You shouldn’t let Coca Cola, HP, and CNN make you feel like your website ought to play like a Superbowl ad.
Small Businesses Have Specific Needs
Superbowl Ads Can’t Meet
Superbowl ads are all about appealing to a mass market. Your small business, on the other hand, survives by the grace of your clientele.
But now, with the Internet, any small business can have access to the same billions of people that Coca Cola does, the same mass market. This is as much a curse as a blessing. Because the mass-market, Superbowl-ad mindset can destroy a small business.
In this free on-line report, you’ll discover:
- The one and only purpose of your small business website.
- What is the most important element of your website, and how it can make or break the deal without you even knowing about it.
- The great hidden inefficiency of traditional website design, and how Web 2.0 software makes it moot.
- One of the most powerful—and dangerous—traffic sources on the Internet, and what you need to do to safely take advantage of it.
- The 4 most important web statistics you need to understand, and why.
- How age-old secrets of advertising that we lost in the television age are now turning the web into a gold-mine for thousands of small businesses.
- And more…
Looking to put together a website, make your website more effective, or develop high-tech web features? Asking for a quote is easy and free.
Simply take a few moments to fill out this form to request a free quote. I’ll reply as soon as I can with a proposal or any questions I have. Note that information you provide me is confidential.
Here’s a sample of some of the work I’ve done:
- JTimothyKing.com, my personal and software-development site and blog
- Gilmore-ism.com, a news and fan site for the TV show Gilmore Girls
- JezebelJames.info, the first news and fan site for the upcoming TV show The Return of Jezebel James
- Be the Story, a blog-podcast celebrating stories and those who tell them
One of my close friends had a problem. He’s a small-businessman like me. He needed to increase business in a very specific target market. And he was wondering if he could do it via the web. Meanwhile, I had been turning from a software developer into a direct-marketing specialist. I knew exactly how he could accomplish this goal. At the same time, other small business owners started asking me similar questions.
It seems small businesses have a problem that can be solved. We don’t have the resources to do elaborate marketing like big companies do. As a result, when we buy a website, we don’t know where our money goes or even whether it’s worth it. Looking at small business websites, this problem seems to be endemic.
Newest posts and articles...
Seth Godin bemoans how cheap the ads are during non-prime-time spots. That is, they’re produced cheaply. They stink. On the other hand, an advertiser will pour millions of dollars into a Superbowl ad that runs only once. Because they don’t want to spend a lot of money producing an ad for a spot worth only a couple hundred bucks. But here’s why this logic is severely flawed, even if the ad runs only once in a cheap spot.
I didn’t do what I promised my wife I’d do. Because I screwed up.
She really wanted to see Rocky, because its inspirational story would really make her feel better right now. I really wanted to see Rocky, too. Because the last time I saw it was long before I knew how to write fiction myself, and I couldn’t learn anything from it. In fact, it was so long ago, I don’t even remember how the movie goes.
Ashley McKee at User Interface Engineering posted links to Tutorial Blog’s list of the 60 best standards compliant web site designs. And she asked, whether these web-site designs are usable, as well as visually appealing.
Well, Ashley. Firstly, let me weigh in on a comment by reader DJ, a comment that can hit home for a small-business owner. He says:
DreamHost, my favorite web host, yesterday announced that there had been a cyber-break-in at their facilities.
A very small subset of our user accounts have been compromised due to a security flaw in our web control panel software. We have already notified those of you affected directly via email…
The security flaw allowed the attackers to log into our customer web control panel with the access privileges of another user. From our web panel they were able to access individual user password information. The attackers also attempted to gain access to our central database and billing information but were ultimately thwarted in that attempt. No credit card information or customer personal information was obtained.
We will soon be making an official post about this situation and the steps being done to safeguard accounts in the future on the DreamHost blog…
Here’s the story of Marillion, an independent UK band. Most bands record demos, scrounge for gigs, and pray daily to be discovered by an A&R rep. The competition is fierce. And frequently, those chosen are the ones with the least talent. And most bands never make it, or break up and die long before they even have a chance.
What do you want to do with your website, that you can't?
- Do you avoid doing split tests because they’re too much trouble?
- Do you send out email and e-zine links without tagging them for Google Analytics?
- Are you tired of typing a snippet of HTML over and over again?
I’m looking for product ideas, and I want to help. Tell me what you’d like to do with your website, that you can’t. I’ll do what I can to help.
