Making Sense of Website Design and Website Promotion

Our Community Forums and Webmaster Blog are free to use, post and comment in. Please feel free to Post a Quick Question and tell the world what you think! This site does not contain any annoying third party advertising - and never will! It really is a free community site to help anyone interested in online marketing challenges.

Promoting a website to generate quality sales leads, requires patience, tenacity and realistic expectations regarding what is achievable. More often than not, webmasters need credible advice and guidance on the latest online marketing issues. So we have developed this community-based website to help non IT literate users, understand and share website promotional issues.

Please start by reading our Beginners Guides Section, which summarises the core online marketing topics and options available to owners of websites. In these short guides, we have assumed you are a relatively non-technical user, by qualifying any 'technical jargon' where ever possible.

Most small business owners already have a website. Yet many lack time or skills to promote it themselves. For startup entrepreneurs, creating a new business website from scratch can be a daunting exercise. The practical challenges often leave entrepreneurs bewildered and burdened, with what they perceive as technical gobbledygook. Even once a new website is up and running, many business owners are unsure of how to apply internet marketing techniques...

Online Marketing or Internet Marketing, describe a set of business strategies and marketing techniques, that are employed to represent a company's overall online marketing objectives. It describes the practical methods of analysing the market, performance testing and promotion, to ultimately sell products and services using the Internet. These methods most commonly include professional website design, search engine optimisation (SEO), link acquisition strategies, affiliate marketing, pay per click advertising, email marketing, social networking, blog marketing, viral marketing, as well as conventional forms of advertising.

Internet marketing is as much a 'black art' as it is a management science (with no right or wrong answer). Frequently, techniques employed to sell more of 'Product A', may be completely inappropriate if used to sell 'Product B'. The right answer is knowing which technique to apply in the first place.

Getting external help is also tricky. The SEO industry is infested with sharp operators, promising 'top ranking positions' in no time at all. Yet in-house website promotion can be very time consuming. Do not try it if you cannot spare the time or do not have the patience and temperament. However, if you are determined to teach yourself, there are some professional exams and online marketing qualifications. Ultimately, success for the intrepid entrepreneur is only really achieved through dogged learning and constant trial and error. 

Good luck with your internet marketing endeavours!