James SpillaneCreating a professional and clean website will set your apart from your competition. A website really is one of the biggest requirements to maintain your online business. Your website should not be loaded with graphics, but it does need to be informative, simple and professional. This should not scare you, there are many ways to create your website that are simple and suitable for your online business.
To create your website you will need to do three things. Purchase a domain name — Name Cheap — (only $10). purchase a hosting service — Hostgator— (as low as $4.95/month), and design your website to upload to your hosting server. When purchasing a domain name make sure it is keyword related to the niche/market you are entering. A long tail keyword is what you are going to want to focus on, they are much easier to rank for in Google. Just choosing any old domain name is fine, but if you are looking to rank for organic search a keyword rich domain name is key.
When selecting a hosting company make sure it is reliable and in good standing. Hosting companies are responsible for the storage of your files on the web, and keeping your site live. hostgator.com is a well known, reliable hosting company. They have great customer service, and their c-panel is very user friendly.
How To Design Your Website
Use a Free Template
This is the easiest way to get going with your site. Most free site templates are easy to use and act just like micro soft word, where you are just typing in you content and adding media (pictures, and video) is very easy to do as well. The most exciting part of these free website designers is that you don’t need to know any type of code to create your site. A more advanced user can use code to customize a few items which gives these free website designers a great advantage. There really is no need to customize these free website designers already have a professional and clean look to them. The #1 resource I recommend when it comes to free website builders is wordpress.org. This web application makes it so easy to build a website you will be amazed.
Use Site Builder Tools
The best option for a paid site builder is Adobe Dreamweaver this does cost a lot so I would wait till you generate some commissions or sales before looking into this, but if you have the money this is a great tool. I would personally stick to the free templates and gain a little knowledge about code and design before jumping into this.
Hire a Designer
You can hire a web designer to do the design work for your site. This can get a little pricey, but if you want it done right your going to want to pay a bit high for it. Ask him/her to make the site professional and clean with good usability. Get assurance that you can edit the site yourself when it is complete. This is so you have control of updating, and adding more content to your site.
The easiest way to hire a designer is to use an auction website like RentACoder.com or ODESK.com. Simply type a description of your project and designers will enter their bids. You will receive many bids from different designers. It is critical to check the portfolio and rate of each designer. Select the one which is best for your work and award him your project. After getting your website you can pay him through the auction website. Like I said before make sure you will have control of your site after it is built.
Characteristics of a Good Website
Simple and Professional Your website is meant for business, so it must look professional. Your site should never be over loaded with big graphics and lots of flashy banner ads. Simplicity is best. Light colors create professionalism think about using them. Design a nice header that will intise a visitor to read more information on your website. Make sure you have good original niche related content on your site. Keep in mind your site needs to build trust with your visitors. The better your content the more people will trust you and mark you as a professional in your niche.
The site navigation must be simple and easy
People should not have any difficulty in searching for a specific page or information; otherwise they will not re-visit your website. Provide a Search Facility on Your website there should be a search box on every page to search your website. This will boost your visitor interaction with your site, and lead them to what they want. The navigation bar at the top of your site should be very specific to your customers needs and lead them to information they are looking for. You want to monetize your traffic and convert them into sales. These specific pages should be informative, but lead the visitor to a soft sell of a product in your niche. Or instead of selling visitors on your site create an e-mail submission form to capture the name and email of your visitors selling them inside your newsletter.
Site Monetization
I know I mentioned before about no flashy ads all over your site. This is what I mean. You want to put clean and niche specific ads on your site to products or services that you are affiliated with so you can make sales. When using ads it is good to stick to a few 2 or 3 affiliate banner or text ads on your site. There is a reason why I say take it easy on the ads and that is the fact the you can lose visitors with too many ads. A visitor is more likely to click a clean text ad banner than a flashy graphical animated banner. I know it sounds backwards, but that is what my tests have proven.
Build Your Mailing List
Some affiliate programs offer you a website to promote their business. This is the ready made solution. But in this case you cannot build your mailing list. When you have your own website you can leverage the biggest asset inside the internet marketing world and that is your list. Building your list will be the best decision you have ever made, once you have it you can make sales over and over again. Once someone is added to your list, do not spam them. Your list is one of the best trust generators out there. Over time they will start to buy anything you provide to them just because they trust you. Do not abuse this trust, give the user good original content through e-mail with soft sells to create commissions.
Conclusion
Your own website is the key requirement for Internet marketing. The overall look and feel of your website should be attractive and the site must provide the information for which people are looking for. Provide good usability for your visitors, make sure your navigation bar and search box are clearly visible. This isn’t that hard to achieve with all the free resources out there. Good luck and have fun out there think outside the box a bit when creating content and websites. Go get the money.
This article was written for Business 2 Community by James Spillane.
Learn how to publish your content on B2C
Join our Telegram channel to stay up to date on breaking news coverage
Add B2C to your Google News Feed
nice post
Very nice article – Just would like to emphasize the Content Creation part a little more.
Content Creation, well it is pretty simple to create content if you have a vast knowledge of the niche you are in. How to get ideas can be a bit harder. I like to go and see what people are talking about in my niche and then write an article about that particular subject and post it on my blog and elsewhere. You want to write you content so that it is directed towards your audience using the keywords in the question they have asked and the problem to be solved as your article. Never have a sales pitch as an article for content you want to provide useful informative information for your users. Other than an article create videos, and PDF files to distribute to your blog and submission sites.
Hope this helped if you need more info just contact me:
[email protected]
Cheers
— Will Skinner