Sheep are notoriously poor. If you’ve ever been friends with a sheep, you’ll know they’re always trying to borrow a couple of bucks (don’t worry, I didn’t understand the pun either). It’s also the reason sheep don’t have wallets.

So why, as a small business owner, would you want to be a sheep? Obviously, you wouldn’t if you want to feed your family or buy a Ferrari. So why do most small business owners just follow the herd when it comes to their website.

Website Super Success Secret #1:
Be different, stand out, and DON’T be a sheep.

Why

Being the same as everyone else is the worst thing you can do in business. Why will visitors choose you if you offer nothing to differentiate yourself? Sure, you say you offer great service, prices, and the best product on the market. But…so does every single one of your competitors.

Go on…ask them!

You want your website to stand out and be remembered. With billions of websites cluttering the web, that’s no easy task. At least for those lesser beings that don’t read this blog!

If you don’t stand out, you compete on price. And that hurts, especially on the Internet. So why wouldn’t you want your visitors to remember you.

How

What is the hands down, easiest way to stand out and be different? Your personality. By infusing your personality into your website, you start to build a relationship with your visitor that is more than just Mr or Mrs Cardboard Salesperson. They get to know the real you just like they would if they walked into your showroom.

There’s a reason I “make websites betterer”, there’s a reason I talk about poor sheep. It may strike you as insanity (the voices say it’s not…), but I just want to make this stuff a little fun. I know what it’s like reading lots of blogs and the ones I remember are the ones that are different.

I heard someone ask, “But what if I don’t have a personality?” First off, everyone has a personality; the question is if it’s the right voice for your business. If it’s not, make one up. I’m not talking about lying completely and becoming a 21 year old Brazilian swimsuit model, but this is the Internet…

You don’t need the life of the party type personality to hold your audience captive. Most of the time, you’re writing, so make the most of your time to craft just the right message. Take some writing classes. Practice is all it takes. In no time you’ll find it a lot easier to do, trust me.

If worst comes to worst, you can always get a good copy writer to do it for you. And don’t forget the images and design of your website also convey personality. Make sure it all ties together the right way.

Homework

Think about the type of personality you bring to your business. Will your audience connect with it? Then work out how you can sprinkle it into your website. You’ve got to start somewhere and you can refine it over time. So just do it.

Being different sets us apart, especially in business. To many people are afraid that if they stand out they will lose customers. But if you look at the most successful businesses, they all do things differently.

Go and take a look at the other websites in your industry and your competitors. What strikes you about them? Bingo, they’re all the same. You could argue that they’re the same because that formula works, but I blame a lack of creativity and laziness.

Your website should be different and unique. It should make your customers actually take notice and not just file you away with all your competitors. When all the businesses look the same, people decide on price. You never want to compete on price!

I hear the moans of “But we ARE different! We’re way better than all our competitors!” Guess what, saying it doesn’t make it true. Even if you have great customer service, putting that on your website doesn’t mean anything.

Guess what? All your competitors say they’re “high quality, customer focused, and great value.” So where does that leave you?

The solution? Show them you’re different. If you have great customer service…show them! And you don’t have to wait until they make a purchase, get some testimonials on your website. Make them stand out, have photos and videos of your customers. Tell stories the have examples of great customer service in them.

There are so many ways to stand out and it doesn’t take a great amount of creativity to do it. Look at other websites and see how they do things. Steal great ideas from other websites in other industries.

So, the moral of the story: Be Different. And then work out how to show this through your website.

Well the new TV anyway, YouTube. I’ve just finished working on a new video and I think I’m improving…

It’s to replace my old dodgy one on the frontpage of my website. My favourite description of it was “annoyed and constipated.” So now, check out the new version right here and see what other strange emotions I can convey through the magic of video.

It answers the curious question of: “How can I improve my website?”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqaT74TSxS0[/youtube]

And while you’re surfing the website, you may notice some clues about my upcoming plans using the words “membership” and “free.” This post was also brought to you by the number 13.

Do a search for any product or service you like. What do the results return? Pages and pages of people trying to sell you something.

If an encyclopaedia salesperson knocks on your door, do you let them in?

If you walk into a clothing store and a salesperson asks if you need any help, do you say “YES PLEASE!”

Usually…No! So why would you behave any different on the internet? It’s even easier to reject a salesperson here as you never even see their face.

Your website needs to build a relationship with its visitors. It needs to give your customers what they want. First thing they want? Information. They want to find out as much as possible before making a purchase. They want to know if they can trust you. They want to build a relationship so they know you’ll be there if things go wrong.

How do you build a relationship with these lovely people? Content, loads and loads of content. Useful, informative, brilliant content. That’s how you build a relationship online.

 

 The five biggest secrets your web designer doesn't know about making money on the internet: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The internet is full of websites that fail to live up to their potential. The main reason is small business owners don’t understand the potential for their website. However, most web designers don’t either!

Over the next two weeks, you’ll be light years ahead of other businesses on the internet as we discuss the five most important facts your web designer doesn’t know about making money.

We’ll be covering:

1. Why a pretty website does not make you money
2. Why salespeople are a dying breed, especially on the internet
3. How to structure your website to retain your visitors
4. The problem with marketing online, no one knows how to do it!
5. The real story on search engines

I hope you tune in and put this knowledge to good use in your business. As always, let me know your thoughts and comments below.

 

 A strong website foundation: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Today I was asked about some of my marketing strategies for websites. To be honest, at first, I was a little stumped on how to answer it. Not because I don’t have lots of strategies to market a website, but I simply don’t have the results to back myself up right now.

I know I have great ideas, and I know what will work and won’t work for my clients. So what’s the problem? We simply haven’t been able to implement any marketing strategies yet!

Everyone potential client I talk to generally has a bad website. I know you think you’re different and your website is great…but let me review it and I’ll let you see what you’re missing. In order to get a website functioning correctly, we first need to build a strong foundation. There’s no point driving traffic to a website that will have visitors leaving after a few minutes. And trust me, that’s what your website is doing now unless you’re one of the very lucky ones.

So I always build a strong foundation. I’m still not happy with my own website and will be rewriting it again in the next week or so. I’m also still waiting on my graphic designer to finish it off. Not because she’s lazy, she’s just had to focus on our clients first.

That is frustratingly apparent in our own marketing too. I’m actually not marketing myself at all in the old fashioned sense and still have a steady stream of customers. Part of that is the social marketing approach I’m using, the other part is the impression we make on all our current clients. Trust me, when I get some new people trained, you’ll be seeing some great marketing (and free information for you) coming out of this website!

The moral of the story is, if you’re looking for a way to market your website, how about first looking at your current websites performance. You’re a lot better off to be impressing every single visitor than having millions and only capturing a few. Increase your conversion rates through better website design and content first. That’s the way to build a great website that grows your business.

 

 How to get ripped off for web design: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

So you’re looking to get ripped off for the design of your new website? No problem! Here’s my easy guide to help you out:

Step 1. Decide you want a website.

Step 2. Approach a web design company.

And that’s it folks. This is a sure fire method for leaving you poor and with a complete waste of a website.

Oh? So now you want to know how not to get ripped off? Interesting, but ok…I’ll try to help. How about getting involved in the web design process. How about finding a company that actually approaches your website as a marketing tool rather than just a pretty…or not so pretty…brochure? How about reading a little about what makes a website successful? How about getting many opinions on what you need?

Even if your web design company promises everything it should…and most do…it doesn’t mean they will actually deliver on their promises. It’s easy to promise something when the buyer doesn’t know what a good result will look like anyway.

How do you know your web design company is giving you the right advice? See how closely they work with you to provide the result you want. Then maybe, just maybe, we’ll start to see less rip offs in the web design industry. And maybe your website will start making you money, instead of just costing you money.

 

 Bad Website Design: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Working in the web design industry, bad website design is obviously a pet peeve of mine. It’s amazing how many crap websites there are out there, and it’s even more amazing that people are paying small fortunes for these websites.

Small businesses are the most affected by this problem. It’s hard to be an expert in everything and a lot easier for web designers to get away with bad design. From just plain ugly websites, to websites that aren’t usable, I’m constantly bombarded by websites that are awful.

Hence why I created my business to try and remedy this problem. I’m the first one to say that you need to look for a niche when starting a business and yet here I am in the middle of a very competitive industry competing against well established players in both the website design and internet marketing industries!

Why? Because someone has to bring true web design up to the level it should be. I know I have a great product and all I have to do is successfully market it. The skies the limit from there.

So, for all the people losing hope in the internet, there is light at the end of the tunnel! If you’re looking at getting a website, please contact me. I’ll offer all the free advice you need to get started, just please get started the right way.

One of the most important marketing activities for your small business can be it’s web site design and the content you fill it with. A well designed web site with great content can make or break your business on the internet. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to get right, but if you do, the benefits will be amazing.

All over the internet you can see substandard small business web sites. As part of the small business person’s ‘do-it-yourself’ mindset, we tend to find a lot of homemade web sites that don’t sell their business. The money they save by doing it themselves can be costing them a 1000 times that in sales. A good web site can seem expensive when you first start out, but it really it’s worth its weight in sales.

Think of it as the sales brochure you have to use with every customer for the next two years! So when you shudder at paying a few thousand euros on a web site, think about how much you spend on a print run.

Now another major stumbling block of small business owners is hiring the right web designer. It’s a minefield out there but with some careful research the right person for the job can be found. However, once you have a web designer to make your web site look pretty, the next step is content. Content makes or breaks your web site and needs to be perfectly written to sell to your visitors.

If small business owners didn’t like paying for the web site design, paying for the content didn’t even cross their mind. The content and flow of your web site is just as important, if not more, than having a professional design. The attention span of your average internet user is about 2 seconds at this point. So get their attention and hold on to it for dear life!

So when it comes to your small business web site, get the design and content right if you want to have sales. A few simple changes can make all the difference to your web site’s performance. I do a free web site analysis and so do a lot of other people, so you really have no excuse not to start on the path of web site success.

There is a lot more than development and maintenance for your online web site to be successful. If you’re currently looking for a web site designer, you need to consider some very important aspects right from the outset. A web site needs careful planning and strategy to succeed so you need to start off on the right foot. That’s the big questions, what aspects does your web site need?

Great design
There are many talented web designers ready to make your web site successful. As long as you’ve spent some time on the internet and know what looks good and what doesn’t, you’d think it’d be hard to go wrong on this aspect. Though it’s surprisingly easy to get wrong. I know some very smart people that have stumbled on this first step and wasted a lot of money. However, the biggest mistake is trying to do it yourself and creating an amateurish looking web site that no one looks at.

Usability
Making your web site usable is not always as easy as it seems. It involves the correct positioning of items on a web page so the user can follow a logical flow to the result you want. If you want a sale, you need to lead the customer there. If you want them to contact you, you need to lead them there. But most importantly, you don’t want customers to get frustrated and leave your web site.

Findability
So now you have a professional looking web site that’s usable and all you have to do is attract some visitors. What’s the best way to get traffic? Search engines of course. We call this Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and it involves making your pages just right for the search engines. Your customers type in keywords to find your web site. The trick is to rank well on the keywords they are typing in. And yes it can be a trick, a weaving of art and magic to do well in the search engines. But those in the know can do it consistently to ensure your web site gets exposure.

Combined with this are the many other marketing techniques that go along with your web site development. A web site is nothing if no one sees it, so you need an online marketing plan to make sure your web site is getting the attention it deserves. This should be the most important aspect of your web site maintenance contract. Your web site development company needs to keep marketing your company once the web site is up and running.

Functionality
You are developing your web site for a purpose and it is important to keep that purpose in mind throughout the entire development process. You’d be surprised how many people set out to design an online shop or ecommerce web site and end up forgetting to check if their web site actually sells products. With a web site, you have very little time to attract a visitors attention, wow them with your proposition, and collect their money. You need compelling sales writing to do this and like all of the above, you need to leave it in the hands of a professional.

The internet is the most competitive marketplace in the world. It’s not like a physical store where a customer has to travel to find your competition, a competitor is literally seconds away. You need to make sure all aspects of your web site work together to achieve your goal or you will find yourself another unsuccessful internet entrepreneur.

A final word of advice, it’s difficult to find a company that can handle the full spectrum of these skills and offer you the web site development abilities and online marketing you require. When I work with my clients, I take care of the search engine and functionality aspects and team up with a web site graphic designer to combine all our knowledge in to making the web site a success. And we’re always getting other input to make sure the web site we deliver is of excellent quality.

So be careful out there, the web site development industry is littered with false promises and propaganda. People that say the can do it all and fail miserably. Be smart with your money and your business’ future.