Creating a website that generates new sales and new leads is all about your customers. What matters is what happens when they step inside your online shop. Do they buy or not? You can create a website that ensures they do buy, and often!
Make sure your website grabs their attention, encourages them to take action, speaks their language, gets personal, keeps it simple, adds value, stays relevant, projects credibility and treats them right.
The above is an excerpt from a comrade's website, Marketing Breakthroughs that I think is very appropriate. I have added this because we are going back into the processes of designing websites for our equestrian clients so that we can assist you in getting your website seen in today's tough economy.
We just finished an RFP for a new product and I realized how much my team and I have learned throughout our 10 years of working the web. We have the ability to conceptualize very quickly what a client needs by just asking them the right questions.
Last year when I had my surgery and I wasn't sure where I would be in the future for web development, I decided not to pursue new web design clients and just work with the ones that we already have. But, now that I have come through my surgery with flying colors and feel better than I have in years, I figure we will start this process again.
Our group are all such perfectionists that this 'stuff' takes a lot of our time and many times it is un-paid work, especially when it comes to the images, the designs and the coding behind the scenes that we do for the web. It is very important to us that we help our clients to succeed. We are always going back to look at the site (especially in a database developed site) and checking to be sure that all works okay and looks good at the same time. Then the time that it takes to incorporate al of the necessary SEO code so that your site will be search-engine friendly and rank high on the list.
Optimizing images for the web is so critical now since we are using so many more images on a page where we used to limit a page to only having 3 images so that it wouldn't be too 'heavy' to download for a dial-up system.
We may spend many hours going through images that have been sent to us at a high resolution and sized for print, and have to reset them for the web.
I know it drives me crazy when I go to a website and it takes forever for an image to download because someone is using a free or cheap website generator, but doesn't understand how to optimize their images or doesn't have the correct software to do it with. They probably have just uploaded the image as it comes from their camera. This can stop a viewer cold and send them elsewhere if they can't see your website because they don't have enough bandwidth to view it.
(Note: Adobe Fireworks optimizes images the best for the web - it was designed for the web. Photoshop was designed for hard-copy print and even its optimizer, ImageReady can't optimize the images as well as Fireworks does. My graphic designer uses Photoshop, sends me the images, and I use Fireworks to change the 'quality' setting to 70 which can reduce the file size a much as a third! Luckily, I've created a batch process to do this.)
Anyway, see our Web Services page for a listing of some package deals we have put together to include a website, plus banner advertisements, premium directory listings with resource guide articles, and email newsletter listings. You can't just depend on your website to be your only way to advertise anymore - how do people find you out of the millions of other websites competing for the same spot as you?
At least HorsesintheSouth.com (and nfla-horse.com, northfloridahorse.com which began my whole web design process in 1997) has very high, solid rankings in the search engines with even our old articles pulling in readers, plus we have developed subsidiary/partner sites that are regional and discipline-oriented so we can provide you with your one-stop advertising venue.
And, do keep checking our Sales and Specials page if you don't want to invest in another website - at least you will get amazing deals on all of the other advertising venues that we offer!
Oh, another thing - I've finally started my blog - www.horsesinthesouth.wordpress.com - it's in its infancy, so I still have a lot to add. What is on it now is my journey through the process of developing HorsesintheSouth.com and an About Me which chronicles my life growing up with horses. I am still learning the intricacies of the whole WordPress blog setup - it has a lot of features to use. So, it's only just begun...
Teri Rehkopf
Staff Writer
editor@HorsesintheSouth.com