traffic, I think it’s difficult to ignore. Besides there are many SEO consultants our there, from those who charge peanuts to those who charge an-arm-and-leg - pick one that’s reliable and suits your budget.

Good luck!