THINGS TO MAKE SURE OF WHEN YOU GET A WEB PAGE

1. MAKE SURE YOU GET A GOOD WEB PAGE

   There are many people who may offer to create a web page for you, kids from high school, your next door neighbor who just got his computer, your brother in law. Sure they might create you a web page but is it a good web page? Web pages need to have good design and be user friendly to be of use to potential customers. If a web page is badly designed or takes a long time to load the potential customer will get bored or frustrated and go elsewhere, and they will NEVER RETURN. With web pages first impressions are all important. There are far too many sites out there to visit to be bothered with one that gave you a bad experience.

   A Web page is a VERY IMPORTANT addition to your business MAKE SURE IT IS CREATED BY A PROFESSIONAL. One who is concerned about your page, your business, how your page hangs together and how it will look to those visitors who come to you.

2. MAKE SURE YOU ARE NOT ALONE IN CYBERSPACE.

   Even if you do get someone to create a web page for you, how are those customers going to find you? Finding a web site in cyberspace is very very hard. Sure there are search engines but I am sure you have all seen the commercials that state if you are not in the first 30 hits forget it, users won't wade through the rest to find you. Those first 30 spots are hard to get, and since the search engines keep changing the ways they list things unless you have a team of professionals constantly changing your site you won't get to the top. Some sites like go.com let you buy your way to the top, but that's EXPENSIVE.

   If your page is out there all alone, it’s just a waste of time and money, no one will find you.

3. MAKE SURE YOU ARE LINKED TO A DATABASE.

   Try and search out sites that are specialized to your business and get a link to your site, or list your site if they have a search engine or database. You are more likely to be found by someone looking for a specific service if you are listed with a specialist market.

   However this takes a lot of time and effort. YOu may have to spend a considerable amount of time searching on the internet for such sites then evaluating them to see if they your potential customers would find them, and if they did would they be likely to use them. If a site is difficult to use surfers will go elsewhere for their information, so dont waste your time and money listing with a site that will not bring you business.

4. DON'T RELY ON A BIG SEARCH ENGINE.

   It's certainly a great idea to have your site listed with all the major search engines but don't expect that you will be pulling in hundreds of customers that way. If your business is extremely specialized or you are selling a very unique product you can certainly expect to be found easily on these search engines. However most business are not that unique so you are down in that mass of "67,987 sites found". Unless you come in the first few screens of returns you cannot expect that any visitor will find you. How do you get there? Well luck can be some of it, but more and more it's money. There are many firms that specialize in creating tags and markers that will ensure that you stay in that top 10% of sites returned. However they demand a LOT of money for this service. If you are a big company and want a lot of returns from your site it may be worth it. For a small company with a limited budget it's most likely not economic.

   The best thing to do is ensure that you are linked to other sites that specialize in your type of work, or a database or site that specializes in your area. The more sites you are registered with the more likely you are to get customers.