Internet and Business Online

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Web Copy
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We have all heard that “it’s not what you say, it’s how you
say it”. Well, the same applies to website content. In
this article we will discuss the importance of web copy and
how to turn your visitors into customers.

Your website content should convince visitors that your
service is either unique or superior to that of your
competitors in terms of quality or is competitively priced.
It should show your potential clients that you can provide
the solution that they are seeking. Your product or service
will solve their problems, answer a dream, enrich their
lives, and/or improve their businesses. You are the
dependable expert that they want and need!

Your website copy plays a major role in establishing and
growing your customer base. Web site copy creates the
“voice” of a company, just as the look and feel of a site
put a “face” on the company and on otherwise intangible
products and services. On an e-commerce site, the copy plays
a key role in closing sales as well as in up-selling and
cross-selling products and services. Good copy delights
first-time visitors, encourages return visits and propels
both customer acquisition and retention.

People read a Web page differently than they do a brochure
or a newspaper. They scan, scroll, click, hit the back
button, and hit the forward button. “Reading” is about
moving around and being in control. You have one chance to
make a first impression – to quickly convey the benefit of
staying on your Web site. I can’t overstate the importance
of first impressions, which in Web-time are measured in
milliseconds. The layout, functionality, message and overall
look and feel of your web page determine who stays – and who
clicks away.

Your story should be clear and to the point. The goal of any
web page should be to get the visitor to DO something: to
move on to the next step in a purchase sequence or to click
for more information about a product or service. Without
readable, compelling copy and clearly organized hypertext
links, visitors are much less likely to complete a
transaction – and return to your site again.

Writing for your Web page should always start from your
visitor’s perspective. What is your Web site visitor looking
for? Why is he/she here? How can you make his/her visit as
quick and efficient and positive as possible? You should
take the time to clarify the goal of each page before
starting to write. If the page is part of a transaction
sequence, identify what may be hindering the buying process.
Be sure instructions are clear and easy to read.

If you are selling a service on your website, your Unique
Selling Proposition (USP) is your service’s most powerful
benefit, in combination with a strong, unique feature of
your business. It answers that most difficult question:

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Why should potential customers hire your service company?
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Tell your customers what service you are selling and explain
what your service provides. What is the key benefit(s) to
your customers? What pain does it cure, what solution does
it provide? Compare your service with that of your
competitors and highlight what makes you stand out from the
competition? Keep working on this until you can clearly
separate yourself from the field. As stated earlier there
must be a convincing reason for doing business with you,
instead of your competitor.

Summarize the above into one tight, powerful, motivating
phrase that will persuade your customer to do business with
you and to trade their money for the benefits delivered by
your service.

As you start to work through the above four steps, you may
find this to be a lot harder than it looks. Don’t blow it
off and give up! You must have a USP. If it was easy,
everyone would have a great USP! Come up with a tight, sharp
USP that sells your service to your customer.

Write tight, get right to the point, be keenly aware of the
audience for the page, and don’t use a three-syllable word
when a one or two-syllable word will do. Use call-to-action
language and be interesting. The page should be so clearly
organized that, in seconds, visitors can understand and get
convinced to buy your product and be able to anticipate
where a hypertext link – or a “Continue” button – will take
them. Studies show that “ease of use” is the winning factor
on an e-commerce site.

If you’re going to promote your service and expand your
customer base using your website, potential clients have to
be able to trust you. Their confidence in you and your
products has to be boosted. Endorsements on your website
from a valued friend or colleague, or a referral from a
strategic partner are the types of “leads” that boost your
credibility. You and your service must be perceived as
being trust-worthy before your visitor will be confident
enough to contact you or even buy your product.

Show prospects that you have their best interests at heart
and that you can adapt or customize your service to meet
their individual needs. Foster an ongoing relationship that
steadily increases their trust levels and cements a view
that you are an “authority” in your field.

Another important aspect of convincing prospective customers
is to keep abreast of recent developments in your field.
Check on what your competitors are writing about, and watch
for new trends. This will keep your website current,
razor-sharp and unique. By keeping your eyes open, you will
be able to grab an angle or niche that hasn’t been well
covered yet by your competitors. Portray this angle or niche
on your website.

Finally, be wary of broadening the theme of your site too
much. Try not to dilute your product or service’s targeted
niche simply to expand your base of merchant partners.
Remember; focus on your selling your service. That’s where
the “meat and potatoes” of your business will come from.

For Your Success!

Brian Simpson

AlbaIM Social Network

http://www.albaim.com

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AlbaIM Social Network for Internet Marketers,

Entreprenuers and Online Business Owners

http://www.albaim.com

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Marketing on the web involves a whole range of strategies, techniques, tools and competences that combine in different ways depending on the business model a certain business follows or is committed to. Some companies specialize in lead-based sales, others in affiliate marketing, while a lot try e-commerce or the selling of goods and services either directly to consumers or to other businesses. The business approach could therefore differ for every individual model for marketing on the web. Change is what defines the Internet best, which is why new things emerge regularly. This is an exciting time to be marketing on the web.

There are too few easy things about marketing on the web, and lots of entrepreneurs struggle a lot before making profit. Mistakes such as the effort of targeting wide demographic sectors are common, and they are the ruin of many companies. Very often this could be the end of a business if it is not strong enough to cope with a failure once in a while. If more businesses started using marketing strategies that rely on client behavior or interest, there would be less failure. For instance, if you deal in bike accessories you can post ads to advertise on cycling web sites, because only web surfers interested in cycling will access such pages.

Another {possibility|idea} for marketing on the web comes in the form of geo targeting. A business would thus develop locally because the nature of the occupation requires for geographical delimitation. Let’s say that you have a small organic farm and you advertise on the Internet; the neighboring area is the market for the products, therefore catching the interest of the local community is essential. At present, there are all sorts of softwares used for geolocation and the strategies for marketing on the web rely on them. It is a completely personal decision to invest in such technology or not. Internet marketing software can be a time saver or an expense depending on how it is used.

Once you understand the basic mechanisms of the electronic market, you’ll see that marketing on the web will be a lot easier to put into practice. The main advantage of online promotions is that they involve much lower costs and the possibility to reach a wider audience that searches for the kind of products or services that you offer. Moreover, it is very clear that online business can be immediately efficient with rapid results that are noticeable by the day. The reward is huge if you manage to rise from scratch and get to earn a living only by working online, but the way to such independence is paved with lots of marketing campaigns, good planning and intuition. Take a look at software for internet marketing.

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So you want to start up a website?  Have you thought about your long term plans for your website?  Doing so will be a great advantage in determining the best possible domain name.  A well chosen domain is a key component to your website’s success. Fine tuning your choice and thinking it through will help secure good placement with search engines and in the minds of your potential visitors/customers.

OK, so now you’ve found the domain name you want, but someone else owns it.  But you really wanted it badly.  Can the domain name still be acquired?  The answer is a qualified YES.  It’s possible, but there are conditions.  However, with a little luck and enginuity you can get the domain name you want even if it is already spoken for.  But for now, lets look at some alternatives to getting that domain name you want:

Hyphenated Names Sometimes it is a good strategy to just take the same domain name and hyphenate it as in turning bobsautoparts.com into bobs-auto-parts.com.  Is it always the best strategy?  Maybe, maybe not.  For example, if the domain name you want is already taken AND well known, most likely this is not a good idea, because most web surfers would likely just type the non-hyphenated version into their browsers and thus could end up at your competitor’s website.  Not a good strategy.  Also, the longer the name you have chosen, the more tedious and error prone it becomes for the surfer to type in the name correctly, again foiling the chances that they will end up at your website.  So keep it short.  Hyphenating a domain name might be a good strategy for you in the following scenario: Let’s say the domain name you want is taken, and the current owner is not willing to give it up.  After researching it you find that there is no website published under the domain name, or perhaps there is but it is poorly designed and gets very little traffic.  In a case like that hyphenating the domain name might make sense and in fact could be a wise strategy.

Longer or Shorter?  If you want to, you can purchase up to a 67 character long domain name.  At 63 characters, thelongestdomainnameintheworldandthensome
andthensomemoreandmore.com claims to be the longest domain name in the world, and it may very well be.  Can you envision anyone wanting to type it into their browser?  My website is www.StartMyWebsiteToday.com    When choosing my domain name I wanted something that in a few words would tell the web surfer what to expect from my website.  Good name selection can be helpful also with search engine ranking.  In as few characters as possible the name of the site, the purpose of the site, and the keywords of the site have all been neatly put together in a domain name.  Shorter is better here.

Brand Name or Generic  Should you give your website a descriptive generic name or do you want to use a brand name?  If your business is known by a brand name, and it is a well known name, of course it is the best possible strategy to try to register that domain name.  For instance, Nike.com is a well known brand name site, although there is nothing in the domain name to suggest that it is a site about shoes.  Still, Nike is such a well known brand name to the public that people automatically know what they will be shopping for when they get there.  If your brand name is well known, definitely try to obtain your brand name as a domain name.  But if your company is Nike or Coca Cola or Budweiser don’t discount the idea of buying the domain name shoes.com or soda.com or beer.com if they are available as well.  People often search the web using generic terms, more so even than brand names.  A person is more likely to search the internet with generic terms like shoes or footwear or sneakers than to search by a single brand name, even one as big as Nike.  So if possible cover all the bases.  You can have as many domain names as you want pointing to a single website, so the more generic terms you can acquire that directly describe your business, the better.   A generic name if your business is new or not yet well known can get great results, if you can find a good one.  To start your search for your own unique domain name, here is a link to a domain name search engine.

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Selecting a hosting plan is a critical step when you want to start up a website.  In prior posts I discussed choosing a domain name and creation of web pages.  Next we will discuss hosting:  Early on in your decision making process, you will want to shop for a hosting plan.

The next step after creating your website is to make it live on the internet, or publish it.  In order to do so, you will need a hosting plan.  A hosting plan is different from a domain name.  You own your domain name but you rent a hosting plan.  In it’s simplest terms a hosting plan is paying a company to broadcast your website onto the internet.  Let’s go over some of the key important factors to consider when choosing a hosting plan:

SERVICE  The number one thing to look for in a hosting plan is service.  It does not matter that a multitude of features are offered or if the price is low if the service you will be getting with your hosting plan is sub par or even worse, nonexistent.  Once your website is live on the internet you will want it to be up all the time.  For that reason you want to be sure and choose a hosting provider that will provide the best uptime as well the best availability and quality of customer service.

UPTIME  What is the hosting company’s “uptime guarantee”? Many guarantee 99% uptime for their servers.  That sounds great, but it does mean that your site could go down for 1% of the time, which means over 7 hours out of each month! If at all possible, choose a host guaranteeing up to 99.9% uptime.

SIZE  What size, or how many pages will the website have?  The amount of disk space all of your website’s pages takes up will determine the size of the hosting plan you will need.  If your website will be media rich with videos or music or photo files, or a large e-commerce site with a lot of catalogue pages, you will have to take space into consideration as a criteria for choosing the right hosting plan.

LINUX OR WINDOWS  This question refers to the operating systems available for hosting and which one to choose.  BTW it does not matter what operating system you are using on your personal computer.  What programming language was used in the Web site design?  For example, if you designed a website using ASP or ASP.NET, you’ll need to find a Windows hosting plan. If you have a Web site that uses CGI or PHP, you’ll need to get a Linux hosting plan.  Note that if you are simply publishing a basic html website, the choice of hosting Operating system won’t really matter as much until you get into more advanced languages such as PHP or ASP.

TRAFFIC  How much traffic or how many visitors do you expect monthly?  Hosting plans are usually sold at different level plans according to the bandwith that will be required.  Bandwidth = Traffic.  Obviously more bandwidth is better because it allows more visitors to visit your site, but at the beginning this will be hard for you to gauge.  Usually the best way to proceed here is to start with a basic low bandwidth plan, and upgrade later as the traffic begins to flow to the website.

SHARED OR DEDICATED HOSTING  The question of shared vs. dedicated hosting is really answered in a very simple way:  First a brief description of shared hosting, which is sharing space on a server with dozens or perhaps hundreds of other websites.  The main factor here is that you will have no control over the operating system, database structure, etc., and will have to work within the structure setup by the hosting provider.  Dedicated or virtual dedicated hosting is different in the sense that you will have full control over the environment that your website resides in, and you will have the only access to that space.  Dedicated server hosting gives you full control over setup of the operating system and auxilliary programs such as database management or shopping cart or database management software.  Generally customer support will be low to non-existent, since this type of hosting is geared to the advanced user who will be using his own custom setup.  The bottom line:  start off with shared hosting if you are a beginner, until you are advanced enough to progress to your own controlled dedicated hosting environment.

At StartMyWebsiteToday.com our uptime guarantee is 99.9% and we offer 24/7 customer service.  The hosting plans that are offered include a variety: shared hosting, virtual dedicated hosting, and dedicated hosting plans with either Linux or Windows operating systems for every need and budget ranging from the small personal website to large online multimedia sites to those interested in ecommerce website building. To see what is available, click HERE: Hosting plans.

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So you want to start up a website?  One of the best things you can help yourself with in your domain name choice is to develop a strategy and plan of attack.  Just as important as choosing the name for your business, a domain name, the name of your soon-to-be website, is one of the most important factors in your online success. Fine tuning your choice and thinking it through will help secure good placement with search engines and in the minds of your potential visitors/customers.

What if someone else already owns the domain name you wanted?  Is it still possible to buy it?  It’s Possible.  It’s possible, but there are some things to consider.  With some research and hard work you can still possibly register that coveted domain name even if someone has beaten you to the punch.  Instead, let’s check out some alternative strategies to get the domain name you want:

Hyphenated Names One strategy to consider if the domain name you want is already taken would be to hyphenate it, as in turning ricksantiqueshop.com into ricks-antique-shop.com.  Is hyphenating the best way to go?  Possibly, but maybe not.  If you want a domain name that is already taken by someone else and is already a well known, well traveled website, this might be a bad move, because users already familiar with the original domain name will just type the original, non-hyphenated version into their web browser, and end up not at your site but at your competitor’s site.  Not what you were after!  Also, if you do decide to take a hyphenated domain name, remember to keep it short!  The longer the domain name and the more dashes you put between words the harder it will be for the end user to remember, and therefore makes it more error prone, which could cost you customers who never make it to your website.  So, the shorter the better.  Hyphenating a domain name might be a good strategy for you in the following scenario: Let’s say the domain name you want is taken, and the current owner is not willing to give it up.  After researching it you find that there is no website published under the domain name, or perhaps there is but it is poorly designed and gets very little traffic.  In a case like that hyphenating the domain name might make sense and in fact could be a wise strategy.

Longer or Shorter?  If you want to, you can purchase up to a 67 character long domain name.  You could purchase a domain name like thelongestdomainnameintheworldandthensome
andthensomemoreandmore.com which is 63 characters long, but why would you want to do that?  Who would want to type it into a browser?  My website is www.StartMyWebsiteToday.com  and has a domain name that tells what kind of website you will be surfing to.  Good name selection can be helpful also with search engine ranking.  In as few characters as possible the name of the site, the purpose of the site, and the keywords of the site have all been neatly put together in a domain name.  Keep it as short as possible.

Brand Name or Generic  Whether or not to call your website by a brand name or to make the name a more generic description of your business online is the question.  Definitely if your business is known by a fairly well known brand name, then you would want to try and secure that as your domain name.  Budweiser.com is a site that is well known and gets a lot of traffic, even though there is nothing specifically in the domain name that says anything about beer.  But because Budweiser is known all over the world as a beer brand, people know what they are getting when they surf to the website.  If your brand name is well known, definitely try to obtain your brand name as a domain name.  But if your company is Nike or Coca Cola or Budweiser don’t discount the idea of buying the domain name shoes.com or soda.com or beer.com if they are available as well.  People often search the web using generic terms, more so even than brand names.  A person is more likely to search the internet with generic terms like shoes or footwear or sneakers than to search by a single brand name, even one as big as Nike.  Think it through and hedge your bets.  You can have as many domain names as you want pointing to a single website, so the more generic terms you can acquire that directly describe your business, the better.   A generic name if your business is new or not yet well known can get great results, if you can find a good one.  To start your search for your own unique domain name, here is a link to a domain name search engine.

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The principles of web design are applicable in every field of designing whether it is for web design or any other form of designing. They lay more emphasis on putting the design elements in an effective manner. The principles help you to achieve the results that area more pleasing.

* Balancement might be defined as the accurate placement of the light and the heavy elements on the page. The balance principle will help us to achieve the target which helps us to design a better layout. It might b be described as the actual interpretation of the gravity in the design or it is the distribution of the elements in the design. Another way in which you can achieve balancing is asymmetrical balance wherein consider for instance you are intending to place the heavier element in front of the center line then you need to place the heavier element somewhere far off from the centerline. The second way in which you can achieve balancing is asymmetrical balance wherein consider for instance you are intending to place the heavier element in front of the center line then you need to place the heavier element somewhere far off from the centerline. The next criteria that you need to consider is the off balance style, in this form the design is totally unbalance. Incase you have content which is intending the people to think then it is important to note that you can go in for the discordant or the off balance style.

* Contrast: Contrast may be defined as the difference between the similar element, further it is not applicable only to color consider that there are number of lines and one of the line is longer than the other, then there is presence of contrast in this scenario. SO it’s very important to note that incase you are applying contrast in designs then you do think beyond color. You can use contrast by showing differences in the font size and font family. Headlines are more contrasting in nature than the surrounding text. Links also provide contrast, like the underlining and color of the link content provides room for contrast.

* Emphasis is the focal point that is provided to some content. A good web designer will determine the hierarchy to the content. It’s a way of determining the elements that are more important that others. Emphasis can be implemented by the semantic mark up, fonts and the color in the design.

* Rhythm: Rhythm is also defined as repetition. Rhythm will bring in internal consistency to web site. Repetition is a good way to attract the attention and instigates the attention of the people. Maybe you can repeat the headlines several times to generate greater emphasis. It can be also implemented by repeating the text in HTML,inserting images a several times,repeating the navigation elements in all pages.

* Unity: Unity is defined as proximity or in other words it is the principle of keeping the similar elements together and keeping the different elements apart. Unity can be achieved by the placement in your layout.

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You are planning to go head-on with online business and the first thing that you have in mind is to create your own website. The best thing that you can do is go through the Information Highway and find a web template and that could really save you a lot of money and time. There are many advantages in using free templates for websites like saving time and money. You just need to download a template for websites then edit it to suit the preferences of your online business. But hold your horses, isn't that a sort of "cheating" your way to success? Look at some of the sites that you think are very unique. They didn’t based their sites from templates. They all did it from the bottom going up & they know that you need to spend big in order to earn big and that's a hard fact in real business. With the presence of web design companies, you can do it the hard way but you will reap big financial rewards for it and you know why? Uniqueness. There is nothing more unique than making a website from scratch and web site design companies are here to help.

Okay, somebody said that it is also better if you can hire a freelancer to do all those web designs instead of getting help from web design companies. Well, that can be a good remedy but not good enough. There are disadvantages when you hire freelancers. Freelance web designers will shortcut their way to finish the job in a hurry and you will get inferior results. They can’t work for you the way you want them to. They dominate and control their own time. But with a web design company, everything is under control and you will get more than what you’ve bargained for: Strategic thinking, top designers, personal attention, competitive prices, real world results and much, much more.

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