Business website help please

save-a-lot

also, search engine optimisation... you can read up and learn various techniques, or find someone who has the knowhow already.

dacouch

I sell websites for a living, they are relatively cheap now days, for instance I can do (Or other companies can) do you an online shop a bit like a smaller version of amazon for around £250. These allow you to upload your stock, show how much stock you have, your customers add the item to their basket and then pay so all you need do is dispatch the item,

Online trading is a massive business and is constantly expanding so they quicker you get on the better.

The key to getting business is optimising your website for search engines mainly google. A good web designer will do this for you.

To get yourself as high as possible on google you need to do the following (There are no doubt other things as google constantly change it).

1) Have good "Key Words / Metatags - If some one is looking for a plumber in reading they are likely to enter the words "Plumber + Reading" which will bring up lots of plumbers in reading. To narrow it down they might add words such as "Reliable or Cheap or 24 hour" etc etc. It is important you get the web designer to include these as many won't. I suggest you play around with google and do searchs for your type of business in your area to find out what might work for your business

2) As well as using the Key Words / Metatags google will also look for the words the customer has entered into google on your web page wording. So it is worth trying to get these words into each page a few times. For instance you could have an "About Us Page" which you could say Mark Smith is a wonderful experienced corgi plumber that offers a cheap but reliable 24 hour service that covers the reading and berkshire area. ((I have highlighted words your customer might search for). This works so well on my last companies website I managed to get our website above a competitors website if you googled their company name. I did this by entering their company name in the key words / metatags and on the contact page putting in small lettering "Our office is just down the road from xyz company"

3) Google looks for the most relevant page for the search you perform, the more often you amend your website, even if its just changing the wording on pages here and there. Then google thinks this website is kept up to date its more important than that other website that is only changed once a year. Google will check your website for changes etc normally once a week. (You can access loads of data on google including when they did this so you just do it the day b4 they check)

4) The more links to other websites with them linking back to your website the better, again google thinks your website is important. (See 5)

5) There are lots of website directories that allow you a free entry such as freeindex, smilelocal even thomson local and google. The more of these you join the better as you can put your contact details and you can put a link to your website (See 4 above). This helps you get higher on google plus if you do it right it will push your competitors websites on to page 2 or 3 of google so they lose business. (Its very easy to place the free adverts.

6) You can "Pay per click" with google, say you type in the word insurance in google it will normally bring up Direct Line in a special box. If the customer then clicks on this box direct line pay google about £12. Different words have different values, the more popular it is the more google charge so if you wanted to use the words "Circus Tent Insurance" as it is very obscure google would probably charge 30p per click. You probably do not need to do pay per click if your website is set up well in line with 1 - 5 although if you are in a particularly competitive field or lucrative field you may want to go down this route. Again I woudl recommend you have a play around with searchs in google for your trade to get an idea for it.

The more thought and effort you put into optimizing your site for google the higher up google you will be which means more business for you so its worth putting some thopught into it.

I would also warn you that a lot of web designers get carried away with making websites flashy to show of your skills and make a webs site to make you feel good when you show your friends. This is not how to do a website you need your website to look good to your customers, come up high on google and be user friendly. Do not fall into the trap of getting a website that walks the walk but does not talk the talk, the Internet is the future of your business so put some thought into what you want your website to do. Again have a look at your competitors websites, what are they doing right but more importantly what are they doing wrong. Use their weeknesses to make your site better than theirs.

Other important things are how long will the website take, do you get a log in password so you can go in and look at the sites stats and do the amendments to it to keep it high on google. Also very important is do you get technical back up as this is important and are there restrictions on your bandwith and how much you can up load a month

I hope this helps, if you want any more help post on here or pm me

sunshine54

i can develop and host a business website for only £10 per page, per year.
your text and pictures, order/contact forms/feedback database/picture gallery. etc
The only payment option i can integrate ATM is paypal. you can pm me for latest client live examples