Professional Web Design

If you’re looking for a professional web design company to build your website so that it’s great to look at, easily found by search engines and generates new customers for your business then check out our service. We specialize in building high quality, affordable websites that perfectly match your requirements and get your business seen online.

We offer 3 different packages so just click on the package above that best suits what you’re looking for. If you have any questions you can contact me via the contact page here or simply fill in your details at the top right of this page and I’ll get back to you shortly.

There are many reasons why small businesses get themselves a website but by far the main reason for any small business should be getting more visitors which equals more customers which equals more sales. Plain and simple your website needs to generate you money. So as an introduction to this topic I’ve started putting together a tips and advice section which I will update regularly for you guys and I’ll shoot you an email with a link to each new article.

I’ll cover a fair bit over the next few months ranging from SEO, Facebook, PPC, Twitter and Offline Lead Generation but the main thing I can show you how to do is to get more customers to your websites (which is also kind of fun!). So to start it all off we need to get a broad understanding of how websites actually make money so we can see where your website fits best.

Websites can be broadly put into one of four different types – so I’ll discuss each one with you in some detail so you can see how they make money off them.

1. Information Websites

Information websites make up the largest number of websites on the internet today and they are growing at a massive rate as the internet develops and expands. The first websites most people think of when we talk about information is either wikipedia or any government website. Both of these are not for profit and generate no income, so they aren’t very good examples for small businesses to copy. They only serve one purpose and that is to pass information to the visitor.

So how do companies who own an information type website make money off it? Well there are 2 ways they can go about it the first of which is to place advertising in the form of either banners or text ads on their websites. A great example of this is to check out the Herald Sun’s website which you can do here. When you look at the website you will see a banner at the top right of the screen which has been placed there by an advertiser. That advertiser is paying money to the Herald Sun to have their banner displayed there. Usually the advertiser pays on what’s called a CPM basis, which means they will pay a guaranteed price for every 1,000 impression their banner gets.

So imagine in a normal day the Herald Sun website gets 100,oo0 visitors who look on average at 5 pages. That’s 500,000 times a day that they are serving up that banner and lets say the advertiser is paying $4.00 CPM then thats $4.00 multiplied by 500 = $2,000 per day for just that banner. If you look around the site you will also see other banners and even some text linkads throughout the website. Each of these spots is” real estate” and the job of the Herald Sun is to sell as much inventory as possible. A couple of things to remember are that the more traffic the website has the more it costs to advertise on it. Some of the biggest websites like tmz.com or youtube.com can cost a small fortune to advertise on – even if you just target Australian traffic.

Having said all that there aren’t many small business websites that would generate anywhere near enough traffic to justify selling banner or text ads on your website. Besides the goal of your website is to get them buying your product, not clicking off your site to see one of your competitors.

Many of the largest information type websites have moved on from selling advertising space to now selling memberships to their websites. Using the example of the Herald Sun you might be aware that they are locking certain parts of their website now to members only – which you can get for around $20 per month. As well as news websites now charging for information think of dating websites, file sharing websites and even site like groupon.com or dailydeals.com where you need to be a member to get access to any information.

The second way information websites can generate income is the way most small businesses do it and that is lead generation. A true lead generation website is a website where the only goal is to get the visitor to call you, email you or hop in the car and visit your business. A lead generation website has to have a very prominent Call To Action (CTA) – check out the right hand side of this webpage and you’ll see what I mean. I have a large CTA  at the top right of the page which leaves the visitor in no doubt as to what I want them to do. This works perfectly for my business because I don’t have a shop for them to visit, all I want is that initila phone call or email.

Another great example I came across the other day was this website www.michaelroach.com. Many of you guys will recognise Michael Roach as the ex-Richmond full forward who made a name for himself with a great footy career in the 1980′s. Well he now runs a successful finance company and his website is a great example of how a lead generation website works. It has a video, information pages and a big call to action for the user to request a call back from his team. How did I come across his website? He was advertising on the radio during the footy game I was listening to. I’ll discuss this type of promotion more in coming weeks.

Lead generation websites are literally GOLD FOR SMALL BUSINESSES. When made correctly and promoted correctly they can bring a flood of highly targetted new customers into your business.

2. Sales Letter Websites

Sales letter websites aren’t so relevant to small businesses even though you should know how they work. A sales letter website is where the whole website is selling you on whipping out your credit card and buying something off them. A great example to look at is this website here selling tinnitus relief www.tinnitustreatmentonline.com for people who have constant ringing in their ears. The entire website is a pitch to buy their product for $24.95.

They are interesting to look at and can generate quite a deal of cash flow, but for most small businesses the sales letter type website won’t really suit your business model.

3. Shopping Cart Websites

These websites are becoming more and more popular and are probably one of the main reasons why retailers in Australia are struggling so much. Aussies love to shop online and do so more than other countries like the USA and the UK. Of course the big ones here are ebay and Amazon but a great example of a small business doing this online is www.designersunnies.com.au where these guys sell their sunglasses online.

Shopping cart websites need 2 main parts – lots of stock and a working shopping cart to process payments. There are positives and negatives to having a shopping cart website so I’ll break them down for you;

Positives

• can sell products anywhere in the world
• cheap to set up compared to a retail shop
• no staff, you can do it all yourself or intergrate it into your current retail shop
• you get paid before you send the product out so little to no risk on your behalf
• easy to update, just the click of a button
• you can make sales 24/7 – no sick days and no staff needed
• you can undercut your competition
• Aussies love buying stuff online
• you can build a membership base and continue to sell to your customers over and over again

Negatives

• shopping cart websites are expensive to set up
• they are labour intensive in that you need to photograph every item you stock
• each item then needs to be manually uploaded to the website
• setting up banking so you can process credit cards is expensive too – generally you will have annual fees of around $1,000 just to have your bank process your sales
• before you begin processing sales your bank will want to approve your website – this can take up to 8 weeks which is why we always start by using Paypal as a processor

Having said all that a shopping cart website can easily start to generate you a few hundred dollars a week which can grow into a few thousand dollars a week which can quickly grow into an online business that easily earns more than your traditional retail store.

I hope you enjoyed the first of my tips and advice articles. If you have any questions or want to discuss your website more in detail you guys know where to find me. I’ll be adding more updates soon some look out for my emails.

Affordable Web Design

Affordable Web Design

Looking for an affordable web design company to get your website online? Have you been searching around on Google looking for a web designer who can build you a quality website that looks great and helps you interact with your visitors… but got put off with quotes for $2,000.00 or more?

Or even worse have you got a quote for your new website only to discover that you needed to pay hundreds of dollars extra for hosting fees, email setup or simple updates or edits?

Hi, my name is Darren Harris and I am a coffee addict (3 skinny cappuccino’s a day),  AFL Football fan (Go Blues!) and affordable web designer who builds quality websites that look great and help you get found online from under $1 per day. In fact I can have your new website completely finished and starting to attract new surfers online in just a few days from now.

Affordable Web Design

Here is just a couple of things I can do for you;

• Get a complete website built from just $49.95 per month
• No lock in contract
• Complete custom options available
• Affordable web design
• Monthly updates on visitors to your website
• SEO options – this gets more people viewing your website more often
• Monthly newsletters, videos and information packages to help your website get better exposure
• Integration with your Facebook or Twitter page.

I’ve helped hundreds of businesses get seen online and you can see some examples of my work here. I’ve built sites for clients in Australia, New Zealand, UK, Canada, USA, Israel and more. No matter where you are I can help out. To get started is really simple, you just need to fill in the form at the top right of the page and I’ll respond to you shortly.

Affordable Web Design

Your website can be made to suit any business, hobby or requirement and the website can be easily updated by you with new information, blog posts, photos or specials with just a few clicks of the mouse.

So for affordable web design perfect for your requirements just fill in the form at the top right of this page.

After watching the video you will probably have several questions, so call me on 0427 418971 or email me darren@alburywebdesign.com

To watch the video click on the image below, it will open in a new tab/window.