Tuesday, September 1, 2009

The Most Important Thing You Should Know Before You Create A Website

By Bradford Butler

People everywhere want to start a profitable internet business but there are not sure of where to start. You motivations may be to one day quit your day job o you may have an existing offline business that you want to take online. Either way, the internet can be a great starting point and business building tool to achieve your goals.

When you are in the planning stages of staring an internet business, aside from understanding the needs of your market, the first thing you want to take to heart is the way your website is designed. The cookie cutter approach does not work in all instances. You want your site to stand out as unique. This means you will have to learn how to build your own site or farm it out.

Should you turn this over to a professional website developer, be prepared to shell out some big bucks. It can cost anywhere from $1000 for a basic design upwards to $5000 or more. By learning to do it yourself, you can save a lot of money and learn a valuable skill.

I am a big advocate of taking the do-it-yourself approach. There are many advantages. One is that you can design your website exactly as you see it. Sometimes it can be hard communicating what you want to others and very often you will never get back exactly what you envisioned.

Website design skills are in big demand. This means that once you learn the basic skills, not only do you become a marketable asset, but you can design your own sites, make changes in the future, or create new websites that target other markets. It is a valuable skill to have.

The best tip I can give for success is to never create a website that is all about you. Basically, keep in mind that your visitors and their needs are the most important thing and should influence the entire reason for your website's existence. The site you create should be bout their wants, desires, needs and aspirations and how you can help them.

A site that truly benefits your visitors is a site that converts well. This means that you have to clearly communicate in every way what is important to them and not what is important to you. Many times people build websites the have very little visitor value. This is a big mistake.

When a person comes to your website looking for a specific solution, they don't want to hear all about you. They want to know if what you offer can really help them. They may be looking for answers to specific problems or may have a strong desire to accomplish something. Either way, how you positions your website will make all the difference in the world.

The best formula you can use is the same formula that copywriters use when creating sales correspondence. The formula is AIDA which means, attention, interest, desire and action. This simply means your site design and website copy should attraction the attention of visitors, hold their interest, create a desire for you solution and inspire them to take action. Do this and your will success.

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