Keep It Simple

We are going to share some of the lessons we've learned over the last fifteen years or so on the operation of our small business website. Actually I think it was 1996, the same year that Microsoft released it's first version of FrontPage (which it acquired from Vermeer Technologies). We went through all the versions of Microsoft FrontPage; Version 1.1, FrontPage 97, FrontPage 98, FrontPage 2000, FrontPage 2002 and FrontPage 2003.

In the old days we had only html files, well a few small pdf files occasionally. As time went by and the average users' speed of the internet increased due to fewer and fewer dial-up connections, we added more and more goodies, i.e., mp3 files, more Flash, Swish and more Java scripts.

In July 2009 we added a "News" segment to our site that is powered by PHP and MYSQL. Take a look at the graph below.

Cook and Company, Enrolled Agents

In the graph you will notice a large increase in requests in the month of July. That is because PHP and MYSQL generate multiple server requests just to serve up a single page with a few graphics and includes.

We had to weigh the pros and cons of implementing such a system. The News section of our website would require daily posts. Making posts daily is extremely fast and easy with the Wordpress software. The trade off in load time of the pages seemed worth the sacrifice.

One of the things we've been working on is serving up information to cell phone web browsers. In fact, we set up a Twitter interface with the News section to enable users to subscribe to the News with their cell phone. It's a leap from being concerned about page size for dial-up users to creating pages for cell phones. Technology really is dynamic!

Make Your Website Pay For Itself

If your website sells a product and customers are able to complete the buying process online, then your site should certainly pay for itself. If your site is similar to ours where you are promoting your services, then the model is quite different. I don't know the numbers but I can guess that we may have 3,000 visitors to our website for every 1 client. So, if you have 2,999 visitors that you can't convert to a client, is there something else you can do for them?

Google has a program called Adsense. This program is really revolutionary in its approach to advertising delivery. Imagine driving down the highway in your car and all of the billboards you see are something that interests you. That's just a small part of Adsense is about.

Adsense allows us to present relevant information to the searchers that come to our website seeking information, a product , service or whatever they are looking for. If visitors don't find what they need from us, I want to help them find what they are looking for.

While I'm on this subject I would like to state a few observations. There are websites out there that have been created for the specific purpose of attracting visitors in order to present advertising to them. I don't necessarily think that in itself is a bad thing, but it has spawned a whole new industry! There are many so-called SEO (Search Engine Optimization) companies springing up. They tout "get rich quick" schemes.

Usually when something sounds too good to be true, it is. The best source of SEO information is free and it is provided by Google at Google Webmaster Central. Making money with a website is not easy, it requires a lot of hard work and a lot of time.

The foundation (starting point) is a lot of good, useful, original content that people are interested in and are searching for on the internet. Good original content requires time and work. Once you have original content that people are interested in, the really hard part is done. Here's my list of things to do in order to have a good successful small business website:

• Good, useful, original content

• Good page names and meta tags on your pages that accurately describe the content

• A good robots.txt and sitemap.xml file that tells the search engines what to index (and what not to index)

• Attention to the design, presentation and layout of your site, always keeping your goals or objectives in mind

Once you do the four things listed above, you will want to monitor your site and make improvements. Test different tweaks that you do to improve the site. Use Google Analytics to track performance.

We have three primary goals with this website and we continually monitor the activity and try to improve the performance.