Branding Your Website Business Can Make You or Break You
Branding is psychological. Look what would happen if your favorite soda pop change it's label. Probably won't taste the same right?
Branding your business should not be expensive or hard to do. You want to make a clear statement about your brand with images, slogans, packaging or otherwise. You want to use your mark whenever possible. Letterheads, on your website, outgoing emails, advertising and invoices. Use your image in the left hand corner when ever possible.
Two kinds of branding: Direct experience and indirect messaging. Example: Direct experience is emotions directly aim to remind you to buy their a car. Indirect messaging is remind you to buy their car and remind you to buy a their brand of tires. When designing your website it is recommended to choose one or the other type of branding.
Your customers need to trust you to buy your products or services You need to realized that YES they do check your return policies. If you have a money back guarantee on your service or product explain it to them up front.
What about the payments' Remember the best Internet sites provide the most secure purchase programs available online.
Explain what are you doing with their private information or code of ethics.
Provide them with your contact information and customer service number.
Try to respond back to your clients in a reasonable amount of time. Companies with good customer service are rewarded with returning customers and new customers by word of mouth
Try to get most of this information to your customer on your home page. Trust sells and trust is just as important to you as it is to your customers.
Other important issues to apply to your site:
Purchase an appropriate domain name
Paying for your own domain name and domain name email addresses build trust and is professional looking. It is easier to trust someone who has evidently made an investment in his or her business.
Include contact information
Provide phone numbers, hours of operation (including time zone), and a business mailing address, your web-masters email address and your business email address.
Keep your content updated
To be current; the content of your site must be no more than 3 months old. Add the date you last worked the site on your home page.
Include a family or personal touch
Provide an "About Me/Us" page. Provide the names of the owner, president and provide the reason why you started your business.
Avoid password or flash screens
If you want to use the option of flash pages, fancy music, etc., give visitors the option of viewing them. Don't force them to download any programs.
Limited your affiliate programs
Remember visitors are at your site to find out about your service or buy your products.
Cater to everyone
Don’t forget to include tags with your images to assist those with sight disabilities.
Comply with local laws regarding business practices or state taxes
Comply with all regulations prohibiting discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation, or age.
Make it quick - Most visitors will not have the patience to wait around much longer than the reasonable load time and will gladly move on. A site that loads quickly and is neatly designed, will show that you are a professional business. You can lose up to 1/3 of your traffic with slow loading pages. How many times did you leave the Fast Food lane when the wait was over 1 minute?
Link it. Make sure your links are working. Test them at least once a month.
Spell it right. If you want your site to be as professional as it can be. Use Spell check.
Don’t be afraid to ask your customers for testimonials.Testimonials provide a way for your customers to learn about your credibility and trustfulness.
Guidelines for your business Privacy Policy
Privacy Policy Information that should be on your site:
Provide on your website a page with your business Privacy policy clearly stated.
Information Collection and Use:
Your business is sole owner of the information collected on this site. You will not sell, share, or rent this information to others in ways different from what is disclosed in this statement. State if your business collects information from our users at several different points on our website.
Forms:
Your business requests information from the user on your application forms and on forms, which allow users to request information. Here a user must provide contact information (like name and mailing address) This information is used to allow your business to process applications, provide customer service response, and to provide the information requested.
Log Files:
Your business may analyze trends, administer the site, track user’s movement, and gather broad demographic information by your tracking system. Please state what you are doing with IP addresses and if they are linked to personally identifiable information.
Links:
If your website contains links to other sites. State that your are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites. Encourage your users to be aware when they leave your site - to read the privacy statements of each and every web site that collects personally identifiable information. State that your privacy statement applies solely to information collected by your Web site.
Notification of Changes:
State that prices of your products or services are subject to change. State that if you change your privacy policy - you will post the change on your business site.
All Rights Reserved. Copyrighted Jane Sadowy 2005-2012
