Your website's design and content is extremely important. It needs to concisely convey information, be easy to navigate, and interesting to view. But even if you have the greatest site on the Internet, it isn't very effective if nobody visits! Whatever the content of your site, you will make more money if more people visit. Getting the word out doesn't have to be hard, but it can be a full time job. First, get your site listed in as many high profile search engines and directories as possible. Search engines and directories send traffic to your site by listing your website when surfers type keywords that match your site's description in a search box. Many engines will list you for free, some will ask a small fee, and others, like Yahoo, will only list you if your site meets certain criteria. Submitting your site for indexing can be a time consuming process. Concentrate on the largest and most used directories and search engines. A few of our favorites: Yahoo, AltaVista, whatUseek, AskJeeves, excite, HotBot, and Lycos. You can find links to the submission areas for these sites on our Resources page
Another good way to advertise is with a banner exchange program. These programs allow you to choose what what type of sites you'd like to exchange advertising with, then you submit a banner ad. The exchange works like this: You reserve a spot on your website for banners to be shown and every time your site shows a banner to a visitor (or every two times, programs vary) another participating site will display your banner. There are lots of banner exchange programs Choose one that reflects your target audience or lets you specify the type of site you'd like your banner to be shown on. Signing up for these programs are usually free, and the results can be pretty good! If you need a banner designed for your business, Mommerce can make one for you.
Also try a referral system that lets your visitors refer your site to their friends. These programs help get the word out by using the Internet equivalent of "word of mouth", always a very powerful advertising tool.
If you have a home business and would rather concentrate on creating your products rather than promoting them online, Mommerce can help. Join Mommerce and let us do the promotional leg work. We work hard to bring traffic to your site and to give you a professional look that will help your business become a success. For more info, visit Join Mommerce.
Take some time and analyze your favorite websites. Pay special attention to those that get a lot of traffic. What is it about these sites that make them appealing? Are you drawn in by the layout? The content? The atmosphere?
Now surf a few sites that don't look very good. What elements do you immediately notice that give you the impression that the site you are viewing is unprofessional? Poor graphics, confusing layout, 'fancy' hard-to-read fonts, lousy spelling, poor grammer, and ugly backgrounds are all elements that can leave a customer cold.
Here are few suggestions: Stay away from low-quality graphics. If you are in doubt as to whether or not a graphic is worthwhile, chuck it and find another one. Animated graphics are neat, but they can be distracting and take a very long time to load. You are usually better off with a quality stationary graphic than an animated one. Choose your background carefully. Light colors and/or non-distracting patterns are almost always best. The content of your site should not have to compete with your background. Keep your layout simple and consistant. If you are using graphical links or image maps, be sure to have text links as well. Some people prefer to view sites as 'text only', (they load more quickly) and if your lacking text links, they won't be able to navigate your site. There are great backgrounds, sidebars, graphics, photos and buttons available for free on the internet. Or you can try your hand at making your own! Try Paint Shop Pro 7.0 by Jasc. Its an easy to learn, low-cost, beginner to advanced level graphic and photo-editing tool.
Finally, enlist the help of a friend. Have her proofread your text, test your site for ease of navigation, critique your choice of graphics and layout, and give her (non-biased, of course) opinion of the overall feel of your site. Take all feedback seriously, and make necessary improvements.
Want a totally unbiased review of your site? Let Mommerce take a look. We'll tell you the truth, but we'll be tactful if there are any problems. See our Web Services page for more information.
If you have a home business or are thinking of starting one, the Internet is a great tool. How can you make the World Wide Web work for you? You can reach thousands of potential customers without ever leaving your home. Marketing your product on the Internet isn't much different than arranging an attractive display in a storefront. Its all about reaching customers and presenting your products. Post clear photos of your products along with detailed and appealing descriptions of each, and of course an easy-to-read price list. Add ordering and shipping information, perhaps some interesting company information, and you've launched into the world of e-commerce. You can even set up a credit card payment system on your site that will simplify your online-business transactions. We recommend PayPal for secure, easy to use, lowcost or free credit card transactions. Once you have built your website, promote your business on the Internet and watch it grow.
If building, maintaining and promoting a site seems too time consuming or downright intimidating, Mommerce can do the work for you. We'll build and display a page of your products in the Mommerce Mall. See Join Mommerce for more info. If you'd rather build an independant site, or already have a site, we offer many free or low-cost design services as well. Click here for more information on Mommerce Internet Services.
Welcome to the Information Age. With Internet commerce and ligtening fast connections, the web is truly the latest and greatest frontier. From major corporations to Great-aunt Roberta, everyone is online. What a great way to expand your customer base and gain exposure for your products and services. We'll give you a quick overview of how to get your own web presence started, and how to make money doing it!
You don't need a degree in computer science to build a website. You don't have to be fluent in any sort of technical language, or even understand how the Internet works to start a great site of your own. There are many programs out there that allow you to build a site using "wysiwyg" (What You See Is What You Get) technology, and one of the best ones we've found is Hometead. Homestead has easy site-building software and website hosting that can give you everything you need to create a great start-up business or personal site. You can even download the software to your computer and work on your site offline. Homestead offers so many features that you'll never run out of new things to put on your site, and it really is as easy as one, two, three! No HTML necessacery, just point, click and drag to create your site. "Sure, it's easy," you may be thinking, "but how does a site built with Homestead look?" For starters, you're looking at one! Homestead has an online tutorial to get you started, or if you prefer a more personalized service, let us help you build a site.
Do you have a personal website, perhaps with pictures and informaiton about your family, or featuring a hobbie or interest of yours? If you have, or would like to start, a personal website, you can add elements that can make you a little money...with no cost to you! Many Internet companies offer affiliate programs, which allow you to advertise their goods on your site and make a commission for every item you sell. Simply sign up, place a link (often a picture of the item itself) on your site, and when someone clicks on the link from your page and buys the item, you get a small commission. There are also programs that will pay you "by the click", a few cents every time someone clicks the link you've placed.
Some ideas for successful affiliateships: Create a "bookshelf" on your site with links to your favorite books, or books that apply to the subject of your site. Put up a "wish list" of items your children would like for Christmas or birthdays. Create an "essentials" page with links to items needed for a favorite hobby. Find links to affiliate programs on our Web Moms Resource page.
Another fun money-making idea is offered by Vstore. Vstore gives you the ability to choose an entire online store, thousands of items, and personalize it with your name, slogan, and information about your company. You can put a link to your store on your site, and anything purchased there earns you commission. This is also completely free to you. Tell your friends about your store and shop there yourself. You'll get back part of what you spend and therefore save a little money!
Once you set up your site and add the links, be sure your site is well designed, has interesting content, is updated regularly, and gets Web traffic. Then sit back, relax, and collect your commission checks! It may not make you rich but its free money for you, and you are helping the companies you link to by driving customers their way.
Look Like A Pro (Even If You're Just Starting Out)
You don't have to be a design expert or have a degree in Computer Science to have a great site, but it can be hard work to build a profitable wep page. Here are a few suggestions to help you make your site effective and easy to navigate as well as give it a professional look.
Make it Quick
Most people will wait only eight seconds for a website to load. If your homepage takes longer than that, surfers will hit the 'Back' button, and you'll lose a customer. Eliminate heavy, unnecessary, slow-loading graphics from your site. If you have a large graphic, try compressing it for a quicker load on one of our favorite sites:
SiteMechanic.com. If you'd like to feature large, detailed graphics of your products, utilize thumbnails. Thumbnails are much smaller versions of large graphics that are hyperlinked to the larger version of the graphic. Describe the image the thumbnail is linked to and let your viewers decide which pictures are worth the wait.
Content is Key
The content of your site is what keeps people coming back. If you intend to make money with your web page (i.e. a business site), you must have a way to "hook" customers to ensure their return. Ideas for content: Interesting (i.e. not boring) information about yourself, your company, or your products, research about a topic relating to your site (i.e. infant development milestones on a page selling baby books), links to other relevant sites (not direct competitors, of course), Free Anything, games, humor, and trivia.
Shake it up
Keep your site updated, add and change your content often. Nobody wants to re-read the same magazine, and nobody wants to revisit a stale website. A good site is always a work in progress, so don't be afraid to try new things and make improvements on a regular basis. If your site always has something new, even if it's not a big change, people are more likely to come back and see what's happening. And what could make you lose more faith in a company than visiting in July and seeing winter holiday decorations still up!
Easy to Surf
Nothing is more frustrating then surfing onto a site that has peaked your interest then finding it is impossible to navigate. Dead links, hard to find information, graphics that look like buttons but aren't.. these are big mistakes to make in web design. Be sure the path to the most important infomation (i.e. ordering info) is clearly marked and prominantly displayed. Define your site's boundarys. Let visitors know when clicking a link will cause them to leave your site. Put these 'outside' links on the farthest pages from your main page, and set them to open in separate browser windows. Unify the look of your pages. Similair backgrounds, layouts, and/or logos should appear on each page so that your visitors know they are still on your site. A few more navigation tips: Place a link back to your main page on every sub-page. A site map is always a good idea, visitors can quickly take stock of whats available on your site without wading through link after link. Search engines for your site are also great features. You can get a free customizable search engine at siteLevel.com.
