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Why Should You Create a website?

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A. What do you want when you create a website?

B. What to do to get what you want.

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A. What do you want?

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1. You may be in a non-profit organisation and want to post forthcoming events on the web. You don't want to have thousands of visitors to the site. But wait - do you want to create a website for new members from the web? I found a new barbershop singer through my website.

2. You may have a small business selling locally. You're happy with yellow pages. But wait - how many thousand words can you put in your yellow page advert?

There is no limit if you create a website.

Have you ever had someone keep you on the phone for half an hour of your valuable time with their questions? Wouldn't it be nice to direct them to your website for answers and sales messages? Create a website!

Once you've written all those answers, wouldn't it be profitable to have potential customers reading your answers? Create a website. A dentist has clients from a hundred miles away, from his website.

3. Perhaps you sell items weighing a hundred tons costing a million dollars. When you create a website you can still write as much information about your product as you like - not like the yellow pages. Then you can direct prospects to phone to make an appointment with your best sales staff.

4. You want to sell a product on the web. First create a website then get lots of traffic.

5. You want to make money on the web?!! without a product?!! No...I'm not laughing. Create a website. If you have lots of traffic you don't even have to be good at selling to make some money with Google Adsense.

If you're good at pre-selling then you can try affiliate marketing, or selling advertising on your site, or several other channels of income. Just create a website and get the traffic first.

B. What to do about it To get high traffic you must give visitors what they want. Tricking Google will only get your domain banned from their listing.

Here are some things not to do when you create a website. If your visitors hit the back button their numbers don't count.

a) Don't use frames when you create a website - the search engines can't find you, and the inventors of frames don't use them on their own website.

b) It may be artistic to disguise your links, but you will lose customers. I visited a site that displayed just one big picture. I happened to pass my mouse over the picture on the way to the back button, and discovered links flashing on the screen. Apparently I had to click on bits of the picture to see any more!

c) Don't use Flash when you create a website. If people are using ADSL they are unlikely to wait longer than three seconds before hitting the back button. If they're on a 56K modem they might be prepared to wait ten seconds. You've just lost another client.

d) Don't use big pictures when you create a website. If you have a photography site, use postage stamp sized pictures with the size stated in your coding, and ask the visitor to click for a larger picture. Telling the browser how high and wide your picture is will allow it to load after the text, so your visitor has something to look at meantime.

e) Don't use irrelevant pictures when you create a website. One picture is worth a thousand words, but only if the picture is saying what you want it to say. Why do people visit websites? It is NOT for entertainment. Their TV gives them all the moving pictures that they need. Even if it is an adult site, the visitor is really wanting to download digital information for later entertainment.

Information is what your visitor wants - When you create a website don't waste your time and money on anything else.

A paid designer will use all sorts of clever artistic tricks - you now know that you will lose clients that way. More than 99% of new websites soon have to close because they have no traffic, which means no profit.

That is your biggest mistake. Instead, find what people want to know first, then give it to them.

So why create a website? Simple, you know more about your own subject than any show-off website designer. You don't even need to understand HTML coding if you use SBI. You still should learn a little about HTML coding, but there are free lessons on my website.

Ian has worked as farmhand, dairyman, tractor driver, street photographer, brickie's mate, electronic designer, computer programmer, desktop publisher. He has made a lot of mistakes building his websites. Avoid the same mistakes. Get a free report about how to create a website profitably.