"Let Your Little Website Shine" Part 4Written by Lynne Schlumpf
Continued from page 1 surfer. 7. Serves a great need: Just like any other marketing strategy, most important question to ask yourself is "What human need is my website and product going to fulfill?" This is same question you'll ask yourself about your product or service. This helps you to stay focused on purpose of your website and keeps content consistently targeted towards that need or group of needs. Any sale happens because person buying felt like product or service was going to fulfill a need they had. Get to know what kinds of needs people have. Maslow said that people have a hierarchy of needs. He saw first needs that must be fulfilled are basic survival needs like air, water, food, and sex. After those were fulfilled, he believed that humans try to fulfill safety needs like security and stability in their lives. The most complex needs are self-actualizing needs like love, belonging, acceptance. Try to figure out what your service or product fulfills as far as human needs you’re your website has to incite feelings in a person. Does your website allow them to dream about a better life? A new car? Capitalize on it, and direct your website to treating them as if they're your friend. Know how it feels to have this need fulfilled. This may seem a little deep to you for a sale, but security need has been targeted over and over by insurance salesmen! Have you ever had to use restroom so bad in a meeting that you could not concentrate on what was going on in that meeting? This is what Maslow meant by hierarchy of needs. This may take some thought, but eventually you'll figure out what it is that makes your website necessary to its visitors. Also, don't forget that people often have a need to relieve stress by having fun. Your website may fulfill this need while selling them something else. This is probably why joke and game websites do so well. This brings us to next element of a great website. 7. Is fun: Highly technical websites cannot really be very fun in most cases, but average website can have some fun in it. Maybe there's a contest of some kind, or a joke of day. Whatever makes you laugh, will probably make your visitor laugh as well. Fun is essential in this stressful world. Find something that will make your website enjoyable to visit, and add it to your site today! After all, we're human and like a good laugh once in awhile. Crude jokes probably won't do too well, unless your target customer base is crude. However, fun makes your site more interesting. Next time, we'll talk about something that will make every business owner shiver, but it's necessary in strange world of Internet sale! I look forward to seeing you again!
Lynne Schlumpf is the CEO of Route 66 Cyber Cafe, Inc., http://www.r66cci.com, a Web hosting and design company specializing in promoting websites for new owners, building affordable e-commerce sites, and providing reliable web hosting solutions as an affiliate of Virtualis Incorporated.
| | 10 Tips for a Better WebsiteWritten by Merle
Continued from page 1
7) Newsletter: If you're going to have a website you need to offer a newsletter, even if it's strictly going to be about sale items, specials or site updates. You need to start collecting a list of your visitors' email addresses so you can keep in touch with them. Ezines help to keep your site fresh in client's mind and helps to establish trust and credibility. For more on how to start your own ezine see http://www.ezineuniversity.com 8) Browsers: You'd be amazed at how differently your website appears in different browsers. Make sure you take a peek at your site in Netscape and Internet Explorer. Recent stats show IE has about 80% of market share, but you'll still want to make sure other 20% can view your site without any problems. 9) Resolution: This is a highly debatable subject. "What resolution should I design for?" The norm these days seems to be 800X600 although there are still a small number of people limping along in 640X480. Look at your site in different resolutions to get an idea of what I'm talking about. If you don't mind letting small majority scroll right and left, I say go with 800X600 (that's what I do) and it still looks acceptable to those surfing in mega resolutions of 1024 and higher. 10) Index Page: This may seem like a given, but I'm going to mention it anyway. On very first page of your site (the homepage) first paragraph should answer "5 W's"; basically telling them who you are and what you're offering. You'd be amazed at number of websites that leave this out; making me think "what do these people do, and what's in it for me?" You need to answer these questions and do it fast. Surfers are a very impatient group. Stop them before they click away. If you remember above 10 pointers when putting together your next website, you'll create a winning site that visitors will want to return to, and not run away from in frustration.
Merle http://www.ezineadauction.com "Where the Best Deals in Ezine Advertising are Made" Subscribe to Ezine Ad Auction Authority and be kept up to date on new auctions as they're added and much more subscribe@ezineadauction.com For advertising information send mailto:advertise@ezineadauction.co
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