"Let Your Little Website Shine" Part 5Written by Lynne Schlumpf
Thanks for joining me again. In this part of series, we’ll talk about trying to keep from looking like a clone. 9. Presents an appearance in keeping with what you're selling: This step just takes a few minutes of objective observation on your part to make sure your website presents personality of your company and has kind of image you intended to project. If you have a very serious service to offer, such as financial services, your website should have very little fun stuff on it. It should present a very professional image. In most cases, it should contain no moving gifs, no cartoons, and no goofy stuff. If your site sells toys, its image can be completely fun. This is, like some of other elements, subject to opinion, so just do what your heart tells you. If you have any doubts at all about appearance of your site, change it until you feel right about it. Check out other sites of your biggest competitors to get an idea what is selling in way of website presence. There will probably be a lot of things about their sites you do not like. Use your creative sense to make a site that is uniquely yours. One financial services company had a lot of success by offering a calculator utility on their site that allowed visitor's to figure out how many years and at what interest rate it would take them to save kind of money they wanted to have available at retirement time. 10. Sells in a very subtle way: There's nothing more annoying than to go to a site to read up on some information you really need to brush up on, and every other paragraph is a CLICK HERE or to buy it, go here. I can understand an FAQ area where this goes on, but not your main page, please! The most effective sites on Internet are those that provide a lot of free information, but they might have a banner at top or a click through on side of page in case reader is interested. Most of really bad sales letters I see on Internet are nothing but that -sales letters with no real redeeming value to reader. If you're not willing to give away any of your knowledge on your website, how can you expect to sell
| | "Let Your Little Website Shine" Part 4Written by Lynne Schlumpf
Thanks for joining me again for this series. We’ve gone over a lot of fundamentals of website. We will now get into part you really cannot put your finger on, but these things are just as crucial to your success: 6. Is interesting: This is very similar to discussion in Element number 5 above. The only thing to add here is that you don't want to just cut and paste from other websites for free information I was talking about. How dull can you get! This is copyright infringement anyway. Just sit down and start writing what you know. If you can't write or spell worth a flip, find a friend who is very good at writing and pay them a small fee to research and write on subject. You want your website to be uniquely "you" or your company. It should have your personality or your company's unique personality written all over it. Just before you go to sleep at night or while you're taking a shower, some of best ideas to make your site more interesting will come to you. (This is when I get my best ideas...you may get yours while mowing lawn or driving or whatever) Keep a small notebook handy near those places of inspiration. Write these ideas down and act on them. (doing this while driving is not recommended!) Chances are, they're best ideas you'll have. They usually come from your subconscious. I am a firm believer in subconsious mind solving my problems for me. When I was a full time computer programmer, I used to go to bed at night with a programming problem really bugging me. The next morning - answer was there. Anyway, use your creative processes however best they work for you. A boring site will be worse than a whole site dedicated to "I love my company", as mentioned in Element number 5 above. If subject itself is technical and a little boring, so be it. However, if your subject could be spiced up a little, try to do so. And please, don't think that putting cute little images on your site that jump up and down are going to make subject matter more interesting. It's like reading a book that has no real depth. It won't take long for your visitors to skim through your site and leave. Surfing web is very personal for most people, as well as interactive. They're sitting up straight, very close to screen, and they're not sleeping, like so many of us who watch television. Take advantage of how much an Internet visitor is involved in experience of surfing to your site. They'll tell everyone, I promise you! Haven't you ever gotten an email from someone you know that includes a link in it and says something like: "You've gotta check out this website. It's cool!" Wouldn't it be great if a bunch of people sent each other those about YOUR website? I'd have to call that ultimate compliment of an Internet
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