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Posts tagged bizweb
Resellers Can Create Websites for Free with Bizness Web
Oct 9th
The foundation of any business online is a solid website. For that reason, we don’t leave our app resellers to go it alone when it comes to building theirs. Instead, we offer our app resellers a free tool that makes building a website easy: Bizness Web.
Site Creation
The site creation process with Bizness Web is very straightforward. Using a step-by-step creation and customization wizard, you can have a site up and running in short order. Our drag-and-drop interface also means that no coding is necessary. Everything is kept simple.
To begin, we offer a number of ready-made templates, including templates for app companies. After selecting the template you prefer, you can then customize your site with your own images and text. Most importantly, you can build forms to take in visitors’ contact info so that following up on leads is easy.
Publication and Revision
After your site is complete, you can publish it with the push of a button. If you already have a domain you’d like to use, we can easily load the site to it. Or, if you prefer, you can use an [insert name].biznessweb.com hosted domain. Once published, review your site to make sure that everything is setup the way you want it. If you need to make any changes, your site can be edited at any time through your Bizness Web dashboard.
Benefits of Bizness Web
Bizness Web sites are mobile optimized and SEO friendly, so your prospect audience is maximized. They also integrate well with social media outlets, making promotion seamless, and feature analytics that help you understand where visitors come from and what they do on your site.
And of course, they’re totally free to our app resellers!
If you have the skills, creating a custom website on your own can be a rewarding project. But even if you need a simple placeholder site to put up while building your masterpiece, Bizness Web is a quick way to get your business up and running.
When you’re ready to get started, click here for a step-by-step guide to building a website with Bizness Web.
5 Mistakes on Your Small Business Website to Fix Immediately
Sep 30th
It’s critical for a small business to have a website these days, but some make the mistake of thinking that any website is better than no website. While this is true for a clean, simple website, it is still possible to design your website so poorly that it would be better to have no website at all. This is fairly challenging, of course, but if you’re making the following five mistakes, you can get there fast.
If any of these errors are present on your website, fix them ASAP to avoid doing more harm than good with your online presence:
1. Your website doesn’t function
This is by far the worst mistake you can make. If visitors to your website are immediately treated to error messages, broken links, videos that don’t load, images that won’t stay in their designated boundaries, and the like, you need to clean house. Sometimes, this is the result of not testing your site adequately in each of the leading browsers.
Make sure that your site works smoothly and looks the way you want it to across all browsers, so that your visitors have a pleasant first experience with your company. If you don’t, and if things seem broken, they’ll browse to a competing website without delay.
2. There are walls of text
Yes, we realize the irony of complaining about this in the middle of our own pile of text. Our point is not meant to address blogs, however. We’re thinking more of your main sales pages. If your landing looks like a copy of the Declaration of Independence, we salute your patriotism, but feel sorry for your visitors.
First, edit down your copy until you’ve just got your core points, without all the fluff. Your readers will appreciate your focused copy. Then, if you have a lot to communicate, break things up with images and different presentation graphics. It will be more visually interesting and will be a lot more likely to be absorbed by readers.
3. Navigation is confusing
It’s critical to make navigation as clear as possible on your site. Unless you’re going for a uniquely creative presentation that suits your business, the tried-and-true tab system you see on almost every site will do just fine. If you want a lot of different pages, break things up into well-organized tabs and sub-tabs (accessed through drop-down menus) so that visitors can find things on the first try.
Once you have a sensible sitemap in place, make sure all of your links are working and send users to the right place. A speedy and smooth browsing experience is the goal, here. Nothing else will do.
4. Your site is riddled with typos
Nothing says “unprofessional” like visual clutter and spelling mistakes. Take the time to go over your text carefully. If you want some advice from a professional writer: read it out loud, slowly, and do it in a quiet place. (Yes, actually read it out loud!) Also, don’t forget to run spellcheck. Then, have someone else proofread it to make sure there are no mistakes.
Errors in your text will cause people to lose confidence in your business. Pay attention to detail, and you can avoid a major reputational pitfall.
5. There are no clear CTAs (calls-to-action)
Does your website tell all about your business, but then leave readers to figure out the next step on their own? Don’t be coy! Be clear about exactly what action they should take next. This could be creating an account, starting a free trial, reaching out for a free consultation, or something else. Whatever it is, make sure you are explicit and give them a big, clear link to click if they want to move forward.
Want to start over with your website? Click here to learn about a clean, simple, and inexpensive way to have a fresh website up and running in no time!
Think You Don’t Need a Website? Think Again.
Aug 21st
Let’s say your small business only makes sales through in-person presentations. Your customers don’t come to find you, you find them. Because of the nature of your business, you don’t expect any prospects to really search for you online. You don’t need a website, right? Your business is old school!
Wrong.
A website is a must-have item for a small businesses that prospects and other contacts can and will rely on as a reference resource. If it doesn’t exist, it creates a big strike against your credibility and perception as a reliable company. You truly never know what reason someone might have for visiting your company’s website, but you can count on this: if they can’t find it, it’s a problem.
Perception is reality
The lack of a website can create issues when working with suppliers, partners, employees, and various other parties. It doesn’t have to be the most informative site in the world, but it needs to exist and it needs to project a favorable image for your company.
Think about your own experiences. Let’s say you solicited bids for a real estate development contract, and a bunch of builders submitted their bid packages. You reviewed the packages, got a sense of the builders, and then decided to check them out online. What would you think of a builder with no website?
“Is this guy for real? Where is his website? Is this a scam?”
A website is a critical way to demonstrate legitimacy, but also attentiveness to technological developments. A business that doesn’t keep up with basic Internet technology may also not be keeping up with developments in its own field. It may be an unfair perception, but it’s important to present your business as one that embraces advances and that can provide state-of-the-art offerings to customers. Without a website, you can’t do that effectively.
Websites make you look bigger than you are
A well designed website lets you directly compete with larger players. On the Internet, a well made website can make you look like the industry leader, if it compares favorably to larger competitors that have let their site lag behind. To the average searcher who doesn’t know much about the relative positions of the companies in your industry, website quality will be the first indicator of each company’s relative rank.
Essentially, your website is your global storefront. As far as the world at large is concerned, you are your website. Not having a website is the equivalent of putting your flagship location on an unmarked island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and shutting the blinds. For this reason, it always makes sense to build a simple, clean website, and make sure that you aren’t losing points from any of the parties that may be searching for you to learn more about your business.
4 Ways to Get More App Sales Out of Your Website
Aug 8th
A website can connect you to billions of people, all around the world. So, why aren’t you rich yet?
Well, a lot of it probably has to do with the fact that most of those billions of people don’t need a mobile app. But for the ones who do, you want to be ready to get things started properly. To do that, you need a site designed to maximize sales. Here are six tips that will turn your site into a lean, mean selling machine.
1. Floating ads
A lot of people hated popups, but guess what a lot of people don’t hate?
Floating ads!
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that they don’t go outside the browser window. We don’t know. But for whatever reason, floating ads are effective and can increase conversions on your site.
Another similar strategy is to use a chat window that opens up on your homepage. This lets you start a dialogue with prospects and provide personal attention right away. If you want to see an example of this in action, just head to our homepage and wait a few moments. Someone will be right with you.
2. Use testimonials
Honest, positive testimonials can have a powerful effect on the credibility of your website (in one case, producing a conversion rate increase of over 30%). If you display brief stories from actual customers regarding how your product helped their business, you can make it clear why people should do business with you.
Place a few testimonials below the fold on your website, and use actual full names of customers, along with business names and links to the app in question. With that info available, prospects won’t have to wonder what kind of product you create and why they should work with you. It will all be there for them in black and white.
3. Generate urgency
There are a lot of ways to communicate to people why they need an app or mobile website today. You can explain how competitors are gaining advantages over those who don’t have a mobile strategy at every minute. You can offer the promise of increasing sales through mobile apps, which is something most businesses would jump at. Or, you could make an offer that is time-limited.
However you do it, don’t make it seem like a mobile app is something that can wait until tomorrow. Things are changing quickly in the mobile space, and there’s really no time to waste.
4. Break it up and keep it simple
Don’t overload website visitors by trying to tell them everything about your business. Just keep it simple. Even something like this can be enough for a headline and call to action:
“Did you know a mobile app can increase your sales by __%? Click here to get started!”
If you do choose to include a lot of info, break things up into different sections with different layouts and visuals. The goal is to inform the reader without asking for too much of their time or boring them. Tell them what you do, tell them why it’s great, then ask them to take action.
Improving your website performance is that simple.
Also make sure to check out Bizness Web to create a free website for your mobile app company!
5 Reasons Why It’s Insane for a Small Business Not to Have a Website
Aug 6th
Some small businesses may be extremely special and may be able to get by without any web presence whatsoever. If your business is one of these, you can stop reading this article now (right after you leave a comment explaining how you can operate without one … seriously, we’d love to know)!
For the other 99.9999% of small businesses, you absolutely have to have a website nowadays. The advantages are too sweet, and the problems that come with not having one have become far too damaging.
Here are the biggest reasons why we say that:
1. Credibility
We’ll be honest. If we go looking for a business online and can’t find their website, our first thought is, “How legit can this business be? They don’t even care enough to have a single-page website so we can see who they are and how to reach them?” It doesn’t inspire confidence, and makes a bad first impression.
Your website doesn’t have to be complex, it just needs to exist to show that your business isn’t a fly-by-night operation. The existence of a website boosts credibility and reassures prospects that you are up-front and reachable. The most critical components are the address of your location, your phone number, and your email address. That way, prospects from the web can find your business and get in touch with you.
2. Reference
People are far more comfortable learning about your business from browsing online than from calling you, or visiting your location blindly. Thus, a website is hugely important for getting people the basic info about your business that they need. If you can deliver quick explanations of your offerings, along with testimonials and other information to round out your website, it can become a very robust reference point and an effective way to pre-sell customers.
3. It facilitates SEO (search engine optimization)
Without a website, you can’t take advantage of the thousands of searches that take place on Google for businesses like yours. Each search is a potential lead and a potential sale, and capturing 0% of that traffic is a massive missed opportunity.
With a simple website (and beyond that, an active blog), you can enjoy your share of the prospects searching in your industry, and get a big sales bump if you focus your efforts in a dedicated and intelligent manner. The science of increasing your visibility and rank in search results is known as “search engine optimization.” Done right, it’s as good as money in the bank.
4. In enables online sales and marketing
Email marketing is a tremendously cost effective way to increase your sales, but without a website to support your program, it can be quite difficult (if not impossible) to make use of this marketing channel. In addition to providing a base for email marketing, your website also allows you to participate in online pay-per-click advertising. This opens up another stream of leads to help your business keep sales and revenue strong.
5. Your competitors have one
This is the clincher. If people go looking for a business in your industry, or for your business specifically, and they can’t find you online, guess what happens? They immediately browse to a competitor. This strengthens your competition, sends your leads into their arms, and puts them at a huge advantage.
Don’t rely on old methods to keep your business afloat forever. Things change, and the Internet becomes more critical to small businesses each day. Stay up-to-date with an easy, low cost website, and make sure that tomorrow’s sales are strong as today’s.
