Monday, April 5, 2010

Online Startups- A How To

If you start an online business, there are two things that are vital to its success. One is getting people to your site, and two is keeping them there. The first goal is addressed by search engine optimization or SEO for short. This is exactly what it sounds like, in order for your site to succeed, it needs to come up as high as possible in the search results because people aren't out there searching for you, they're searching for a particular product or service. Think about the last web search you did, did you make it past halfway down the first page of results, let alone to the second? My guess is probably not. This is why it is so important for startups to come up quickly, everyone knows the big names but a startup may offer a better or cheaper product that nobody knows about.

Once you get traffic to your website, the most important thing to do is keep people there to ultimately spend money. In order to do this, you have to know what people are and aren't clicking and why. Several sites such as google analytics track different stats and even let you run different versions of your website to determine which is the best, most engaging layout. I think that is the most interesting but also possibly the most confusing feature. What if a person gets one site layout the first five times they visit and then a new one on the sixth try? That could confuse and turn away a repeat visitor so I think that's a double edged sword.

4 comments:

  1. I agree, Google analytics definitely helps enhance Search Engine Optimization. Although on the layout issue, I think if someone has become familiar with a website or service the website is offering, a layout change would not affect their decision to come back next time.

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  2. I definitely agree that SEO is very important for startups. I know like you I hardly ever venture far down on my search results so if the start-up doesn't appear early chances are I will not click on it.

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  3. I found it interesting how every person that visits a certain website, gains it a certain amount of profit through each click. SEO has become important because now it gives small businesses equal opportunity to gain exposure.

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  4. Yeah I was also puzzled on how a person didn't get confused using different layouts and how that didn't skewer the results by having people turn off by it. Also you mention being on top of the search engine is most important but we known that is paid for with a lot of money how do suppose these start ups react or change that?

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