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In a world filled with oodles of distractions, it’s becoming increasingly more and more difficult to focus. Focus on our products, focus on our customer service, focus on our core principles, and focus on our marketing.
When it comes to Internet marketing and SEO, focus is mission critical. Focusing on your core products and their descriptions, focus on your web site design and possible sales entry funnels, focus on your social media campaigns, etc..
So, we had a call in today (prospect) that wanted a new web site designed. My sales team of course spent the time to explain SEO and how it needs to be married to your web design, etc., at which point the prospect exclaimed: “No, I don’t need any of that SEO, so you can take that out of the quote. My girlfriend Dabbles in SEO.”
Here’s what’s wrong with that statement: If you are going to spend thousands on a web design, do you really want someone who just DABBLES with SEO as a hobby or wouldn’t you be more comfortable knowing that you just hired true marketing experts who know, eat, sleep and breathe SEO?
If your web site is indexed in Google, let’s hope that Google actually crawled deeper than just one page and has indexed each page of your whole web site. The benefit here is strength in numbers, the more pages that Google digests, the more likely you are to be found under particular search phrases, etc. So, when it comes to design, it is mission critical that each one of your web pages has a call to action and even more importantly, a phone number or some method of reaching you or purchasing your goods.
Think of each page of your web site like this: If I have a prospect ready to purchase my product or service, do I really want to make them jump through 32 hoops just to be able to complete a transaction? Hopefully, your answer is NO. Therefore, treat each page of your web site as a potential sales page, have it designed in such a way that it pulls prospects into your sales funnel upon any entrance, upon any page.
Much like being a business owner, being a web site owner is about dedication, drive and passion. Not everyone in the world can be a business owner, not everyone in the world can run a successful web site.
Use my guide below and ask yourself: Do you have what it takes?
I was surfing some local Orlando restaurant web sites today and found a huge common theme that annoyed me to no end… PLEASE WAIT WHILE LOADING. 3 out of the 4 restaurant web sites that I visited made me wait for a menu to load, or wait for a tacky Flash presentation to load, etc. I will be the first to admit that I don’t have a lot of patience, but I literally waited for about 2 minutes for one menu to load when I clicked it. The end result, I hit the back button and went on to the next web site.
When you design your web site, please keep this in mind: people have NO attention span online. They want fast, efficient and effective, they will not hang around and wait for 14 minutes while something loads no matter how amazingly pretty the web site is. Your web site can still be beautiful and visually stunning without loading intricate and lengthy files.
This Web Site Is Best Viewed In…. Fill in the browser blank here. Web designers should be designing web sites for ALL browsers including Firefox, IE (God Forbid), Safari, etc. We recently worked on a project for a client who had a custom database that was running on the site… Each time we viewed the database portion of the web site in Firefox, it declined to show the images (which are mission critical to the software). The developer’s work around was this: Display an error message: This web site best viewed in Internet Explorer 5.0.
Now, it is possible that web sites will look differently in some browsers, usually spacing issues, etc., BUT, your web designer needs to make certain that your web site FUNCTIONS in each and every browser on the web and not just display an error message because they could not figure out why it’s not functioning.
Do you love what you do? Are you passionate about it? People sense passion, passion is contagious, passion can set your company apart from the competition. The same can be said about your web site. Does your web site capture your passion? Does it evoke that critical emotion in your prospect and connect with them? Your web site is just one more way to share your passion and enthusiasm about your product and / or services with your prospects. If it’s not grabbing them and engaging them, it’s little more than an online business card.
Here’s a few ways you can share your passion through your web site / Internet Marketing initiatives:
I have a few job openings for our company, so I’ve been receiving a ton of resumes. Some good, some NOT so good and then the one I received today, indescribable. The particular job opportunity was for a Social Media / Internet Marketing assistant, so of course, I’m looking for someone who has a strong background in social media and Internet marketing. I open the email only to find a list of web sites that this individual has designed. I also noticed that this particular person sent the same email / resume to about 50,000 other folks in the CC line of the email. I’m instantly NOT impressed. Something kept me on the email though, rather than hitting delete, my curiosity got the best of me and I had to click some of the web site samples. My friends, the web site I saw today sent shivers down my spine. Mind you, I look at about a billion sites a day, so it truly takes a lot to make it on my radar. This particular web site landed smack dab on my web sites that suck radar as soon as the bubbles on the web site started making bubbly noises. It got worse. Next to the bubbling bubbles trickling up the page there was a message about being professional. The message indicated that this particular person (company) was a true professional. But wait, there’s more….. At the bottom of the page, big words: FREE WEB SITE TEMPLATES by StarFish or MoonFish, or something similar.
There was absolutely nothing professional about this email, job resume, the web sites that were sent as samples, etc. Bubbles and sound effects will always FAIL the professional web site design test . If you are telling the world that you are a professional anything, please make certain that your web site emulates that claim, and for the love of God, please, NO bubbles.
Thinking about redesigning your web site? I’ve compiled a list of things that your web design firm should NOT be doing to your web site. Some are pet peeves, others are just mandatory don’ts.
Music.
Unless you are DJ Dwain, please do NOT add a soundtrack to your web site. No one wants to listen to When You Wish Upon A Star when they visit your web site looking for mortgage advice.
SEO Insights From TomJelneck.com Orlando Internet Marketing Blog The SEO CEO Blog
