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Your WEB SITE is at the heart of your marketing and sales efforts. It is the worldwide window into your company, viewed constantly by prospects, customers, partners, shareholders. That's why this valuable tool demands the same strategic and financial commitment as your brand itself. We cannot stress this enough: you can, and must, afford & plan a quality site!
Visitors come to your site buy, to learn, to gauge vitality. It should instantly make an impression, then guide them within seconds to info they want. Exotic features are fun, but don’t let creativity overshadow message and usability. You want to seize, educate, sell—then tempt guests back for more.
Design and usability are only half of the battle. On today’s Google-governed web, SEARCH ENGINE optimization (SEO) – getting to the top of the list – is the other half. At every level, your web efforts must be crawl-friendly. SEO can be a pain, because parameters change constantly. But beware: no one has the inside track. Engines openly tip all webmasters. The secret is staying informed.
Search engines let companies bid for those ever-elusive top spots too, via search engine marketing (SEM) a.k.a. pay-per-click (PPC). SEM is easy, yet tedious and costly. Marketers are known to spend hundreds of thousands on clicks alone.
Still, the Internet remains a level playing field for businesses. Take full advantage of it with affordable help from The Guru: |
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We Help Build & Promote Living Sites.
 Domain registration & host selection.
Web site planning, budgeting, design.
Usability metrics & testing.
Dynamic programming.
E-commerce.
Data management & response.
Search engine optimization (SEO).
Search engine marketing (SEM).
Banner, e-newsletter, link programs.
Forums, blogs, grassroots efforts.
Globalization.
Site performance metrics & analysis. |
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| MarCom Guru service packages fit any budget. |
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Domain selection. Is your URL easy to say verbally (such as over the phone or on the radio)? Do you have to spell it? More than once?
Do you own the domain of your brand name?
Have you registered other relevant global extensions?
Communication. Does your site instantly convey who you are and what you do in the “top fold” of the front page (in other words, a user doesn't have to scroll or click to get the picture)? Is your layout optimized to your purpose (commercial, educational, etc.)? Is your design flexible for growth/change?
Size vs. speed. How long does your site take to load? Have you tested its performance on the variety of browser interfaces? Does your front page serve up any off-putting features, like animated pop-ups, loud sounds, etc.?
Usability. Is your entire site easy to navigate? Can visitors find any page in fewer than three clicks? On any given page, do users know where they are in the site’s structure? Can they single-click back to the main page or site map?
Does your navigation provide so many links that users are overwhelmed?
Are your links logical (avoiding hip or vague language)?
Clarity. Is your entry page so loaded with “highlights” that nothing is highlighted?
Is your site too text-heavy (like this one)?
Do you break information into easily digestible sections?
Attraction. Do you freshen your site regularly?
What tools are keeping you in the prospect’s mind after the first site visit?
Promotion. Are you promoting your site? Efficiently and cost-effectively?
Do you take advantage of the web's vast but targeted (and generally affordable) communication opportunities, e.g. e-newsletters, forums, blogs, listings, etc.?
Presence. What steps have you taken to keep your site highly listed in natural lists? Have you streamlined individual page content for SEO, used descriptive naming, plugged in key terms/phrases throughout your site, developed crawler maps, submitted to the wild array of engines? Are you overspending on click-through marketing to compensate for poor rankings?
Reports. Are you regularly tracking unique visitor statistics to ensure that your site content is on-target? Do you adapt? Do you attempt to correlate traffic spikes/drops to measure response to other marketing campaigns? |
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We invite you to read more free tips & trends—
our monthly e-memos are written for business people. (Opt out at any time; read our policy).
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Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, Steve Krug
Web Design for ROI: Turning Browsers into Buyers & Prospects into Leads, Lance Loveday & Sandra Niehaus
Communicating Design: Developing Web Site Documentation for Design and Planning, Dan M. Brown
Search Engine Optimization an Hour a Day, Jennifer Grappone & Gadiva Couzin
Search Engine Advertising: Buying Your Way to the Top to Increase Sales, Catherine Seda
Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Marketing Handbook, Boris Morokovich & Eugene Norokovich
Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers, Robert Scoble & Shel Israel
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