It is possible to make money online, running your business from home. But to be able to do this, you have to have a website. Most people starting up a home-based business will try to build their own, that's fine if you know what you are doing but can reflect terribly if you don't. Home based business websites, need to be professional looking but not overly flashy!
Some work-from-home opportunities include a website when you sign up, but if starting up a business, consider either one of two options.
1) Pay someone to build your website for you. Look around you, websites can be purchased at low cost these days.
2) Use a Free template or paid for template. Web designers work from home too and are happy to work for low fees to get their own online/home-based business off the ground.
Make sure your website is consistent.
Your customers will want to see a consistent web layout. Most users will make an impression of your site in seconds. The difference between a good-looking site and a bad-looking site is a potential lost sale.
If you run an e-commerce business from home, don't try to build the shopping cart yourself. Use a third-party product like PayPal, particularly good for selling a few products and well respected. Payment processors like PayPal take care of your Data Protection requirements and leave you to get on with promoting your internet business.
Third-party software
Paid host or free host?
How much does it all cost?
In fact, a well-planned, well-designed website can be a home based business owner’s best friend.
The first thing that you need to do is to start planning your home-based business website as soon as possible. A mistake that many home-based business owners make is in waiting until their company is already up and running. This can cause problems because the domain name should be on all offline marketing materials.
It costs a great deal of money to have new letterhead, business cards and other printed materials redone to add the domain name. Furthermore, having a website adds substance and credibility to your home-based business. So, you want to plan your home-based business website strategy as early as possible.
You also would like to put a great deal of thought into your home-based business domain name. Often, it’s the same as your business if the name isn’t already taken. This may not be the best way to choose a domain name, however. You would like to make it easy for prospective customers to find you, so you may be better off deciding a domain name that describes your home based business product or service accurately.
The reason for this is that people who are looking for lawn care services are going to do a search for lawn care services, so the domain name should relate as closely to that as possible. A hot trend these days is to put hyphens between each word of your domain name, but stay away from periods and commas.
When it comes to actually building your home-based business website, unless you’re extremely knowledgeable about web development and design, it’s a good idea to hire someone to do it for you. You can find many great web designers online who will build and host your website for a truly affordable fee. Many of these companies have templates you can use to design your home-based business website yourself.
Whichever method you choose, remember that you want your home-based business website to look as professional as possible. And be sure to stay away from slow-loading graphics and flash. Web surfers aren’t known for their patience and will leave a website if the pages take too long to load.
Another important part of your home-based business website that you want to put a great deal of though into is the content. You’ll want the content to speak to your customers in a conversational, informative manner. And website experts suggest the more pages the better.
When you’re first starting out, five to ten pages is probably enough, but you will want to add to the content as you go and frequently update your content with news and information to give your home-based business website visitors a reason to come back. If you’re sitting there screaming, “But I can’t write!” Relax.
You can hire professional website content copywriters on outsourcing websites like Lance and Guru to develop the content for you for quite affordable rates. It’s money well-spent to have the best content possible for your home based business website.
A sticky home-based website will be made up of helpful customer information, a wide range of interesting articles and be simple to use and navigate. It's one that makes website visitors want to stick around for as long as possible and return as often as possible.
Having a home-based internet business is more than just putting a website online and sitting back waiting for the cash to start rolling in. The online world is a competitive environment and for your online home-based business to succeed you're going to need to engage the attention of your visitors.
A sticky website draws visitors further and deeper into the website and grabs their attention from the home page to the checkout page. To boost the stickiness of your home-based business website, simply follow these 5 tips!
1. Check Your Home Page.
You have about 10 to 15 seconds to keep a visitor's attention when they land on your home based business website. You must let your visitors know what your website is about as soon as possible. You need a compelling headline to clearly show the benefits of your product or service and what action you would like them to do next. For example, should they submit their email for more information, ring now for the latest prices, click here to book now etc.?
2. Have Simple Navigation.
Complicated navigation can be confusing for your website visitors, so make it simple for your visitors to get around. Clearly tag links and write your content so that it is easy to read. It's best to offer a minimal number of options on navigation bars (no more than 10 options) and keep the navigation bars in the same position throughout the website.
3. Use Well-Written Content.
The text on your website needs to carefully written so that it keeps your website visitors interested and persuades them to take the action that you want. Make sure that the text is written for your visitors and not just about you. Your content needs to tell people how your product or service will resolve their problems or make them feel good.
4. Use Testimonials.
Testimonials reduce any concerns or worries that new visitors may have about buying from you. Testimonials from people who have purchased from your home-based internet business will help to persuade your new visitors that you provide value.
5. Provide Something Of Value For Free.
All the top internet home based businesses offer visitors free downloads, reports, videos, coupons, etc. that are beneficial to their target audience. These help to build trust and interest in your website that will keep your website visitors returning to your website to see what new things you are providing for free of charge.
Opt-in newsletter
Shopping cart if you’re going to be selling merchandise
Autoresponder
Affiliate program
Email courses
Free offers
And don’t worry if all of this website building stuff sounds confusing or difficult for you. A good website developer or a few nights searching the Internet for information on building a website will clear everything up for you—or lead you to the right company that will build your home-based business website for you, from beginning to end. Just make sure the company has a great reputation. You may be running your home-based business from your basement, but that doesn’t mean your website has to be anything less than perfect.
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