The basic question that arises when discussing the relationship between a company and a virtual market of today is not whether the company can afford to appear on the Internet. It should rather ask, whether it be the fact that there does not appear. Online business requires above all skillful selection of the target group and choose those tools which allow to effectively get the message to this group.

The primary source of data on the company is always its website. For some projects, especially large and profitable services such as social networking, along with the availability of the site is running a promotional campaign. That tactic does not work, however, in the case of corporate sites and image, as it causes a significant increase in expenditures from the very beginning.

An entrepreneur who decides to set up a website, must choose among three options:

Creating a site on their own. The creation of 'skeleton' website requires the mastery of (at least in the basic extent) technologies such as xHTML, CSS, PHP. To develop a visual design requires knowledge of maintenance of graphics programs, as well as knowledge of current trends. The advantage is its low cost (assuming that we use the free application for graphic and web designers). Its disadvantages include time-consuming (before designing a website you have to spend a lot of time to obtain the necessary information), and unsatisfactory results (at the first projects is unlikely we will be able to achieve the level of professional services).

Create a service based on the available templates. In this case we get ready graphics, usually chopped and coded. However, the template must be customized. This step requires knowledge of the technology described earlier, but at a higher stage (to make the changes you need fairly well versed in the structure of the code). The costs of this solution depends on the price of the template. In addition, (if you do not buy exclusivity of the project), we have to reckon with the fact that the same template can be bought by another person or company. On the other hand, get ready, professional-looking project.

The order creating the interactive agency. This option is most convenient for the certainly a trader. Interactive agency should thoroughly know their expectations and help in the selection of materials. The role of the client is therefore limited to commenting on the proposed solutions, and all technical issues are the responsibility of designers. The final result depends of course on the standard of the agency and its methods of work. Commissioned to develop the service on an outsourced basis also requires a relatively high financial outlays.

Site Maintenance: How much does it cost?

The cost of maintaining a functioning site consists mainly of fees for the maintenance of a domain (ie the company's Web address) and hosting costs (maintenance site on the server). Very often companies decide to buy a domain and hosting services from the same supplier. Differentiation hosting plans offered on the market is quite big, so choosing one of them should be guided primarily by the server parameters (amount of available space, number of email accounts, supported technologies, uptime, or the time at which the server is available, etc.). It is worth noting also the available bandwidth, ie the amount of data that can be downloaded from the server or sent to him. If we expect that service will be visited by very many users, we should choose a server with a high transfer (it is given in GB, either annually or monthly).


The battle for search

One of the main treatments for promotional Web sites is positioning. It involves the use of tools that provide the highest page rank in search results on search engines. Due to the popularity of the Google search engine positioning web services is computed almost exclusively on her.

A single trader can have serious problems to take a leading position in search results very popular phrases (queries, addressed to the search engines). However, it may ensure that the site was optimized, ie the service code to be readable for crawlers browser. To do this, take care of the individual site descriptions in the meta (they may not be identical for each sub-pages), with addresses containing the titles of articles or pages, not just their numbers, as well as a logical and ordered structure of the content. Pay attention also to the texts - whether they appear in keywords? Are are highlighted, eg in the form of headers? Many tips for optimizing Google provides by providing free materials on the subject.

Service position but also affects its facilities, such as the number of external links that lead to it. In this case, it is important to position the service, which links to the page. Businesses also use the so-called. presell pages, which is similar to blogs, sites, containing the texts offer links to the site. It should be noted that duplication of the same link reduces its value, rather than increase it. In addition, the algorithms of search engines change, so really no method of positioning will not be effective at all times. The best solution therefore appears to confer an external positioning companies or at least consult with their actions.

How to revive a website?

Although the company's marketing activities on the Internet must refer to its website, without the promotional activities one does not find this page. Among the many methods available to promote the service (and thus the company) should be mentioned:

Sponsored links campaigns. These are PPC campaigns (called pay per click). You pay for them for the ad, but for every click. Sponsored links are a guarantee that the service will be displayed at the top of the search results or next to it. Advertising costs depend on the popularity of the key phrase. The advantage of this type of promotion is the possibility of targeting, the limitations of the campaign, to a selected region or city.

Promotional mailings. Mailing list is one of the best forms of promoting your site. Required to obtain email addresses by building your own database or using external databases (be careful when buying a database on its legality!). Assembly of a pool of addresses allows you to maintain constant contact with customers, build your corporate image and dosprzedawanie products in the same (so-called up-selling) or a separate offer (so-called cross-selling).

The partnership. It involves a network of partners, ie websites that will recommend the company's offer in exchange for a commission on sales. Partner site puts on your website link or banner. A special script advertisers recognizes the site, which site visitors are coming from a partner site, and customers placing an order. With this system of records, the partners receive certain profits from the sale of the command.

Viral marketing. It uses the psychological needs of sharing knowledge. Viral materials are made available by the company, but their fate depends on the audience. Effective marketing virus should prompt a recipient to send it to another person. Such material is stored, or promote a specific product from the company's offer, or to build associations with her image. The promotion of viral counts ingenuity, but the most commonly used advertising media are movies and merchandise (cards, wallpapers, small applications).

Is it worth investing in e-business?

Certainly so. The Internet is now the largest market on which the company can operate. Its global nature makes promotional activities must be carefully planned, and the vision of the company should maintain consistency and clarity. It should be emphasized that the Web still poses tremendous opportunities for growth. On the one hand all the promotional activities on the Web are professionalizing: customers now pay more attention to the appearance of the service and its usefulness as get used to the current standards. On the other hand, the web becomes for consumers and businesses seeking a natural place for products and services. Best proof of this dynamic development of internet commerce. It can therefore be assumed that if the measures do not bring us Internet measurable results, is to blame for this state of affairs bears the wrong choice of measures to promote, rather than saturation of the market.