How Much Money Should I Spend To Set Up My Internet Business?

Well, for a start I have very little to spend, so that closes the discussion down a bit. But my ISP (Internet Service Provider or the folk who host my website in this case) offer a service where I can set up a fairly instant website, with very little knowledge of these things and.... Robert is your Mother's Masculine Sibling.

Hmm... can it really be that simple? Well of course not. So far I have pretty much disliked every design they offered.

I like simple,  it seems they like lots of big pictures. I like red and blue, but as you probably know orange and grey are currently in favour. Woe is me.

However, after a lot of fiddling around, (and make no mistake, you will end up spending a lot of time if you don't spend the money) I have come up with design I can live with for now.

Is Learning How a Website Works a Waste of Time?

No. No. And thrice No. If you walk into a food shop and the floor is dirty, cobwebs hang from the ceiling and the counters are dusty, do you buy? No, you move on.

And make no mistake, if someone lands on your site and they get that dusty feeling, they will be off so quickly you will see the time waves ripple.

There is another aspect about this that counts.  The Search Engines such as Google, Firefox etc do not like trampoline sites (that is sites that people bounce off faster than they got on).

Understand Your Customers and you Can Succeed at ECommerce

Your customers are individuals.  They will like certain 'looks'.  But all of them will get to your site more easily if it is designed propertly.  And all of them are more like to stay longer and buy if they can use it comfortably.  Taking time to understand your customers, and building a website that suits them is important.

If you get really bored, just keep asking yourself this.  "If I were opening a business on the High Street, would I sign the rental documents for a premises I had never seen?"  You would probably say no to that. 

So I fiddled.  I learned a lot though.  I learned how to make my blog match my site at least a little.  I learned about other marketing tips and tricks.  And I will be putting every one of them online for you in the not too distant future. 

Don't forget, searching on the internet will bring you a lot of free resources when it comes to building your site.  Let me know if you find anything great, because I could really do with a boost just now.

Free Information

And don't forget there is a lot of free information on my website. 

Ever onwards and upwards