Is Your Businesss Web Page a Billboard Sitting on a Desolate Internet Highway?

A decade ago, small businesses flocked to the internet. It was going to transform the way business is done and they wanted to be part of it. However today many are quite disappointed and perhaps philosophical about how their web pages didn't do diddly squat.

While there is no doubt the internet has changed how business is done today, for most businesses all that changed is they now have an internet Yellow Pages ad in addition to their actual listing.

The only people that go to their web site are people who already know about their business, and are just checking for a phone number or the business hours.

While that's certainly not true of all businesses, it is true for a good many, how about you?

The fact is that most business web sites stink!

• Most aren't using their ability to list their business in multiple categories.
• Most have just a billboard, or an electronic brochure and not an interactive site

And the reason is in large part because:

• Most web sites were created by techies and graphics designers and not marketers.

If you were able to afford it, and were in the wall paper business, you might buy a yellow pages ad under wall paper, and maybe under decorating or any number of other yellow page headings. Most businesses don't as it's very expensive to do so, even with multiple category discounts.

With your web pages, you don't need to pay extra to be listed in multiple categories. You just need to do a systematic listing of all relevant keywords that your possible customers might use in an effort to find you. These keywords should be listed in the invisible meta tags that should be behind your web page. It's surprising, but a large number of web sites have no keywords listed, and of those who do, most are grossly inadequate.

This may take a little time and effort, but once done, it will pay tremendous rewards in additional traffic and potential new business.

The second major failing of most web pages is that they lack a way of capturing their viewers email address, and thus they are not able to follow-up with people who might become good customers. Every business web page should have at least one opt-in form where prospect could indicate their desire for additional information.

You may have thought your web designer would have done this for you. But unfortunately most web designers">web designers are not marketers. They tend to be graphic artists or techno geeks. Great at creating web pages, but not necessarily great at getting your web site to generate the business you had hoped it would.