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There is no such thing as a home page

Guest post by: Todd Jamieson

Article Overview: As children we are taught to see beyond first impressions and give everyone a chance. The old “don’t judge a book by its cover” still plays in my ears as I enter a less than pristine restaurant or a new acquaintance’s messy home. Still, in everyday life and especially in business, first impressions mean everything. From the polish of your shoes to the make of your phone, we are constantly being judged by our peers based on outward appearances; and a professional website is no exception. In an online world your website is more than just your storefront, it’s your brand identity.

There is no such thing as a home page

You’ve built a strong brand. Your office is professional, every piece of collateral you give to prospects is designed with a specific purpose. Your greeting area is strategically designed to match your corporate colours and your magazines for guests are continually replaced. You go crazy when the cleaners miss a spec of dust or things are left out of place. You believe a good first impression means everything. Or do you?

The way your company is positioned online is more important than ever. Today, most people visit your website first and then they may choose to contact. The reality is you may never meet 90 percent of prospective clients. Unfortunately it is not as easy as it used to be either. While your website is an important part of your online brand, there are many other ways people are learning about your business.

Here is a quick checklist of a few areas you can monitor to ensure you are truly creating a great first impression:

1. Website:This is by far the easiest to fix. Ensure you have a brand guidelines document and a content strategy plan. Ideally your website should match your marketing collateral look and feel as much as possible.

2. Twitter:Many people are taking their issues to twitter. Monitoring your name via the saved search or other software will allow you to stay on top of bad or good conversations about your business.

3. Facebook:Like Twitter, you can also monitor this. If you deal with retail customers, it is also a good idea to have your own Facebook account. This should be designed using the same brand guidelines.

4. Free Directories:There are many free directories that are now showing your company name. Monitoring these and adjusting incorrect information (spelling mistakes, address changes etc) are important. Again, this can be done by signing up for various website monitoring services.

5. Ratings and Reviews:Much like Twitter and Facebook, past clients may review your company or give them a rating on a free site like: Yelp.ca or Travelocity.com. Prospective clients frequent these sites to get an unbiased opinion. Monitoring and responding to bad or good reviews via these websites will help your reputation online.

Managing your reputation online does take time unfortunately, but is well worth it. Luckily there are many free and paid tools for this. Google Alerts is great for monitoring websites whereas r Hoot Suite is great for monitoring social media (Twitter, Facebook etc).

Remember, as bad feedback comes in, it is important to react professionally and not say what you really want to say! Be polite and diplomatic in your responses and start a dialogue. You will may be presently surprised at the amount of prospective leads you get as a result!

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Article Tags: Brand, Design
Referred by: http://www.brymarkpromostore.com



Related Forum Posts
Re: Internaltional coaching business from Morocco SOS Stress ! - Hi Fays, Your website looks very nice and clean. I have 2 suggestions: 1 - Right now your home page is the contact page, I think it will be better to write an introduction on the home page, and explain what it stress management, and offer the free trail. 2- On the contact page, it is not safe to give your email, insert a contact form, with your email hidden, it will reduce the spam you receive.
Re: Search Engine Friendly Home Pages - As per your suggestions, i would like to add alt tag, anchor tag and header tag optimization in your search engine friendly home page because Google crawler also crawl these things when comes to your home page.
Re: Top Banner Help - Hi Benny - it could work. It's always an issue of spacing. On the home page we have two sections for the forums and in the past we have put the Win over $1000 in Free Prizes! graphic on the home page but it didn't have a significant impact on signups / posts (as far as I can tell)
Re: Traffic! How do you get it? - Hi GT, Traffic is the Holy Grail as we all know but sometimes it can get a bit cloudy. I agree that the basics are all good, article writing, SEO, blog comments, directory submission etc etc but it takes a bit of time and sadly that's when a lot of newbie’s give up because they are too impatient. My first website was 'networldgateway.com' and when I look at it now it looks pretty poor but I chose my No 1 keyword phrase as 'best home business ideas' and if you google that you will see my site on page 1 or maybe 2 now after some time on page 1 which is great but I don't get sign ups from it because I presume it's not an appealing site but the keyword phrase works fine because it incorporates 4 different keyword phrases such as best home business, home business and home business ideas. I was very unhappy with that site so I joined the APG who built me a much better site which is ‘Workfromhomegems.com’ and I am using the same phrase for that but it will take a while to catch up to my old site but I know one thing, if I don't start getting sign ups from the new site when I get to the higher Google pages then I will be seriously hacked off, LOL, best wishes, Mal.
Re: Traffic! How do you get it? - [quote="Mal Tindle":znnzv07e]Hi GT, Traffic is the Holy Grail as we all know but sometimes it can get a bit cloudy. I agree that the basics are all good, article writing, SEO, blog comments, directory submission etc etc but it takes a bit of time and sadly that's when a lot of newbie’s give up because they are too impatient. My first website was 'networldgateway.com' and when I look at it now it looks pretty poor but I chose my No 1 keyword phrase as 'best home business ideas' and if you google that you will see my site on page 1 or maybe 2 now after some time on page 1 which is great but I don't get sign ups from it because I presume it's not an appealing site but the keyword phrase works fine because it incorporates 4 different keyword phrases such as best home business, home business and home business ideas. I was very unhappy with that site so I joined the APG who built me a much better site which is ‘Workfromhomegems.com’ and I am using the same phrase for that but it will take a while to catch up to my old site but I know one thing, if I don't start getting sign ups from the new site when I get to the higher Google pages then I will be seriously hacked off, LOL, best wishes, Mal.[/quote:znnzv07e] Hey Mal, I can understand your frustration. I'm sure you're not the only one that faces this problem. I've had to face this reality as well and really think about how I'm marketing as well as the content on my site. There are many factors that contribute to the traffic/sales ratio, and it can be daunting at times to figure out what would be best to change. One thing to consider are the offers or programs you're promoting. This can sometimes be the biggest factor, but not always. Next would be the quality of traffic. Seems like the quality is there given the keywords your site was ranking for, so I'm guessing it would be something else. After looking at your first site, I think maybe it could use a different layout. That's just my thought. The most important thing to realize is that it takes a lot of testing, testing and testing. Once you get the traffic, test different elements to see what's going to convert better. I've changed my home page many times to aid in getting higher conversions. I'm seeing results, but I'm sure I could always do better. It's a never-ending process. Don't lose hope my friend.


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