Learn the Six Guaranteed Steps to Successful Website Development
Learn the Six Guaranteed Steps to Successful Website Development
Let’s face it … We’ve all found ourselves in the similar position of wondering what we could do to make our website more successful and capitalize on the tremendous opportunities we know exist online. If you happen to be over the age of 35 this “technology stuff” might have you feeling completely overwhelmed and wondering how you will ever “get it” enough to make money online.
Well I can tell you succeeding on the web is much easier than you would expect. This article will deliver on the promise made in the title and will teach you the six steps necessary to be successful online. Even better than delivering on the promise … I guarantee you it is much easier and more logical than you’ve ever believed. So, for all you 35+ geezers out there (me included), just follow the formula, take action, and you will be amazed at the results.
Step One: Define your Internet Initiative
I am quite sure you’ve all heard the saying, “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll never get there.” Well that applies to your online business as well. If you don’t take the time to clearly map out what it is you’d like to achieve online, you will severely diminish your chances of achieving any type of success online.
You need to decide EXACTLY what it is you are looking to accomplish online. Whether your objective is to generate a certain dollar amount in sales, generate more new leads, or to clearly communicate a message to your visitors. Whatever your objective is, you need to write it down and use it as a guide to everything you do online. When you are putting together your plan ask yourself at each step in the process, “Is this going to help me achieve my goal of (insert initiative here)?”
Step Two: Get to know your Buyers
If you don’t fully know and understand what is important to your “Buyers” your chances of succeeding online are going to be very low. The old days of one way communication and a simple sales process are over. The Internet has made doing business much more complicated and shifted the position of strength away from the seller and moved it to the buyer.
Just take a second to review the difference. In the old days if you went shopping at your local department store and were looking for something very specific. If you were looking around for several minutes and simply couldn’t locate the item you might look around for someone to help you. If you didn’t find someone right away you would search harder before giving up and leaving. You might have spent as much as an hour looking around before you decided to move onto the next store.
Let’s look at how things are now. You go to Google and type in the name of that same item. You are presented thousands of options as to where you can purchase that item in less than a second. If you happen to click the top listing and find yourself NOT FINDING the exact item within the first 3-4 seconds, you click the back button and are off to the next store.
This can be extremely frightening if you let it. IT doesn’t have to. Although the Internet brings complication to the picture, it also brings many different opportunities to understand what is of the highest importance to your potential “buyers.” Don’t be scared … Just LISTEN to what is important to your “buyers” and make sure you are taking action to provide it to them!
Step Three: Hang out where your buyers do and PAY ATTENTION
Your “buyers” have a plethora of places to communicate with other like-minded people. There are forums, blogs, social media sites, industry publications, and a number of other places where your buyers are asking questions in their own words. They are clearly stating what is important to them in making their buying decision. The majority of these places are open to everyone. The anonymity of the Internet allows you to go hang out in these places and monitor the conversations these “buyers” are having. There couldn’t be a better opportunity to get an extremely clear picture of what you need to provide to create a happy customer base, than to listen to their words.
Step Four: Learn from your competition by spying on them
Similar to how the Internet provides you the ability to anonymously review what your “buyers” are discussing, you also have the opportunity to conduct anonymous espionage on your competitors. I know this sounds sneaky, unethical, and possibly even dirty. Well, it isn’t!
Everything that happens online is tracked and the amount of data which is stored is incredible. There are tools available which can help you uncover the specific strategies your competitors have implemented and in some cases you can tell how successful these strategies are. I have provided links to some of these tools below in the resource box so you can TAKE IMMEDIATE ACTION following this article and begin to keep a close eye on what your competition is doing. You can learn from their mistakes and possibly use this intelligence to find a way of reaching your “buyers” better.
Step Five: Develop and follow a clear plan
If you’ve ever studied successful companies and worked to identify the most important ingredient in their success, I am sure you’ve found they all took the time to create a business plan. If you’ve found that this common element is something they all have, I am sure you realize it is not very smart to expect your website will be successful by simply turning it live.
If you set a clear objective for your website, understand what is most important to your potential “buyers,” hang out where your “buyers” hang out so you can understand the language they speak, and take the time to understand how your competition is catering to the wants and needs of the customers you are competing for … You have all the information necessary to create a successful strategy.
This step in the process is FAR TOO IMPORTANT to not spend time on. Treat your online strategy as though you are writing a story that leads to the perfect ending. If you follow every step of the story, you will absolutely achieve this perfect ending. Don’t make the mistake of rushing through and possibly skipping an important ingredient.
Step Six: Test, modify, and test some more
Back in the days before the Internet companies incurred a large expense in creating advertisements, company collateral or even product packages. Once these pieces were created, the either needed to be used or if the message didn’t work, they were thrown away and there was a further investment that needed to happen to get the message re-crafted.
Thank God for the Internet! You now have the ability to create a message and gather data which will prove that message as successful or not within days or, in some cases, hours. Additionally, the expense required to craft and post a new message is extremely low and in some cases non-existent. Now that you know this, it is important to monitor the results incurred by your messages and if you find they aren’t working well, or as well as you’d like, you can change it quickly and efficiently.
You know have the six steps required to GUARANTEE your success online. If you’d like to receive a deeper explanation of each of these steps click the following link to receive your FREE Guide to Online Marketing.
Learn the Six Guaranteed Steps to Successful Website Development - To learn more about this author, visit Pete Brand's Website.
Like this article? Share it with your friends
Learn the Six Guaranteed Steps to Successful Website Development
Let’s face it … We’ve all found ourselves in the similar position of wondering what we could do to make our website more successful and capitalize on the tremendous opportunities we know exist online. If you happen to be over the age of 35 this “technology stuff” might have you feeling completely overwhelmed and wondering how you will ever “get it” enough to make money online.
Well I can tell you succeeding on the web is much easier than you would expect. This article will deliver on the promise made in the title and will teach you the six steps necessary to be successful online. Even better than delivering on the promise … I guarantee you it is much easier and more logical than you’ve ever believed. So, for all you 35+ geezers out there (me included), just follow the formula, take action, and you will be amazed at the results.
Step One: Define your Internet Initiative
I am quite sure you’ve all heard the saying, “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll never get there.” Well that applies to your online business as well. If you don’t take the time to clearly map out what it is you’d like to achieve online, you will severely diminish your chances of achieving any type of success online.
You need to decide EXACTLY what it is you are looking to accomplish online. Whether your objective is to generate a certain dollar amount in sales, generate more new leads, or to clearly communicate a message to your visitors. Whatever your objective is, you need to write it down and use it as a guide to everything you do online. When you are putting together your plan ask yourself at each step in the process, “Is this going to help me achieve my goal of (insert initiative here)?”
Step Two: Get to know your Buyers
If you don’t fully know and understand what is important to your “Buyers” your chances of succeeding online are going to be very low. The old days of one way communication and a simple sales process are over. The Internet has made doing business much more complicated and shifted the position of strength away from the seller and moved it to the buyer.
Just take a second to review the difference. In the old days if you went shopping at your local department store and were looking for something very specific. If you were looking around for several minutes and simply couldn’t locate the item you might look around for someone to help you. If you didn’t find someone right away you would search harder before giving up and leaving. You might have spent as much as an hour looking around before you decided to move onto the next store.
Let’s look at how things are now. You go to Google and type in the name of that same item. You are presented thousands of options as to where you can purchase that item in less than a second. If you happen to click the top listing and find yourself NOT FINDING the exact item within the first 3-4 seconds, you click the back button and are off to the next store.
This can be extremely frightening if you let it. IT doesn’t have to. Although the Internet brings complication to the picture, it also brings many different opportunities to understand what is of the highest importance to your potential “buyers.” Don’t be scared … Just LISTEN to what is important to your “buyers” and make sure you are taking action to provide it to them!
Step Three: Hang out where your buyers do and PAY ATTENTION
Your “buyers” have a plethora of places to communicate with other like-minded people. There are forums, blogs, social media sites, industry publications, and a number of other places where your buyers are asking questions in their own words. They are clearly stating what is important to them in making their buying decision. The majority of these places are open to everyone. The anonymity of the Internet allows you to go hang out in these places and monitor the conversations these “buyers” are having. There couldn’t be a better opportunity to get an extremely clear picture of what you need to provide to create a happy customer base, than to listen to their words.
Step Four: Learn from your competition by spying on them
Similar to how the Internet provides you the ability to anonymously review what your “buyers” are discussing, you also have the opportunity to conduct anonymous espionage on your competitors. I know this sounds sneaky, unethical, and possibly even dirty. Well, it isn’t!
Everything that happens online is tracked and the amount of data which is stored is incredible. There are tools available which can help you uncover the specific strategies your competitors have implemented and in some cases you can tell how successful these strategies are. I have provided links to some of these tools below in the resource box so you can TAKE IMMEDIATE ACTION following this article and begin to keep a close eye on what your competition is doing. You can learn from their mistakes and possibly use this intelligence to find a way of reaching your “buyers” better.
Step Five: Develop and follow a clear plan
If you’ve ever studied successful companies and worked to identify the most important ingredient in their success, I am sure you’ve found they all took the time to create a business plan. If you’ve found that this common element is something they all have, I am sure you realize it is not very smart to expect your website will be successful by simply turning it live.
If you set a clear objective for your website, understand what is most important to your potential “buyers,” hang out where your “buyers” hang out so you can understand the language they speak, and take the time to understand how your competition is catering to the wants and needs of the customers you are competing for … You have all the information necessary to create a successful strategy.
This step in the process is FAR TOO IMPORTANT to not spend time on. Treat your online strategy as though you are writing a story that leads to the perfect ending. If you follow every step of the story, you will absolutely achieve this perfect ending. Don’t make the mistake of rushing through and possibly skipping an important ingredient.
Step Six: Test, modify, and test some more
Back in the days before the Internet companies incurred a large expense in creating advertisements, company collateral or even product packages. Once these pieces were created, the either needed to be used or if the message didn’t work, they were thrown away and there was a further investment that needed to happen to get the message re-crafted.
Thank God for the Internet! You now have the ability to create a message and gather data which will prove that message as successful or not within days or, in some cases, hours. Additionally, the expense required to craft and post a new message is extremely low and in some cases non-existent. Now that you know this, it is important to monitor the results incurred by your messages and if you find they aren’t working well, or as well as you’d like, you can change it quickly and efficiently.
You know have the six steps required to GUARANTEE your success online. If you’d like to receive a deeper explanation of each of these steps click the following link to receive your FREE Guide to Online Marketing.
Learn the Six Guaranteed Steps to Successful Website Development - To learn more about this author, visit Pete Brand's Website.
Like this article? Share it with your friends
 | |
 |
No article feedback found. |
| |
Leave Your Feedback |
 | |
| |||
Jeff FosterWebBizIdeas.com is a Minneapolis website design company founded to help people start an internet business by providing them with website, business, and internet resources that help foster the growth of successful online businesses and develop innovative Internet business ideas. We specialize in internet consulting & internet marketing. - Visit Jeff Foster's Website |
|||
John BrennanJohn Brennan Ed.D. Dr. Brennan is President of Interpersonal Development, LLC, a training and development firm. Interpersonal Development has provided sales training and coaching to more than 3,000 sales reps from over 100 companies. A native of Australia, Dr. Brennan received his doctorate from the University of Rochester. His dissertation researched the effectiveness of Behavioral Modeling Technology in training people in interpersonal skills. While he has spent most of his career designing or delivering training, he was also a Vice-President of Sales of a training and development franchise with operations in 25 markets. Dr. Brennan has designed and delivered sales training in North America, Asia, Europe, Australia and the Middle East. He has been a guest speaker at numerous national and regional professional conferences. When Microsoft wanted Best Practices articles on sales for their web site, they called Dr. Brennan. The results are at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/FX011387391033.aspx His firm’s clients have included Volvo, The Prudential, Merrill Lynch, Eastman Kodak, Gannett, Equifax Europe, the Economist Group and countless small businesses. - Visit John Brennan's Website |
|||
Linda RichardsonLinda Richardson is the Founder and Executive Chairwoman of Richardson, a global sales training and performance improvement company. As a recognized leader in the industry, she has won the coveted Stevie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sales Excellence and she was identified by Training Industry, Inc. as one of the “Top 20 Most Influential Training Professionals.” Ms. Richardson is credited with the movement to Consultative Selling and is the author of ten books on selling and sales management, including Sales Coaching — Making the Great Leap from Sales Manager to Sales Coach, and Stop Telling, Start Selling. She teaches sales and management at the Wharton Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton Executive Development Center. Linda is a frequent speaker at industry and client conferences, has been published extensively in industry and training journals, and has been featured in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Nation’s Business, Selling Power, Success, and The Conference Board Magazine. Learn more about Richardson's sales training and performance improvement solutions at http://www.richardson.com web - Visit Linda Richardson's Website |
|||
Casey GollanCasey Gollan, Business Coaching & Mentoring Programs. Add $1 Million to $10 Million in the next 1 to 3 years. Since 1996 Casey has to added hundreds of millions of dollars to businesses. Watch a free video see client results Business Coaching website. - Visit Casey Gollan's Website |
|||
Joe DagerJoe Dager is President of Business901, a progressive coaching company providing no-nonsense direction in areas such as Lean Six Sigma Marketing and organized referral marketing. What others say: In the past 20 years, Joe and I have collaborated on many difficult issues. Joe’s ability to combine his expertise with “out of the box” thinking is unsurpassed. He has always delivered quickly, cost effectively and with ingenuity. A brilliant mind that is always a pleasure to work with.” - James R. If you want to learn more about Business901, start a conversation with us. We can be found @ Web/Blog: Business901.com Web/Blog: FundingYourNonprofit.com LinkedIn Profile Follow me on Twitter - Visit Joe Dager's Website |
|||
Anne BarrAnne Barr has over 26 years experience in sales and marketing, six years as a franchisee. She has assisted over 367 business owners and purchasers to achieve their goals in career change, transition and exit strategy. She holds the designation of Certified Franchise Executive from the International Franchise Association, Certified Business Intermediary from the International Business Brokers Association and Board Certified Broker from the Texas Association of Business Brokers. Anne is active in professional organizations, networking groups and volunteers for non-profit entities. As owner/operator of four successful businesses, Anne has proven people skills and enjoys helping clients find the right "fit" in business ownership. Visit www.FranchiseOpportunitySpecialist.com for more information about me and my company. - Visit Anne Barr's Website |
|||
Kim CastleWith nearly two decades in the advertising and design business, with clients like Domino's Pizza, General Motors, Direct TV, Pedigree, Wolfgang Puck, Higher Octave Music, Hollywood Celebrity Products, Disney, and Paramount, as well as thousands of entrepreneurs around the world define, structure, communicate, and position their business for greater profits, BrandU(R) co-creators Kim Castle and W. Vito Montone discovered that entrepreneurs could experience the same power that big brands command for a fraction of the cost with the world's only process-based results-drive Integral approach to business creation. BrandU(R) is helping entrepreneurs grow with the power of extreme clarity from idea...to brand...to market(TM) and helping one million entrepreneurs become successful and whole so that they can make a difference in the world. Are you one of them? If you want to experience clarity all the way to the bank(TM), get started now at http://www.brandu.com. - Visit Kim Castle's Website |
|||
Stephanie RobeyStephanie Robey is President and CoFounder of Pivot Positive, LLC - an Internet marketing business focused on helping people start work at home ventures. Previously, she was employed at The Search Agency with over 20 years experience in graphic design and 10 years experience in online marketing. She was responsible for launching the Conversion Path Optimization (CPO) unit where she and her team have conducted hundreds of optimization tests for online companies across multiple verticals. She is a successful entrepreneur having started and sold 2 companies and remains on the board of directors of the third, PhotoSpin.com Stephanie began her career in the direct marketing realm creating and producing direct mail for many of the major cable television companies and directly attributes her understanding of Internet marketing to those early offline experiences. Stephanie is a graduate of San Diego State University with a BFA in Graphic Arts and also holds an Executive MBA from the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University. Read Steph's Blog Meet Steph and Dave Sign up for our Free 7-Day BootCamp: Self Employed & Rich - Visit Stephanie Robey's Website |
|||
|
To learn more about the Evan Elite Author Program please contact us. | |||
 | |
|  |
Subscribe to Pete's articles
 | |
|
|  |
 | |
|
| |
 | |||||||
|
 | ||
 |
||
|
||
 |
||
|
| ||
 |
| Have you written articles that would be of value to entrepreneurs? Become an expert on our site by publishing them! Expose yourself to a wide audience, drive more traffic to your website and get more sales! Click Here for details. |
|
|
 |
| Modeling the Masters: Learn the true secrets behind Walt Disney's business success factors & grow your company! Video produced by Phanta Media |
|
|
 |
"Learn straight from Evan how you can Make a Full Time Income (And More) from a Website"
Click Here To Learn More |
|
|
|
|
Get advice & tips from famous business owners, new articles by entrepreneur experts, my latest website updates, & special sneak peaks at what's to come!
|
|
|
 SEO Made Simple Sample Chapter The Human Network Managing Customer Relationships Performance Improvement Plan Business Wisdom |
|
 | ||
 |
Top 50 Franchising Blogs
Top 50 Franchising Blogs | |
 |
Top Social Business Blogs
Top Social Entrepreneur Blogs | |
| ||
 | ||||
| ||||
|
| ||||
| ||||
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||
|
Email us your ideas on how to make our website more valuable! Thank you Sharon from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for your suggestions to make the newsletter look like the website and profile younger entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez and Sean Combs!
|
|
|
| ||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||