How Not To Promote Your Website
| Category: Marketing Strategy | Date: 2001-02-19 |
There are countless articles available on how TO promote your website, but I feel it is equally important to realize the incorrect methods of website promotion and how to avoid them. Everyone wants to promote their site, but most people are looking for free or inexpensive ways to do so. Low-cost promotion is fine, but presents a very fertile market for scammers and rip-offs.
Failing to have a purpose or concept in mind for your site before it is even designed can lead to problems down the road. This will make it much harder to establish a niche market or uniqueness that could bring lots of customers.
Even if you have a well conceived concept, it can be easily nullified with a poor design. Here are some of the top design flaws that I see on a regular basis:
Ugly Pages - Dark or busy backgrounds strain the eyes and will quickly cause your potential customers to leave.
Lack of Content - If most of your pages don't contain at least two-thirds real informative content, your visitors probably won't have much of a reason to come back.
Poor Writing - If you don't possess decent writing skills that really sound professional, then invest in someone who does.
Lack of Meta Tags - These HTML tags are often overlooked. Doing so could cost you dearly when trying achieve good search engine positioning.
All the Latest Plug-ins - Designing your site with all the latest technology and gadgets may look cool, but it will probably take too long to load. Even worse, it may not be viewed at all. I personally have left many sites after finding out I needed to download and install XYZ plug in to view it. Most people probably won't bother and you could lose lots of traffic (and money!).
Lack of Pertinent Contact Info - It amazes me the number of sites I run across without an email contact. That is like having a business with an unlisted phone number. Ideally, a physical address and phone number should be included as well.
Too Many Animations - Having more than one (if that) JavaScript or Java applet animations on a page can be very distracting and really take the attention away from your message. People with slower modems may not even download or be able to view the page. Keep it simple.
Poor Navigation - If your visitors get easily lost or confused on your site, they will be looking for the fastest way out. Make sure to include a link to your home page on every page.
One of the traps many people fall into is paying to have their site listed in a cybermall. These promoters often charge substantial up front or monthly charges. They advertise that their cybermall attracts 500,000 visitors a month and they will limit the number of similar businesses. That much may be true, but unlike the real world, you will not get any traffic from browsers just strolling by. It just doesn't work that way online. If somebody does a search for computer software, they are not going to visit your sporting goods site.
Free for all links proved to be big headache for me. In my earlier days I wasted a lot of time posting to these types of sites and probably got little if any traffic. Then I put a FFA links page on my own site. It would send out a short confirmation message with a signature line which I thought would be a great promotional tool. Unfortunately I found out that the only people that go to these sites on the ones posting ads. Very few people read the actual ads. To make things worse, many people used an autoresponder as the contact email address, so I would receive hundreds of autoresponder messages per day. You may have had better luck, but they are the biggest waste of time in my opinion.
Not having your own domain name shows total lack of professionalism and really hurts credibility. Having your URL look like www.some_domain/user/your-home-page.html would be like telling someone your office is located inside Wal-Mart, in the northwest corner, at the end of aisle 3 behind ladies apparel. It is imperative to spend $35 per year and look like you are serious about your online business.
SPAM! It should be thought of as BAM!, because just that quickly you could lose your credibility, your ISP, your ability to ever mail to many major ISP's and even law suits. Responsible opt-in email marketing can be very successful if done properly. Don't ever, ever be tempted to take advantage of offers like "2 million "targeted" e-mail addresses for only $29.95". It would be the worst Internet marketing decision you ever made.
I hope this article will help you avoid some of the mistakes I made in my early days of Internet marketing. Your online business experience should be a constant learning process. It is the very nature of the Internet. I hope my insights will always add to that learning process and help my
readers become more profitable and productive.
About the author:
Barry Craft has helped thousands of entrepreneurs develop more income from their online businesses. He publishes "Cyber Marketing News" which provides the latest Internet marketing tips.
barry@profitmatters.com
http://www.profitmatters.com/
Failing to have a purpose or concept in mind for your site before it is even designed can lead to problems down the road. This will make it much harder to establish a niche market or uniqueness that could bring lots of customers.
Even if you have a well conceived concept, it can be easily nullified with a poor design. Here are some of the top design flaws that I see on a regular basis:
Ugly Pages - Dark or busy backgrounds strain the eyes and will quickly cause your potential customers to leave.
Lack of Content - If most of your pages don't contain at least two-thirds real informative content, your visitors probably won't have much of a reason to come back.
Poor Writing - If you don't possess decent writing skills that really sound professional, then invest in someone who does.
Lack of Meta Tags - These HTML tags are often overlooked. Doing so could cost you dearly when trying achieve good search engine positioning.
All the Latest Plug-ins - Designing your site with all the latest technology and gadgets may look cool, but it will probably take too long to load. Even worse, it may not be viewed at all. I personally have left many sites after finding out I needed to download and install XYZ plug in to view it. Most people probably won't bother and you could lose lots of traffic (and money!).
Lack of Pertinent Contact Info - It amazes me the number of sites I run across without an email contact. That is like having a business with an unlisted phone number. Ideally, a physical address and phone number should be included as well.
Too Many Animations - Having more than one (if that) JavaScript or Java applet animations on a page can be very distracting and really take the attention away from your message. People with slower modems may not even download or be able to view the page. Keep it simple.
Poor Navigation - If your visitors get easily lost or confused on your site, they will be looking for the fastest way out. Make sure to include a link to your home page on every page.
One of the traps many people fall into is paying to have their site listed in a cybermall. These promoters often charge substantial up front or monthly charges. They advertise that their cybermall attracts 500,000 visitors a month and they will limit the number of similar businesses. That much may be true, but unlike the real world, you will not get any traffic from browsers just strolling by. It just doesn't work that way online. If somebody does a search for computer software, they are not going to visit your sporting goods site.
Free for all links proved to be big headache for me. In my earlier days I wasted a lot of time posting to these types of sites and probably got little if any traffic. Then I put a FFA links page on my own site. It would send out a short confirmation message with a signature line which I thought would be a great promotional tool. Unfortunately I found out that the only people that go to these sites on the ones posting ads. Very few people read the actual ads. To make things worse, many people used an autoresponder as the contact email address, so I would receive hundreds of autoresponder messages per day. You may have had better luck, but they are the biggest waste of time in my opinion.
Not having your own domain name shows total lack of professionalism and really hurts credibility. Having your URL look like www.some_domain/user/your-home-page.html would be like telling someone your office is located inside Wal-Mart, in the northwest corner, at the end of aisle 3 behind ladies apparel. It is imperative to spend $35 per year and look like you are serious about your online business.
SPAM! It should be thought of as BAM!, because just that quickly you could lose your credibility, your ISP, your ability to ever mail to many major ISP's and even law suits. Responsible opt-in email marketing can be very successful if done properly. Don't ever, ever be tempted to take advantage of offers like "2 million "targeted" e-mail addresses for only $29.95". It would be the worst Internet marketing decision you ever made.
I hope this article will help you avoid some of the mistakes I made in my early days of Internet marketing. Your online business experience should be a constant learning process. It is the very nature of the Internet. I hope my insights will always add to that learning process and help my
readers become more profitable and productive.
About the author:
Barry Craft has helped thousands of entrepreneurs develop more income from their online businesses. He publishes "Cyber Marketing News" which provides the latest Internet marketing tips.
barry@profitmatters.com
http://www.profitmatters.com/
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