Your website is your home on the Web.
If you’re looking to sell anything online, whether it’s to promote products, services, a company, brand or even a happy face, you need a website. A website gives you/your company an identity and an air of credibility.
Sure. There are ways in which you can sell a sheep load of stuff online without having your own website, particularly through various Classified sites, online Marketplaces, sales pages, squeeze pages, and emails. But unless you have a Brand, Name or Company that stands out or you’re a World renounced Gangster, then, for the most part, you’ll be competing on price. And that’s not much different to racing to the bottom of the hill at top speed, without any shoes on. The same can be said about high-value products and services. You don’t just pay $10k (or even a fraction of it) to a guy who sells stuff off the back of a truck, especially if he’s wearing a mask and claims that he wasn’t given a name at birth.
This is why having your own Website is the only real way to build a “sustainable” and lucrative income online. And, if you already have a presence in the Real World (outside of the world wide cobweb), then having a website will help strengthen and even multiply your exposure and credibility.
Now, the type of site that you need depends entirely on the nature of your Business. If you’re a full-time Bank Robber or a Professional Carjacker, then perhaps advertising your contact details, location and the license plate of your getaway vehicle on the web, may not be such a great idea.
But, if you’re doing something legal and decent(like most normal folk), then the type of site you need would most likely fit into one of the following categories:
1. Company websites– This is what you need if you have a Business, Product or Brand with a physical presence. Or if you’re looking to start a new venture somewhere with a nice view, plenty of Sunshine and three blind mice as your trusted associates.
For the most part, these sites serve as portfolios that give your prospects some background information about your Company, details of the products and services you provide, customer testimonials, notable accomplishments and most importantly your contact details.
Now, if you’re planning to integrate your company’s products or services inventory with the site along with an online checkout, then the site would fall into the reins of an online store and no longer be just a “pretty portfolio”.
2. Personal Branding Sites– In many ways, these sites are very similar to Company Websites. But since the Goose that lays all the Golden Eggs in this scenario is YOU, the onus of the Branding and the spotlight falls on you instead.
3. Online Stores– Whilst a portion of an online store would have some of the “basic characteristics” of a Company Website (to help convey Brand recognition and credibility), it’s primary focus is to provide each visitor with a pleasant, user-friendly and secure shopping experience.
Therefore, online Stores will have a few more moving parts to them than most other sites, as you would also have the added responsibilities of safeguarding your Customer’s payment details, tracking inventory and streamlining the whole shopping experience into one dazzling shopping cart.
The Site Design
Your first course of action should be to dip your toes in and feel around for any nearby sharks and sunken treasure. This way, you get a better understanding of your current market trends and behaviors.
Now you can spend a ton of resources and several hundred years to master the intricacies that tie all the pieces together yourself OR you could just take the easy road and emulate what’s already working for your competitors.
Determining what’s working for your competitors is as simple as monitoring their rough success rates through their Paid Advertising campaigns (with Google in particular).
We identify these successful campaigns by running several “niche related” searches on Google and seeing what shows up under the “Paid Ads” sections there. Then we weed out the less successful campaigns from the winners, by assessing the consistency of each campaign.
If a site is being advertised around the clock for a 4-8 week duration (or continuously), then it’s safe to assume that they very likely have a good Ad Copy, Website, and a Sales funnel in place for their prospective clients. If any of these components were missing, much like a break in the middle of a pipeline, the interruption in the flow would have ripped a hole in their Ad budgets and forced them to stop their campaigns abruptly. Winners get in the ring again and again with a huge grin on their face, because they have a winning strategy in place. Otherwise they would be down to one tooth by the time they get in the ring for a second time.
So, once we have found one or more sites that have got their door hinges fitted in the right way, we narrow down our selection to one perfect candidate and “reverse engineer” the burritos out of them. When I say “reverse engineer” I am talking specifically about “modeling” after their success, NOT copying any of their material or mimicking their site designs. Ultimately your site has to be your unique design.
BMW may not copy anything that Mercedes do (and vice versa), but you can expect the wheels and steering wheels of both manufacturers to work roughly the same. That means, if you turn the steering wheel of a BMW or a Merc to your right, you can expect the wheels of both vehicles to turn the same way. If one manufacturer thought it would be cool for the wheels to turn the other way for the sake of being “innovative”, they would very soon have a long line of very unhappy customers just waiting to punch them on the nose.
After deciding which site to emulate, you can outsource the web development process to a proficient developer at Upwork (upwork.com) or Fiverr (fiverr.com) to help you with both design brainstorming and site design processes.
By the way, when looking for the ideal candidate to hire, you can save yourself a lot of heartache and hair loss by restricting your choice to contractors who:
- Have been active on the website during the last 7 days(preferably in the last 24 hours)
- Have an overall feedback score of 95% or greater. It’s also worth reading up on what clients are saying about the contractors too.
- Have been with the community for at least a year (the longer the better)
- Have a great attitude and are quick to respond to queries. But keep in mind, that you may experience delays in communications, due to geographical time differences etc.
- Have a portfolio to attest to their level of competency and mastery
Free vs Paid Site Solutions
If you want a bountiful harvest, don’t start out with a handful of heavily discounted seeds.
With that in mind, I would recommend that you go for a standalone WordPress website. WordPress is search engine friendly, so you shouldn’t have too much trouble getting the desired traffic to your site (provided you get the “basics” right). I mention standalone because you can get free websites through WordPress.com as well. Free sites not only make your brand/company look less professional, but they also subject you to about as many rules and regulations as about the amount of hair on your Cat.
Another drawback with free sites is that your domain name will always appear as an extension of the site provider’s domain. It’s not much different to a Racehorse getting the credit (and a movie contract) for winning a race, even though the Jockey did all the whipping and whooping. That might not have happened if the Jockey sent the Horse on a Spa Retreat and ran the race himself.
Lastly, you’re tied to the framework they provide. So, your customization and expansion options would be greatly limited. In fact, you’ll be lucky if they even allow you to squeeze your rocking chair in there.
But, if you’re still keen on pursuing the free option or you’re just getting started, then consider going with a Tumblr.com account instead. Tumblr serves both as a good free site platform as well as a popular social network. On top of that, they also offer a good number of free and paid templates to choose from.
Credibility and Extra Measures
When you’re building a site that doubles up as an online store or an online store in itself, you also have the added responsibility of wrapping together a payment gateway, a merchant account, an SSL certificate and a website Trust Badge (not mandatory) into one enticing package and topping it all off with a cute little bow.
But if you wanna go down the hassle-free and chirpier route, you can just ask someone to build the whole darn thing for you from the ground up. Obviously, you would still need a merchant account, SSL certificate, and a Payment gateway. But at least you’ll be getting someone else to do all the grunt for you. You also have the third (and simplistic) option of going with a plug-n-play solution like PayPal. It may be a limiting on the customization aspects. But at least it works.
Some helpful pointers
(A) Feel free to have a look at my website (KaizenFusion.com) and grab ideas from there as you please WITHOUT copying any of my content. Your content is your voice and therefore it should be unique to you. In fact, I would even advise against hiring a blogger to help you with your content writing, unless you can find somehow who has the same eye color, hairstyle, shoes and personality as you.
(B) When you build a Business site in any shape or form, you should place a greater emphasis on keeping your visitors on the site long enough for them to either contact you, opt-in to your email list or to make a purchase.
This is where you may need to consider hiring a good copywriter to help you with the process. Good copywriting keeps your site visitors engaged, whilst gently “nudging” them into joining a mailing list. It also helps them to make informed buying decisions about your offerings.
If your copywriting skills haven’t paid off so far, I would highly recommend going with a Copywriter with a good track record and verifiable testimonials. But bear in mind that good copywriters can be expensive. So if you’re just starting out, then you are probably better off mastering the skills yourself with a little bit of help from the wizard of copywriting: Mr. Dan Kennedy himself. Learning the “skills” doesn’t necessarily earn you a “Guru Medal”, but it’s a start.
(C) Last, but not least invest in a rock solid hosting solution. Obviously, if you opted for any of the free options mentioned earlier, then hosting is already included. Otherwise take time to read a few unbiased hosting reviews and go with a company who:
- Has been in Business for over 10 years(as there are too many fly-by-night hosting companies out there these days)
- Has an average user rating of 4 out of 5 stars or greater
- Hosts ALL your files in SSD storage(as opposed having a majority of it stored in ultra snail speed spinning disk drives from the Dinosaur era)
- Can be reached both via email and phone around the clock.
- Have a 99% or greater uptime guarantee
Now, all that’s left is for you to…go out there and take action!!
