Internet Marketing Case Study Series: Part 5
Posted on April 29, 2008 | Filed Under Case Studies
Wow! It’s been a while since I wrote another installment of this series. But that’s a function of my coaching student’s busy life schedule. He was finishing up a masters in education and then had a bit of a career path crisis. But, he’s back on track now and chugging along on his first website.
I am a little behind, though, even so in reporting Jim’s progress. When I last left you, he was brainstorming the structure/outline of his site. It’s an important step, so you need to take your time. You want your site to be organized in a logical fashion that is user-friendly. At the same time, you need to organize it so that it maximizes the search engine potential. Jim chose to do it by getting a large piece of poster board and laying out his structure in an organizational chart fashion.
He used post it notes to label each page and the associated keywords, so that he can make changes if he needs to. He’s a visual person, and this seems to work for him.
After that, Jim got started on building his site. Every site needs to start with a design, or template. In SBI, this is fairly easy. You just go to the Look & Feel Selector, and you can choose from over 100 different designs. And among those, you can do further customization, even if you have no graphic skills. Jim has me, though, and I took one of the SBI designs & overlaid a photograph and logo text on it to make it uniquely his.
So, once he had a design, it was time to build the home page. Here are some essential points about a home page on a content site like Jim’s:
- It needs to have a strong “voice”, meaning basically… personality, your personality. Don’t be impersonal or standoffish… people won’t connect with you that way.
- It needs to communicate what your site is about and what’s in it for the reader… why should they click through to the rest of your site?
- It needs to not have advertising. People don’t want to be hit with ads as soon as they enter a content site. They want information. Nor do you want to give them an opportunity to click off your site before you’ve fully drawn them in.
- It doesn’t need to be more than 350 to 500 words… just enough to get your Most Wanted Response (MWR), which should be to click through, or maybe to subscribe to your ezine or mailing list.
Your home page should set the tone for the whole rest of your site, and you DO want to connect with your readers. Revealing at least a bit of your personal background helps, especially if you can show that you truly understand where the reader is coming from. Talk from your heart, and write like you talk. This is not Wikipedia and you are not lecturing.
After you build your home page, it’s a good idea to get the Contact page up fairly soon, so that if you DO happen to get any visitors (it doesn’t usually happen right away, but you never know), they can communicate with you if they want. NOTE: Don’t ever post your actual email address on a page, or you WILL get spammed. Trust me; I know. Put a form up on the page. Again, SBI makes this easy as pie with their FormBuildIt module.
Another great page to start out with is your About Me page. Here’s your chance to reveal a bit more about yourself. Really allow your readers to get to know you. This is a powerful technique that will contribute to your eventual success with your site. The Web is an impersonal place. Make yourself real.
And once you lay that foundation for your site, then get busy writing your actual content! This is where Jim is now. He’s so in love with his site, he’s having trouble actually buckling down and writing the meat. But he’ll get there…
To your success,
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My name is Kathi, and I created this website to share my expertise and knowledge about starting an online home business. Thank you for visiting. I hope you'll take the time to explore not only this blog, but also the rest of my site. There's lots of info here! You can 