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You can't just
have a website today, it needs to be good!
At one time, having a website
was an advantage over competitors. But today you not only need a
website for your business, you have to have a good one and you
have to be good at maintaining it.
When I went to school there
was always something that I did not want to do, like read books
and write term papers. But the teachers made me do it, so I would
be able to read and write today.
I assume you also went to
school and learned how to read and write and that is good,
because those are the skills you need to build a website.
Now, building websites is just
something we need to do to be in business today. It is as
important as paying taxes and managing employees. We don't have
to like it, but it is part of doing business.
And it is a good thing that we
all did get an education and wrote those long term papers and
read all those books, because now we can build website pages and
write content.
Of course building a website
is not a punishment, so try not to think of that way.
It is an exciting window into
your company, your business or your products. It is a way for you
to show the world what you do, how you do it and why they should
use you.
Many people believe websites
are only for nerds but that again is not true anymore than books
are only for nerds. Now maybe the nerds read more books and wrote
more term papers, but all have to read and write.
Now, the nerds are building
sites like facebook and twitter because they did work harder in
school and learned more. While most people only need to build a
basic website for their own business.
Of course, if you own your own
business, you probably did a lot more that most people and
building a website should be very easy for you.
Today Websites are
Simple to Build
With sitebuilders like
pageBuzz.com anyone can build a website in minutes. But that does
not mean a 5 minute website is good enough.
Websites are not just a window
into your business, they are the main impression new customers
will get about you, your service and your product. So having a
great website is critical in getting new customers.
And when I say great, I don't
mean well designed, I mean informative.
You need as much
information and detail about what you do as possible. You need to
write articles, details and explain what I should call you and
pay you money.
All of these elements are
important.
But when I see what my
customers have done I feel like a 3rd grade English teacher.
I look at home pages with 1
paragraph of bolded large font text to make it look like more
than it is. I see nearly blank pages with no information.
I have to tell them
to add more, write more, make more of an effort.
"but I don't know
what to write" they cry. "I don't know what to do".
"This is hard!", they while.
That might have worked in 3rd
grade, but as a business owner you have to do more. People expect
more.
If I tell you the page sucks
and you did not make an effort it might hurt your feelings, but
imagine what your customers are thinking! They are running for
the border to get as far away from you as possible.
So you can't be lazy, you can't
make excuses, you have to be good at building a website and make
a website that will get you business.
Now your teachers all those
years pushed you so you would learn and now it is time to used
what you learned to show everyone what you do.
There are no more free rides,
no more free customers because you are the first one online.
You are the last
one online
If you are just getting a
website today, you are one of the last to arrive. Your
competition is already here, they have websites, social media
campaigns, they have networked with clients and build a following
online.
You are just getting started,
trying to build a business.
It will not be enough to build
a 5 pages website anymore than it was to hand in a 1 paragraph
paper in 3rd grade. It is just not enough to compete.
Maybe you have ignored the
Internet for the last 15 years, but the rest of the wold did not,
they have been embracing it and making money at it.
To be competitive, you have to
add more, work harder and come from behind.
I am always amazed at how
little people want to do, how little effort they make and how bad
the websites are. It does not take much effort to write a full
pages of information, maybe an hour or 2 at most.
That is not much time in the
span of someone lifetime.
People spend more time playing
video games, downloading useless phone apps and watching cat
videos on youtube than working on their websites.
And that just won't cut it!
You have to learn about
marketing, lean how to make a page look presentable, learn how to
build a website.
Building A Website
is no different than writing a paper.
If you can write a paper about
anything, then you can build a website. You see, this page, this
article, you could have written it, added it to your website and
now rather than you reading my work, someone would be reading
your work.
You spent years in school
leaning how to write, now that you have a business you need to
use that skill.
Sit down, write some stuff...
that is all there is to it.
Posting one paragraph on a
page is an embarrassment. It will give customers the wrong
message.
Websites with no information
are insulting to the viewer because you assume they are idiots
and don't need to know more than the 3 lines of hype you give
them.
But your competitor is one
click away, so if you don't make an effort, unlike your 3rd grade
teacher giving you a second chance to do it right, you are losing
customers because of your laziness.
It is never too late to add
content to your website, to upgrade or make it better.
But if you don;t try, you will
never get any value from your website.
Frustrating for Us
at pageBuzz
You might sense some
frustration from my article and that is because we are very
frustrated with customers. They call for hours and hours of help
and their website reflect only minutes of work.
We only make money if they
stay in business, and spending 10 hours helping a customer to see
only 15 minutes of work on a website is painful.
People tend to
judge us for what our customers do. But we don't choose our
customers, they choose us, they manage their own websites and
then we get judged based on what they do.
So we want people to be
successful, to make money and we do everything we can to make
that happen.
Sometimes that takes harsh
articles like this to shake people up, to get them motivated and
make them understand.
I don't like comparing my
customers to 3rd graders, but sometimes a dose of reality is what
they need.
If they are building websites
like a 3rd graders, I have to tell them before it is too late.
Fixing The Problem
Fixing the problem is easy,
people just need to make a little more effort on their websites.
They need to spend a could
hours a week working on content. Now if you can't find 2 hours a
week in your busy schedule then you should not be running a
business.
Taking some time for your
website is as important as any other aspect of your business, so
you need to take it seriously and make it part of your regular
routine.
Sure you can hire a designer
to do it all for you, but what do they now about your business?
Recently an ecigarette company
asked if I would build their entire website for them. I told them
no, I don't know anything about their product and if I have to
spend hundreds of hours doing research to write pages they will
need to pay me for that.
Nobody wants to pay a designer
$100 an hours to go learn about their product just to write one
page that they could do themselves in 30 minutes or less.
Of course, I offered to format,
edit and even add the content to the website. But like most
websites I build, I don't check the content, I expect the
business owner to know what they are writing and they it is
accurate.
I focus an design, colors,
graphics and the things I am good at while I expect the business
owner to write what they are good at.
I can sit down and
write page after page about what I do and what I know. I
expect business owners to be able to do the same. Maybe they
don't understand how to make it look great on a website, but
that is no excuse for not being able to create the content in
the first place.
The problem is not that people
don't know how, it is that they are too lazy to try.
If we can fix the laziness, we
will fix the problem.
I tell people, sit down one
time a day for 20 minutes and add at least a basic blog post.
After 1 year, you will have 365 pages. That is a big website if
you just take the time each day to write down what you did today.
The thing is, if you don't
your competitors are, so the 5 pages you had built by a designer
and forgot about, well so did the search engines, your customers
and everyone else. Because the other guy is adding new content to
his website daily.
Websites in 2014
and Beyond
Websites in the coming years
will be bigger, more detailed and more complex. Just as you first
ignored the Internet 15 years ago, you are ignoring that other
people did not and now they are 15 years more experienced, move
involved and better at building websites.
If you want to compete in
todays Internet, you have to build good website, make a serious
effort and be better than your competition.
We can provide the
tools you need, but we can't do everything for you.
Nobody knows your business
like you do and now it is time to take what you learned in school
and start applying it to the website. Start making an effort
before it is too late entirely.
If you are still in business
it is not too late, but a few years from now it might be.
So get off your lazy ass and
start building a better website, one that you can be proud of,
one that customers will enjoy and appreciate what you do enough
to because one of your customers.
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