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How To
Build A Web Site That Sells
Copyright
2002 Herman Drost
Have you ever set off in the car
to your destination, without a map, naively believing you
will find it? Several frustrating hours later, you are
either lost or stressed out. Your wife says, “I told you
so – you should have brought the map!”
This is the same situation when you create a web site
without planning. The end result will be an unclear purpose,
target market goals and structure. Ultimately, you will lose
visitors and end up with little or no sales.
Let’s look at each of these points:
Define Your Purpose
Without a clear purpose for your site, you will not know
where you are heading. For example, the purpose of my design
site, is to help small business owners attain a presence on
the web to sell their product or service. Now, write down
the statement of purpose for your web site. Go over it a few
times to make sure it is crystal clear, otherwise your
customers will be trying to figure it out for themselves.
Research Your Target
Market
Research the product or service you wish to sell. Find out
if it has a good niche (e.g. a product or service nobody
else has thought of), or it has a strong demand (many people
are searching for it). Do a search on some of the major
search engines (e.g. Yahoo, Overture) for keywords and
phrases that you think people will be using when looking for
your product. Now you can see what kind of demand there is
for it.
Realize many others may be
competing to sell the same product. Focus on something
unique you may have to offer, that stands out from your
competitors. If you are setting up an affiliate program,
make sure it is a reputable company with a good track record
with lots of help available from others involved. Don’t
recklessly jump in – you will waste a lot of time and
money. This is the number one reason, why many entrepreneurs
give up so quickly.
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For
a more in-depth look at targeting your market, read my
previous article,
“How to Target Your Customers and
Put Them in a Buying Mood?”
Set Your Goals
Create a timeline for the planning, building and marketing
of your site. Without doing this, procrastination may take
over your goals.
Decide how much money you want to spend to create your
site and how much you will invest for its promotion.
Set a target date for what you want your site to achieve -
you can always adjust it if you need to. Make a goal for
how many visitors you will attract to your site. What
percentage of these will be actual sales? When do you
expect to make a profit?
Choose a Domain Name
Look up available domain names for your business, by using
Nameboy. (www.nameboy.com). They will provide a large list
to choose from. Keep your domain name as short as
possible, so it is easy to remember. Avoid hard to spell
words. Also avoid words with hyphens in them, because
people won’t remember to add the hyphens and may end up
at your competitor’s site.
Mindmapping – How to Sketch Out Your Site
This is the process that allows you to structure ideas on
paper in the logical order your brain follows, rather than
the linear process normally used when forming ideas.
Take one sheet of paper, draw a circle in the middle –
this is the subject of your homepage. From there, draw
branches, which have more ideas about your topic. If any
topics are related in a more definitive way, create
another branch off the current idea branch. Within
minutes, you will see your mindmap develop into a dynamic
sketch. You might find that a standard sheet of paper is
not enough to contain all your thoughts. Use more paper,
create more branches, and keep the ideas flowing.
With a clear purpose, definite target market, targeted
goals, a domain name and a clear structure, you are now
ready to begin building the pages for your successful web
site.
In my next article, I will discuss how to structure your
web pages, so they will be easy to read and navigate. This
will attract visitors to your site, and ultimately make
more sales.
=========================================================
Herman Drost is a Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of iSiteBuild.com
Web Site Design and Low Cost Hosting
(http://www.isitebuild.com)
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