This is a critical error, and yet one that every small business owner has made at least once in his life. We make it, because it’s human nature. Every human being loves to talk about himself. So when I talk to a potential customer, what’s the first thing I want to say?
I want to tell him all about me, of course! Except, he doesn’t care about me. Yes, I’m sure he wants to be friendly. I’m sure he wants to be polite. Maybe he’ll let me talk for a minute or two. But he won’t listen.
Joshua Porter at User Interface Engineering notes:
You’ve got to hand it to MySpace. The designers there have done the impossible: they’ve created a site that tramples on the aesthetic sensibilities of nearly everyone while continuing to grow and be successful.
Then he explains why MySpace is good for design. The reason, in a nutshell, is that MySpace actually provides value to its users:
Jim Edwards posted on his “I Gotta Tell You” blog about “Free Website Traffic” myths and scams. Including one that I’ve been dying for someone to debunk: So-called “safe lists.” Yes, I’m sure the people selling access to the safe lists are making a bundle. But for the rest of us… Well, as Perry Marshall recently warned, “In the ’make money on the Internet’ category… a sucker is born every six seconds.” Thank you, Jim!
The cold, hard truth is that building traffic is hard. And it can be expensive. This is one of the key areas in my upcoming report, The 4 Things Every Small Business Website Needs. Don’t let anyone fool you! Getting traffic to your website takes time, it takes money, it takes effort, and it takes smarts. But it’s a necessary part of any business website. (And not just any traffic, but the right traffic and at the right time.)
-TimK
Google AdWords is both the best and worst thing that happened to Internet advertising. It’s a system that makes it possible, for the first time in the history of the world, to deposit five bucks, write a couple of ads, and instantly get access to over 100 million people—in less than 10 minutes. In fact
it may be the first and best thing to do to get traffic to your site.
I was doing research for a client. In the span of less than a half hour, I visited three sites. And in that span of time, I encountered some of the biggest site-design mistakes on the web. By “big,” I mean that these mistakes are costing these businesses customers. The right prospects might be visiting their sites right under their noses. And there’s nothing they can do to turn them into customers. They probably don’t even realize that these visitors are even there.
