Some companies assume that a business website is a business website, but in fact the online needs of Fortune 500 companies and small businesses are very different. If you are a small business, you need:
1) A very professional-looking website:- If your company name is not very recognizable, your website visitors will use your web design to judge your level of professionalism. After all, your potential customers have few ways of knowing whether you are an amateur, a fraudster, or a legitimate business, so first impressions do count for a great deal. Your web site will also have to get the visitor’s attention within a few seconds, which is why it’s important to make sure that a professional designer puts together your site.
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That old adage “You never get a second chance to make a good first impression” is especially relevant to the world of web design. Not only will viewers not return to your site if your web space does not make a good first impression, but your viewers are likely to start judging your web site right away. While we may have been taught to look past first impressions in people and while we may think it’s good to give someone a second chance, in cyberspace these niceties do not exist. If your web site fails to make a good impression on a viewer, that’s it.
How much time do you have to make a good impression with your web site? 30 seconds or less. If your web site creates a bad impression in that little amount of time, your viewer is likely to click his or her way to a new web site, leaving yours behind for good. 30 seconds is not a lot of time, so you will want to make sure that you do not waste any precious amount of that. You will want to:
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Some companies are gleefully predicting the demise of search engine optimization (SEO) and keyword rich content. Some claim that the advent of pay-per-click advertising and other ways of getting a web site to the top of search engine rankings with no keywords at all will make search engine optimization obsolete. However, this is not the case.
Instead, what has happened is that two forms of search engine optimization have developed. Rather than just one way of getting your company web site to the top of search engine rankings, there are now two methods:
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Although fashions come and go in software development, some things stay remarkably constant. One of these is the use of databases. You may be wonderfully up-to-date with an AJAX Web interface or the latest whizbang Windows user interface, but under the covers, you’re probably still pumping data in and out of a database, just as we all did a decade or more ago. That makes it all the more surprising that developers are still making the same database mistakes that date back to those good old days of Windows 95 and before. Perhaps it’s just that most of us learn to use databases on the side, rather than really studying them. In any case, here are my nominations for the biggest mistakes that I see over and over again.
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DO:
• Keep the domain name and home page simple. Lots of people want to show off their design skills by adding lots of fonts, animations, Flash, audio, and colors to their home page.
This does not make a good first impression. A sleek, professional home page looks like it was put together by professionals and customers appreciate a home page that loads fast, too.
The same goes for your domain name – if it’s too long or complex, your customers won’t recall it. If your business name is long and complex, choose a very simple domain name that is easy to remember.
Keep in mind that some of the world’s best-known brand names are one syllable, unique and simple: Pepsi, Coke, Ford. Apply the same standards to your domain name.
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