Your URL IS Important

Great information on how to make sure your website reaches it potential. Great reading.

Tony

Top 5 Ways to Ensure Your Domain Name is Effective

By Chris Crum -

If you don't feel like you're getting enough business from your website, evaluate your domain name before you go to all of the trouble and cost of marketing it. Maybe you've already gone to all of that trouble and spent a lot of money and can't figure out why it's just not working. If you do not have an effective domain name, you may be losing out on an unbelievable amount of web traffic. Think of your domain name as the main part of your website's signage. Keep the following concepts in mind and you won't have to rely as much on search engines for customers to get to you site.

1. Easy to Remember The most important thing you can do for your domain name (possibly your site) is to make it easy to remember. You want customers to be able to type it in their address bar without even thinking. Look at Amazon for example. Just think of how many people looking to buy books bypass Google or Yahoo and enter "amazon.com" directly into their browser's address bar. It is simple and easy to remember. Amazon.

2. Not Too Long Another great thing about Amazon that also makes it easy to remember is that it is short and sweet. If you make your domain too long, people may use search engines to find what they are looking for just out of laziness because they don't feel like typing in your long URL. It may seem like that is really lazy and most people wouldn't be put off by it so much, but people want what they are looking for instantly. They find any shortcuts helpful. If they turn to the search engine and you are ranked at the top, then fine. But when they use the search engines, they are also bringing up all of your competition in front of them.

3. Easy to spell There's nothing more annoying as a user than trying to find a website, but not being able to come up with the right spelling. So if this happens, the user can either keep tyring different spellings (which is a pain) or again, turn to the search engines. So why not eliminate any of this hassle and just make your domain simple and easy to spell?

4. Relevant to what you do Having a domain name that says something about what your business does, can be a good way to help people remember it. An example of this would be books.com. This domain happens to be owned by Barnes and Noble, one of the nation's largest booksellers. This is one concept that does not apply to Amazon's domain name, but they can get away with it because they have done so well at branding their name over the years, which is the last concept I will discuss. A company like Amazon that has many different areas of business may find this harder to achieve anyway.

5. Branding If you are going to have a domain name that isn't relevant to what your business does, you need to put a great deal of effort into branding it. Always including the domain name in ads is a good way to start. Branding a domain name can be more difficult when you are a small business, especially now that more and more businesses have Internet presences. You need to find a way to make yours stand out from the crowd.

The bottom line is that if you want people to go straight to your site when they get online, you need to make it easy for them to do so. The easiest way for them to find you is if they know your domain by heart and don't have to think about it. Take a look at yours. If you were a user, would you be able to easily get to it?

Its All In A Name

Ran across this article and found it to reinforce my philosophy on web development and marketing strategies. Read on. It makes good sense.

What a Difference a URL Can Make

By Chris Crum -

Research shows that print ads that contain URLs are up to three times as likely to drive readers to a website than those that don't include them.Not that this information comes as much of a surprise, but it is probably a tactic that many businesses still are not using. The Research Shows...A study conducted by the Magazine Publishers of America shares this info along with statistics that show that readers of magazines in the Travel, Home and Women's categories tend to drive more readers from the magazine to the web. Think About the Actual URLFor a print ad to inspire web traffic, the URL itself can play a tremendous role in whether or not it even gets visited.Helen Leggatt at BizReport suggests using fresh, unique URLS "perhaps per campaign or even per publication" to generate interest. As an example, she mentions a recent Burger king campaign utilizing the haveityourway.com domain. I would suggest at the very least using a memorable, easily spelled domain name like I talked about in this SmallBusinessNewz article.Don't Overlook the StrategyThe concept of inclusion of a web address in offline marketing is also something I've stressed before for encouraging more customers to turn to the web, particularly for brick and mortar business looking to expand their online identities. It's a no-brainer for those businesses who exist strictly online that are already seeking print advertising. Think about print ads that have inspired you to find a company's website. What was it about the ad that made you want to learn more by way of the Internet? Odds are it was probably the URL there pointing the way.

Marketing Tips

If you as a business owner intend on expanding your customer base, Marketing is something you must do to continue bringing in new business. High fuel prices, which are leading to increased retail prices on everything from peanut butter to tires, are just one of the economic factors cutting into the consumers budget and taking a bite out of expendable income. With the increasing crunch on family budgets you must constantly market yourself to your exisiting customer base and to potential new customers as well.

As with everything else these days, the price of advertising continues to rise as well and this sometimes a financial hurdle for small business owners. You really must advertise at least 13 weeks in order to see a return on your money.

I ran across this information compiled by Leigh A. Zaykoski which makes a lot of sense for business owners who don't have a large marketing budget. Just click on the title of this post and you'll be directed to some helpful tips that are well worth your investment of time and money.

Knowing and Keeping Your Customers

Companies without a marketing mindset are at a disadvantage in today's business world. Those who are still centered around their products, rather than their customers, are doomed to fail. Knowing what your clients' expectations are, exceeding them, and building a reputation based on that is the key to success. Pay attention to your customers, and they will come back time and time again. Ignore them, and they will disappear faster than you can spend your marketing budget to try to bring them back.

True and sincere marketing efforts never go waste. When you invest in marketing related activities, you are sure to reap benefits. Well run marketing campaigns can help you earn good profits.

The Starting Place

Are you frustrated by your lack of results at work? Have you hit a wall? Are you uninspired, stuck in a rut, feeling under-appreciated? Well, good news: Your success is not up to your boss, your manager, your employees, or the economy. It's up to YOU. Studies say that we actually work only half the time we are on the job. So think about it-- when you say "Bye, honey, I'm going to work!"-- what is it you're really heading off to do? And how is it contributing to your overall success? Business is never bad, people are just bad at being in business. If that makes you mad, this book is for you.