Article Archives

Make Money Online With Your Business Website!

by Tawnya Sutherland

A business website is an absolute must for all business owners to help market your business and make more money from it!
The fact is, we are increasingly depending on the internet for information. Your client will not only search for your website to solicit your business, they will refer back to it to obtain contact information, service options, prices, and your clientele base. They will "size you up" by the quality of your website – just as they would had you had an office or storefront.

Today's lesson is dedicated to giving you the technical lingo tools and a few tips to begin the process of getting your business website up and running.
Website Techiel Lingo
I have provided a helpful metaphor to explain website terminology – the techie lingo associated with getting your website online:

Think of a website as your new apartment. It has:

An address (domain name)
A physical location with enough space (hosting)
Different rooms like a kitchen or bedroom (the web pages)
Big french doors to let people in and out (bandwith / transfer)
A landlord / gardener (website designer / maintainer)

You and your visitors will also need:

A sports car to get there (ISP-internet service provider like Telus, Shaw, etc)

Other extras you may wish to have at your new apartment are:

A mailbox (email using your domain name)
An answering machine (autoresponders)
A mailman (cgi scripts to process forms)
Comfy. relaxing furniture (web usability)
Floor plan / directions for visitors (site map / good navigation)

If you have a business there (online store) you might also need the following:

Shopping baskets (shopping cart)
Cash register (merchant account)
A security system (secure certificate)
Good advertising (SEO - search engine optimization)
Signs on your door (banner ads)
Grand Opening Notification (PR - direct promotion / press release)

We could go even further and say . . .

Neighborhood (the world wide web)
Elevator buttons to the next floor (portal)
Private den / conference room to have meetings in (Intranet)
Buzzer in apartment building entrance to be allowed in (firewall)
Basement with a dumbwaiter (database)
Hallways (hyperlinks within your site)
Phone line (hyperlinks to other sites)
Decor and Interior Design (CSS/cascading style sheets, Javascript, Flash Technology)
Guestbook for people to sign when they visit (cookies)
Dictionary on your bookshelf (FAQ's - Frequently Asked Questions)
You may need to hire a moving company (FTP - File Transfer Protocol)
Art and Pictures on your wall (GIF, JPEG, PNG)
Key to your apartment (password)
Host / Hostess to formally greet your visitors (Netiquette)
The noisy drunk who lives down the hall (Spam)
Last but not least, every apartment building has that gossipy neighbour that you can find out just about everything from (Search Engine)
Now that we have the technical lingo out of the way, you can relax now when you interview potential webdevelopers since now you will know the process and speak the lingo.

Common Website Design Mistakes
In a world of information overload, your website must grab your visitor’s attention: provide them with the information they need clearly, tell them where they are. Make it an inviting door to your business by avoiding these common website design mistakes:

Excessively large graphics that make download time slow.
Too many animations that confuse and overwhelm a user.
The Blink Tag. It’s annoying!
Plug-ins like FLASH that require a download by the user.
“Under Construction” signs.
Bad Color Choice. Choose colors that fit your audience
(Read my article on choosing colors for your website).
Grammatical Errors. The website speaks for your services – no one will hire you if you cannot spell!
Text that is too small or too large.
Horizontal scrollbars along the bottom of your website to view the right-hand side of your webpage. Users automatically know to scroll down on a website but scroll across too? This is inefficient from a usability standpoint.
Choosing a domain name that is too long or can't be remembered easily.
Audio clips that play automatically. I recommend no sounds as they increase download time but if you absolutely must have music playing in the background, give the user the option to shut it off.
Broken images. Square boxes with missing images? Very unprofessional.
Broken links. Enough said.
Too little blank space between sections. Give your reader some “white space” to rest their eyes!
Overuse of UPPERCASE. This screams “yelling” at your user and is against netiquette (net etiquette).
Having your website on a host that never seems to be online. Choose a reliable host for your website that is online 24/7.
Too many advertising banners!
Slow servers or oversized pages because of un-optimized, large, graphics. Either one will send your user elsewhere. Patience for websites to download is scarce nowadays.
No text navigation option. Always provide text navigation at the bottom of your website or a sitemap to help users find their way should they get lost at your website.
Last but never least, remember the KISS principle: Keep It Simple Stupid!

Tawnya Sutherland is a Certified Internet Marketing Specialist, Webdeveloper and also a Canadian Certified Virtual Assistant. She also runs the VANF Networking Forum for Virtual Assistants which has become the newest hot spot for VAs to network together.
Email Tawnya for a FREE quote for your website design.