When it comes to websites people get really confused. The market is full with webdesigning companies, freelancers, virtual assistants, students and marketing agencies offering website design services. There are different platforms used and everybody has a slightly different style and a different skill set.

Some webdesigners produce the most stunning looking work when it comes to design, but the traffic ranking is bad. Others produce horrific looking, weirdly coloured websites and lots of traffic and sales. If you are lucky your website looks attractive and attracts sales.

So, how on earth do you know what kind of website to get, who to ask to do it, how much you should spend, which keywords to use, etc. etc.

The best thing to start with is to find out what kind of site you require for your specific situation and goal. If you know that you have a much better understanding of who and what to look for. You then are also able to search for the right solution on Google.com or ask your prospective webdesign the right questions.

There are different kind of websites available for you and need to match your business strategy. Things have changed a lot in the recent years with the rise of Social Media and you can actually make very different decisions about your web presence than in the years before. I will start off with telling you about the different types of websites that are out there and for what purpose they are (because they all have their purpose).

Types of websites

Brochure website

This is the traditional website that we all know from the past – and of course, the presence. It is the website that many webdesign companies still recommend, but this choice may be limiting you in your marketing efforts. Many brochure websites are done in HTML, which means they are static websites and don’t index in the search engines that easily. It is often recommended by Internet Marketers to have all your websites on a Blog/Wordpress platform for better search engine optimization.

The brochure website is great to show off your logo and branding, it can be the “home” of your business, but it is not interactive, you can’t communicate with your visitors and often you can’t keep them on your website for longer than a few minutes or seconds.

This is an example of a brochure website:

The brochure website can be a great company website portal, meaning that it simply shows off who you are, what you are about and what services you can offer. This may be a starting point for your business if you are a wedding event manager, photographer, etc.

What is missing is a way to attract your visitors to

• communicate with you
• share your articles or content
• add new content regularly, even daily
• show off specials
• offer a free taste or service for your website visitor

You can create your brochure website as a portal. The portal is like a front entrance that leads you into the hall of the homepage and you have different doors people can enter. One door might read: Consulting. The other door might be Products, the next Books and so on. It can be accummulation of all your business offers. It may also be a portal if you have different sub businesses, say your business domain name is <your name.com>, eg. Lizzy Lissington, and on this website you simply tell people what you are offering. This may be Lizzy Lissington’s sub businesses, such as Lizzy’s Photography, Lizzy’s Dog Equipment, Lizzy’s Dog Breeding Kennels, etc. People can click on the part of Lizzy’s business that they are looking for. They may want to buy a puppy, so they go to Lizzy’s dog information. When they click on Lizzy’s dog breeding, they may be led to another website called: Lissingtonkennels.com. Please note the names are purely ficticous.

When the visitor clicks on Lizzy’s Photography, they may be taken to a Facebook page with a customized Facebook page where they can check out all her work and click on “like” to be added to Lizzy’s community on Facebook, ask her questions, read her posts and interact with other people who like Lizzy’s Photography.

When the visitor clicks on Lizzy’s dog beds and dog equipment, they may be led to a shop website called “Lizzysdoggear.com” and are able to see all dog equipment Lizzy has on offer, from leashes, dog food to dog beds. They simply browse the store front and click on the items they like and order them by using the shoppingcart system and paying by credit card.

So in the end, you can see it as a hub that shows you all about Lizzy. Lizzy could even add information about her dog training ebook on there. When you click on “dog training”, you will find yourself on a so-called squeeze page, which means that all you can do on that particular website or page is ordering a free, sample ebook on dog training. It could be a 30 page free document on “How to buy a puppy” or “how to stop your dog from barking at the neighbours”. Lizzy short report is meant to give you a taste of what her training is about, how easy it is to implement her suggestions and to show you how knowledgable she is when it comes to dog training. It is also meant to buy her database, her “list”. The database or list is a list of prospects who may want to buy her dog training videos or ebooks that are not free of charge, but as you already liked her free report, you may be more inclined to buy her information products because you start to “know, like and trust her”.

Squeeze or Listbuilding page

Example of a squeeze page

A listbuilding page is also called a squeeze page and has only one purpose: to get the website visitors contact details, including the email address, to keep in touch with them. The marketer knows that many visitors don’t buy at first or second touch, they need to feel the “I know, like and trust you” factor before they want to buy from you. Different to the sales page, the squeeze page has no buy button anywhere. It is also much shorter, usually only one screen size long and often has a video or photo attached and an opt-in form, asking the visitor for name and email address. Sometimes other details are asked for, but the more the more information is asked the less people usually sign up, so business owners need to be careful to not push their visitors off the page by asking too many contact details. Often only two fields, name and email address, are compulsory, even if there are fields for phone number, address, website, questions, etc..

When a website visitors signs in, the contact information goes into a listbuilding shoppingcart or email marketing system. From there the business owner can contact the visitor whenever they like with a newsletter or a special offer. It is not recommended to contact the list (the people who opted in) too often, otherwise people will perceive it as spam and unsubscribe. There has to be an unsubscribe function in your system, otherwise you go against the spam laws.

When the website visitor has entered into Lizzy’s squeeze or listbuilding page, he or she may at some stage be led to a sales page. This is the time when Lizzy hopes that someone will buy her complete video dog training course. Underneath you see what a salespage could look like.

Sales page

On the left you see an example of a very long sales page for dog training. Please note I’m not affiliated to the service nor have done the webdesign. It’s simply a good example of a sales page for you to check out. Click on the image to enlarge it to see its elements: video use, persuasive text, website only leads to one thing: the sale. The salespage also has large buy buttons, testimonials, photos, etc.

Say you want to sell a product, such as an ebook or an information report or a CD Multi-Media coaching set, you do best by organizing yourself a sales page.

A sales page is often very long. It states problems the website visitors may have and talk about the solution, gives examples, features, benefits and also testimonials. At the end (and in-between) there are calls for action, to buy the product.

Sales pages are highly effective when done correctly and don’t really look like webdesigners “pretty” works, they have only one aim and that is SELL. Many sales pages have no link going anywhere other than the shoppingcart to buy the product. The philosophy behind this is that a confused person doesn’t buy. If your whole page/website deals only with the sale of this one product or event or service, then all you can do here is buying or not buying.

The longer you stay with the text the more likely it is you buy. The sales page is a conversation and written in a conversational style. There is no place for British English and high level academic language on it.

Online reports and video series can often be represented by graphic design products. The actual product is an information product (mp3 audio, Youtube video, ebook in pdf. format, etc.) and the graphic designer creates a graphic showing off how the online products could potentially look like. Very often you will never receive a real product when you buy an online product. Sometimes you will receive a real folder with CDs and you can choose to have an online version.

The graphics for an information product could look like this:

You may wonder why the trainer or information marketer uses these graphics that makes you think you purchased a real book or real CDs. This is just to help you make a decision to buy. If they talk about a report or video only, you may not be able to imagine how much information you will get for your money. If they show you a graphic with ten CDs you will think that you receive the content that fits on 10 CDs, so it must worth the money you spend.

If you sell an information product you may consider using graphics for them as well. Look at the graphic on the left: doesn’t it look like you are purchasing a ton of information instead of just some online videos or reports?

The Store website

If you sell real products, such as dogs leases, dog beds, dog food, etc. you will consider have your own store. This store has a shoppingcart that helps the visitor purchase the goods and pay for them immediately online. They often take Paypal or creditcards or both.

Underneath you see an example of an online dog store.

Example of an online dog equipment shop

Facebook page

As mentioned, Lizzy could have a store or a page on Facebook as well. Some people who haven’t got a business website yet, actually choose to build a customized Facebook page instead. The page is different to your profile. Lizzy would have her profile set up for Lizzy Lissington and then a Facebook page for her dog business. This is free of charge and she can talk to her clients online and attract a lot of traffic as Facebook is one of the world’s leading websites. It’s of similar importance as Google.

To make her Facebook page memorable and to sell her products and make her business known, she might want to hire a web designer who design her custom Facebook page as it’s not that easy to do it yourself, but it is usually cheaper than a full website.

Check out the example of a Facebook dog business page:

To engage people, Barkbusters have a Facebook page with a competition. If you “like” their page, you go into the draw to win something. Check it out underneath:

Example Facebook page

Hub

Cesar Millan, the famous dogtrainer, has a big hub for his dog training business, offering everything from online video training, book sales, apparel, forum, etc. His website is done as a static website. Being Cesar and famous, his website ranks extremely high in the search engines, but when you are a newbie to the online world, chances are that your static website would rank worse than a WordPress website with constantly fresh content via the blog page. The blog page is your newspage that will get indexed very quickly in Google when you update the blog frequently and with the right keywords.

Example of a big hub website

A hub website (could also be called portal website) that also integrates the blog (news items) and Social Media, such as Youtube, Facebook, etc. is the website from the internet marketer Fabienne Frederickson. It’s a great example of a web site that shows off everything that someone offers, such as online courses, coaching, mastermind groups, events, etc. Check it out http://www.clientattraction.com.The reason I show you Fabienne’s's website is that she combines the elements mentioned in the text above: she uses the sign up box for her listbuilding, she lists her products and services like a portal and she intergrates Social Media (video, Facebook, etc.)

Social Media integration is nowadays a must to grow your business. Fabienne is using a WordPress platform. Two-way-communication is more and more important for the consumers of today and integrating a blog and Social Media platforms make that possible.

See the example: Fabienne makes use of the sign up box for her listbuilding, she uses her blog to show the website visitor she knows what she is talking about, helps the search engine optimization with it, she displays a Facebook bad on the side bar, she shows off the icons of the Social Networks you can connect with her (Twitter, etc.) and she posts videos and photos. When you go to her product page, you will find links to salespages, so she integrates all marketing methods in one.

Conclusion

You see that there are several options to market your services and products successfully online. Each solution mentioned her has its reasons. The sales and squeeze pages want the website visitor to only to ONE thing (either sign up with your contact details or to buy something) and don’t want any distraction, therefore you can only do one thing on these pages.

The store has the aim to offer the visitor a great shopping experience with a handy way to buy products, pay online and get them delivered to your door. Great for time-poor people.

The portal and hub helps you to see what services and products are on offer. Often businesses have a variety of these websites with different domain names to get maximum results.

Looking at Fabienne’s clientattraction website, you see it all integrated in one, but then leading off from different pages and links you see squeeze pages, sales pages, blog pages and her Facebook page in action. Why did she do this? Because Fabienne is a very well known marketer and wanted to show her readers and clients what services and products she offers and what she can do for you. She has many programmes, products and training events available that it makes sense to have a big hub or portal to show them all off at one glance. In the past, she used to have a squeeze page as her homepage and had a WordPress website hidden behind the squeeze page. I will show it to you underneath:

I hear it regularly at local networking meetings: why should a local business worry about blogging?

Most small business owners still believe that blogging is a) only for crazy online geeks with big glasses and b) won’t be of any use to small businesses that provide services or sell to mainly local markets.

Point a) I know many bloggers that are quite normal people who have families, go on holiday, drive normal cars, go to restaurants, have friends (yes, it is possible as an Internet geek to have real life friends!) and live a normal life, just like you. So don’t judge them on the stereotype (although I agree it’s funny).

Point b) In this post I would like to point out the advantages of blogging to YOUR business. You could be a real estate salesperson blogging about the market and newest listings, a coach blogging about midlife crisis, a consultant about tips on finding a new job or a cosmetic institute blogging about the latest eye shadow fashion.

The main thing about having a blog is to attract the right kind of people to your website or blog, the people who likely love what you have on offer – either your knowledge or your goods. You could have tons of people visiting your website, but if they are not targeted – people who are not in your target audience – you gain nothing from it, just a fleeting visitor who vanishes into thin air within two seconds.

If you are a dating coach and you regularly blog about dating tips, how to dress for a date, dating body language, dating psychology and so on, chances are that you will get the attention of single folks who are eager to read your newest advice – and eventually book an appointment for a consultation with you.

Chances also are that other businesses who have something to do with dating, for example men advice forums (like Askmen.com or similar) may find some gems in your post and link to you – bingo, and you have started to become more important in the online world and your blog or website will be ranked better due to this link. The more you have the better it is, but don’t fall for these weird emails from foreign people who ask you for a reciprocal link to their dodgy website that sells even more dodgy products. If the other website’s content has nothing to do with your content it won’t give you any advantage, the opposite can be the case. So beware.

When you have your own blog for your business make sure you research what your target market wants to know. Ask them when they come through the door of your shop or send them a survey (great free survey tool is http://www.surveymonkey.com) This tool has a weird name, but is used by many large companies as well as small ones.

If you are a fitness coach, the amount of topics about weight loss is sheer endless and you actually offer a kind of community service to blog about your fitness and diet advice. It would be crazy if you didn’t make use of a blog to show off your expert knowledge, build relationships with your readers and even offer your products or consultations occasionally. But be aware and don’t stuff your blog posts with constant “buy this” or “order that”.

A blog is there for information and relationship building in the first place. Remember you talk to people who look to you to find help with their problems. Once you have build relationships and you use an integrated marketing approach (including email marketing marketing and opt in reports and freebies) you will earn money with your knowledge and attract more clients who are keen to sign up with you.

If you get a blog from your webdesigner, make sure that it’s connect to social networks. There are many plugins (loosely translated as a connector) that help blog visitors to share your post with other people. If you mention “plugins”, your web developer will know what you are talking about…

If someone, for example, loves your post on how to loose weight without starving yourself, they can “retweet” it to their followers on Twitter. Twitter is a ultra popular Social Media tool that millions of people use daily. Many people keep the window of Twitter open throughout the day, always ready to read about something new or interesting. If your post gets re-submitted to a large group of people, chances are that other people will tell others about it, too, and you have quite a viral effect with your one post. Other people, who have never heard about you, will come to your blog or website and read what you have to say. And maybe even become your customers…

Another thing to ask your webdesigner for is the RSS feed to your blog. With this feed your loyal website visitors can sign up to receive all your future blog posts straight away after posting. There are different options on how they can receive them (in a reader or per email) and you can discuss this with your webdesigner). It is important to have this function so that you can start building relationships.

“Heike, I’m located in xxx and all my customers are locals. Why should I blog? I don’t need to get website visitors from the other side of the globe”, you may say now.

Becoming an authority in your field is a great thing, if you are recognized in Iceland, in the Seychelles or in your hometown, your website will get a better ranking when you have optimized your keywords that describe what you do, offer or write about. Your local people may well put in a search term, such as “Hamilton real estate”, into the search engine and if you have optimized your blog posts’ keywords, chances are your post will come up for the person to read.

Additionally, never really discard selling globally! I know it sounds scary, but it’s sometimes even easier than locally because there are so many people out there maybe looking for exactly your tools and knowledge while your locals might not even care. So don’t close your eyes to the opportunity, especially when you offer a service, such as coaching, consulting, training, etc. You’d be amazed how many people train with overseas institutes nowadays or buy wares from foreign countries. It might be time to open up your mind about the opportunities worldwide.

The Internet has made it possible for us to cross borders, communicate with people from around the globe and to sell and buy easily from other countries, so keep your mind open about this. If you would like to have more information on this, please send me an email.

Summing up, blogging is a great tool if you are a local business targeting local people just as much as global audiences. Be brave, try it and you will reap the rewards of getting a better website ranking, more targeted visitors to your blog, more inquiries and connections.

I just read  this great article in Lorrie Morgan-Ferrero’s Ezine, Copywriting TNT. As a graduate of Lorrie’s Shefactor Bootcamp I’m a great fan of hers and wanted to share this post with you:  

Blogs Are the NEW Secret Weapon for Reaching Your Tarket. Just like you, I hate being marketed to. Every day we’re bombarded with over 3,500 marketing messages. And frankly I’m sick of it! But blogs are different. Blogs are a two-way conversation between blogger and bloggee (plus all the readers in between). Through commenting and cross-linking, you can share feedback. You can build your network. You can become, dare I say it, an Internet celebrity!

See, blogs add humanity and instantaneous expression to the web. Like ezines, blogs are a way for your customer to get to know you.

However, unlike ezines, blogs help you with search engine rankings. Did you hear me? I said, unlike ezines, blogs help you with search engine rankings. That’s a big one.

Entrepreneur Magazine, Business Week, even the FCC (Federal Trade Commission) all believe blogs are here to stay. Recently Michael Powell, chairman of the FCC, started one. His initial post drew over 30,000 readers. A Microsoft spokesperson says Bill Gates is considering starting a blog. And filmmaker Michael Moore built a blog to promote his controversial movie, Fahrenheit 9/11.

But who has time to read a blog anyway? Exactly! The job of a blog is to cut through the information overload and deliver searchable, relevant and current content. BlogAds.com recently conducted a survey of over 17,000 blog readers. Here’s what they report:

• Blog readers are older and more affluent. 61% of blog readers are over 30, and 75% make more than $45,000 a year.

• Blog readers are more cyber-active. 54% of their news consumption is online. 21% are themselves bloggers and 46% describe themselves as opinion makers.

• Blog readers are media-mavens. 21% subscribe to the New Yorker magazine, 15% to the Economist, 15% to Newsweek and 14% to the Atlantic Monthly.

• Whether on the left or right, blog readers have traits in common that often are absent in today’s public spaces: passion and initiative.

• Blog readers have apathy towards traditional news sources. 82% say that television is worthless. 55% percent say the same about print newspapers. 54% say the same about print magazines.

• Meanwhile, 86% say that blogs are either useful or extremely useful as sources of news or opinion. 80% say they read blogs for news they can’t find elsewhere. 78% read because the perspective is better. 66% value the faster news. 61% say that blogs are more honest.

• Blog readers appear united in their dissatisfaction with conventional media and their rabid love of blogs.

Don’t you want to be a blogger too? How about looking at some samples of the good, the bad and the bizarre?

Model citizen blogs: http://www.marketingsecrets.com/blog/ – John Reese’s blog. Hey, the guy just made $1,080,496.37 online in a single day. Here’s a good rule of thumb. If Reese is doing it, you should be too.

http://www.talkbiz.net/ramblings/weblog.php – Copywriter Paul Myers keeps us up-to-date on SPAM and other Internet marketing nightmares.

http://www.bookedsolidu.com – Michael Port’s new streamlined and simplified community helps you get booked solid. His old site, Booked Solid Referral Network, was just too big. This one is amazing! You’ll love it.

My Blog: http://www.redhotblogging.com – my blog today.

Bizarro Blog: Jeff Bridges’ site is considered a “blog.” He uses “hand-written” graphics that make it a unique and clever site! (Yes, really.) http://www.jeffbridges.com

I dipped my toe into the blogging pool a few years ago. Now I’ve decided it’s time to really learn how to do this stuff with an expert who will take me by the hand through the scary forest of the blog-world. I’m going back to school!

Christina Hills has opened another world to me using WordPress. I just attended her amazing, content-filled “Website Creation Workshop” studying her detailed webinars. Even though I have my own Blog, I’ve learned a ton since meeting this bright and intelligent guru woman!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Award-winning marketer, world-renowned copywriter and creator of “The She Factor®“, Lorrie Morgan-Ferrero of Red Hot Copy has a reputation as the top female copywriter in the info-marketing industry. She has written award-winning home study courses, conducts a world-famous virtual copywriting training, holds live workshops, and is authoring the original book, The She Factor based on her own She Factor Marketing System. Lorrie is dedicated to teaching the world it is possible to shift from the hype-filled sales to a more modern version…marketing written with authenticity, trust, and rapport. Check out Lorrie’s websites:  http://www.redhotcopy.com and http://www.redhotcopy.com/shefactorbootcamp1.html and http://www.redhotblogging.com.

Today marks the day of my new website launch. This sounds exciting, but it also marks the end of the life of my “old” website.

Looking back at the former website I feel strangely sad. This was “me”, this site represented me and what I am doing. I felt so proud when I first saw it online.

The content hasn’t changed much, but the functionality of the new site has: it’s a WordPress blog website and I love how easy it is to use.  My old website was lovely looking, but it didn’t make it easy to interact with other people. When I first started I didn’t realize that this is actually important.

Sandra De Freitas in “Does my blogsite make my wallet look fat?” says that our websites have a new job description.  

It’s like the secretary in the good old times: she would sit there all day typing on a type writer and couldn’t change the mistakes she made (not that an experienced secretary ever made them!). Nowadays secretaries don’t work like that anymore. Most click through lots of applications and work with all of them confidently. They deal with a big variety of tasks; email, organize calendars, use modern equipment and learn every day something new.  The job description has changed, has become more demanding, but also more interesting.

Sandra describes our website’s new job description as:

• A relationship builder
• Sales manager
• Event manager
• Traffic generator
• Automated marketing machine
• Blogger
• Search engine optimization manager
• Advertising manager
• Statistics manager

Oh, that’s a lot.

And our old website? It’s an online brochure. What an upgrade! Yay!

Anybody who is interested in the theme, check out the FLAXX themes, which are  very easy to use, set up and change. Click here to view more details