I'm sure you all know the typical commercial advertising site. It's totally swamped with BUY THIS NOW banners, popups and every other sort of 'catch me if you can' advertising. Well it doesn't have to be like that! It is possible to run a commercial site, with ads, while making it informative and good value. Here is how.



First and foremost when you are designing your own commercial site, or are in the market to purchase a template, be your customer. That's right, you really need to take off your supplier hat for a while and picture your site exclusively as seen through your visitors eyes. Would you like to have to navigate through a lot of banners and put up with those hideously annoying popups? I bet you wouldn't, but it is amazing to see how many sites are out there inflicting this pain on their customers. I wonder if the webmasters of these sites would put up with these tactics when they go browsing for a product or service themselves? My guess is they are no different to the rest of us, and would steer clear of websites just like the ones they serve up for us!

In all honesty, no one knows your product or service better than you. However what you may need assistance with, is the best and most efficient way to market that product or service. The best advice I can give is to close your eyes and recall the best two or three websites you have visited recently. You know, ones that impressed you with their clarity, usefulness and value. Ok, now browse the net and find those sites, confirm that your initial impression was correct and then jot down why you reckon these websites are good. Things like, eye appeal, relevance to their market, provision of information and clear pathways to purchase. After this process, you will end up with a shortlist of sites you like, with the reasons why. Next, look at what you are selling and decide which one or two of these sites suits your industry or theme best.

The final step is to re visit these websites and have a look for information about who designed them. As a hint, this is usually found at the bottom of the home page, under a link like 'designed by', or 'created by'. Track this designer or template provider down, and go to the next step of costing the process of commissioning them to create a website for you.

Getting your site is up and working is an important first step, but encouraging all your potential customers to find it is just as vital. There are many ways to achieve this, some simple and some not, but just one tactic I'd like to share with you, is optimising your site's position on a search engine page when someone types in some keywords related to what you're offering. Write articles relating to your product or service, add a link to your site in those articles, and have them published on the internet. The technology behind this approach is beyond the scope of this article, but it is tried and tested, and it WORKS.

All the best with your website, and have a ton of fun doing it.