Web Marketing:
Getting people to find and visit your site is a must if you are going to succeed
on the Internet.
We can help with any of the following and more...
- Get your own domain name. If having your own domain name
is the only way to look professional, it is not in your best interest to host your
site as a sub-domain of another site.
- Put your domain name on everything. You should put your
domain name on all of your printed documents including business cards, flyers, brochures,
mailing labels, letter head, etc.
- Tag your web pages. You should tag each page within your
site with a description and a list of keywords that describe each page.
- Submit your web site to search engines. About 90% of the
traffic you will see from search engines will come from the top 3 search engines:
Google™, Yahoo!®, and Microsoft® Windows Live™ Search. It is important to optimize
your pages to rank as well as possible.
- Notify your current customers about your web site. The
simplest way to generate some traffic to your site would be to notify your current
customers. Your customers are your best prospects for repeat business and will give
feedback on how to improve your website.
- Create E-Mail lists. You can create an email list to help
keep your company in contact with your customers. Your customers can get on or off
the list with a simple online form. The best part is that you spend virtually no
money to send your customers a message. It is important to note that SPAMMING (sending
unsolicited email) is not an ethical business practice.
- Use Auto-Responders. You can use auto responders to immediately
send a response to customers who contact your company via email. The automatic response
is fully customizable, and is usually used to inform your customer that you have
received their message and that you will provide a personalized response soon.
- Stay Dynamic. Keep your website exciting by constantly
updating it with new information and images relating to your products or services.
- Create Strategic Links. With a little research, we can
find places on the internet that would make sense for you to advertise or create
a link back to your site.
- Analyze Usage Reports. Once your site has been up and
running for a while and you have had a few visitors, it is important to analyze
where these people are coming from, then you can focus your time and energy on what
you know is working.
- Promote your web site through traditional marketing efforts.
You must remember that your web site will never be found unless you promote it.
It is a myth that you can simply create a web site and people will beat your door
down. Your web site is a cost effective way to improve marketing to current customers;
however, you must promote your site to get people to visit.
Should I Design My Own Website?:
A website can make a small business look big. Should you do it yourself or hire
a pro?
Whether you run a small home-based business or are a Fortune 100 Corporation --
if you don't have a web site, you might not be marketing your message in the most
effective way.
Creating a web site yourself can be as easy as using a word processor. With programs
like Microsoft Expression Web, almost anyone can create a basic web site that provides
static information for your customers, such as how to contact you and answers to
frequently asked questions. Full scale sites that are interactive, dynamic, and
professionally designed, however, can be considerably more complex.
I Want to Create the Site Myself
The first thing you are going to need is a web presence provider (WPP). While some
online services, like Comcast and AOL offer subscribers free web space, there are
many drawbacks: you may be required to place advertising on your site, you will
not have your own domain name, you will not allowed to sell products, you have limited
disk space, and response time is below average.
You are going to need your own domain name, such as www.yourcomany.com. Anything
else seems unprofessional. Plus, you get the added advantage of reserving your name
forever. You had better hurry though, as finding an available domain name gets harder
every day!
Carsley and Associates can help you find an available domain name, register it, and get your site hosted on the web.
You will need web design software that enables you to create a dynamic Web site.
We recommend
Adobe Dreamweaver
or
Microsoft Expression Web.
These tools provide a visual means of creating and uploading your website. Adobe Acrobat is
also great for providing standard format downloadable documents. If you have an
interest in creating your own graphics, then Adobe Photoshop and PaintShop Pro are
popular packages.
You will need to determine if you have the skills, creativity, and time required
to design the site. Designing a web site from scratch, and having never done it
before, can be very time consuming.
Among the features that could be important to you are e-mail services; secure credit
card transaction tools; submission of your site to major search engines for indexing;
support for hit counters, statistics and forms that enable your customers to request
information or order products; and bandwidth. Carsley and Associates can help you
with all of this.
I Want to Hire Someone to Design My Site
Hiring a web designer to complete your web site can save you a vast amount of time.
We recommend that you find a web designer that can provide a complete of range of
services, including web hosting, web design, web marketing, web administration,
and e-commerce.
Carsley and Associates offers a complete range of the above services.
Typically, costs start at about $3000 for a small 20 to 30 page business site, depending
on the project. Most projects are billed by the hour. The hourly rates of designers
can vary widely; we recommend you look closely at what the designer has done previously
and how long it took to finish the project. Many of our own customers have switched
to Carsley and Associates because "Work By Night" web designers with a day job couldn't
finish the job quickly enough.
Carsley and Associates even has solutions for sites with dynamic content. If you
expect frequent changes, we can create a web infrastructure that allows multiple
people to add and change the website’s content.
For more information on our web design service, see
Web Design.