Your web site is the electronic storefront or reception area of your small business and your URL is the electronic address of that website. As such, you want to put the URL in as many places as possible, to help increase the traffic and ultimately the number of visitors to your website.

photo credit: chrisdlugosz

Here are the top sixteen spots for your URL:

1. Business Cards
Place the URL in a noticeable location on your business cards. Good spots are under your logo or below your address.

2. Email
The URL should be a hot link and should be in the signature panel of your emails

3. Company Stationery
Again place the URL in a prominent spot so that it can be easily found.

4. Product Packaging
If done correctly you can place the URL in multiple spots on the product packaging.

5. Marketing Brochures & Business Article
Logo should be on the front and back covers. Can also be on the title page inside.

6. Social Media Sites
Join some of the online communities like Facebook (www.facebook.com), LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com), and Twitter (www.twitter.com) and promote your site.

7. Signage (Windows, Vehicles, Sidewalk, Sandwich Boards)
The URL should hold a prominent spot on all of these signs.

8. E-Mail Newsletter
You might consider creating an e-mail publication, perhaps monthly with a list of tips, industry updates, or new product information. This is a superb way to stay inj touch with your customers and prospects.

9. News Releases and Media Kits
Send news releases to print and Web periodicals both in your industry and in general.

10. Advertising (Yellow pages & other)
Although these are going out of fashion, you still want to be listed in them.

11. Client Surveys
Customer surveys are a good way to keep up-to-date with customer requirements. Your URL should be in a prominent place on these surveys.

12. Giveaways & Premiums
These are good promotion tools and should always have your URL in a noticeable spot.

13. Address Stamps
Don’t forget to include the URL in the old fashioned address stamp.

14. Key Directories
A link from a directory helps you increase traffic. You should submit your URL to Yahoo! Directory (dir.yahoo.com) – you’ll have to pay for this service, the Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.com), which is free and About.com and Business.com that are also paid directories.

15. Trade Organizations and Specialized Directories
Specialized industry directories and trade associations that you may belong to are ideal places to list your URL even if it costs you a fee.

16. Direct Mail Pieces
Lastly, although this is snail mail, all pieces going to customers as well as to prospects should have the URL in a place where it is readily noticeable. There should be some call to action to get the reader to link to the URL.

These sixteen spots are some of the most effective places to market your web site and consequently your business. Now is the perfect time to review your business and put in place a 2011 web site strategy.

It is essential that your customers know that they can find out more about your products and services by visiting your web site. So placing your URL in as many prominent places possible helps increase the traffic to your web site. Please find twenty-five prime locations we identified. If you can think of others, please let us know in the comments:

photo credit: quinn.anya

Business Cards
Email signature panel
Company letterhead, envelopes and other stationery
Google, Yahoo and Bing local
Your Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites
Product Packaging
Marketing Brochures
Signage (Windows, Vehicles, Sidewalk, Sandwich Boards)
Direct mail letters and envelopes
Advertising (Yellow pages & other)
TV Advertising
Client Surveys
Media Kits
Giveaways & Premiums
Address Stamps
Flyers
Product displays, for retail or trade
Trade show brochures
Tent cards
Postcards, or direct response cards
Entry forms, for contests or sweepstakes
Receipts and invoices
Fax cover page
Radio advertising, if your URL is short and memorable
Company vehicles

Optimizing Your Web Site for Search Engines

As a small business owner, you need to have a list of these 10 essentials so you can speak to your web site designer and builder. If that person can’t discuss these topics intelligently with you, perhaps you need to hire someone else. Remember that not all web designers or web builders understand or are proficient in optimizing websites for search engines

Don’t make the mistake of paying your consultant for the submission of your site to search engines. Most of the top search engines and crawlers will find your site without your having to submit it. They will find and index any page on a site that is designed properly to achieve top ranking. So you want to make sure that your site is search engine optimized. This article gives you some of the basics of Search Engine Optimization.

photo credit: dannysullivan

1. Page Title
The crawlers always look first at the Title Tag or the text that displays in the reverse bar of the browser when it lands on a page. The title is also used to describe your page when someone adds it to their “Favorites” or “Bookmarks” lists. So you want to make sure it relates to what you do or how you want people to remember your business. You need unique text describing the unique subject matter of each page since the different pages deal with different material on your site (10 to 15 words, 60 to 65 characters maximum).

2. Page Description
Some search engines and crawlers support the meta description tag and look at the text, generally, 200 to 250 characters to index it, although only a smaller portion (160) of this amount may be displayed. Remember that search engines can change how they treat meta tags at any given time. Google, for example, typically ignores the meta description tag and instead will automatically generate its own description for this page based on content from the page that best matches the user query. If your meta description is the best match for the user query, Google may show that in its results. Other search engines may support the meta description tag partially.

3. Keywords
The meta keywords tag allows you to provide additional text for crawler-based search engines to index along with your body copy. Not all of the crawlers support this tag which just reinforces the information in the body copy. Remember, if you don’t use the specific words on the page, then just adding them to the meta keywords tag is extremely unlikely to help the page rank. The meta keyword tag is also sometimes used as a way to help your page come up for synonyms or unusual words that don’t appear on the page itself. These keywords should be the words “language” that your customers use to look for your product or service.

4. Site Navigation
If at all possible, you should consider a site map with text links to help visitors find what they are looking for and to point the crawlers to all of your internal pages. Try not to use frames as they tend to be difficult for the crawlers and avoid javascript and image map links. Include a static html site map and xml site maps and add a robots.txt page if applicable.

5. Page Content
Search engines try to find the best content that describes a keyword or phrase so you need rich content high up on your pages to make it easy for both your visitors and the crawlers. Try to use keywords in H1, H2 and H3 headlines and easy to read text. Include your geographic location so that you can be found easily in local searches. Avoid Flash animation and use images sparingly because the crawlers can read text nor Flash and images. When crawlers find the same content in multiple pages they tend to rank the best page and put the rest into a supplemental index that is never looked at again. Use unique title tags and publish articles first on your own site before you submit them for mass distribution.

6. Optimize Your Code
Crawlers move through your ‘code’ (your page) looking for your content so you want to have your content as high up the page as possible. Avoid wherever possible javascript and CSS and if not then place them in external files and call them from a single line of code.

7. Domain Stability
Try not to move your domain too often as you appear to the crawlers to be a SPAMMER. Try to stay with the same host and get if at all possible a dedicated IP address so that you don’t have to worry about losing the address because one of your sharers did something inappropriate and the address became banned.

8. Links
The number of links pointing to your site helps establish your importance and rank. The quality of these links are even more important than the quantity so try to get back links from quality sites using you keyword text in the links.

9. Competitive Sites
Search your keywords to see your competitors’ sites and analyze what they are doing. See who links to them and try to understand why. Try getting the same links.

10. Web Analytics
Keep track of the number of unique visitors to your site. Hits are not as important because they just simply denote the number of times a page has been pulled. Check your statistics frequently and try to understand who is visiting and why.

Remember, any competent site designer and builder will be able to give you advice on the above topics.

If you are a small business and are being counseled by your web developer, your marketing or PR agency to ignore building a website and to put your initial web investment into building a Facebook page, you are getting the wrong advice.

photo credit: sepp0

Here are 5 solid reasons why you need your own website, owned and managed by your company:

1. Social Media sites like Facebook and Twitter and all the rest are being stormed upon by marketers who use the draw of 500 million users as an excuse to convince their clients that there is potential for increasing brand awareness and pushing out content to these poor unsuspecting potential customers. What should be happening is that companies should be spending their time listening to the pitter patter on the sites and trying to understand what the customers want as opposed to trying to push more stuff out at them.

2. Let us agree that it is fairly simple to build a Facebook page, but remember that your website is the equivalent of the reception room in your company headquarters or the storefront of your retail business. Would you build a great billboard to bring clients to your uncompleted or your as yet not started storefront. Yes people will notice your Facebook page like they’ll notice the billboard and you’ll possibly get great online visibility. They’ll still want to visit your website to validate your existence and you’ll be non-existent.

3. Facebook does give you an opportunity to listen to your audience and understand what is driving them. Build your website first, then go on Facebook and learn to listen to what your potential customers are saying. This gives you another reason to further analyze and understand who your favorite customer is and you can then use this information not only to enhance your marketing message but in the process, you’ll also improve the look and feel of your existing website.

4. Facebook is cluttered with look-e-loos who are buying nothing. They are individuals who are simply socializing with their family members or peers. Don’t get carried away by the 500 million number of users. Quality and not quantity should be the driving force here. Of course you might get more traffic than you would on your web site, but how good is the traffic for generating immediate revenue.

5. To suggest that company websites will soon be inside Facebook is to suggest that you give the everyday operation of your business to someone you don’t know, you haven’t vetted and someone who has no accountability. How long do you think you’ll stay in business. Also, some of the biggest web companies have disappeared or faded into the woodwork. This can happen to Facebook. If Facebook craters or they decide to change their model, what will happen to your website. Don’t forget when Google changed their algorithm what happened to the page rank of thousands of websites and the negative impact it had on revenue generation for all those owners.

Build your website and make it the foundation or home base of your web thrust. Then use social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and all the rest of them as outposts to spread your reach outwards. A good read on this topic is Why Your Website is More Valuable Than Facebook

In a recent blog post, the experts at Alphabetix outlined five features that a website with “Rockstar” status must have:

photo credit: Joshua Lowe Photo

User Friendliness

A website should be easy to read, easy to navigate, and easy for potential customers to find common information about you, including:
Products or services you offer
Detailed information about you
Recent blog posts
Contact information

Content Clarity
The content of your website should be clear and easy to understand, and your potential customer should know what you want them to ultimately do on your website. This is true for every single page of your website.

Personal Style

Personal style is a double entendre of sorts, because your website must be personal and personable.

On the personal side of things, the very look of your website should be unique and showcase the best your brand, product, and service have to offer. On the personable side of things, remember that every single person that interacts with your website has their own expectations for the products and services you offer.

Engagement
Simply put, you want to engage your potential customers while they are on your website. The important part of this engagement is to determine what exactly you want them to do while they are on your website.

Security

Website visitors want to be sure that your site hasn’t been hacked, and that by visiting your website they are not vulnerable to downloading some horrific piece of computer code that will harm their computer.

Conclusion

Keeping an eye on these five website must have features will help raise your website from mediocre to rockstar status.
For the full article, please go to Five Rockstar Websites Must Haves

Want to make your small business look big? You can learn a lot from Monte Enbysk, a senior editor at Microsoft Office Live, who in his article in Entrepreneur, today, points out these ten things as the answer to what customers are looking for when they visit:

1. How your business is unique
Answer the question “Who are you?” as interestingly and compellingly (and honestly) as possible. This includes writing management bios that mention your expertise, years of experience and any unique attributes or details that may set you apart from others.

2. A clear sense of what your company offers
It’s incredible how many sites you visit and you’re not sure what the company offers. Make it a priority on your home page to provide at least general information about your products and/or services, with links to specifics on a Products page.

3. Contact information, including a phone number and physical location
This may seem like a no-brainer, but many companies are purposely vague about their location. Showing a physical location, even one that no one will ever visit, comforts a customer that your business is real and legitimate. Provide a phone number that maps to that location, rather than just an 800 number, she advises.

4. Third-party validation
This means customer testimonials, client lists, case studies, awards and recognition you’ve received, positive news clippings and the like. Potential customers indeed want to know who you do business with, and what current customers have to say about their experiences. Such items “forge the underpinnings of trust,” Porter says.

Client lists are especially important if your customers are businesses. If you’ve got some big-name customers, people like to see that. But make sure you get approval from those you list as clients.

5. Secure Socket Layer (SSL)
SSL is an encryption system that helps protect the privacy of data exchanged between a customer and a website. If you have an e-commerce site that takes credit card information, customers want to know that their sensitive data is encrypted. Get SSL if you don’t have it. If you do, let customers know that and about any other safeguards you proactively take.

6. Ease of use and navigation
If people can’t find it, they can’t buy it. Keep sites “crisp, clean, and easy to navigate,” and study traffic and usage patterns to adjust the sites based on what visitors are coming for. The ability to search a site is very important. Businesses should study their search data to see if there are trends and what to make front and center.

7. Clear guidance on your processes
Let customers know, step-by-step, important things such as how to order–and where to go and what to do should something happen out of the ordinary. Customers also want to know your shipping costs and procedures and how they can get status reports. Last but not least, customers want to know how you handle complaints and problems, return procedures and whether you have a money-back guarantee.

8. An ability to give feedback
Encourage feedback about your products and services, your ordering process and your site in general, by providing a feedback mechanism–either feedback forms or e-mail links. Not every small business prefers to offer this, in some cases because of resource constraints. You might get some good stories to feature on your site or in your blog.”

9. Clear calls to action
Customers want signs or buttons in order to act, be it “Buy now” or “Sign up for our newsletter” or “Click here for more information.” But many small-business sites don’t provide calls to action or they don’t present them clearly enough.

10. Special offers and personalization
By personalizing a sale with a special offer, incentive or coupon, small businesses can gain an edge on their bigger counterparts, Porter says. This can be as simple as a hand-written thank-you note, free gift wrap services or a special offer for repeat business.

For the complete article, please go to: 10 Things Customers Want on a Website

Steve Strauss posted this in his column in USA Today. I think that any small business that is not maximizing its Web presence is missing a golden opportunity.

First, let’s make sure we are on the same page. When discussing Web 2.0, what we are talking about is an era where websites are more interactive, engaging, and interesting than before. They are not static, as they were, say, 10 years ago, where all you could do was read. Instead, a Web 2.0 site is one where visitors can engage with you, your business, and your site by:

• Posting comments on your blog, or articles, or chatting in a forum.

• Re-tweeting your content, sharing it on Facebook, or Digging it.

• Watching a video, listening to a podcast, or participating in a webinar.

• Taking a quiz or responding to a poll.

The essence of Web 2.0 is that it is collaborative and interactive. By creating a site that engages and interacts with people, that makes them want to stick around (hence the term “sticky site”) you give people more of a chance to create a connection with your business.
For the complete article please see Maximizing your web presence is key to building your small business

Using the Internet to do business is here to stay and more and more small businesses are having an online presence. You need to think of your business in terms of what it takes to build a more relevant and targeted customer base to meet your market head on rather than how to push your product or service out to unsuspecting prospects. Here are five things to do to set up a web strategy to compete effectively in today’s online world.

1. Build a web site with content that is written around the key phrases that your customers use to find a business or products/services like yours.

2. Use social media like Twitter and Facebook to get your customers to start conversing with you and among themselves. Listen and pay attention to the conversations and you’ll learn all the psychographic and behavioristic pieces of information you need about your customers.

3. Learn to showcase your product or service online based on the information you collect about your target market.

4. Try to move online as many elements of your customer service as possible and make sure that in this mode your customer service is faster and better.

5. Make sure that your web presence is a strategic business direction for your company.

Remember that in today’s world a web presence is something that customers and vendors expect. A well designed and built site will attract prospects and once they are there, will build your credibility and help convert then to buyers of your product or services.

Much of today’s small business for profit and not-for-profit application software was written over a decade ago. The million dollar question is: Are these applications still worth running ? Considering all of the technology innovation that has occurred since then, can we expect an application designed and built with yesterday’s technology for yesterday’s business world to fit today’s?

The answer is no.

“If it aint broke, don’t fix it” does not apply to your small business application programs. Your application is like a good race horse, you run it until it can’t race anymore and then you retire it. You don’t try to patch it up.

Many applications which are still out there need retiring. The great applications replace is upon us and we can’t fight it any longer.

How do you go about deciding which applications to replace?
• If it was built over a decade ago, no matter by whom, it is a prime candidate for replacement.
• If the underlying business requirements have changed significantly since the application was developed, you can be certain that it is not performing optimally.
• If the application was written to run natively on a mainframe, a midrange or even a personal computer, it’s on the list.
• If the application has a pure character interface and all of the reports are in text, it’s a candidate.
• If the application does not grant web-based access to staff or members, it needs immediate attention.

Some things to beware of:
If the application does not fit the business requirements then you have to go back to the drawing board. To do this properly, presupposes that you thoroughly understand how your business functions.

Do not for a moment think that if you change the user interface, you have fixed the problem. It’s like drugging a horse, it’s may work for a race or two, but then the horse collapses and may die.

Do your business a favor. Take a deep breath, then take a hard look at your applications portfolio and remember, it may be running but it can still be “broke”.

How will you quickly deploy technology and handle customer support requests for help?
Web applications are being put in use especially where there is a need to interface to customers and even in today’s world of heavy web usage in the home and in business, there are still a lot of users who are not web literate. As we deploy the web into our customer community, we’re forcing users who are unfamiliar with browsers to be very dependent on them. This could be very detrimental to the growth and success of today’s business. Put in place training for both your employees and your customers so that your web applications become easy to use. A help desk may go a long way to helping out this situation.