How to make a website to sell online? (Part 1)
Selling online with a website has become easier today than it seems. Just several years ago, we needed at least some level of coding knowledge in order to build websites on our own. Otherwise, we needed to spend thousands of dollars just to make our own website.
Today, the rapid growth of technology and internet has given rise to the development and popularity of online tools. Free and easy to use blogs have made it really, really easy to publish anything online. In fact, many internet marketers are using blogs to sell their products online.
Now, let’s get on to the nitty-gritty….
If you are looking to develop a professional-looking website with fancy designs, flash, user login interface, and backend connection to a database, chances are that you’ll need to engage the services of a web designer.
There are some things that online web hosting and design sites just can’t give you. The skills and talent of web designers are still essential and crucial to produce a site that is highly customized towards the needs of an organization.
But, the good news is that, you don’t really need to pay for all that to build you own website. The fact remains that fancy designs and flash animations don’t count for search engine rankings, Google Page Rank or quality content.
What you really need is a website that is strategic in terms of keyword optimization, relevant content, call-to-action, and an adequate balance of incoming and outgoing links. This means, you can create a simple website with a free blog service, using virtually no coding knowledge at all.
Of course, when you require a little more function, customization and flexibility, you may need to subscribe to hosting services such as Yahoo! Web Hosting, GoDaddy’s Website Tonight or Google’s Page Creator to create your own website. With these tools, you are always given a template to start with, layouts you can choose from and a user interface that allows you to write and upload your images.
SynthaSite (http://www.synthasite.com) is an interesting website building service that I found on the website. All you need is to select from a myriad of templates, color schemes and layouts already preprogrammed for you. Then, an easy-to-use friendly interface (I’ve attached a snapshot), is provided for you to enter your content, upload images to your site, edit your HTML code, and to incorporate Adsense advertising or Google maps. In addition, you are also allowed to edit your meta tags, descriptions and keywords used on your site.
With this, you are able to create your own web pages, upload product pictures and descriptions, produce search engine optimized content, place shopping carts or RSS product feeds (http://www.what-sells-online.com/blog/2008/07/how-to-sell-online-dropshipping-vs-affiliate-product-feeds.html) without much coding or scripting knowledge required.
Other sites that offer services similar to SynthaSite include:
Why is it so easy today to build an online store?
The answer is simple. The web of today is full of online tools we can either subscribe to, or use for free. Our success in online business is no longer dependant on our technical skills – we can easily purchase these services, or outsource our needs to skillful programmers from around the world.
Instead, what are important today are our ideas and our ability to draw traffic to our website. As long as our website is substantially presentable, easy to maneuver around and meets the needs of the audience, there is a fair chance of successfully making a sale.
Now, if you have SOME HTML, PHP, ASP or JAVASCRIPT coding knowledge, you are able to create professional looking websites by customizing web templates you purchase online. Here are some interesting links for this:
In part 2 of How to make a website to sell online, I will reveal important elements of drawing traffic to your website, and some of the right ways to use online advertising for successful internet marketing!
