tips on making your website work for you
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STEP 3: KEEP PROMOTING YOUR SITE
So you've spent a serious amount of time, effort and money on the integration of your new site into your small business. You've plastered the URL over everything that moves, beaten anyone not using their company e-mail address with a big stick, and you're feeling pretty pleased with the results.
So what now? Sit back and take it easy? Nope! Here's where the real work begins. Having built a website and attracted some traffic to it, your objective now is to gain repeat visits and referrals. What else can you use?
The areas we'll look at are: Repeat Traffic Chances are, you've gone to a lot of trouble to encourage visitors to your web site, so don't let it be a one-time-only deal. Here are some ideas that anyone can use to maximize their site's hit rate.
1) Provide Regular, Fresh Content People that have an interest in what you do will return if they believe they'll find more information on successive visits. If they come back a couple of times and find nothing new, they probably won't ever come back. Adding a tip of the week or coupon of the month is a great way to get the ball rolling.
2) Create 'Web Site-Only' Offers This is also fresh content, of course, and if you do this regularly, you'll increase repeat visits. Try to time these offers to be just a little more frequent than your average repeat sale: that way you can close the gap between sale number one and two a little. Be careful not to overdo it, though.
3) Create an E-Mailing List In order to tell people when you published fresh content, especially new offers, send out a newsletter to your subscribers. Mailing lists are very easy to set up and can generate huge rewards to your business if done properly. Yahoo! provides a free and easy service at Yahoo groups that you might like to check out. There are limitations in the number of addresses that can be on any one list (to help prevent spam), but you can just set up Group 1, Group 2, etc. to get around this limitation.
4) Put Technical Documentation Online If you sell or provide anything that requires instructions or manuals, make copies of them available online. People lose manuals easily, and it's a simple thing to tell them that they can find the current instructions/documentation on your site -- which will, of course, expose them to all of your other material at the same time.
previous next
STEP 3: KEEP PROMOTING YOUR SITE
So you've spent a serious amount of time, effort and money on the integration of your new site into your small business. You've plastered the URL over everything that moves, beaten anyone not using their company e-mail address with a big stick, and you're feeling pretty pleased with the results.
So what now? Sit back and take it easy? Nope! Here's where the real work begins. Having built a website and attracted some traffic to it, your objective now is to gain repeat visits and referrals. What else can you use?
The areas we'll look at are: Repeat Traffic Chances are, you've gone to a lot of trouble to encourage visitors to your web site, so don't let it be a one-time-only deal. Here are some ideas that anyone can use to maximize their site's hit rate.
1) Provide Regular, Fresh Content People that have an interest in what you do will return if they believe they'll find more information on successive visits. If they come back a couple of times and find nothing new, they probably won't ever come back. Adding a tip of the week or coupon of the month is a great way to get the ball rolling.
2) Create 'Web Site-Only' Offers This is also fresh content, of course, and if you do this regularly, you'll increase repeat visits. Try to time these offers to be just a little more frequent than your average repeat sale: that way you can close the gap between sale number one and two a little. Be careful not to overdo it, though.
3) Create an E-Mailing List In order to tell people when you published fresh content, especially new offers, send out a newsletter to your subscribers. Mailing lists are very easy to set up and can generate huge rewards to your business if done properly. Yahoo! provides a free and easy service at Yahoo groups that you might like to check out. There are limitations in the number of addresses that can be on any one list (to help prevent spam), but you can just set up Group 1, Group 2, etc. to get around this limitation.
4) Put Technical Documentation Online If you sell or provide anything that requires instructions or manuals, make copies of them available online. People lose manuals easily, and it's a simple thing to tell them that they can find the current instructions/documentation on your site -- which will, of course, expose them to all of your other material at the same time.
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