Copyright 2006 Christopher T Robinson

When you first start your business the first thing you will need to do is to market and promote it. It does not matter what business you decide to do you will need to make a website to be successful in your promotions.

All businesses need leads and one of the most cost effective ways to get them is by website promotion. There are many ways to promote your website, which we will explore in later issues, but none of these promotions will be effective without a professional looking site. There are many different types of website but we will just go into how to build a basic one right now. Here are the steps you will need to take to build your basic website:

Before you start: It is important to define your business concept and your market.

You will have already chosen your concept and defined your market so I will be brief on this.

Your market concept defines your USP (unique selling position). This is what your business will sell and how it will differ from your competition.

Defining your market is a matter of analyzing your visitors. This will not just be any visitor it will be your most wanted visitors. These VIPs deserve some thought. Ask yourself a couple of questions.

Who are my most wanted visitors?
What will attract them and persuade them to buy?
What are their interests and where will I find them?
Make a thumbnail sketch of your most wanted customer and build your website around their needs.

Making your website:

Get a good HTML editor. 2 main ones are Microsoft Front Page or Dreamweaver. This will be your biggest investment. Dreamweaver will allow you to have a 30-day free trial.

Decide on the layout of your website, it will include these pages:
Your home page
Your sales page
Content pages
About us-contact form

Your home page can either be your sales page or an introduction to the rest of your site. If it is an introduction page, it must be:
Clear
Concise
Enticing-lead people into the rest of your site.
Have simple user friendly navigation so that your visitors can move about easily
Have your newsletter subscription box for visitors to sign up for your free newsletter.

Your sales page is one of the most important pages on your site and I will go into this in further detail in later issues. Briefly it must be:

Personal
Professional
Persuasive

Your content pages are the ones that will draw in visitors and encourage other related businesses to link to you. They should be tailored to your most wanted visitors. What would they like to know and read about? Primarily they will be looking for information. This will be on and about your products or business industry. You can write informative articles, product reviews and stories or antidotes about your business industry. Include resources and links to other pages in your site. These should all be keyword rich about 3% keyword density. These pages will pre sell or warm your visitor for the sale and will lead into your sales page.

It is very important for the credibility of your business to include an about us section and contact information. You should include a way to contact you preferably a form rather than your direct email (this will cut down Spam).

So there you have it, both these HTML editors are easy to use. Have fun making your 1st website and remember the golden rules. Make it look professional, and keep it user friendly with lots of good content and resources. This will please your visitors and the little search engine bots when they visit your site.