Recently I replied in a discussion forum asking the question, If you could only have one marketing expense for your business what would it be. Naturally, I replied with a great website! Reflecting on this more, what I should have said was, A good professional web designer.

When you hire a professional web designer / web developer, you are getting more than just a beautiful website design; you also gain the knowledge of that professional, which may include web marketing strategies, what types of layouts work best, what types of features your typical customer desires to see, how to make your website more efficient, what practices to avoid that might annoy your web audience, how to design the website with clean code that will attract search engines, and how to convert your visitors to customers.

There are a lot of neat “do-it-yourself” tools out there, but taking on an important marketing project for your company on your own – without all that expert knowledge – could actually hurt you.  What if you unknowingly use a photograph that was copyrighted?  What if you try to add some simple features and the code you used exposes your site with a major security bug?  What if you implement a feature that your mom thought was cool, but your ideal customer hated?

All of these headaches can be avoided if you spend your dollars wisely, on an established professional web design company.

Here’s a quick tip for a first time e-commerce project.  If you plan to support real-time automated credit card transactions, you will be setting up a merchant banking account with a payment gateway (such as Authorize.net, LinkPoint, YourPay, etc.).  If this is a new merchant account or a new gateway service, at some point the bank will want to do an approval process of your website.  What they usually want to see is a posted return policy, a posted privacy policy, and SSL security in place.  So prepare all of these things as early in the development process as possible.

A creative and effective way for your business to help out non-profit organizations and charities is to use your company’s online resources.  Consider some of these ideas:

• If you don’t already have e-commerce features on your site, you can easily set up a pay pal account to accept online donations without having to purchase complex a shopping cart system.
• If your site currently incorporates e-commerce, add an option at check-out to include a donation into the purchase total.
• Use your social media outlets to share your support of your organization and let others know how they can help.
• Link your organization’s website to your own site and social networks to help out their SEO.
• Have an online contest.  For example, whenever your company’s facebook page reaches 1000 fans, you will donate $X to Organization X.

By using these and other tactics, you will not only be supporting a good cause, but you’ll be building your online presence and improving your site’s SEO in the process!

Despite that the average American is dreaming more about their upcoming vacation than their business, December is a time when website owners seek out opportunity to drive sales.  And it isn’t too late to take advantage of the holiday buying frenzy.

Things you can do to make money with your web site this holiday season:

• Add a new product variation to your online store – Shirt now available in teal!
• Make “kit” suggestions and sell them as a bundle package – How about a mug to go with those coffee beans?
• Suggest some creative cross-sell items for people to notice when they are shopping -While you are looking at this hot cocoa mix maybe you’d be interested in a new pair of fuzzy slippers?