By: Scott Offord
With many thousands of business websites already strutting their stuff in cyberspace, is there any sign that the Internet’s business saturation point is being reached? Not a one. On the contrary, there are excellent reasons to believe that we are still early in the game of business Web marketing. There are still tens if not hundreds of thousands of businesses that have minimal Web presence or none at all.
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By: Scott Offord
A brief survey of today’s Web shows a wide range of complexity among websites in the small business and non-profit sector. These can include anything from a single page that acts essentially as an online business card, to complex, multi-layered sites with dozens or even hundreds of pages—and everything in between. The simplest websites may need to change only if the organization’s phone number, address, or basic message changes—in other words, seldom. More complex sites, however, may require updating on a monthly, weekly, daily, or even hourly basis. A real estate firm, for example, or a car dealership may want to update its pages every few days or even more often to provide visitors with the most timely, relevant information and to spur new sales.
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By: Scott Offord
In a previous article, “Four Keys to Making Your Website Work for You,” I outlined four crucial considerations for creating a website that works hard for you night and day: (1) clarify your goals, (2) employ a competent web developer to help you fulfill those goals, (3) make sure your visitors can navigate the website easily to find what they are looking for, and (4) fill your pages with content that is easy on the eyes and clearly understandable. Now, let’s assume you’ve done all that and your website is in place. Is your job over? Not by a long shot. Don’t think of your website as something set in stone just because it’s up and people are finding you on the Web. To help make your site work its hardest, treat it as a developing entity that evolves over time. How can you determine the ways your website should develop? Some of the most relevant information will come from the feedback you get from your visitors, existing customers, and potential customers. In this article, I want to identify two major ways feedback can help you hone your website into a razor-edged marketing tool.
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By: Scott Offord
There is a divide—and potentially a great one—inherent to the website development process. Occupying one side of the divide are a small-business owner’s initial objectives and expectations for a proposed website. On the other side, some days or weeks later, stands the completed website. The divide is the gulf that exists between the client’s early vision and the finished product.
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