Online Advertising
Should I advertise my business online? A quandary for a small business with limited funds. It can be useful to research online groups that may be users of your product or service. Those online ads or links can go a lot further because you are not paying for clicks from people that you are not targeting. Where you go for advertising may also be dependent upon the demographic you are tageting.
For example, when I had a market research company that tested new product names, I paid for ads on Google. I had click-throughs from parents looking for names for their children. Needless to say, this was not my target market. I was looking for brand managers, product launchers and innovators. I found an organization dedicated to branding. I paid for a link on the site. This group was active and those prospects were dead on. I did get a decent result from Google ads, but I spent too much for irrelevant clicks. Facebook can be an excellent and inexpensive way to target your online ads. Regardless of where you decide to advertise, make sure you use google analytics, statcounter or a similar free tracking software so you know where the traffic is coming from and how they are finding your website.
Instagram is generally for the younger adults, whereas FaceBook boasts 79% of the US internet users and approximately 66% of those aged 55+. 62% of those over 50 are using FaceBook- that is over 34 Million people of that age demographic alone.
Facebook can be an excellent and inexpensive way to target your online ads. Regardless of where you decide to advertise, make sure you use google analytics, statcounter or a similar free tracking software so you know where the traffic is coming from and how they are finding your website.
Website Design
There are a myriad of options when creating your own website. I am going to assume that you are not skilled at writing code and are probably looking around for a CMS Content Management System like Wix, Weebly, SquareSpace. These allow you to drag drop, resize, add buttons, links, change colors. You can learn quickly, or hire someone who knows the platform.
About CMS- Content Management Software:
The good: You can maintain control as far as tweaks and changes as needed- You don’t have to find a host account- It will be a pretty website, the templates they offer are generally gorgeous.
The bad: If you want e-commerce, look carefully. Many don’t have adequate e-commerce that are able to offer associated products for example, like Woo Commerce. You will have to pay them to host your site, which will cost a lot more than a regular hosting company (compare $30 a month to $4 a month for a simple host like Hostgator, Bluehost or webhostinghub).
The ugly: You may lose it completely should you decide to move your website. They own the template and the contents you entered are rarely moveable or exportable.
The Answer: WordPress! It’s not just for blogging. This open source platform allows users who do not understand much about code to design their own websites using themes. These themes function as the framework for your site. You can still tweak it to personalize it with color, images, pages. It is not just a blogging platform. You can turn blogging off completely and build static pages. There is a ton of help available online.
Some recent design trends- don’t worry about “Above the fold” or keeping your main info at the top 1/3 of that page. That was a style issue when web pages were short standard page sizes. Currently, trending designs will have longer pages with longer scrolling expected and often enjoyed, by prospects. Interactivity and the objective of keeping their attention is important, but not at the sake of loading times. Keep the prospect in mind and continue to make the information they are seeking readily accessible. This will serve you well for website optimization SEO purposes too!