Top 7 Business Website Mistakes

The website boom of the early 21st century showed us that the business world was indeed ready to enter in world of the internet. However, times have changed, and many of the websites have not changed with it. Here are a few mistakes that website make in today's internet culture.

1)Infrequent updates- To have a website that gains the most business, you must have the best, most up to date website possible. If a visitor feels that you do not properly maintain and update you website, then chances are they will leave and find a similar business that does.

2) JavaScript pop ups- A JavaScript pop up is a notification window that opens when you visit a website that states and message and has an "ok" button at the end. This was extremely popular during the website boom, but quickly become a no-no, mainly because people over used it. Not only would they ad the pop up to the main page of their website, but they would also add one to each and every sub page. Typically these pop ups did not contain any information that would be viewed as important to the viewer. This was annoying then, and is much more annoying now, since newer computer system also have a noise that goes with the popup. If you have a message that MUST display to the user before they can go further on your website, then a JavaScript pop up may still be a good option, but I strongly caution you to not overuse it, if you use it at all.

3) Heavy graphics- You have to remember that a percentage of your visitors will be on a dialup connection, which means they will have trouble downloading your website if you have a large number of graphics on your website. Unless your website is in flash, I would try to avoid using any type of animated graphic, since they typically have large file sizes.

4) Using heavy, high contracting colors- This was another thing that was popular during the internet boom that quickly become unpopular due to overuse. It was once believed that high contracting colors would grab the users attention. While this is true, it also has a negative effect since it would hurt the user eyes, and sway them away from the website.

5) Clutter up pages- If your website seems be cluttered visitors will be less likely to view further into your website, especially if they think they will have to weed out the information they need from the information that is useless to them. You do not want to have too much information on each page, and you never want more then one topic on each. A good navigation system will eliminate any problem you have.

6) Lack of a navigation system- many websites created during the internet boom lacked one of the most important parts of a website. One a visitor clicked on a page they were taken to a new page without a way to return or access additional pages within the website. A navigation system insures that the visitor will be able to view your entire website. A good navigation will take the visitor back to the page that they originally come from, to the main page, and to the other major parts of the website. Additionally, the navigation (typically near the bottom of the page) should have links to things such as website polices and term and conditions.

7) Overusing Advertising- This is actually a fairly new problem with website, especially since Google started their Adsense program. Many website have more ads then information on the page. A visitor does not want to have to weed though the ads to find the content that they are looking for. The irony of the situation is: A visitor is more likely to click on an advertisement link if they do not feel that they are being bombarded by them. This is defiantly a situation where the saying "less is more" is true.

The Number One Rule For Profitable Niche Market Selection

Selecting a profitable niche market is something that stumps a number of marketers. It's not easy to do. There are a lot of considerations to take into account, such as demand, competition, the type of customers and an endless amount of other things that you should consider. But there is one thing that is absolutely essential before you decide whether or not to attack a niche market.

The number one rule for choosing a profitable niche market is:

There MUST already be customers in your niche spending money on products to solve their problems or improve their hobbies.

Many marketers discover a niche market that they believe will be profitable because it has huge demand and ZERO competing sellers. They expect to be able to dominate the market due to this lack of competition. But, there's always a reason for why there is no competition and that's usually because the market doesn't buy.

When you choose your next niche idea, make sure there are competing products that are selling well so that you know your target market are buyers.

There's an easy way to find these markets. Simply go to Clickbank.com, browse through the various categories, make a note of potentially profitable niche ideas and then research your ideas using the traditional niche filtering process. This includes identifying the demand for a product through keyword research, identifying the amount and quality of competition and identifying the capabilities of the market.

By using this method you already know that your market are not afraid of spending money on products because there are successfully selling products on Clickbank.com

So, next time you choose a new niche to target – MAKE SURE YOUR MARKET ARE ALREADY SPENDING MONEY ON PRODUCTS.

Sales Copy Plus Product Creation Plus Traffic Equals Success

Making money on the internet selling your own product requires three things: a good quality product that delivers everything you promise, excellent sales copy that can convert browsers to buyers and website traffic so that potential purchasers can actually read your sales copy.

Before you can sell a product, you have to create it. The first step to creating a product is conducting research into market needs and trends. What problems do people need solved? What knowledge do you have that you can share and people can benefit from? Can you ride a current trend with a complementary product? Forums are good places to get a sense of people's needs and the sort of products they may be looking for. If you have a website, you can ask people to fill in a survey or you can ask current customers or subscribers what products or services they would prefer to see. Information products are probably the easiest and least expensive products to create. You can use a ghostwriter to write an e-book for you and you can start your own affiliate program to get other people to sell it for you.

Once you have created your product, you need to have an attention grabbing sales page that convinces visitors to buy your product. There is a real art to writing good sales copy. You need to write an attention grabbing headline, preferably in bold, large, red letters. After you have attracted the reader's attention, the copy needs to be interesting enough to keep it. The best way to keep their attention, is to identify a problem they can relate to or an issue of concern and then tell them how you can help them improve their circumstances. If you keep the focus on the reader and what you can do for them, you will maintain their interest.

Just grabbing the reader's attention and keeping their interest isn't enough to get the sale. You have to ignite a desire for your product. In other words, you have to succeed in creating a belief that the visitor needs your product to improve their life in some way. Desire must then be converted to action. Your sales copy must move the reader to take action, whether to buy, subscribe or contact.

Now that you have your product and your brilliant sales copy, you must successfully drive traffic to your sales page to increase your product's sales. The most obvious and necessary strategy is to make sure you are listed with search engines and directories then make sure your website content is keyword rich for SEO. The next step, is to create back links to the sales page and the website as a whole. Do not purchase back links from article farms or other third parties. Links to your website need to be natural, otherwise you risk being penalized by search engines. One of the best ways to create natural links to your sales page is to use article marketing. The article can pre-sell your product, service or yourself and encourage readers to click on the link to your website or sales page. This will drive traffic to your website by encouraging direct visits and increasing your link popularity with the search engines. Forum posting and blogs are also excellent ways to direct traffic to your site, as is purchasing pay-per-click advertising from search engines such as Google. A combination of these strategies is recommended to increase website traffic and therefore sales.

Product creation, sales and website traffic are all necessary for online selling success. Done right they are a winning combination guaranteeing high sales and financial success.

The Real Secret To Internet Marketing Success

Those of you familiar with my previous writings on Internet marketing are well aware of the fact that I am a big proponent of the idea that the only "secret" to successful Internet marketing is this—there are no secrets! The very use of the term "secret" is a marketing ploy (and a very successful one I might add, and one that I utilize myself on occasion) that has been utilized since the primitive times of advertisement and marketing. (And the odds are excellent that this particular word is going to be found in advertisements and marketing campaigns of all sorts until humanity is no longer around to take advantage of it.)

Internet marketing, while having the potential perhaps to pay off in much bigger ways than other forms of marketing and business, still involves work, and lots of it. In fact, it has been my experience that Internet marketing is NOT a quick and easy path to "easy money." Rather, just the opposite! Generating a sustainable income via Internet marketing, more often than not, does not happen overnight. Success is fleeting, especially early on until you establish your niche market(s) and slowly begin to dominate them.

Internet marketing takes much hard work, persistence, knowledge, creativity, and, above all else, time. (And don't forget to throw in a little bit of luck for good measure!) Internet marketing is not the quick and easy road to riches that some would have you believe. It is much easier just to go out and get a "regular" job and get paid to make someone else rich.

Internet marketing also has a very high learning curve. It takes time to master. I have been involved with Internet marketing for quite a while now and have enjoyed some major successes of my own, but, even with my experience I still manage to learn something new about the business almost daily. Success in this field particularly requires that you become a student. You have to learn much about technology, marketing, sales, product, and so very much more. And all of these change almost daily! Educating yourself and staying abreast of developments is no easy task but it is a prerequisite to Internet marketing success.

Now, the above having been said, I want to say this—I love Internet marketing! I enjoy the difficulty, i.e., the challenge involved in Internet marketing. It is fiercely competitive and I happen to like the competition—no, I love it! In no other forum do you constantly have to evaluate and reevaluate your tactics and strategies as you do in Internet marketing. A competitor with a similar or same product is always trying to one-up you and you have to, in turn, one-up him or her! This cycle goes on and on, ad infinitum. More often than not, the most creative individual is the one who wins the customer and, subsequently, the paycheck.

Ok, so the title of this article is "The REAL Secret to Internet Marketing Success," so you want me to go ahead and give you that "REAL secret" right? (Hey—you weren't expecting this to be a piece on the difficulty of Internet marketing after all!) Remember though, I have already said that there are no secrets, unless the secret to Internet marketing success is a mixture of hard work, dedication, perseverance, patience, creativity, time, knowledge, etc. Of course this isn't a secret that would sell very well now is it? No one wants to hear something like that for free, much less pay to hear something like that! But I guess if there is in fact a secret to Internet marketing, then that would have to be it, in my humble opinion at least.

My parting advice is this, especially to those of you presently pondering "getting into" Internet marketing and those of you just starting out. Success is there for the taking, if you make up your mind from the beginning to see your endeavors through. Despite the claims of "easy money" being made by thousands of Internet gurus the world over, you WILL have to work hard and persevere. You can't do "nothing" and watch the cash roll into your PayPal account. It just doesn't work that way.

Study, absorbing all that you can. Find a niche and exploit it. Be creative—find something that hasn't been done before or find something someone else is doing that you could do better. Persevere. Success doesn't happen overnight but in increments. Set goals, small ones at first then becoming progressively more ambitious, and accomplish them. If you are serious about Internet marketing, no one can make it happen other than you yourself. Here, like no where else, you get to see the fruits of your own hand—whether bountiful or otherwise.

Copyright 2007 by M. Shane Huey. All rights reserved.