Business web pages

The internet and business for idiots

Now let me start by saying, those of you who are more technically inclined, will think this post somewhat benign, but I’m writing it for people like myself, who have just discovered the wheel. This is not meant to be a detailed description of e-commerce, far from it, just an insight into some aspects.

So the internet that great advertising Mecca or is it? Well this depends on your pockets, your product and your target market. So where did I start, oh yes at the place the most uninitiated start. While at a trade show, I was approached by a Google/Yahoo authorized reseller, yes I could advertise on Google and Yahoo, be provided with activity reports, have my listing on the first 3 pages all for a very respectable fee. So I signed up for 3 months.

My activity reports showed, I was getting an average 10,000 hit per month on both Google and Yahoo, how was it, that I got only one enquiry in 3 months from a country of dubious repute. Well after I installed a web-site traffic estimator, I found that nearly all the hits came from one IP address in Asia.

So I contacted both Yahoo and Goggle in HK and the US, any interest in my case, no, zero, there are plenty more people waiting to sign up, they don’t care at all, even if fraud is suggested.

So how to get round this, well its all rather easy, goggle, type “add words traffic estimator” and it will give you the likely number of hits per day, your kind of product would receive, so you the entrepreneur can make an informed decision, also instead of using a third party agent, do it yourself, using google “AD-WORDS”

Then there is the business of search engines, again the problem with these, you have to sign up for a given period, with little or no knowledge of the performance in term of hits you will receive and this can be expensive. I was quoted rmb 52,000 per month, not a small investment in the unknown. So shop around and try those search engines offering free trials, get web-site traffic tracking software, so you can be sure of where your clicks are coming from.

Now on to “pay per clicks”, another method of charging, the waters get very muddy, you can bid for price per click, but what is a click, is that to open your home page, yes! And any other link in there, you pay, per click, HOME – ABOUT US – PRODUCTS – SERVICES – in fact any clicks within your web-site will be charged. Therefore, this needs to be a consideration when designing your web-site, keep links to a minimum.

SEO, “search engine optimization” now people who start a new web platform, I have the greatest respect for, but the number of people who are at the edge of IT and “talk the talk but don’t walk the walk the walk” are many, “we can offer SEO services for just rmb 25,000 a month” but what are you getting. Well, once the changes are made you are paying every month for very little.

Here is my story, I spent a year trying to find someone who could give me a straight answer as to what SEO was all about, having done my own research on the WWW, yes I had an idea, what it was about, but no inkling how to go about it. Finally by chance I met someone who was in the business and worked for a major PRC search engine.
So a meeting was arranged, my business partner, the expert and myself sat down to “chew the fat” (talk over business) so 20 minutes of techno talk of what this massive IT concern, could do for me and all it would cost was RMB 25,000 a month. But there was no mystery at all, this was stuff I already knew. When I imparted my knowledge and the fact that most of what was talked about only had to be done once, our IT expert, declared me an expert, to which my partner agreed; I however, had problems staying upright in my chair. I know sod all about IT and that’s the truth, what this displayed is, as I said before (sorry B4) there are a lot of people working on the edge of IT who are full of!

So how to get round this, there is a lot of information on the net, so if you are thinking about www advertising, SEO or web design, do your home work, before you start. Most important of all, get all aspects of your web-site right at the start, not just design, but also the SEO and the way people navigate around your site, remember you may be paying for each click on your web-site, so that needs to factored in to the layout. Getting all of this done at the start may seem expensive, but in the long run it will pay for itself.

A suggestion to http://www.shenzhenparty.com a great web-site resource I use regularly. How about one section dedicated to all matters related to conducting business on the web, a web-site with a section about web-sites, where those who are in the know, can let us know of their existence, would be a valuable resource to those of us looking at how the wheel works

At all cost, avoid authorized resellers, just a total waste of money!