Business survival information letter Pt 2 of 8
Hello Again Business Builder,
Here’s another 5-minute reading with my thanks for continuing with me on the most important business survival information you’ll get this year, and maybe for many years.
Who else is concerned about helping you keep your income numbers up? I am, but who else? I think most everyone else is only concerned for himself, which is a huge business mistake — by the way. A Free Enterprise community has much to do with helping one another to have an economically strong community. All of the other cafes and restaurants and welders, roofers, and mechanics, and florists and so forth make a “market place” and we need that to make a vibrant city.
I was about to speak about the best way to bring in more customer traffic and that of course has everything to do with good communication with potential customers. You really do need a well-produced and inexpensive way to tell prospective customers what you can offer to them.
Some technicians who are in the business of building websites make promises of a beautiful website. Some even say you can have your own “free website.”
Promises of a “free” website are only for a sample. No one can give you a website for free. In the long run, doing and learning all of this can cost a fortune, and even on your own, it might take 2 or 3 years to learn to do it all yourself. Don’t start on that road unless you intend to make advertising or website development a career!
The free pages at Facebook are too restrictive and so drab looking they do little more than waste your precious energy and time. Their computer programs take over and place photos where you don’t want them, or add photos you don’t want. The FB page is a small, free, helpful notice to the world but that’s as far as it goes. I have an FB page but it’s NOT my main way to reach the world. It’s only there as an entree’ into the social medium.
A website is for doing major big jobs. But for many restaurants and cafes, a single “Landing Page” is sufficient to inform customers and draw in all the traffic you need — if it is seen! (and there’s the problem….)
A website needs software somewhere, and some big computer needs to “host” the site and keep it on the Internet. That means also there are security risks and a big hosting company must be employed to maintain the site and the computer running it.
You will also need people who maintain the site and make sure on a daily basis that it is working. The cost for all of this to be maintained properly is going to range between $US800 and $US2900 per year!
Remember, this is only for their technical work. YOU still have to write the pages, bring in photographs and do everything else. That alone for a new website while you’re learning, requires at least a full day of work for each page. If you have 5-pages it could take up a week of your work-time IF you know how to do all of this. If you are a beginner it may take more than a month.
Siteground is a British owned company with all phone help in Eastern Europe and they speak a sort of English. No one knows a word of any Chinese dialect. Voiden; I’m not sure what languages they speak.
You can see this endeavor is costly in money and personal time. It really can at first be somewhat traumatic. The truth is, you don’t have the time, the knowledge, or the energy to do it all yourself.
I’m not the only one saying this. The teachers at “TheThemeFoundry.com” (a very big technical shop for site developers wrote, “When you add up the costs of managed hosting, premium themes, plugins, site maintenance, and support, the costs of creating a website are a fraction of what you’d spend to hire a developer and designer to create a bespoke solution for you for your web presence and management.”
What that tells you is, hiring someone to build a website for you is very expensive, and trying to do it yourself is much more. You could spend so much time, energy, and worry trying to do this yourself it could actually ruin your business, your health, your marriage, and your life. So, that’s the wrong path to follow. (Some of these guys charge $10,000 to build a website — and you’re wishing for a new stove or walk-in refrigerator. Paying someone to build a website for you is often the wrong path to take!)
Yes, there is software to make a website quickly but someone has to write the advertising “copy” (the words) and that is a “skill set” and a job all of its own. (I tested two of those “free” web hosts and they were difficult to use.)
I have in truth been studying and applying the wisdom of many great advertising writers for many years. I began with an interest in advertising at age 15 and now I’m age 70 (very healthy, thank Heaven!) You don’t just cram a library of sales writing knowledge into a young woman or man in a month. Anyone who imagines so is not a salesman and never has been. And….the best sales advertising copy-writers were salesmen. I was a print advertising space salesman in New York, and later in Seattle, and won awards for good work and a high volume of sales….and I did help those businesses gain more customers! Those skills to do this did not come quickly! I started ad sales at age 18. I started selling at age 10 or 12!
But here’s what you should remember….
YOU DON’T NEED A Big Multi-Page WEBSITE!
I have gone over many websites for restaurants and cafés. The big websites have too many pages. The website builder justifies his price by making up all of these pages. But, he is a web technician and knows nothing about sales, marketing, and advertising. He really never will! Making so many pages confuses customers.
That prospective customer wants to know about your food, the ambiance or environment, and prices. Instead, she is forced to go from page to page and link to link to “discover” that you’re more than a takeaway café. I have seen this on the website of a very expensive Italian Restaurant in Sg! This is no joke. This sort of website building is a plan to waste money and cause customers to go elsewhere!!!
A personality survey of web technicians proved they are “introverted” non-outgoing personalities. This means they like computers and mathematics. They do not like to converse with people They do not like to go to parties. They are absolutely never the personality to be a salesman/saleswoman! It is true salespeople are trained to be good in that work. The saying is they are “made,” not “born.” No one is born to be a salesman. But it takes a particular personality to do the work. We must be outgoing, sociable, and tenacious. Some of us are born that way, and some are not.
It’s safe to say most web technicians have never sold anything to anyone in their lives! So, What makes them qualified to produce advertising and tell you that any particular website design will sell more? Truth is, they’re guessing and promoting what they’ve made but they have no idea what works and what does not in advertising. Most big ad agencies don’t have any idea either!!! (Yes that’s true!) It turns out big black serif print on a white background (like we see here) works better to draw customers than anything else. Older eyes cannot see light gray and pastels, and thin, smaller fonts like this demo sentence.>>> Older eyes cannot see light gray and pastels and thin, smaller font, like this demo sentence.
Disaster Demo: I am absolutely amazed at the great numbers of websites that display print so small, so thin, and so light, that their words can barely be read. Why do they do this? I guess they think it’s for style. They think it’s “beautiful,” or perhaps they simply Don’t Care! Whatever it is, they’re wasting a lot of electricity and a lot of money, because readers are leaving them in flocks and herds, running elsewhere to find the information they want, and can clearly see and read!
I lately watched a demonstration teaching use of web page editing software. A young woman appeared covered with tattoos down her right arm, and too much make-up, a leather halter top displaying a tattoo between her breasts, and a bare waist. She topped it with multiple colored short hair. She produced a web page and ended by putting non-serif thin yellow type-style print onto a yellow background!
I couldn’t believe it.
This “girl” doesn’t know anything about eyes! If the eyes can’t see what I write, the reader will not buy. There’s a saying among American hunters. “Walk downwind of your prey because if you’re upwind, the turkey will see you, the deer will hear you, and the bear will smell you.” Similarly …
You must understand your prospective customer’s needs before you attempt to send him the right message at the right time and from the right medium!
No one learning to make websites knows anything about this. That is why they produce multiple pages of confusion at VAST cost and waste business owners’ money as if they were pouring gallons of hot soapy water down the dishwashing sink!!!
Let’s talk more about that for another five minutes tomorrow. Thanks for reading this time.
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