Making the Most of SiteBuilders

Site Builders, the free build-it-yourself website builders that are bundled with your hosting package, offer a cheap entree into the wonderful world of websites, but usually, you get what you pay for.



Unsophisticated Home Page

A savvy home page is not merely an introductory page, but rather a table of contents. It teases the content on the back pages and puts everything just a click away. Site builders typically offer a single pane without divisions. It is difficult to break up the page gracefully to offer a variety of featured content boxes, or sections.




Slower Loading

Styles, the data that determines the color and style of fonts, is usually coded inline in site builder pages, so it takes longer to load the content and the associated styles. With professional sites, the styles are kept separate in a style, or CSS, file, so no styles are repeated and loading time is reduced.



Dreadful Graphics

Sitebuilders typically offer low quality graphics that make your site appear unprofessional.



Workarounds

If you cannot create sections on your home page with divisions, have a short paragraph for each separate topic. Include a subtitle and small image for each topic. Keep the fancy styles to a minimum to keep the load time down and the look will be more consistent, too.



Using graphics professionally on a Site Builder site is dicey. The best looking sites have used the strategy of a solid background for the header with a professional looking logo. The logo should have transparent background matted with the background color. If you don't know what that means, consider working with a professional graphic artist to produce your logo.



The Best Site Builders

There are some site builders that work even for inexperienced users. The two best ones I know of are:

1. The iLife sitebuilder that comes free with the purchase of an Apple computer.

2. The SimplWeb Joomla site builder. This site builder offers support and great tutorials not found with other sitebuilders. It isn't free, but it includes hosting. Joomla is an excellent Content Management System so don't let the word scare you off. This is different from Jolly Mystic where we build the Joomla site and turn it over to you to update yourself. The difference in pricing is that you pay a little more upfront with us but then you're done. With SimplWeb you pay an ongoing monthly fee, a bit above normal hosting fees.

Don't Be Shy - Persona Branding for Your Online Business

Many, if not most, holistic and esoteric professionals, are shy and sensitive. This sensitivity makes you tops in your field, but can inhibit you when it comes to branding and promoting yourself.


Persona Branding


Persona branding, using a single person as the identity of a business, is usually the best approach to branding a business of an author, medium, psychic, astrologer, or basically any business providing a personal service where you are the sole provider of that service. It is better for sole owners of holistic service businesses because:

1. People like a real person to be associated with personal healing or reading.
They are going to let you invade their space, or at least their aura, and they would like to have an understanding of who is doing it, rather than some cold name like "Wellness Express". There is comfort provided by an individual that is absent in a corporate-style company name.

2. A person's name is more relatable than a company name.
It is much easier for people to understand, remember and want the homemaker services of "Martha Stewart" over "Federated Publishing and Media Conglomerate".

3. A person is a convenient umbrella for a variety of modalities and services.
We can understand that a person has more than one talent, but the same offer can be more confusing from a company.

4. It is easier to brand with a person than with a concept.
Companies pay thousands of dollars and go through mental gymnastics trying to create an identity concept that works. Your persona already works. Your name, your picture, you're done (almost).


But sometimes mediums and healers are reluctant to come out and declare that they are in alternative professions because of public stigma and general shyness. Here are some thoughts that may help:

1. You are not the same as your persona.
Keep in mind that, although you are using your name and likeness, your persona is not the same as you, the person. Your persona is a kind of avatar that just happens to resemble you. Keep them separate in your mind and you will not feel as vulnerable.

2. You are in service.
Keep your eye on your purpose and not on what people think of you. Since you are trying to serve people, it does matter in an abstract way what they think of your persona, but not you. Be detached from the public impression of you.

3. Be ready for positive and negative reactions.
All reactions help you focus your product and services. Take praise and criticism from a high perspective and just take the lesson from it - this seems to work, this seems not to work.

So use your persona as your brand - It's a good thing!

10 Things Every Holistic Website Must Have to Succeed

There are some elements all successful holistic websites have in common:

1. A well-organized site with a consistent look and feel across all pages
A well-organized site is a user-friendly site. A consistent graphic look increases trust and the level of perceived professionalism.

2. A well-designed home page which allows users a peek at the backpage contents

In the olden days of the web, the home page was treated as an introduction to the site, but now that everyone is comfortable with using the internet, we get right to it by presenting a page that is more like a Table of Contents. Small content boxes usually surround the main content area and are used to preview new articles, features, or to provide a quick path to the most popular pages. With a well planned home page, you tell visitors what you're about in a glance.

3. A strong identity

All businesses need a logo. It may be typographic(letters only) logo, but you need a logo. If you are a sole proprietor, an author, medium, instructor or the like, you serve your visitors best by creating a brand under your name or persona. It is simply the best way for people to remember you and find you. If you are going to persona brand, you should have, in addition to a logo:

• a professional photo (mandatory)


• a video of you on the home page (can be welcome or about your latest thoughts or new product or service)


• a graphic signature(if appropriate)

4. A Download in exchange for visitor's email
Sometimes called "bait", this is a first step to motivate visitors to give you their email and start a sort of dialog with you that may ends with them purchasing your product or taking the first step toward a purchase.

5. Newsletter sign-up
Keep the dialog going with feature packed newsletters. Always offer a little something special in your newsletter, like a coupon, or notice of a "members only" event.

6. Continually changing informative content relevant to your website's purpose
Sticky websites are websites that visitors return to again and again. Well written, relevant and fresh content insures your visitors will return to see what's new. This content can be re-purposed for use in your newsletter. Columns or features like monthly sun sign forecasts, a new monthly video yoga lesson, or new meditation keep people coming back.

7. Freebies to download
Offer some "no strings attached" free downloads, such as a meditation audio file, a workbook or other useful download.

8. Events
Events make your site look like a lively place. List any events, demonstrations, classes or appearances on the front page. Consider live webcam or telephone lessons and workshops.

9. Products or services described as concretely as possible

Be sure you describe clearly what you are offering. It's not enough to simply list your skills (like "masseuse") and assume clients will call you. You must create offerings that appeal and identify the product like "1 hour Swedish Massage. Experience the deep soothing relaxation only the Swedish Massage can offer. Plan to take it easy after this wonderful experience. $75"
Some holistic professionals are embarassed to include price information or they want to have flexibility to charge less to those who can't pay. There are other ways to give back, but you must include prices when you describe you products or services. When there is no price it makes you seem unprofessional and untrustworthy and drives away paying customers.

10. Promotions

Netcraft says that the total number of websites on the Internet has now exceeded 182 million! You must promote your website both for traditional marketing purposes and to get the inbound links that improve your search engine ranking. Some quick suggestions for promotion are blogs, reciprocal links with other businesses in the field, and writing articles for online magazines

Learn more about enhancing your spiritual or holistic online business at http://www.jollymystic.com/.

How to Write for Robots

Write Content that Increases Your Site's Search Engine Ranking



In the 1951 SciFi thriller The Day the Earth Stood Still, Helen, played by Patricia Neal, saved her life by knowing how to speak to Gort, the robot. Here are some tips for getting your content ready for the robots that crawl your web pages to index the page content for search engines:

1. Create lots of relevant content
Some experts suggest that you publish 100 pages of content relevant to your potential customers! Every page you can add toward this is going to help your relative ranking, so start your journey of a thousand steps that begins with the first step ...

2. Identify keywords for your site
Use the words your potential visitors are likely to use to search for you on Google or other search engines. To generate keyword ideas, check out Google's AdSense Keyword Tool.





This is a useful tool because it tells you what search words people entered and how many times. The Keyword Tool even allows you to make a list of the keywords you want to use and can export the list into a variety of formats.

3. Use the keywords in certain ways
Keywords earn even greater relevancy by how they are used throughout your site. Use keywords in page titles, page urls, image descriptions, subtitles and, of course, within the paragraph itself, emboldened. It would be ideal if your domain name itself contains the most important key word. Do not over-use your keywords; your total of a single keyword per page should not exceed 8 as there is some evidence that using more than 8 is considered spamming and your site ranking will be penalized.

4. Do not use full-page Flash
Do not use full-page Flash movies, especially on the home page. This blocks some robots from crawling your site. If the Flash movie is an intro or splash screen movie on the home page, it can block the entire site from being indexed, and therefor found, on Google.

5. Use DIVs not Tables
Do not use tables as your primary way of formatting your page; use divisions instead. Divisions expose your content to the Googlebot. Beware: many sitebuilders use tables instead of divisions to create layout boxes.

So get ready for the GoogleBot invasion by preparing your content, and don't forget the magic words

Gort, Klaatu barada nikto

For more information on optimizing your search engine ranking, visit http://www.jollymystic.com/

The Golden Rule of Web Success

The Golden Rule of Web Success is similar to the original Golden Rule, 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you'. You know how you use the web and how you like to be treated as a visitor or customer. Put another way, the Golden Rule of Web Success is:



This means that you think about what will be of service to your visitors and lay it out in a well-organized user-friendly way. Here are some tips for making your visitors enjoy your site and feel good about you:

1. Offer something of genuine value. This may be products, information or services.
2. Have a main navigation bar in an expected and consistent place across all of your pages. Make everything as easy to find as possible.
3. Build a well-constructed home page that offers a kind of "Table of Contents" to your site, making the most popular pages only a click away.
4. Create a consistent look and feel across your site. This creates trust and gives the impression that you are a professional.
5. Create a lot of relevant content and present it in a concise and "chunked up" way that is easy for web readers to scan.
6. Be as concrete and factual as you can. Avoid hyperbole and "marketease".
7. If you are selling goods or services, offer a guarantee and return policy.
8. If you ask for visitor's email or other information, offer a privacy statement that says you don't sell, trade or give away any private information.
9. Make it possible for visitors to interact with your site and with you.

For more articles on web success, visit http://www.jollymystic.com/.