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My two main “Pet Hates” at the moment are Static Websites and phone book type Online Directories.

The whole point of setting up business On-line, is to make sales for your business.

Taking that in to consideration, here I go …

Static Websites

A Static Website also called the Brochure website, consists of a number of web pages, and needs to be developed and designed by a professional.
Unless you understand HTML, it’s very difficult to add pages to this type of web site yourself.

For small business owners, in my opinion, a Static website on it’s own, is a waste of money, because more than likely, only people that know what your website address is, will visit your website.

Why?

Because in the majority of cases, Static Websites do not do well at getting a good ranking in the Search Engines.

Most of your potential customers/clients won’t know your website address, so if they also can’t see you when they search in the Search Engines, your website will just gather virtual dust.

A CMS Based website, (CMS stands for Content Management System) is far better.

It can be used as it is, if your budget is non existent, but it can be developed and designed by a professional to make it look good.

This type of website basically allows you to add more pages to your website later, without understanding HTML and some are very good at getting listed in Google.

In my opinion, by far the best CMS to use for a small business owner is Wordpress, if it is done correctly.

Phone book type Online Directories

Basically, in order to get people that would be interested in what you have to offer, to visit your web site, you need to go where the people are Online.

One of the latest trends is Online “Phone Book” type Business Directories that you need to pay to get a listing in.
There are thousands on the Internet and even in Ireland there are more than you would expect.

I’ve been on the Internet since 1994, so I’ve seen everything and I can tell you for a fact that 90% of these are a waste of money.

Why?

The majority of them will send no visitors to your website.

The main decider as to what you should spend your money on for anything Marketing related is, and always should be …
“Will you get visitors to your web site?” and if it’s a Yes,
“Was it worth the money you spent getting them?”

I use Google Analytics on all my website and my clients websites and in case you don’t know, this allows you to see where visitors to your website came from.

I have seldom seen a Business Directory in the recorded data, with one notable exception and that is ShopIn.ie.

ShopIn.ie has a list of 25 things that you can do with your paid ShopIn.ie listing to get more business, which includes plenty of things ShopIn.ie will do for you.

Yes, ShopIn.ie are going to actively bring people to their website, in fact they have gone as far as to state that your money is used to Promote you.

Interesting concept … you pay for a listing and they pool part of that fee to promote you.

So before you spend your hard earned money on a listing in an Online Business Directory, ask yourself “What am I getting?”

What do YOU think?

Leave me a comment.