Oh Steve Jobs, you’ve read my mind. You also started a discussion that is long overdue. Job’s wrote an open letter today about Flash and why Apple has chosen to still not support the software made by Adobe. He makes some good points. I agree on all of them.

There are so many websites (especially restaurant websites) that are built in flash, it just boggles my mind. It’s extremely frustrating when you’re on a mobile device searching for a restaurant. You’ll do a quick search, get the website and location, but when you access the site to check out their menu, hours and delivery details it’s usually a site built in flash, UGH! Even if your phone was able to display the flash content, typically it’s really tacky, tasteless design thats hard to navigate. Usually I get frustrated and move on to the next restaurant.

Calling all restaurant owners! Make the change now! If you want your business to be bustling, then you better order up an experienced designer to build your site hopefully in CSS3 and make your site mobile friendly. Most people will do last minute searches for a restaurant, so not only does your site need a search presence, it also needs to be easily read and optimized for mobile devices.

In an interesting experience I had several weeks ago I noticed something about technology. No matter what, there is always a market for something. My girlfriend and I chose to sell our iPhones. In my opinion the iPhone is over hyped, is too restricted with it’s sdk’s, and the AT&T network is just horrible, (we’re getting Droids *plug).

We both posted our iPhones on eBay. They both sold incredibly under 2 minutes of being on auction via the buy now feature. Now here’s the interesting part. I noticed both buyers were Chinese. So I did some investigating and found out a tremendous amount of “gray-market” iPhone demand in China. Turns out that China does not allow wifi enabled iPhones to be sold due to some local regulation.

Suffice to say the phones sold for more than we paid for them with a nice profit. Seems that no matter where you are in the world, the demand for technology whether it’s legal or illegal and whether those determinations are just or not, people want to be connected at any cost. This gives great hope and promise within the social networking arena which much of the world isn’t even participating fully yet.

I believe that technology will actually become a sought after commodity as more and more restrictions come into play. Especially with all this talk about Google filtering China’s search results. I expect that there could also be a large Black Market Internet which will push the limits of technology even further.

Ashton Kutcher has almost 4 and a half million followers on twitter. That’s equal to more than half the population of New York City. Dude couldn’t find his car, but he found 4,291,162 people that think he’s worth listening to.

How did he do it?

Ashton Kutcher was one of millions and millions of people–famous and not–that flocked to Twitter and started sharing, chatting, an selling to each other.

Of course Twitter, has been the hottest thing on the internet for two years and was an obvious choice for reaching that huge number of potential movie-goers, reality-show watchers, or whatever else he wanted his fan base to become.

But wait…

Studies show that a full 60% of people leave twitter after a month and never come back. Who are these people? For obvious reasons, I like to call them Qwitters. They heard about a fad, decided to follow it, and then for whatever reason, decided it wasn’t worth their time and lost interest.

Which is fine unless…

You’re an internet marketer. As a web marketer, you aren’t allowed to just stop interacting with your customers or selling your product–a web marketer should always have something to say about their service or product.  Tweet about a new offering, blog about your holiday–or comment on a friend’s blog mentioning it, create some fun link bait, or even post a couple of inspirational quotes. Anything is fine as long as you are asserting your existence an letting your customers know you are there and still believe in the message and stand behind your product.

But I don’t like Twitter!

And that’s fine. We’re the first undead marketers to tell you not to blindly follow web marketing trends. But no matter whether your platform is your twitter page, your facebook, your myspace, your blog, or your email newsletter, never stop letting you’re customers know you’re there.

The point is…

Even aplusk started with a big 0 as his follower count, but he tweeted everyday, stayed on target and never quit. Take the same attitude towards your website marketing. Remember to assert your existence and speak to your customers everyday in any way you can and never be a Qwitter.

One trend I see on a regular basis, are companies following a dead trend or one on it’s way out. Typically once a marketing trend catches on, it’s already dead. Your competitors are hoping you follow their lead. Thats what makes them the leader and you the follower. They are already thinking 6 months ahead and you can barely keep up. It’s all about taking chances. If the risk you take is successful enough that will carry over and hopefully will snowball into more trend setting ideas. Yes there is trial and error involved, but it’s always the risk takers who reap the benefits.

One great and recent example is a friend of mine, Phil Kaplan just launched a new business called “blippy“. It’s controversial in the fact that it involves making credit card purchases publicly available online for all to see. It’s the next Twitter. Instead of telling your followers what your doing, you passively do so by making purchases. This creates a way of letting people know where you are, and what you’re doing and gives a clue on what you really purchase without even typing in an update.

Phil’s always been a progressive thinker, thats what makes him so successful.

Bottom line, take risks. If you don’t you’ll always be in second place.

I can always tell when someone is being fake. So can you. It’s a gut feeling, a natural instinct that tells you that something isn’t the way it ought to be. Think about those expressions old movie cops used for when something just wasn’t right: this smells fishy, I smell a rat, etc. That’s because when something or someone is phony, it’s as tangible and obvious as a smell.

The same principle applies to your web copy, or anything you write about your business. If it’s fake, it’ll smell fake. That is, it will come off feeling forced or unnatural to your readers or potential customers.

Will your readers know why they don’t want to click the “go to checkout” button or even why they don’t want to navigate further in the site? Maybe, and maybe not. Some people are very good at understanding their gut feelings, while others just feel a sort of uneasiness that makes them want to go down to the next result on the Google page.

In either case, the reason will be the same: your writing doesn’t seem natural.

Natural writing sounds like it’s something you want to be saying in the way in which you normally say things in your everyday life. Of course there are matters of formality–slang isn’t appropriate for web copy because it doesn’t seem professional, and not everyone understands it. But the idea is simple: write the way you would naturally speak if you were discussing something you love with someone who would like to know more about it.

So for example, if you loved say, model trains and met a very attractive lady (or guy) at a Model Trains convention…how would you go about explaining to her the details of your thrilling new concept that will innovate model transportation as we know it today?

You would probably: explain your concepts well, make sure she understands everything you’re saying, and go into just enough detail to keep her interested in your concept without putting her to sleep.

The same principles should be in your writing whenever you’re updated the sales copy on your website or sending an email to a client. After all, you want to leave your reader feeling as clear as a spring day; not pinching their noses and clicking the close button.

Every industry has experts. They have years of experience, and can make decisions from the gut that some can’t or may have a hard time doing. Most times companies will take the low road of hiring within even if it comes at a cost of potentially ruining a company. Don’t make this mistake. Just because an employee may have taken a web design class in college is by no means a foundation for them to be a Web Designer, let alone Art Director. Management will usually opt to not spend time and resources searching for the rock-star candidate. They will happily settle for less, if it means less hassle and less money to spend.

If your business is in a situation where it finds itself in dire need of an expert, please hire one. The expense that it may cost upfront for a seasoned pro is far less expensive than the misery you will put your business through promoting the wrong person.

You need someone who has a lightbulb going off all the time throughout the day. A true creative visionary. Someone who doesn’t hoard their ideas because they’re so abundant. There are plenty of people like this out there, the question is, if it is a matter of your business surviving from their ideas, are you willing to financially support this need to save your business?

Wow, well aside from the long cool headline this is big news from Google. Basically Google will soon take your personal web habits and cater the results for you. This is good and bad depending on what side of the fence you stand. Google has always been about search relevancy. This is great is you search for similar things on a regular basis and want to omit the search results you never choose anyway. The ones who will suffer from this are the companies who will infomercial you via search results. You know who I mean, the ones who optimize their sites to rank for terms that sometimes have no relevance but are hoping to find customers blindly.

I think this can be great for legitimate businesses. Yes it may be harder for you to gain ranking but you know what, this means fair and equal balance among competition online. Build a strong brand the old fashioned way and you will be rewarded. If you’re a new business, then concentrate on word of mouth and standard marketing strategies first before shoveling a bunch of cash into a pay per click campaign.

Ok, first off. If you don’t know what Augmented Reality is you may be asking, whoa… this sounds pretty weird. Actually Augmented Reality is a new Web 3.0 coined term which merges online life with real life.

Here’s an example. There are several iPhone apps that allow you to view through your iPhone camera in real time while overlaying web elements on the screen (map, directions, description of what you’re looking at through the camera). This sounds very sci-fi. But really we need to start thinking of how marketing strategies will be developed this way since we are quickly moving towards a reality of merging web life and real life.

Dreamers can now apply far fetched ideas into something real, usable and profitable. Imagine being able to create unique ad’s for customers walking by your store in real-time, or being able to find restaurant reviews and locations based off a geo-targeted picture taken on your phone. There are still plenty of kinks and new developments to be made to make this hybrid of web and life truly functional. But right now is the catalyst of ideas to come.

Even more far fetched, imagine using Google Street View. Now imagine you see a car in street view, you hover over it and an ad is displayed for used cars of that make and model. The ideas really are endless and I’m really looking forward to what Web 3.0 brings us.

Here’s a topic that most of you can relate to. You have an opinion and I have an opinion and most of the times these will be different and thats ok. Thats what’s great about us humans, we agree to disagree and great ideas come of these situations sometimes. One thing that can really throw a wrench in the mix, is letting your opinion override fact when making business decisions that can have a significant impact on your company.

Lets say you have a certain taste and style associated with that. You like cartoonish looking designs and thats ok by me. But, when making a decision to implement a serious tone and professional attitude, you may want to let your personal taste step aside and let reason do the talking. Many businesses suffer from this problem. Allowing someone to make high level decisions on style when in fact they are not qualified to do so will create a serious snowball effect and your project will most likely fail.

If your company uses analytics to make educated decisions on marketing strategies, then they’re on the right track. Go with the flow. Utilize all the tools necessary to make your decisions based on fact and not opinion. Users web behavior are done with reason, if you’re not paying attention to their habits, then you’re basically passively ignoring them and you will reap the benefits of not catering to your customer.

If you’re a small local business and you want to get on your local customers online radar, your first priority is getting your physical address all over your website. Zip codes and alternate names of the neighborhood your business is in will definitely increase your organic rankings in Google. When customers are searching for a local business, they usually enter a keyword followed by the zip code, or the name of the neighborhood with the keyword of the product they’re searching for. Then Google will show a hybrid local result using their map and normal search engine results link underneath it (see map image above).

Getting local organic results is the first challenge, next is getting quality customer reviews about your business. Setup a customer survey questionnaire, have customers fill them out and encourage them to post the results on google maps. Come up with an incentive for your customers to do this. This should be your top priority, think of it as word of mouth which essentially it is because the quality of referrals you get from word of mouth are usually high.

Bottom line is having an established connection between your physical business and online presence should be taken seriously. With little effort you can boost your customer reach significantly.

It’ really boring and stale the same old SEO tips and trick articles you see online. I recently got an email from someone marketing an SEO tips webinar and how to dominate Google, and be listed in the top 5 results for your search terms. So I decided to attend it purely out of curiosity because I know how these things go already. To keep the story short, I left the webinar 10 minutes into it because it’s the same old boring crap everyone has heard before. It really surprises me on how long you can keep up this game of tricking people luring them in with big promises just to spew out garbage that you can find on Wikipedia.

So here’s my tip. Write about what you love. Keep your site going with steady content for about a year to gain traction. Most people looking for a quick buck don’t have patience, and are not in it for the long haul and it shows because they’re not doing something they love to do. Yes add in the typical standard SEO best practices, but just keep it going. Write everyday.

Remember, search engines change algorithms all the time, so you may be listening to information that really is harming your site and not helping it. Most articles I see is information thats a few years old already and thats a lifetime on the web.

So here’s the secret, pure intention always wins. And I think Google’s algorithm favors honesty more than keywords.

So you’re ready to get your business online. You have a great idea or product, great written content, domain name and a beautifully designed site. You start your search for web hosting companies. You get hundreds of search results and you don’t know which to choose. Some offer free hosting, limited time specials, dedicated hosting, virtual hosting. There’s so many choices that you’re confused and overwhelmed and don’t know what to do.

We’re going to make it easy and break it down for you. I’m going to educate you so you’ll know what to avoid.

Basic Hosting Packages

Usually the basic hosting packages are for small business, portfolio sites and blogs. The average cost for a web host is about $7.99 to $100 a month pending the additional services and bandwidth you require and normally have a onetime setup fee which ranges from $29-$49. Don’t buy into the up sell. For a moderately sized e-commerce site, you may need about 200-400mb of space and approximately 1gig of bandwidth. You can always upgrade your service so there’s no sense spending more money now if you don’t have to.

Dedicated Server Hosting Packages

A dedicated server hosting package is much more robust and allows for a lot of customization. This is usually for larger companies with unique applications that need to be run and for sites with large amounts of traffic. The upside is flexibility as these packages are very scalable, speed, because it is running your site only and security since no other sites are being shared on your server. The downside is that it usually takes more resources to manage and monitor them in turn costing more money.

The bottom line is don’t buy into the up sell. For a moderately sized e-commerce site, you may need about 200-400mb of space and approximately 1gig of bandwidth. You can always upgrade your service so there’s no sense spending more money now if you don’t have to. Always start off small and gradually increase resources when needed.

Google, Yahoo, eBay and Microsoft have now all positioned themselves to offer free temporary Wi-Fi access in some public spaces and airports in the hopes of drumming up their advertising efforts. This can go a number of ways. It can be a great service to cut costs for the average person who looks to surf the net for free, or can be a pain to those who see this as a potentially intrusive move with big business bullying themselves to get in front of a mass audience.

Personally, I think it’s a win win. Free access but you have to use their search engine. Big deal, sounds great to me. The only objection I would have is how much access they will have in tracking what you do from your mobile device or laptop. This is where free wi-fi can eventually go wrong because of all of these companies being so data driven and hungry to stay ahead of each other that they lose site of customer experience.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and if you are blind to the overall goal of these companies and just want to casually surf the internet for free, then there is really no harm done.

So where does inspiration come from when starting a web business? How did you get to this point? Why do you want to work for yourself? Depending on what business you want to start, the reasons will vary. Usually inspiration comes from necessity but thats not always the reason. The simplest thought sometimes can spawn a great idea. It’s how you develop your idea and how you follow through is what will take it from just an idea to a reality.

Many times with large business’s, idea’s are shot down from investors because of the risk factor. You’ll encounter lots of red tape, chains of management and overall pessimism. Some companies are comfortable to truck along with the same old tried and true methods and are happy receiving marginal results. This is where your ideas can run wild. A true marketing visionary knows to push the envelope for the right occasions and knows when to fold an idea from gut feeling. Let your ideas run wild now, because once you achieve success on a larger scale, the room to be creative narrows greatly.

The stand out businesses online are successful because their belief in their product and their customer service speaks for itself. If you feel strongly about your idea, that will come across to your peers and will usually find it’s way to becoming reality. Focus on your idea and envision it in everyday life. Even if it sounds funny or doesn’t make sense, you have to live your idea for it to become something that invokes emotion.

The key to success is to find the emotional trigger of your client or customer. Think from the mass consumer perspective and divide to the lowest common denominator. Many times its the little things and details that will turn someone off about your offering, so be sure to cover all your bases and make sure to avoid the simple mistakes.

Think 10 steps ahead. Eventually the rest will catch up.

This morning on my commute I was reading an article in Businessweek’s iPhone app. After scrolling a few times due to the content being so long I became uninterested in the rest of the article and went back to listening to music. I didn’t feel like reading a novel on my 10 minute commute.

This got me thinking, if Businessweek created an app for the iPhone to make their content more accessible on mobile devices, then why did I become uninterested in it half way through? The content was just too long for an article that could get to the point quicker. This is where I think the old 200-500 word article count is soon to be thrown out the window.

Businesses need to start writing with mobile users in mind. Short, headline driven articles thats all. Get to the facts fast and make your point. If you create a piece of software for use on a mobile device, be sure the purpose it serves is for what it is intended to do, make reading on mobile devices easy.

The next major leap in web marketing is mobile devices. More people have web enabled mobile devices than personal computers now. Many have also already ditched their land lines for far superior and affordable mobile phones. The next piece of outdated technology to go is the desktop computer. Once web based operating systems take over, you’re going to see an explosion of new mobile devices that will replace old and out of date clunky desktops. People are living faster paced lifestyles in which time is limited and if you want your product to sell, being in front of your customer in the palm of their hand wherever they go is a no brainer. This is an area where you need to establish yourself now in the mobile marketing arena.

Having a mobile version of your website is an absolute necessity. Mobile sites are more text oriented and they should load fast, so images should be used sparingly. Ensure that your customer can easily navigate the site and find what they’re looking for quickly. Adapting an appropriate mobile strategy to co-exist with your current web strategies will ensure you don’t lose customers who may be far more mobile savvy.

The fastest growing mobile trend right now are unique applications (apps) that run on the phones operating system. Devices like Apple’s iPhone is in the lead with thousands of easily downloadable applications most being free or little to no cost at all. Apple’s share of the mobile market is growing rapidly and far exceeding expectations.

Apple has claimed over 2 billion applications have been downloaded. Thats a massive market that is still new and has unlimited potential. It would be in your businesses best interest to start researching how an application for the iPhone could benefit you.

Google recently acquired the company AdMob for $750mil which reinforces the idea and reality of mobile becoming the next big thing.

Sites such as HSN and QVC know this and sales have been steady to show this model works. They use their network channel as a sales person and their website as their catalog.

What if you don’t have a product but offer a service? This model of web video still works. Getting face to face with a potential customer even if it’s digital will increase your chances of selling your service through credibility and trust. Purely spoken information will increase leads and sales due to the lack of attention span to read on the web. Most people tend to listen better than they read when digesting information, so take advantage of this method of selling.

Video is even better for advertising online since there are so many sites that promote video. Most sites you can submit your video to are free and some can even earn you money. Driving traffic to your site with customers that have already seen your product tends to yield better conversion since a customer has made the choice to visit your site after seeing what you offer. With a small little investment in a video camera and reading a few simple tutorials online, you will have a new arsenal of web marketing tactics ready to go.

Optimization isn’t just a term used for search. You can optimize all facets of your business from yourself to your employee’s to software purchases and web hosting packages. You need to itemize the biggest expenses your company has which is probably advertising and narrow things down from there. I know several large companies with million dollar campaigns running with many inefficiencies where their money can be spent better in other areas.

Look for any and all inefficiencies of your online business. Always stay on top of new marketing techniques, make sure you read current industry blogs within your vertical market and ditch anything that doesn’t convert to sales. Pay close attention when analyzing your site for any holes in the sales conversion process. Getting feedback from customers from a quick multiple choice question form is a great way to find out areas your business may be lacking.

Without any major changes, little by little you can save money and potentially save your web business.

Customers are not the same. They are all different and have different needs. If there is one recipe for an online businesses success it would certainly be great customer service. Anyone can sell something online, but it’s how the customer interacts with your site and the attention given to a customer which is integral to creating a loyal, satisfied long term customer.

If you’re selling a specific product, you should be knowledgeable about that product if not an expert. One thing that turns off customers is an uneducated seller who is concerned more with unloading a product for profit than actually believing in what they are selling. When you’re knowledgeable about your product it puts the customer at ease. The customer feels confident buying from you because they know if they have a question or issue it will probably be addressed quickly and thoroughly. People like confidence, especially when buying a product.

One example is the use of mobile applications. The market for mobile apps right now is huge. If your online business is thinking of creating a mobile application, the best strategy would be to provide something that benefits your customers. Giving back so to speak is a great way of providing value to your customers and at the same time can be used as a very effective marketing and feedback tool.

When you provide value to customers that goes beyond what you are selling, it creates a positive memorable experience for them. This is crucial for any future marketing or word of mouth buzz you may want to create through your customer base. If you want your customers to promote your site without them knowing, the best way to do that is to ensure they are spreading the word to their friends and family about your service and why it is a pleasure doing business with your company.

Always keep the customer happy.

1 – Letting internal business politics influence website design

Just because an executive may like the color blue doesn’t mean thats the best decision or direction a website should go based on his/her taste and opinion alone. And just because you may want to kiss up and do what the boss says, you’re making a larger mistake in the long run. You will always be respected for doing the right thing and maintaining your artistic integrity then to sell out for quick and cheap short lived praise from the boss. Most businesses run with the “what have you done for me lately model” so a mistake like this can bite you back. There are ways to avoid these situations and easy compromises can be made if you approach the subject professionally with statistics to back you up. If an executive thinks a purple, green and orange color scheme represents the new product best, have documented proof that it doesn’t and discuss how using an alternative and complementing color scheme can be more successful.

2 – Launching prematurely

Personally I think this happens everywhere, even though a few companies have their launch strategy down pretty well, there are some that will just always jump the gun. Most times executives get a little too excited about a new product and think that a site can be launched prematurely, a.k.a. a “soft launch”. Just because it is mocked up in Photoshop doesn’t mean it can be made live the next day. There are so many components to releasing a large corporate site that launching early with limited features will just wind up turning into a mess. There needs to be design sensitivity training for management that focuses on timelines and why it is important to stick by them.

3 – Re-designing for the hell of it

This one of the biggest wastes of time for a designer. Just because your competitor has revamped their site doesn’t mean you have to do the same. There needs to be a clear strategy behind changing your design and not just because it looks cool.

4 – Understaffing and overworking

Having one designer work on a major corporate site is down right insane. I’ve seen it plenty. Not only can you burn them out on working on one project for months at a time, the room for error increases because of the repetitiveness they are engaging in and sheer volume of multitasking they are performing. No matter how great a designer is, and at no fault to his/her own, everyone benefits from having their work reviewed or collaborated with another person. For a major news publication styled site, there should be at least three designers. One for designing core elements such as navigation, page layout. One for CSS and page styling, and one for accents such as buttons, banners etc.

5 – Involving novices for senior decision making

Sometimes team building is best left to staff events. Although newcomer input should always be valued, and is a great way to make them feel more a part of the team, involving newly hired or entry level designers to make decisions that can significantly impact the businesses bottom line is a big no no. Senior people are senior because they have years of experience under their belts and know how to avoid amateur mistakes that a new designer may make to get his/her name known.

Always go with a senior designers advice, even if the boss thinks the newbie is cutting edge and has thousands of people following their twitter account.

6 – Not adhering to Best Practices

Skipping steps. Yes there’s a time and place when deadlines supersede certain processes, but if there is a formal procedure of doing things always stick to it. I have seen first hand the simplest of mistakes slip through for the sake of getting something out in a haphazardly way.

7 – Prematurely partnering for quick bucks

So a new site has alot of buzz, and they get a ton of traffic to their site. You’re in a position to partner up and looks like a win win. All of a sudden a month later, the site goes belly up with some type of scandal, and your name is dragged through the mud with them. Now it’s time for damage control. Cleaning up the mess of your company being associated with a scandal. You spend more time scouring message boards to clear your name then you spent putting into the partnering decision in the first place.

Bottom line, do business with reliable and established businesses. Don’t just jump on the bandwagon for a quick buck. Always think long term.

Buzz words, marketing campaigns, visual overload all vying for your attention and commitment to buy into what they’re offering online. Sometimes it’s a necessary evil we need to accept and deal with. I don’t ever think that once in my life I ever bought something because it had a slick catch phrase or the packaging was cool. Many people are starting to get wise and do the same especially in a downturning economy. Don’t really on fine print or disclaimers to get your business through the door.

Many consumers make purchasing decisions based off of one criteria, customer satisfaction. If someone recommends a product  and swears by it, it usually creates a word of mouth buzz. If the service and product is great, you’ll probably have many happy customers and advocates for your business. This is where I think that search engine marketing and search results will start to become less important in the next few years. More and more web users on social networking sites are starting to take recommendations from friends and word of mouth for information then relying on search.

Avoid wasting time and money on slick ads and expensive creative agencies to try and capture leads for new business. You need to sell your credibility. You need to be and live your product or business. Times are changing and consumers are more skeptical than ever and have become more savvy shoppers. Honesty and credibility has now become a commodity in which you need to be successful. If you give your word and stand by it, that is the true recipe for success.

One thing I’ve seen too often, is the release and approval of websites that certainly lack credibility in the design department. Sometimes these decisions are made by managers with no design experience, other times it’s a rush to get a product on the market.

Usually this happens with smaller companies with no in-house design department, but there are also some guilty parties with major design departments in which this shouldn’t happen but does anyway. Many times it comes down to an urgent business need and the rush to have it released rather than to think about how the design portrays credibility of the company to it’s clients is undermined. It is understandable for a product to launch quick and efficiently but always get the opinion and approval of a credible design source.

Here’s an easy way to think about it; you wouldn’t wear your gym clothes to a business meeting, and you wouldn’t wear a suit to go work out in the gym. Then why would you use a cartoon style to represent a strong financial business? Or use a stark minimalist approach for a kids daycare center. I think my point is clear. Design needs to be directly linked to your business. Visual representation is job one with an online business. It’s your front door that welcomes customers in, or confuses them and makes them turn away. So please do some research and put some time into the design of your businesses site.

Personally I have been turned off by a few sites with this backwards approach to design in which I would not do business with the company solely on my first impression of how they represented their business online. If a company cannot get it’s homepage right, there are probably other underlying problems about.

So get it right. Don’t just ask an intern if the site looks good.

How does a business become an overnight success? Why do some businesses take off and others crash and burn? There are so many reasons why some sites become mega successes it’s really hard to nail down the details. Usually there is a loose formula for this. Timing, need, drive and accessibility. Timing is the hardest part in this stew of success. Sometimes you just get lucky and win the business lotto. Some businesses have the right product at the right time, and some take years to gain momentum. Most are associated with luck, but there are ways to force the momentum in your favor.

Hard work always shows and pays off. This is the first step in the right direction and will separate you from the businesses who don’t have a strong online presence. Having your website finalized before launch and avoiding those “under construction” or “coming soon” will definitely make more of an impact. It’s all about first impressions. Remember think “real life” when making decisions about your site.

Offering something that most don’t is also a great start. This is harder to come by nowadays since the internet is flooded with everything under the sun. But if you’re a niche and have a demand for something the better your chances of succeeding. Make sure you spend a good amount of time researching your competition and analyze what they’re doing, where they are advertising and any strategic information you can use to your advantage.

Website Trends

Whenever a new trend comes about is also the perfect time to start a business related to it. I remember when ringtones first started to become big everyone was making a ringtone site. Now this doesn’t always work, but if you are experienced enough, you can dabble in a few different genres online fairly easy if you have the time to commit to it.

Internet Buzz

Creating a buzz. The greatest way for overnight success is publicity. Now whether it’s good or bad is up to you. Doing something extreme in your marketing tactic can make the news, but breaking the law can also kill your business. One guerilla marketing campaign that comes to mind is when the cable channel for the Adult Swim hired some people to put up digitally lit led characters for Aqua Teen Hunger Force around as advertisements, they thought it was a bomb plot and people were arrested. But overnight it made the news and everyone was talking about it. I guess thats the price you have to be willing to pay.

There’s plenty of opportunity out there, it all comes down to your idea and how hard you push it.

A great and free way of getting some link backs to your site as well as promoting certain products to a wider range of customers is using news article sites such as e-zine articles. Sites like these offer content for use to re-post on other websites. You write an article, and someone in need of web content related to your subject will post it on their site. The benefit to you, they need to include a link to your site to credit you for the content. Pending on how general your topic is, it could be re-used on dozens or hundreds of sites. That means dozens or hundreds of link backs to your site, which in turn can significantly boost your search ranking.

Another simple way of promoting your website is to create a press release. There are many sites online that will publish your news and send to the local news wires. The news should be something significant to warrant having a press release such as a launch of a local web business or new product. This will certainly get temporary traffic to your site. This is great to tie this into a product you may be promoting heavily on your site that you want customers to see.

Sometimes large marketing tactics with a small business marketing budget isn’t possible, this is where you need to get creative, go grass roots and get your guerilla marketing on! Getting quality visitors to convert better is tougher to come by. People are keen on bait and switch and other scams, so integrity and quality on your site is important.

The basics which have been covered many times is to setup simple search engine ads through all the top search engine companies. The cost is determined by the keyword you bid on to have your ad show up. The more you’re willing to spend on one click of your ad with a related keyword, the higher you’re placed in the ad results section of the search engine. A way to stretch your budget out is to do some research with International search engines. Most other markets may be cheaper to bid on highly sought after keywords. Also look for alternate keywords related to your product. Don’t always go for the obvious. Use one of the dozens of keyword tools online to determine what is best for your company. Try simple misspellings of certain keywords also.

Next is to brand everything with your domain name. Business cards, email signature, social networking profile pages. Depending on your business model and product offering, you should post flyers with your domain name and offering. Your goal should be to drive as much traffic as possible to your site for little to no cost for the first few months.

Submit your sites URL to all of the top search engines. There usually is an add URL link on their sites but sometimes you have to search around for it. Submit it to directories such as dmoz.org.

Search for user forums related to your business. Get active with posting on the forums, gain credibility, don’t blatantly promote, but discuss with others and drop light mentions of your business and always have your URL in your profile signature.

Social networking sites are great for promoting your business. Make a profile on a few sites like facebook, linked in and twitter with the name of your business. Keep people informed with new products and ideas not only on your main website but in these areas also. Word of mouth buzz is priceless when looking for traffic to your website.

Small strategies like this can gain momentum and you will see a better return on your investment rather than throwing money away without really knowing what works best, and what quality leads and customers your getting.

Theres really no excuse nowadays to make the mistakes previous companies have made on the web. Your site should be tasteful with a balance between look, functionality, readability and also optimized for search engines. Stay away from heavy flash animations and images. Avoid using text inside images. Instead use html text over images. Text is your friend. Remember the more relevant and unique content on your site the more you’ll be crawled by search engines spiders which in turn results in better organic ranking.

Here’s a quick checklist for your website launch.

Grammar, writing style and spell check. Make sure the customer can easily understand your offering. Don’t ramble on about your products. State the facts in bullet points and a few sentences. An simply resolved issue such as misspelling lends to a lack of credibility so always double spell check. If you don’t take the time and effort to check your work, that ultimately represents you and your business. Write with the masses in mind. Use simple and short as your guideline to writing content for your site. Too much content even if well written will be skipped over. We are a headline driven culture and have learned to read that way. We like short to the point headlines. So stick to small paragraphs and bullets.

Navigation. So important. Most commonly, top navigation or left bar navigation. Many sites have un-intuitive navigation layouts that confuse people. Be sure every page links to its proper section and can cross link back via a site-map. Try and use an easy to understand naming convention for your navigation sections and the pages they link to. Create a site map. Site maps list out every link on the site with its proper section. Site maps also carry value with Web crawlers since this gives a quick snapshot of your sites layout.

Broken links. Ugh, sometimes it just happens when designing a site that you may mis-link a page that won’t exist. Test every link on your site before launching. Not only does it look bad to have broken links on your site, web crawlers may even rank you negatively because of broken links. The best thing to do is to make a custom 404 page instead of getting the default “page cannot be found” that your browser displays. Creating a custom page with a link back to the homepage ensures a better customer experience. This gives the user the option to look around on your site rather than just leaving your site.

Add a sense of community. Add a review and comments section or even better a discussion forum. People want to know about a businesses service and track record before they buy. To build credibility, user reviews are important as well as making other users feel a sense of community on your site. Adding a forum is a great way also of letting your customers speak to each other regarding your product.

So you’re ready to start your website. You have a great name and idea, now you need to get your site online. The decision to choose a web hosting company should be based off of word of mouth or reviews on forums and discussion boards. Frustrated customers will certainly let everyone know if they’ve been burned by bad service. To start look for a company that has been around for a few years. Don’t just look for a cheap deal from a company that just setup shop! They’ll probably be growing pains and issues. Make sure the company has a reasonable up time for their sites as well as a 24/7 support number or email address to contact someone if your site happens to go down overnight.

Be sure to choose a dedicated IP address and not a shared IP. An IP address is the actual number (like a phone number) associated with your domain name. A dedicated IP address is best as an insurance policy against your site being grouped together with either competitor or malicious sites. Shared IP addresses can move your site within different groups on a server.

Web hosts are generally $9.99 to $100 or more a month and depends on certain factors. Size of site content, how much traffic will be coming to your site, and the use of a dedicated IP address. To start, the $25-50 range is about right for a startup web business.

For branding, your overall strategy will be focused more on advertising than getting great search results because you’re presenting your product to people who may not know about it for the first time. This type of marketing strategy is to saturate the web with your name and associate it with your product. For an already known name or product familiarity, you’ll rely less on advertising but will focus more on search engine results. This is because people may be familiar with and know your product but they may not how to find it easily online or through search.

Shorter, easy to remember domain names are most desirable. But since the web is saturated with domain squatters* who have bought most of the great and easy to remember domain names. It’s harder to come by a unique easy to remember name so you’ll need to get creative. Domains with dashes are ok when in a pinch for a name you really want (my-domian-name.com) just try and keep it to about three words max. Purchasing multiple variations and common misspellings of your domain name is also normal procedure. This ensures if someone types in your name wrong, someone else won’t buy that domain and profit on it directing a user to a competitor site.

Domain names are typically $9.99 a year to register and usually has the option to extend for several years at a cheaper cost.

*someone who buys domain names in bulk in hope of someone wanted a name to pay a high price for it.

That is one of the keys to a web sites success. The only way you will get great search engine rankings is to make sure your site has the following:

Unique content. Copycats beware. Search engines penalize you for copying content so don’t even go there. If you’re selling a product or service that others are selling also, creative bizarro content (opposite of theirs but related to the product). Original content with proper use of title tags, keywords, meta tags and description is what helps you climb to the top of the search engine results pages. Shoot to have about two or three keyword rich paragraphs per page. Write the content in the perspective of you searching for it online, with terms as how you would type a search request into a search engine, but in a way that blends it into the content and makes sense.

Keywords that are higher on the page top left are ideal. Web spiders (an automated program that search engines use to find your content) hit this area first usually and is common that they’ll rank the page higher.

Name and use alt tag images. The code used to visually display text if your browser doesn’t show the image. Make sure these are named in relation to your sites keyword strategy.

Naming conventions for web pages. The name of your page /my-page.html is important. Make sure it relates to the content on your page and references a keyword. Best way is to have a keyword in the page name and the same keyword in the H1 tag (Header 1).

Cross reference other related pages on your site. If one page has info that leads to the other page, link certain keywords to that page.

First and foremost, your current business or your business idea.

Most ideas and businesses are created out of necessity. Whether it’s financial goals or to make your life easier or both. When creating an online business, your website is your storefront and represents you and your offering. Being honest, maintaining integrity and credibility with customers will ensure your success. Always stick to your gut first decision even if it fails. Learn from your mistakes even though trying to avoid them.

To start your site you need a domain name (www.businessname.com) website content (text and images), knowledge of a web site program to create your site, or hire a designer. There are some good free website template resources available also that are basically pre-built (like a pre-fab house) you just need to add content (like adding furniture to your new pre-fab house). Having your content written and organized before you build the site is ideal. Try to shoot for at least 20 pages of content to launch your site.