Launching a successful online business website made easy!
Once I was talking to my friend who was planning to launch an online store. He was so full of energy when he talked about the launch of his store in a week’s time. I gave him all the advice I could and I believe he followed them religiously.
After 1 week I paid him a visit to see how his launch went. He explained to me how he did everything he could but his website was unavailable most of the time. The reason was his webhost shut him down for consuming too much resource. He also made some other mistakes which I had to point out and it finally cost him twice as much if he had implemented them at the start.
No matter what, generating traffic to your site will cost you either in terms of money or in terms of time. You could choose whether to spend money to generate traffic or not. Spending time is not an option but a necessity.
So here we prepare our online business website for receiving traffic. If anyone plans to just stop here and not continue with implementing them please stop reading now.
Alright, I guess you are still interested in the implementation phase. To prepare our site before traffic generation campaign begins, we need to ensure some things are done properly. A business analyst certification program should be able to teach you the basics of starting an online business and the importance of online marketing to establish your online presence.
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15 Point Check List for Your Online Business Website Launch
- Do you have enough content on your landing page? I suggest that you have at least 10-15 articles before generating traffic to your blog or website
- For heaven’s sake, make sure that the design is unique and does not resemble 10000 other sites. This does not hold true if you are not into your site for the purpose of making money or you are doing some charity work. Never ignore the fact that a unique design is very much appreciated. It helps to differentiate your site from the rest and also for branding purposes
- Are the contents captivating enough to capture your reader’s attention?
- If you want to promote an affiliate product, make sure that the affiliate links are working and that there are at least 2-3 links within the article. If your business is about selling something, make sure you “sell” and not “entertain”
- If you own the product make sure the ordering process is real simple. Test it out yourself and see if everything works. Even if it means you have to use your credit card to pay for your own product
- If your main aim is to capture leads then make sure that the lead capture service such as aweber is in place and that they work correctly. Don’t forget to create an auto responder for the lead capture
- Make sure your site has an easy to navigate structure. I have seen many businesses make much less than they could simply because they confuse their customers
- The offer you are promoting must be above the fold where the people coming to your site can see it directly without scrolling a mile down.
- There must be call to action on the landing page. Without a proper call to action anyone would simply fail to take an action which results in lost customer and lost sales
- Do not clutter the landing page. Make it as simple as possible while retaining all the essential information
- Avoid common mistakes such as spelling mistake, website not loading in IE 6, broken links etc
- If you expect a huge influx of visitors, make sure you have a decent sized web hosting package. Shared hosting won’t do, make sure you get yourself a VPS or a dedicated server based on your need
- If you have a long term business strategy, never ever avoid SEO or search engine optimization. Make sure that you hook up with an expert before you launch your website so that he can make sure everything is top notch
- Pay for usability reviews or at least ask on some forums about the look and feel of your site
- Ensure that your site has SSL and other security measures in places especially if you collect client information.
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What do you think? Is there anything more that you should be mindful of while launching your online business website?
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