Chapter 5
Automating your Website
The question we get the most is: How do I begin creating my Website?
Many people who don’t have a site are starting to realize that because of the low-cost of creating
and maintaining a site, they should have one.
And, in many cases, people that already have a site, realize that they need to redesign it to make it
more effective. Or, they want to re-do their site so that they have more control over their content
instead of having to pay for someone else to make every little change.
Now before we get started, we realize that we are discussing the do-it-yourself option, and that you
might not have the time or energy or interest in developing or running your own site. In that case,
visit our Web site, www.EyeCatcherInteractive.com, to find out more about how we create a custom
site that fits your needs.
But if you do want to do it yourself, where do you start?
We have tried out dozens of solutions, and we’ve whittled it down to recommending either a basic
Web Site Development Solution or a Blog Solution, both of which can be found at
www.WhatWeSuggest.com.
Blogs
A blog is short for Weblog, which is a Web site that displays in chronological order, the ongoing
comments written by one or more individuals called bloggers.
Think of a blog as an online diary where you can write about whatever you want. You can use a blog
to promote a product, review products, express your political views, talk about your life, or whatever
else you want to write about.
If you want a Web presence fast and inexpensive, we suggest a blog. There are many blogging
tools, and it can be very confusing when trying to decide which one to use. Be careful as many of
blogging companies don’t provide very good customer service. For our latest recommendation,
check out the Blog Solution at www.WhatWeSuggest.com.
Web Site
There are literally thousands of Web design and development tools out there. In our ongoing
research, we look for Web solutions that meet three basic criteria: effective, easy-to-use, and
inexpensive.
There are some Web site solutions that are free. How can the companies that provide these sites
afford to give you the tools free? Well, with these free sites, you typically don’t have too much
control over how your site will look, and the company will have the right to put advertising on your
site. If you want to look professional, we recommend you stay away from such free solutions.
SiteBuildIt! - Website Development In-a-Box
Site Design Solutions
Now, even though SiteBuild! provides you with what we think are quality design templates that are
sufficient to launch a professional-looking site, we have been asked for suggestions on other design
tools.
SiteBuildItNow allows you to use popular Web design programs like Dreamweaver
(www.Dreamweaver.com) to have more control over the way your site looks. Again, this might be
overkill for you, but you should know that it is an option. You could design your site in Dreamweaver
and then overlay that look onto the powerful “backend” solution of SiteBuild!, which will provide you
with its full suite of marketing solutions. It’s extremely flexible.
You also can use pre-made Web site design templates as an intermediate solution. Such templates
are not as complex as using Dreamweaver, but provide you with more designs than SiteBuild!.
Just like overlaying Dreamweaver designs on your SiteBuild! site, you can overlay a cool looking
template with Flash designs or other special effects. (Flash is a program that enables you to create
animation on your Web site.) Check out the Design Template Solution for your website we
recommend by clicking here.
Also, instead of hiring a designer to create your logo, which will be used on your site and on any
offline promotions such as print brochures, stationary, business cards, etc., you might want to
check out our recommended Logo Creator Solution by clicking here or by visiting our
recommendation page at
www.WhatWeSuggest.com.
For some of you, SiteBuild’s templates or other templates, might not be sufficient. If you really want
a professional design or additional assistance with online marketing, visit our company’s Web site at
www.EyeCatcherInteractive.com, and we will design a custom Web site and/or online marketing
program for you.
Buying Domain Names
If you are building a Web site from scratch, you need to choose and buy a Web address [also
known as a domain name or URL (uniform resource locator)]. For example, our URL is www.
EMarketingInABox.com.
Even though a solution like SiteBuild! allows you to choose a Web address as part of the cost of the
Web development package, you may want to buy more URLs.
Why would you want to do this?
Well, imagine that your company’s name is Joseph Smyth Corporation. You may want to buy many
different URLs so that if people type in different versions of your company name, they will find you.
You may want www.JosephSmythCorporation.com, www.JoeSmyth.com, www.JoeSmith.com, www.
JoeSmythCorp.com, and any other combination that you think you should own, including
misspellings.
Don’t go crazy buying tons of URLs, but don’t be cheap about this either as the cost of a .com
domain is only around $ 10. Many of our clients didn’t listen to our advice on this, and decided to
only buy one URL, only to regret it later, when someone else snapped up related URLs.
Once you have these multiple URLs, you can redirect them all to your own main site – or various
sites if it is appropriate – by following the simple instructions provided to you by your Domain Name
Provider. So when someone types one of your URLs into a browser, you can send them to
whichever Web site you want to.
For our recommended Domain Name Provider, click here or check out
www.WhatWeSuggest.com.
Basics of Site Content
Although design is important to present your company as professional, we suggest that you focus
more on what your Web site says (the words on the page) rather than how it looks.
Too many people spend lots of money on design when they should be using that money to invest in
a copywriter who can really help you market your business by crafting effective writing for your site.
If you need help copywriting, visit www.EyeCatcherInteractive.com for more information.
Here are the basic things that you want to write about on your site:
Who We Are or About Us – you want to present yourself or your team. Write short biographies that
will build your credibility. We also suggest that you put up professional photos of you and your team
alongside your bios. People surfing the Web might be a little more comfortable if they see that there
is a real face behind an otherwise-anonymous Web site. Remember, you are trying to build
credibility through having a Web site. If you would like to see how we did it, visit our About the
Authors page on this website.
What We Do – explain the products and services that you offer, and how they will benefit your
prospects. For more on this, see the next section, Basics of Copywriting.
Our Clients – list some of your previous clients if possible. If you are a new business and don’t have
any clients yet, you might want to either skip this section, or explain the types of clients that you
hope to service. So you might say that you provide your service to the financial industry, the
healthcare industry, etc.
Case Studies – again, if you are new, you might not have a section like this, but if you do have
clients, show prospects how you have helped others like them. Make sure you get permission from
your clients to put their names in the case studies or else just say something like: “We helped a
major financial institution by….”
Contact Us – make sure you put down a street address, emails, phone numbers. Some companies
we’ve worked with want to remain anonymous and only provide an email address. We suggest
against this. Again, you want to show that there are real people behind your site. It is the most
powerful way to build credibility on the vast unknown desert of the Web. And consider making your
contact information available on every page of your site – in a footer (a simple line at the bottom of
every page of your site.) To see how we did it, just scroll all the way to the bottom of this page.
Basics of Copywriting
The biggest mistake we see people making on their Web sites is not spending enough time on their
copy (the words on the pages). Part of the problem is that they spend their time – and the space on
their pages – promoting themselves, boasting about how great they are and flexing their muscles
about how they provide the best customer service.
This is all wrong.
What you should be doing is showing your prospective customers that you know what their
problems, their pains, and their fears are, and how you can help them solve those problems, ease
their pains, and calm those fears.
Of course, as we’ve said above, you should display: (1) testimonials – good things that your
customers have to say about you; (2) case studies – to show that you’ve solved other people’s
problems in powerful and measurable ways; and (3) your and/or your team’s biographies, so that
you can show that you have good work experience, training, and education that can convince a
prospective customer that they should check you out further.
But, you should mainly focus on your prospective customer. How do you do that?
Think of this simple formula. Say:
“We can do X for you, so that you can achieve Y.”
For example, if you are a Web designer, say something like: “We can design your site so that it
looks good and increases the number of people who call you to ask you about your products or
services.”
This is a concrete, measurable benefit. The key term here is “so that”. Your product or service will
do something for them so that they can, for example, save time, money, and/or energy.
For professional help in crafting your message, visit us at www.EyeCatcherInteractive.com.
Shopping-Cart Solutions
Here, we are talking about the online equivalent of the supermarket cart. You place your
merchandise in the cart and then check out when you are all finished.
Just as there are many tools out there with which you can build your Web site, there are many
shopping-cart solutions for those of you who are selling products like books, e-books, teddy-bears,
clothing or any other tangible thing that you ship out to someone – as opposed to those of you who
provide a service like plumbing or graphic design.
One of the best ways to increase the number of sales is to minimize what is called “shopping-cart
abandonment.” Many people will start to put things into your electronic shopping cart but then
decide not to buy. Many studies of online shopping behavior have proven this.
So you want to make sure that you have a shopping cart that minimizes such abandonment. It must
be easy for your customers to use, and easy for you to manage.
For our suggested shopping-cart solution, click here or go to www.WhatWeSuggest.com and check
out the Shopping-Cart Solution.
Here are some of the features we look for in shopping-cart solutions that we recommend:
- Secure payment processing so that your shoppers feel confident that their identities and credit-
card information won’t be stolen online;
- No software to add – as we discussed in the business model section earlier, we prefer ASP
solutions – application service providers enable you to “rent” the service without having to
purchase software;
- Ability to accept payments in any currency, which is important in the global marketplace of the
Internet;
- Inventory tracking to make your business easier to manage;
- Ability to customize your look-and-feel to match the rest of your site;
- Ability to run multiple Web sites from the same account to keep your costs down and to make it
easier to manage multiple sites;
- Capability to sell digital products so that you can sell high-profit electronic products like e-books
or music files;
- Ability to have recurring billing, in case you run a membership site or subscription site where you
need to bill people periodically, like monthly or annually, without having to remember to do so for
each customer;
- Affiliate program capability, so that you can have others help you sell your products and give
them incentives to do so by providing them with a commission;
- Ability to track every aspect of your online and offline marketing so that you can see where you
should invest your marketing dollars so that you get the highest return on your investment;
- Offline credit card processing so that you can take orders wherever you are or if someone prefers
to call you instead of ordering online; and,
- Good support, meaning a toll-free number, relatively long customer-service hours (not just 9 am
to 5 pm), and knowledgeable, helpful people who will answer your questions when you need
assistance.
So again, for our latest recommendation, click here or check out the Shopping-Cart Solution at
www.WhatWeSuggest.com.
Autoresponders
Autoresponders are absolutely necessary to automate your site’s functionality so that you can
concentrate on marketing rather than fulfilling orders and requests for information from those who
visit your site.
An autoresponder is an email solution that automatically sends a reply to an email message.
Autoresponders are used to send back boilerplate information on a topic or an electronic document,
such as an ebook or ebrochure, without having the person requesting the information or product do
anything more than email a particular address. Plus, you don’t have to do anything. It’s all
automated.
Autoresponders are also used to send a confirmation that a message has been received – in other
words, you can send emails that thank people for ordering or telling them when they will receive their
orders.
For our recommendation, click here or check out Autoresponder Solution on our recommendation
page, www.WhatWeSuggest.com.
Tools to Increase Conversion
As we will discuss in the following sections, after automating your site so that you can effectively
handle all the prospect leads that come to your site, you must reach out to potential customers via
several different marketing tactics.
In some cases, you may be paying for traffic, that is, paying other Web sites to send you prospects
through advertising on their sites. Or else, you might be using what is known as pay-per-click
advertising with Google, Yahoo!, or other online advertising networks, which you can also pay in
order to receive visitors to your site.
So before you go spending time, energy and money on driving people to your site, you want to make
sure that you do everything you can so that you can convert your browsing visitors into paying
customers.
Digital Salespeople
One of the coolest new trends we’re seeing in the marketplace is the use of digital salespeople on
Web sites. Digital salespeople are animated speaking characters, which can be easily added to
your Web site to pitch your products. They are eye-catching and have proven to be very effective in
converting leads into customers.
There are several companies providing this type of application. Following are some of the features we
suggest you look for when choosing a digital salesperson:
- Subscription-based service so you don’t have to make a huge investment upfront in order to test
whether a digital salesperson will be effective for you or not;
- Ability to create a wide array of animated speaking characters – men, women, young, old, and
even animals depending upon what it is you are selling;
- Easy-to-use tools for you to design, manage and publish your digital salesperson;
- No knowledge of computer programming needed;
- Ability to create audio messages for your characters to speak using recorded audio, uploaded
audio, computer generated speech and even professional voice-over talent; and,
- Ability to add artificial intelligence applications so that your characters seem more life-like and
thus are more effective in selling your product or service.
New digital salesperson applications are coming out rapidly. This is one application that we search
for on a weekly basis to see if there are better ones in the marketplace. Right now, for our
recommended Digital Salesperson Solution, click here or visit www.WhatWeSuggest.com and look
under Digital Salesperson Solution.
It is also a good idea to engage your website visitors with audio and video marketing tools, which will
enable you to communicate with your customers more effectively. Check out our recommended
Audio & Video Streaming Tool by clicking here.
Landing Page Optimization
A landing page is a page within a Web site which is where a person “lands” after clicking on your
banner ad or sponsored link. It is the page that you are sending all your prospects to in order to try
to convert them into buyers.
Too often, before we work with them, we see our clients spending significant time and money driving
people to their site, but next to no time thinking about which pages are most effective to send their
clients to.
Keep in mind that it is not often effective to send a person to your site’s homepage unless that is
where you initiate the action that you want them to perform. The most-desired action might be for
them to make a purchase, sign up for an email newsletter or any other actionable objective of your
campaign.
Therefore, make sure you are not just being lazy and sending them to your homepage when another
page in your site is more appropriate to be the landing page.
Also, many marketers do not take the time to modify and test their landing pages so as to make
sure that they are using the right words, offers, images, and page structure that most effectively
turns visitors into cash.
So it might be helpful to think of your online marketing campaigns in two parts. First, you are
pitching to your prospects with the actual marketing activities, reaching out to people in order to pull
them into your site. But once you get them there, you need to capture and captivate them to do
business with you or else they’ll slip through your fingers and end up on somebody else’s site, doing
business with them.
So landing page optimization is the practice of preparing your site to receive and convert your
prospects most effectively. You should definitely look into investing in a Landing Page Optimization
Solution. Such tools perform a variety of essential activities range from helping you design an
effective landing page; writing powerful copy; creating effective thank-you pages; testing
appropriately; and modifying your landing pages based on the feedback from your testing.
This is one of the most important aspects of effective marketing online – and sadly, it is most often
overlooked. If you don’t seriously look into this type of tool, you are missing out on huge
opportunities. Slight modifications in your pages might prove to increase your conversion rate by
huge amounts, thus making the small investment in the tool much more than worthwhile.
You may consider getting a website optimization software, which is a complete search engine
submission, landing page optimizatization and search engine marketing platform that will help you
manage you e-marketing endeavors and increase search engine rakings for your website. Try this
Website Optimization Solution We Recommend.
Chapter 6 - Reaching Out to your Prospects
| eMarketing In-a-Box: How to Attract, Retain and Monetize Your Website Customers Copyright 2007 All Rights Reserved emarketinginabox.com All Rights Reserved paul@emarketinginabox.com I matthew@emarketinginabox.com |
After years of reviewing dozens of the top site-building solutions, we’ve come to the overwhelming
conclusion that if you are serious about starting an online business, we suggest that you use
SiteBuildIt!.
We call it Web Development In-the-Box because it is the only tool that provides a complete
web development solution for small businesses - from domain name, web hosting, email
marketing and design to state-of the-art online marketing and search engine optimization tools.
Click here to take a short VideoTour to learn more about SiteBuildIt! solution.
For one low annual cost, this solution provides you with:
With SiteBildIt! you don't need to learn all the technicality about HTML, website coding, design and
search engine optimization. SiteBuildIt! does everything for you - it delivers traffic to your site and
provides you with all user-friendly tools you need to succeed Online.
This is just the basic functionality of this solution. We can’t possibly cover all the marketing tools
that they’ve pulled together in their overall site-building solution – there are just too many – and
SiteBuild! does a great job of explaining it all if you just check out their site by clicking here.
So, in conclusion, SiteBuild! is the only all-in-one site-building, site-hosting, and site-
marketing tool that we have tested, used consistently with much success, and therefore can
endorse wholeheartedly. The tool enables anyone with a small and mid-size business to build – but
more importantly, market - a professional, popular, and profitable business. Check out this unique
solution, which we strongly recommend you learn more about, by clicking here.
You may also take the VideoTour of the SiteBuild tool that will walk you through the whole
Website Development process we recommend. We really suggest that you take the time to watch
this video because - whether you like this tool or not - it will give you a glimpse of the steps you
need to take to build a successful online business and you will enjoy its informational value.
conclusion that if you are serious about starting an online business, we suggest that you use
SiteBuildIt!.
We call it Web Development In-the-Box because it is the only tool that provides a complete
web development solution for small businesses - from domain name, web hosting, email
marketing and design to state-of the-art online marketing and search engine optimization tools.
Click here to take a short VideoTour to learn more about SiteBuildIt! solution.
For one low annual cost, this solution provides you with:
- A Web address (domain name which most often ends with .com)
- The ability to design your site with hundreds of different templates from which you can choose
from a huge variety of look-and-feels for your site. You can make it very corporate-looking if you
want to project a serious image, or a very playful design if you want your business to have an
image of fun. SiteBuildIt! provides you with tons of choices.
- Site hosting, which is a service you need to maintain your site on the Web. Hosting provides
you with the computer file storage capacity and ability to display your site online.
- Search engine optimization (SEO), an online marketing solution, which helps you choose the
right keywords for your site pages, place them correctly on your pages, submit them to the
search engines like Google and Yahoo, so that when people search for your type of product or
service online, they find you. It’s basically a methodology that enables you to get traffic – visitors
– to your site without having to pay for them.
- Visitor tracking, which is an easy way to see how many people visited your site, the pages
they were interested in, and how long they stay on your site. This information is invaluable. If
you know what people are interested in – and when people leave your site – you can change
your site on an ongoing basis so you can try to keep people on your site and direct them to
places that will help you sell your product and service rather than having them click away.
- Email Marketing and Autoresponder solution so that you can communicate with your site's visitors
and offer newsletters
- Blogging solution so that you can build a blog complimentary to your website
With SiteBildIt! you don't need to learn all the technicality about HTML, website coding, design and
search engine optimization. SiteBuildIt! does everything for you - it delivers traffic to your site and
provides you with all user-friendly tools you need to succeed Online.
This is just the basic functionality of this solution. We can’t possibly cover all the marketing tools
that they’ve pulled together in their overall site-building solution – there are just too many – and
SiteBuild! does a great job of explaining it all if you just check out their site by clicking here.
So, in conclusion, SiteBuild! is the only all-in-one site-building, site-hosting, and site-
marketing tool that we have tested, used consistently with much success, and therefore can
endorse wholeheartedly. The tool enables anyone with a small and mid-size business to build – but
more importantly, market - a professional, popular, and profitable business. Check out this unique
solution, which we strongly recommend you learn more about, by clicking here.
You may also take the VideoTour of the SiteBuild tool that will walk you through the whole
Website Development process we recommend. We really suggest that you take the time to watch
this video because - whether you like this tool or not - it will give you a glimpse of the steps you
need to take to build a successful online business and you will enjoy its informational value.
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