You have to advertise to get your business name out there, but advertisement isn’t always billboards. Most small businesses don’t have the resources to place those ads. Let’s examine a phone book advertisement. All of these figures are dependent on content, placement and other various factors; they are not quotes for advertisement. For a basic ad on their website your business can expect to pay around $100 per month or $1,200 per year. Your average ad in the actual book can run up to $8,000+ per year. Ouch. So, keeping score, we’re up to $9,000 worth of advertising. It’s going to be hard to recoup that level of investment.

Next, we’ll consider using social networking as the sole source of advertisement and the opportunity cost involved in that. Facebook is free. Hallelujah! Not so fast. Facebook does nothing on its own. You have to spend the time to fill in all the information, make all the friends, gather all the “likes” and keep the content up to date; preferably on a daily basis. Otherwise, it’s just another page floating out there that no one reads. So, let’s assume you have put in the time to create and maintain a Facebook page for your business. It probably took you a few hours to fill in all the information, put up some pictures, send out some recommendations, etc. Now, every day you need to spend a couple of hours updating your posts, keeping the information relevant, making sure you’re reaching your target audience, getting more and more “likes” and maintaining two way communication with your fans. Here’s the big question: what is your time worth? Even at minimum wage ($7.25 per hour) for 12 hours per week you have spent $87 worth of productivity on Facebook alone. Now, I’m sure you value yourself higher than minimum wage, but for the sake of argument we just spent $4000 per year in productivity.

Now let’s take a look at email marketing. One site charges about $15 per month for up to 500 email addresses. Not a bad deal, but you still have to do the work. So let’s assume that you’ve paid for the 500 addresses at $15 per month. You want to send out bi-weekly emails, so you spend about 3 hours (at $7.25/hour) working up the emails. So your opportunity cost is $21.75 every two weeks plus your $15 per month for the addresses. That totals about $750 per year if you are severely undervaluing your own time.

Before you know it, you could have spent nearly $15,000 and had almost no return on that investment. But there is good news! Web sites can cost a fraction of that investment. Plus, websites are 24/7 advertising. They work around the clock. Granted, you still have to put in some time to make sure the website information gets out there, but we can make that easier on you as well. We can also help to make social networking easier. If you’re going to put in the time, shouldn’t it give you multiple results? A website, combined with facebook and various other points of contact allows you to realize a much larger return on your investment of time and money.

So, when considering your advertising budget, consider that outdated forms of advertising are very expensive, relying on facebook isn’t as free as it seems and email marketing can still add up to thousands of dollars. Consider the big picture for your small business, and take into account what your time is worth. Add up the real costs before you spend anything, and remember Cobalt Spider Web Design can help. Just give us a call.

First, there’s the cost of YOUR time – creating an effective website is not a quick process. If you are spending time building your own website then you are not spending time working on YOUR business.  That time lost is opportunity lost.

To look at it from another  angle, unless you are a tax expert, you probably don’t do your own taxes–not that you couldn’t, but the time it takes to stay abreast of the continuously changing tax laws is daunting….so unless you are a web site designer, creating your own site is not the best use of your time/money.

There is a lot to consider with how a site lays out so that it is easy to read and navigate, graphics to build, pictures to optimise, and it takes more than cutting and pasting some images into a template.  It gets even slower if you have to spend time troubleshooting and teaching yourself bits of programming.

Then there is the work that goes into planning the site to work well with search engines.  Even if the site looks fantastic if you have not done even some basic search engine optimization (SEO), you may not rank highly in the search engines.  Which would mean that the time you spend building the site is all lost.

Remember, you get what you pay for – the “free” site builders can certainly look nice up front, but without up-to-date, quality code you site may stop working the way you want it to, which puts you back to square one.

These are just a couple reason you should NOT try to build your own site.  There are web design firms out there that range from small to large, inexpensive to very expensive all depending on your needs.  Pleas feel free to get in touch with us at Cobalt Spider Web Design to talk about your affordable, fully custom (never from a template) website.

For many consumers, a website will be the first contact that they have with your business, whether they learned about you from the phone book, word of mouth or a search engine.  While a traditional phone book listing still fills a niche, a quick Internet search for “plumber” or “mechanic” is far more likely to play a role in consumer’s evaluation and selection of a business or vendor.  Ensuring you have a well-designed, thoughtfully executed website means that potential clients can learn about and evaluate your company, read testimonials, “meet” your staff, and see representations of your goods or services quick and easily – in short, they spend less time seeking and more time engaged with your business.

Additionally, your website can provide interested parties with multiple means to contact you – traditional address and phone number as well as  email, form mailer, even Twitter and Facebook. Providing a variety of options for getting in touch means that potential clients can interact with you more efficiently, saving you and them, time

If you have a brick and mortar location, your website can direct people to you via directions and mapping services.  You can also use your site to show off specific features of your business location – photos of your exterior and interior, facilities, equipment, decor, even menu items – the options are limitless and can really establish your company with clients before they ever set foot in the door.

Do you have a business that involves house calls or service visits?  You can have employee photos and bios listed on your site so clients will know who to expect at their home or business – knowing a bit about the person on the other side of the door can be very reassuring.

One very important thing that a website can do for you is give your clients a way to get to know you.  This is extremely important. Do not overlook an “About” section (you can call it anything).  Your customers want to know why it is they should trust you, what experience do you have.  Think of it this way, who are you more likely to buy a product from, a person you know or a random person that you run into?

Having a good website with your own domain name also speaks volumes to potential clients.  There is a huge difference in saying, Yes you should buy my product! Email me at yourname@aol.com. “ versus “…email me at yourname@yourbusinessname.com.”  having your own domain suggests that you are here to stay.

1.Content is STILL King

Good content is really what the search engines want to see.  This means the information on your site should be relative to the subject of your site and should be laid out in a logical way.  This will also encourage your visitors to stay on your site (and probably come back to it).  It should also be noted that the search engines love seeing new content on sites, so be sure to update information on a regular basis

2. Titles

Not every chapter in a book has the same title.  Neither should your website.  Make sure that you have good descriptive titles for each page on the site.  This gives you visitors (and search engines) an idea of what sort of content they will find on each page.  However, do not fall into the trap of stuffing your title with a string of keywords. This could easily get you knocked down in the rankings.  Keep it short, simple, and descriptive.

3. Descriptions

Most of the time, when you search for a site on one of the search engines there will be a small description of what is on the site.  This normally comes from a description tag in the code of your site.  Much like the title, it should be different for each page, descriptive, but brief (try to keep it around 60 or so words)

4. Keywords

Once upon a time there as a tag line for keywords…well it is still there, however many folks abused it and would stuff tons and tons of keywords into the tag that had nothing to do with their site.  Because of this search engines do not really look at this tag anymore.  However, it is still worth putting key words and phrases into the content of your site.  These keywords should be a combination of headings and used in normal sentence structure.

5. Backlinks

As far as the search engines see it, the more incoming links you have to your site, the more important your site is.  Think of it like an online popularity contest.  There are lots of fast and easy ways to get started such as Facebook and Twitter (and a slew of other smaller social networking sites).  Also, look and neighborhood associations and local chamber of commerce.  Look for forums relevant to what you do and become an active member (be sure to use your web address in your signature).  There are some legitimate pay for a backlink sites out there.  There are a lot of sketchy ones too.  Do not pay a site that is going to spam your address across the web.  This can get you banned from search engines.

This is not the end all be all list by any stretch, but it does give you some of the basics that you and your designer should be covering.  Let it also be said that search engines can be very slow to find all of your information after you or your designer submit it or do updates.  Be patient.  It is also not uncommon to have your site fluctuate in the rankings.  People go from page on of results to page 10 all the time without doing a thing to their sites.  There is a constant stream of new sites coming online everyday which means a lot of competition for keywords.  Hang in there.  Promoting a website is the same as promoting anything else.  Give people a reason to want to come there and they will.

1: Search Engine Optimization starts here, so try to get some keywords that you want to be found by into your title.  If you are a pet groomer, try to get that, or something similar that explains what you do into your domain name (petgroomer.com is taken by the way).    At the same time, do not be too specific either.  If for now you groom dogs and went with “doggroomer.com” you could potentially be painting yourself into a corner.  What happens if you want to expand into grooming cats?

2: Make it easy to remember.  I am sorry to say that most people will not remember your personal name.  This especially holds true if you are doing lots of networking at tradeshows, conventions, or even striking up a conversation out in public.  So choosing “yourname.com” as a domain name may not be the best idea.

I should also mention length of your domain name as well.  Let’s say you are an artist, who lives in a small cottage by the sea.  You may not want to choose “yournametheartistwholivesinacottagebythesea.net” (yes I know that is a bit silly but I am making a point).  That name is way too long and would require your visitors to remember a lot of information to get your address right.  Not to mention who wants to type that out?  Keep it simple.

3: Once you come up with some idea of names, first check and see if they are available.  There are many places online to check and see if your desired domain name is available.  We use Hostmonster.com.

Once you know the name (or names) that you want are available, check in with some of your friends and see how they respond to different names.  This can really be valuable information.  Something that you think is clever someone else may not understand.  If your friends who know you do not understand what you are trying to say with your name, your intended customer base will not get it either.

If you have a Google account, using Google docs you can set up a survey to send out to your most trusted people.  Google docs will also compile the return data for you.

4: Avoid names that have no relevance to what you do.  If you are Yahoo, or Google, or Amazon and have the budgets to market your site then you would have no problem.  However, if you are a startup business or a small artist, this may not be the best choice for you.

2: run good spyware/malware detection software on a regular basis

3: change your passwords on a regular basis and make them challenging

4: if a link looks fishy…do not click it

5: your friend did not get mugged at knife/gunpoint in london last night

6: if you are going to be away from your computer for an extended period, turn it off. a lot of the bugs are set on timers to recruit your machine into a bot net when it is likely that you will not be there.

7: get a firewall. There are some good free ones out there

8: be careful of what apps you install on facebook and such

9: don’t post where you are going to be for the world to see (this also lets bad guys know the good times to break into your house)

10: hackers love hiding malware on free video sites, music site, photo sites, “adult” sites. know the link you are clicking on.

Macs and smartphones will more than likely become the next targets as both have grown in popularity, and smartphones have not really kept up with protection methods.

This will be a forum for us to chat with you about some of our services and how they may benefit you.  Not only that, but i promised on facebook that there would be big things coming for Cobalt Spider Web Design in 2011.  I meant it, and i will be able to update you on those things here…at least in a little more detail then i can on facebook.

We will not just be trying to sell sell sell here either. The internet is a big place with lots of corners to explore. We want to be able to throw the light into those corners for you and help answer questions about how to choose your domain name, what words to use as keywords in your site, how to help promote you site once it is live (and how that can then help you in search engine results) and the tons of other things that can help you as a small business or an artist become more successful.

Please fell free as well to ask any questions that you may have either by posting on the comments section here or email us directly .