Web Graphics Membership

Maybe you are a new web marketer who doesn’t match my previous level of ignorance.  I often think, “If I had only known then what I know now.”  The “then,” of course, is when I first ventured into the Internet business arena.  I could fill an entire book with the idiotic errors that I made due to ignorance.  In truth, I could fill a multi-volume set.  It’s a bit embarassing.

Every once in a while, I try to share one of those bits of wisdom that have subsequently come my way.  I identify one or two simple realities of the online business world about which I had been ignorant and that cost me a lot of money, a lot of wasted energy or, usually, both.  I hope you find these useful.

Here is today’s lifesaving advice:  Every page on a web site is a landing page.

I actually believed that every prospect who came to my site would first visit my home page.  They would all digest the valuable content there and progress through my site in an orderly fashion, like third graders in line on their way to gym class. 

If I had found an expert who would teach me how Internet surfers actually locate my website and how they act once they get there, my sites would have been designed very differently.  I needed to either contract with an outside expert, take much more time to learn before acting or had someone with Internet marketing experience professionally build a business website for me–one that actually had a chance of meeting my goals.

Here are some things that would have saved me a great deal of time and money in the long run:

*  Most people find their destinations by using search engines

*  Search engines don’t really care about entire web sites; they think of the web as a huge collection of independent pages

*  Recognize that each page on a web site should be created with the goal of achieving the ultimate purpose of the site (obtaining the desired action on the part of the visitor)

*  Having tracking software that would allow me to diagnose how real people move through my site’s pages

*  More quickly discovering that, cumulatively, the interior pages of my website receive more first time visits than my home page

*  Recognize that an aesthetically pleasing page is not the same as a productive page

*  We should all “bite the bullet” and spend some money wisely in the early stages of our business development, because that will lead to greater income sooner than if we behave as the iconic Mr. Scrooge

I truly enjoy building websites, so that is not something that I would have wanted to have outsourced.    However there are lots of things that I should have outsourced (and that I now do) when I was first beginning.

Related posts:

1. Quiz: Every Page on Your Business Website Is a (Fill in the Blank)
2. So You’ve Selected the Mini-Site Format for Your Business
3. Big Mistake in New Online Marketer’s Web Design
4. Large or Small Website for Your Online Business?
5. Large Website or Small Website for Your Company’s New Business?