NEED A FRESH LOGO?
Is your logo tired and outdated? Is your company’s image stuck in the past? Well, if it is, do not wait another second. Call the experts at Blue Sand and we will design a new and fresh custom logo for your company. We will make sure that your new company logo is fully integrated. The expert designers at Blue Sand are experienced and are dedicated. Contact Blue Sand today!
Open for Business, Really?
E-merchants have many of the same concerns as brick and mortar merchants. Just as brick and mortar merchants need good business locations, e-merchants need easy to remember URL’s and sharply designed websites. One major but simple pitfall that comes with e-commerce is often taken for granted with brick and mortar stores and that is the business needs to be open.
That sounds simple especially in comparison to a brick and mortar store. E-merchants need to examine what constitutes being open for business in a virtual sense. Working with an SEO, or search engine optimization, consultant can help determine the specific needs for a website.
One of the major considerations for keeping virtual doors open is the hosting service. Proper SEO tactics demand a solid hosting company for a website. If a merchant’s website is down, they are essentially closed for business. If the hosting service for a florist in Houston goes offline just before Valentine’s Day, then that means a serious cut into revenue.
There are a variety of hosting services available for websites. Understanding SEO techniques can help a webmaster figure out which hosting services will best fit their particular service.
Free hosting is rarely recommended. The old adage, “You get what you pay for,” is not lost in the digital era. Free hosting often comes with bandwidth limitations, typically has reliability problems and can even interject advertisements on a merchant’s website. Why would a small Mom and Pop florist in Houston want to risk having an advertisement for a national florist chain on their homepage? When a customer visits a merchant, then that merchant wants to keep them, not allow the consumer to get distracted by advertisements. In regards to bandwidth limits, why sacrifice the quality of graphics or get “punished” for success? Using the florist in Houston as an example, they will need to provide the consumer with crisp and clear pictures of the flowers in order to properly market and sell bouquets.
Another pitfall of being “closed for business” is for a website to be missed by web crawlers. Search engines use crawlers to identify websites. If a site is down or electronically closed to the crawlers, consumers will not be able to locate the virtual front door. SEO efforts can make sure customers who need a special bouquet delivered in Houston will find a local florist.
However, being noticed by a search engine is not enough. Web searchers are hit with hundreds of thousands of results per search. How many people will click all the way to the bottom of the list to find a small retailer in Houston? SEO techniques can raise the relevancy of a website which will in turn boost where a site falls in page rankings by a specific search engine.
Opening for business does not stop at HTML coding with e-commerce.
