RECOMMENDED PRODUCTS AND SERVICE PROVIDERS continued
As I told you in an earlier posting, the web hosting service you use, especially as a beginner is extremely important to your success. I personally use several different providers for my websites.
But a hosting service and domain registrar that I use most is 1an1.com. You will find a link to their website below. What makes them really special is that not only can you get a good package including domain with web hosting service, but their free down loadable manuals are extremely useful and well written. You can start with a basic package to get your first website up and running quickly and then add additional services as needed. I whole heartedly recommend them. In the interest of full disclosure, I do receive a commission from them, if you click on a link and make a purchase. But like everyone else, I need to earn money to help support my efforts on this blog.
As I said previously, it is important on this page to indicate which products and service providers you are recommending based on personal useage or general reputation or both. I have provided you with both types in this post and in my post immediately prior to this one.
LINKS PAGE
This is the page where you provide links to other websites that you find useful and that you believe your users will benefit from. They can be links to sites that provide information, or where your users may choose to click through for something of benefit to them, either free or to purchase. Always state the relevance of each link to your users. Spell it out for them, do not take anything for granted. But also be careful how you word things, because you never want your users to feel you are condescending. There is a big difference between stating information in a knowledgeable fashion that will help establish you as an expert(if that's applicable to your website) and being condescending.
ARTICLES PAGE
This is the page where you include articles that are relevant to what your website is doing. They can be articles written by you or other people. You want your users to keep coming back to your website and one of the best ways to do so, is to have a rich collection of articles that are relevant to your users and constantly being updated and up to date.
If an article's date is not current, be sure to explain why it is still relevant to your users. Some articles are truly timeless even in the Web 2.0 world.
So for example, if your website is designed to sell "widgets" you could have articles listing all the benefits of "widgets" , perhaps the history of "widgets" and how they evolved over time in to what they are today. You could also have articles from people who are recognized "widgets" experts.
INTERVIEWS PAGE
If this is relevant to your website, you can post interviews of experts in the field that your website is all about. These can be interviews done by you, or interviews of someone done by someone else for you, and you can also use video interviews. Search engines love content rich websites and video is a great way to boost the ranking of your website in the search engines. But search engines and search engine rankings are for another time and will require numerous posts.
PRODUCTS PAGE(S)
If you are using your website to sell products (or services) you may want to devote a page to each product or service you offer, and why your users should become your customers and buy the product or service from you. Your products page(s) should include clear and concise descriptions of each product or service, make sure to also use good pictures of each product. Depending on what the product is, you may want to take your own pictures or obtain them from the maker of the product. Any pictures you use, should be fairly and accurately depict the product or indicate that the picture is for illustrative purposes only.
In my next post, I will deal with "footers" which as you probably guessed are the links to pages that you place on the bottom of your home page.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Friday, October 10, 2008
Basic Pages for Your Website & Suggestions For Content on Those Pages
In deciding how to formulate and determine the content for your website you should think about what your website must include to be credible and have the necessary information to prevent the possibilty of lawsuits and other potential problems. But also what you need to keep people on your website and to keep them coming back for more and more visits. In addition, when you write the content for many of these pages, remember, you are also writing for the search engines.
So with all that in mind, let's get started. Lets take the header pages in order. Header pages are those pages that are either at the top of your home page or on either the left or hand side of the page.
HOME PAGE
This is the most important page on your website, because this is where people decide whether or not your website appears to be what they want or are looking for and if they are going to stay on your website or move on.
The home page should tell people what your website is all about and you need to differentiate yourself from every other website that is doing the same thing you are.
ABOUT US PAGE
This page is where you state who you are, what your credentials are and why we should care and belive what you say. Do not be boastful or condecesending. state facts, some of your successes and what you do and what your website. Give the reader some of your bio. But do not over do it.
In the process of deciding what to put on this page, as well as all of your others, look around and see what your competitors have on each of their pages. But do not confine yourself to just your competitors, look at the websites you like to visit and think about what appeals to you about those sites.
NEWSLETTER PAGE
This is the page where you can grab your visitor's attention and keep them coming back for more as well as build up your credibilty in their eyes by demonstrating your expertise and arousing their curiosity. You can also use this page get people to sign up to recieve your newsletter by e-mail. In addition, you should keep an archive of prior newsletters, perhaps just for your members to access.
MEMBER'S SECTION AND JOIN OUR MEMBERS SECTION
This is where you start to seperate the "tire kickers" from the people that are seriously interested in your website(and/or your services, if applicable). It is important that you make these people feel that they are getting something special by being a member and then make sure you deliver. Do not make empty promises.
By giving your members real value, and letting them try your suggestions and recommendations, it gives them the chance to see if you are the real deal or not.
RECOMMENDED PRODUCTS AND SERVICE PROVIDERS
Here it is very, very important that you know exactly what you are talking about. The products you recommend should be products that you found useful and had a positive experience with. If you have not used the product yourself, do not recommend it unless someone you know and trust very well has told you all about it.
I want to stress that it is very important to use the products you recommend personally. This way you can honestly tell your members what works, why it works and how to best use it for their benefit and if possible, provide screen shots of the product.
Personal useage of the recommended product also enables you to determine what the learning curve will be for new users. For example, you would not want to recommend Adobe Creative Suite Master Edition 4.0 to someone who has never built a website and/or taken pictures and edited them. All of these programs have a very steep learning curve. It is also a good idea to give your members some idea of what the price will be, so they can determine if it is within their budget and if the learning curve is justified for them based on what the program does and what they need it for.
It would be very unfair for you to recommend Adobe CS 4.o without telling them that the price range can be anywhere from $1800.00 to $2500.00 depending where you look. Yes this is extremely powerful software, and it could be almost everything you need to design and build a website and make it powerful and fancy, but you could spend a year easily learning how to use it, and just know the bare essentials.
When you recommend a product, you are in effect endorsing it and your credibilty with your members is at stake. But there is a way to tell your members about programs without putting your credibilty on the line, and you need to show them that you are aware of of programs that are generally considered to be the industry leaders.
So what would be an acceptable way to tell your members about Adobe CS 4.0? Here is how I would do it.
The leading program collection for website developement and picture editing is Adobe Creative Suite Master Edition 4.0. These programs are not for the faint of heart of faint of wallet. You should also know that CS 4.o has a steep learning curve for each of it's components, and you should be prepared to spend a substantial amount of time learning these programs and you might need to invest in training programs to learn how to use it. The price range is from about $1800.00 to $2500.00.
I have not personally used this new version of Creative Suite Master Edition, but I have used CS 3.o , which is one of the earlier versions. It does not have an intuitive user interface. I cannot recommend this to beginers. If you need to build a website quickly or edit photos, this is not the program suite to start with, but rather something to work up to.
For a detailed description of CS 4.0 , please refer their website to adobe.com.
To be continued...
So with all that in mind, let's get started. Lets take the header pages in order. Header pages are those pages that are either at the top of your home page or on either the left or hand side of the page.
HOME PAGE
This is the most important page on your website, because this is where people decide whether or not your website appears to be what they want or are looking for and if they are going to stay on your website or move on.
The home page should tell people what your website is all about and you need to differentiate yourself from every other website that is doing the same thing you are.
ABOUT US PAGE
This page is where you state who you are, what your credentials are and why we should care and belive what you say. Do not be boastful or condecesending. state facts, some of your successes and what you do and what your website. Give the reader some of your bio. But do not over do it.
In the process of deciding what to put on this page, as well as all of your others, look around and see what your competitors have on each of their pages. But do not confine yourself to just your competitors, look at the websites you like to visit and think about what appeals to you about those sites.
NEWSLETTER PAGE
This is the page where you can grab your visitor's attention and keep them coming back for more as well as build up your credibilty in their eyes by demonstrating your expertise and arousing their curiosity. You can also use this page get people to sign up to recieve your newsletter by e-mail. In addition, you should keep an archive of prior newsletters, perhaps just for your members to access.
MEMBER'S SECTION AND JOIN OUR MEMBERS SECTION
This is where you start to seperate the "tire kickers" from the people that are seriously interested in your website(and/or your services, if applicable). It is important that you make these people feel that they are getting something special by being a member and then make sure you deliver. Do not make empty promises.
By giving your members real value, and letting them try your suggestions and recommendations, it gives them the chance to see if you are the real deal or not.
RECOMMENDED PRODUCTS AND SERVICE PROVIDERS
Here it is very, very important that you know exactly what you are talking about. The products you recommend should be products that you found useful and had a positive experience with. If you have not used the product yourself, do not recommend it unless someone you know and trust very well has told you all about it.
I want to stress that it is very important to use the products you recommend personally. This way you can honestly tell your members what works, why it works and how to best use it for their benefit and if possible, provide screen shots of the product.
Personal useage of the recommended product also enables you to determine what the learning curve will be for new users. For example, you would not want to recommend Adobe Creative Suite Master Edition 4.0 to someone who has never built a website and/or taken pictures and edited them. All of these programs have a very steep learning curve. It is also a good idea to give your members some idea of what the price will be, so they can determine if it is within their budget and if the learning curve is justified for them based on what the program does and what they need it for.
It would be very unfair for you to recommend Adobe CS 4.o without telling them that the price range can be anywhere from $1800.00 to $2500.00 depending where you look. Yes this is extremely powerful software, and it could be almost everything you need to design and build a website and make it powerful and fancy, but you could spend a year easily learning how to use it, and just know the bare essentials.
When you recommend a product, you are in effect endorsing it and your credibilty with your members is at stake. But there is a way to tell your members about programs without putting your credibilty on the line, and you need to show them that you are aware of of programs that are generally considered to be the industry leaders.
So what would be an acceptable way to tell your members about Adobe CS 4.0? Here is how I would do it.
The leading program collection for website developement and picture editing is Adobe Creative Suite Master Edition 4.0. These programs are not for the faint of heart of faint of wallet. You should also know that CS 4.o has a steep learning curve for each of it's components, and you should be prepared to spend a substantial amount of time learning these programs and you might need to invest in training programs to learn how to use it. The price range is from about $1800.00 to $2500.00.
I have not personally used this new version of Creative Suite Master Edition, but I have used CS 3.o , which is one of the earlier versions. It does not have an intuitive user interface. I cannot recommend this to beginers. If you need to build a website quickly or edit photos, this is not the program suite to start with, but rather something to work up to.
For a detailed description of CS 4.0 , please refer their website to adobe.com.
To be continued...
Monday, October 6, 2008
Some New Features
To help you MAKEYOURINTERNETMONEY I have decided to add links to reputable e-books, articles and other items I think will be useful to you. I have also found this information to be valuable.
As I mentioned in my last post, we need to discuss content for your website. One of the most important things to remember is your content must be meaningful not only to your visitors but to search engines as well. You must include key words and phrases that someone looking to find your site would use. You should also do a search, using these key words to find out the search engines are treating them and see what you find.
For our purposes, I am going to use the terms key words and phrases interchangeably, as if they were the same thing, even though they are not, just so we can save time.
Think of a key word as a single word you type into a search engine to find something or perhaps someone. If you use a "group" of words, that is a phrase.
Search engines love good content, but they do not like web pages that are little more than a bunch of key words with little else. So in putting content on your web pages, you must first have a plan.
Let's say your website is devoted to helping people repair their credit. You would want to make a list of all the keywords and phrases someone would associate with repairing their credit. Try to come up with at least 25 keywords. Write your list on a separate piece of paper. It does not matter what order you use, but write down everything that comes to mind and do not feel you have to stop at 25 words, write down everything you can possibly think of. We will explain later how to narrow it down.
Before we continue on the topic of content for your website, let me digress a minute to make some suggestions about what web pages you should have(we will talk more about this in a later posting) I recommend that you start with the following pages:
Home Page
About US
Newsletter
Member's Section
Join Our Members Section
Recommended products and service providers
Links Page
Articles
Interviews
(A page for each product or service you are selling, if applicable)
Federal Law
State Law
Then for the bottom of your home page you should have the following pages:
Legal Disclaimer
General Disclaimer
Site Map
Contact Us
Those are the basic pages I recommend you should include if you were building a web site on improving your credit. Think about what you would put on each of these pages to help determine your content. In my next post, we will continue our discussion of content.
As I mentioned in my last post, we need to discuss content for your website. One of the most important things to remember is your content must be meaningful not only to your visitors but to search engines as well. You must include key words and phrases that someone looking to find your site would use. You should also do a search, using these key words to find out the search engines are treating them and see what you find.
For our purposes, I am going to use the terms key words and phrases interchangeably, as if they were the same thing, even though they are not, just so we can save time.
Think of a key word as a single word you type into a search engine to find something or perhaps someone. If you use a "group" of words, that is a phrase.
Search engines love good content, but they do not like web pages that are little more than a bunch of key words with little else. So in putting content on your web pages, you must first have a plan.
Let's say your website is devoted to helping people repair their credit. You would want to make a list of all the keywords and phrases someone would associate with repairing their credit. Try to come up with at least 25 keywords. Write your list on a separate piece of paper. It does not matter what order you use, but write down everything that comes to mind and do not feel you have to stop at 25 words, write down everything you can possibly think of. We will explain later how to narrow it down.
Before we continue on the topic of content for your website, let me digress a minute to make some suggestions about what web pages you should have(we will talk more about this in a later posting) I recommend that you start with the following pages:
Home Page
About US
Newsletter
Member's Section
Join Our Members Section
Recommended products and service providers
Links Page
Articles
Interviews
(A page for each product or service you are selling, if applicable)
Federal Law
State Law
Then for the bottom of your home page you should have the following pages:
Legal Disclaimer
General Disclaimer
Site Map
Contact Us
Those are the basic pages I recommend you should include if you were building a web site on improving your credit. Think about what you would put on each of these pages to help determine your content. In my next post, we will continue our discussion of content.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
Posts
