Starting an online business can be enjoyable, and entertaining, as well frightening and terrifying.

Giving life to your plan, your idea, your dream, your product your business in the form of a website is an effective way to get more than just a return on your investment. It’s the opportunity to connect, energize, inspire, amaze, delight, awaken, electrify, intensify, move, propel, and set into action your website visitor into becoming your friend. Your story can be told using an unbelievable mixture and an inconceivable blend of text, art, drawings, case studies, visuals, actions, animations, videos, photos and sound. Add in a touch of user interaction in the form of opinions, surveys, comments, and links to more information and you’ve got boundless opportunities.

You have to study all the information available to you online.

• What type of demand is there for a service or product you can deliver?
• What reaction do you want to get from your website visitor?
• What’s the one thing you would like your web visitor to do while they are on your website?
• Who is your ideal customer?
• Which parts of your website do you want to standout and which parts do you want to blend in?
• What methods will you use to interact with your web visitors?
• What methods will you use to build a relationship with your web visitor?
• More to think about then you thought?

The most important things to remember are;

•  Don’t confuse the web visitor!
•  Give the web visitor a reason to stick around and hear your message!
•  Do not lose the web visitors desire to learn about, purchase, obtain information on, read, review, stock, buy, and invest in, your product or service.

Be careful how you use your call to actions!

Stop, Road Work Ahead, No Parking, Rest Area, Slow Down, Don’t Run, Walk, Be a Good Neighbor, Wash your Hands. Why do you react to some and ignore the others?

Understanding how signs make you feel helps you better understand how to use them on your website.

• Read Now!
• Buy Now!
• Click Here!
• Sign up!
• Buy!
• Like!
• Send Request!
• Act Now!

When you are online you can pick and choose which call to actions you follow and which you ignore. This is a moment when you would like to think you are in charge. But this is not the case. The truth of the matter is your unconscious is in charge. Neuroscientists believe your five senses take in over 11 million pieces of information every second. You conscious mind process a very small part of that information.

When you land on a website your unconscious mind has already processed millions of pieces of information that your conscious mind will never be aware of. It takes place in a matter of seconds. Your unconscious mind will collect data from a website and instantly decide whether it is a good or bad. Should you go or should you stay? All needed information will then be passed to your conscious mind. This puts your unconscious mind in the position of guide, pilot, driver, instructor, person in charge.

Life online is a life filled with websites that are

• Engaging
• Stale
• Flat
• Lifeless
• Mundane
• Spiritless
• Attractive
• Ideal
• Excellent
• Confusing
• Disoriented
• Uncertain
• Uninformed
• Incoherent
• and more

As you read this more websites are being added to the internet. Appalling, horrifying, enjoyable, grim, colorful, exotic, and extraordinary websites are being added to the internet in hopes of creating a following. So why should someone choose you over your competition?

There are hundreds of ways for web visitors to find your website. Of course the most popular is through a search engine like Google. Since most people (when surfing online) have about a two second attention span, that’s how long you’ve got before the web visitor hits the back button and heads back to Google. If you can’t create a desire in the web visitor with-in seconds of them landing on your website then they threw you back and move on to your competition.

The next time you’re looking to make a purchase online or for that matter looking for information online, take note of what websites you react favorably to. What makes you pay attention? What makes you leave? What makes you dig deeper? What makes you purchase? What makes you contact them? What moves you? What excites you?

You are always changing and developing. What you want today is not what you wanted when you were five years old. We have experiences in our life that affect future decisions in ways that we don’t fully understand. Most purchase decisions are made with their subconscious mind. This is the reason that you have to know who your perfect client is! You cannot build your website for everyone. It has to be targeted to one group of people.

If your website is being designed for people who are just starting their families then you want photos of people in their 20’s, just getting started in life. Every piece of your website from the information, photos, colors, and graphics should be tailored to your perfect client. Your website not only has to inspire, captivate, exhilarate, and make a lasting impression but it also has to create a desire in your web visitor for more.

All the pieces should come together in your web design. Your message has to be clear. The web design needs to be clean. Your website has to have both flair and purpose. Most importantly the desired action needs to be obvious. The path to the desired action needs to be clean, clear, concise, and exact.

The only way to do this is for you to know the purpose of your website. If you don’t know the purpose of your website then you can be pretty sure the action you want your web visitor to take isn’t clear. You should know who your website is designed for. If you don’t know who you your website is designed for then chances are the action you want them to take isn’t clear.

Does your current website design lack focus? The way we get focus is by having a clear understanding of who you are marketing to and what action you want them to take when they land on your website.

What sells better?

• A website that is only selling one product or service?

Or

• A website that sells everything?

In the real world, if I am going shopping I’ll head to The Mall or Wal-Mart. I know by going to either of those stores I’ll be able to take care of several shopping needs at once. Manuela needs some shoes. Frankie needs clothes. The family needs milk. It makes since to go to a store that carries everything.

Due to time it’s best to go to a store that has a little bit of everything. But what happens if the travel time is non-existent? Let’s say you are standing in Home Depot and there is a line of experts waiting to help you.

You are about to build a fence and want to know how deep you should burry your post. You can ask anyone expert standing in front of you the question. Now imagine as you stand there each expert has a sign above his head. This sign tells you what he’s an expert in. The first one is an expert fence builder. The second is an expert plumber. The third is an expert deck builder and the fourth is an expert in plumbing, deck building, gutters, fences, web designs and if he’s not busy he’ll even shovel snow off your drive way.

Who are you going to trust with the single most important part of the whole project?

You see, a lot of website owners confuse the Internet with the off-line world. They try and build a website that is tailored to everyone and in return it’s built for no one. When you try and become the Wal-Mart of your industry you end up being seen as a company that is not an expert in anything. Wal-Mart is tailored to a person that is not sitting at home watching their favorite TV show while looking for a baby bed for their sister-in-laws baby shower. Wal-Mart is built for someone, who is in a hurry, trying to save money, doesn’t have the ability to push the back button and search 5 million stories that compete with them in a blink of an eye.

With that being said it appears trying to be everything to everyone has worked for Amazon. People buy from people they like. People like people who are like themselves. The reason you buy from Wal-Mart is because it’s convenient. Wal-Mart saves you time and money. When you are online you become the time travel. You are able to travel in time to any shop you want anywhere in the world you want to go. You are no longer looking for a store that has everything. You are looking for an online expert that you like. The way you know you like him or her is because their website was built just for you. It grabs you by the shirt, looks you in the eyes and says, “I am the one, click me now!” Yes it’s that obvious when a website hits its targeted audience.

If it’s raining and your roofs leaking, you need a roofing expert. You need someone close by that does emergency repairs on roofs. You go to Google and do a search for your city and state along with the text “emergency roofing repair”. You click on the first website that comes up and it has a flashing banner that says, “24 hour roofing repairs” and says click this button and we can be there in 5 minutes. Was this website not built and tailored just for you?

What’s Better a Website that sells everything or one that Specializes in Only One Thing?

Let’s go back to the roofer. He does nothing but roofing repair. He lives in a small town and there are three other roofing companies. He’s recently learned that there are only two gutter companies in the town. So he wants to offer gutters along with the roofing repair service. So…the question is do you build a totally new website for the gutter service or do you add gutters into the roofing repair company. After all it does make sense that a roofing repair company also offers gutter repair.

Let’s look at it from the consumer’s side as you make your emergency phone call;

Negative:

• When you land on the site you now have to choose gutter repair or roofing repair.
• It’s kind of what’s behind door number 1! When you click roofing repair will you be asked more questions or get the answer you seek?
• Now you have to make a decision as to rather you want to start clicking buttons or hit the back button and find another website?

Positives:

• If you have a gutter problem it’s good to know this company can repair it.
• Knowing they do both roofing and gutters makes you think it’s a bigger company and adds some credibility.

It’s not a question of how many services should you offer your clients but how many services should you offer on one website?

Amazon started out as a bookstore but continued to add new products until they’ve become the Wal-Mart of the internet.

Too many options overwhelm us and we do nothing at all.

That’s what a group of researchers said. Researchers put a table of 6 different flavors of jam in front of a store. They then swapped it out with a table of 30 different flavors. They did this throughout the day and studied how people reacted to the 30 choices compared to the 6.

• Both groups tasted about the same number of flavors.
• The table with 30 flavors drew a larger crowd.
• However, thirty percent of the people that visited the table with six choices purchased jam, while only three percent made a purchase from the table that offered 30 options.

So if less is more then why do sites like Amazon continue to grow in size? Could it be the affiliates with the single topic sites that are running the sales up for Amazon?

Does this mean that I would be better off having an attorney web design business in Atlanta Georgia rather than a web design business in Atlanta Georgia? Is a world wide web design business okay, or does that include to many topics? I realize the only way to answer these questions is with split testing and sadly enough I am just starting to get my feet wet with split testing. So…I was wondering if anyone was willing to share what they’ve tested as well as the results from those tests? Oh…and I realize that no two sites or business are the same, so no two results would be the same but just wondering what others have been able to learn from split testing?

Websites are powerful incredible story tellers that are able to use multiple combinations of words, pictures, photos, illustrations, graphics, animations, videos, and sound to tell a story that’ll convince the end user that his or her life would be better, easier, happier, healthier, more product, wealthier and brighter if they just owned what it is you are selling. You can top it off with a little user interaction in the way of polls, surveys, places to comment, and links to get more information. The possibilities are endless.

There are so many things to consider. What will you sale? What do you want your website visitor to remember about your website? What action do you want your website visitor to take while they are on your website? Who do you want to sell to? How will you make sure the right parts of your website get noticed? What types of media will you use on your website? How will you draw your web visitor into your website? You will be overwhelmed at all the possibilities!

There are a couple things to remember when building a website.
• Keep your users attention.
• Don’t confuse them.
• Don’t bore them.
• Don’t allow them to lose interest in your product or service.

Have you ever noticed all the signs around you?

Stop, Slow Down, Don’t Run, No Parking, Walk, Be a Good Neighbor, Wash your Hands, No Spitting. Have you ever wondered what makes you accept one and reject the others?

The reason I ask is because we get hit with them every day on the internet.
• Read me!
• Buy me!
• Click me!
• Sign up for me!

Of course, you are not forced to follow any of those instructions. You decide what appeals to you and what does not appeal to you. You are in control. You can hit the back button at any moment. But have you ever wondered what causes you to hit the back button on one website and the contact us on another?

The Internet is a giant spider web filled with websites that are
• Fascinating
• Boring
• Eye-opening
• Scary
• Beautiful
• Ugly
• Superficial
• Complicated
• Hideous
• Brilliant
• Stupid
• Distasteful
• Unintelligible
• Confusing
• and more

At every moment in time, more and more ugly, shocking, gruesome, dull, exotic, and wonderful websites are being added to the internet.

Web visitors find websites in many different ways. One way is through the search engines. The thing about the search engines is that it’s easier to hit the back button and find another website then to sit around and try and figure out what a vague website is trying to say. We are a have to have it now world and if your website does not create the desire in the web visitor to have it now they’ve thrown it back and moved on to the next website.

Now think back on the last time you were looking to purchase something online or even for information. What were you looking for? How did you search for that information? What made you pay attention? What made you move to the next website? What made you take action? What made you look more? What excited you? What made you tell a friend? What made you purchase a product?

The most popular way for someone to find your website is through Google. The problem is that most people that are surfing the internet are doing just that, surfing. This means you’ve got about 2 seconds to grab and hold their attention. That’s about the amount of time it takes to hit the back button. The next time you’re looking to make a purchase online try and pay attention to what makes you stick around. What makes you pay attention? What makes you leave? What makes you dig deeper? What makes you purchase? What makes you contact them? What moves you? What excites you?

You have to know who your perfect client is! You cannot build your website for everyone. You have to target one group.

Did you know that we have a mathematical formula inside our brain that tells us what’s hot and what’s not? This part of the brain only looks out for three things;

• Our safety.
• Food.
• Sex.

The reason this is important to know is because if you’re targeting people in their early 20’s you need to have photos of the people that group would find attractive in your photos. Having an attractive person with your product makes your product appear more attractive. At the end of the day it’s the little things that normally have the biggest impact. If you don’t know who you’re targeting then you’re not targeting anyone. Every piece of your website from the information, photos, colors, and graphics should be tailored to your perfect client. Your website not only has to inspire, captivate, exhilarate, and make a lasting impression but it also has to create a desire in your web visitor for more.

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Sed id dui dolor, eu consectetur dui. Etiam commodo convallis laoreet. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Vivamus vel sem at sapien interdum pretium. Sed porttitor, odio in blandit ornare, arcu risus pulvinar ante, a gravida augue justo sagittis ante. Sed mattis consectetur metus quis rutrum. Phasellus ultrices nisi a orci dignissim nec rutrum turpis semper. Donec tempor libero ut nisl lacinia vel dignissim lacus tristique. Etiam accumsan velit in quam laoreet sollicitudin. Mauris euismod lacus ut magna placerat ac molestie augue consequat.