Hi! Thank you for your comments. I can relate with wanting to learn the process yourself, it’s the same for me.

I think that even if you had hired a website designer, you still would have wanted to make changes as you learn more about online marketing strategy and using a blog to connect with your customers.

In the long run it benefits us to know the information, you’ll have more flexibility and you won’t be at the mercy of someone to make changes or fix anything.

Thank you again for stopping by and sharing your story – T

Firstly I signed up to Microsoft Office Live Small Business, or Microsoft Live Online Small Business, whatever it’s called! Unfortunately I signed up to the US version and I’m UK.

Cue rebuild on the UK version.

Then I found that I couldn’t do all the things I wanted to do. The templates were restrictive, image editing was a nightmare, font choice was limited.

But I didn’t want to hire a web designer, for two reasons. The first is that I couldn’t afford it. The second was that I wanted to have flexibility with my site. I wanted to learn how to build pages, use widgets, and some basic html so that as my business changes I can keep my website bang up to date.

So for rebuild number two I went with wordpress, plus genesis framework and prose from studiopress. I’ve learned some basic html and how to use widgets and to find my way around the wordpress dashboard.

I’m still learning about SEO and I haven’t tried out split-testing yet.

It’s all part of the journey!

Thank you for your comments.

All the “Like This”, “Follow Me”, “Add Me On G+”, etc. can distract you. These, for some, have become popularity contest instead of “these people connected with me because I helped them solve a problem”. The business owner who is really out there to help people solve problems will focus on building “true” influence and not gaming the “metrics”.

Thanks for stopping by,
Theresa

There’s a lot of conversation and pseudo-statistics on building influence through social media. For instance, the Klout metrics are built around perceived influence based on how much you tweet and who (or how many) engage you on Twitter.

This is a paradigm where small business owners should take care not to confuse the influence ascribed to them by “metrics” with the ways you describe of building true, lasting influence.

You’re right having influence in a market does give you leverage. However, influence doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time and you have to build a trust with your target market. The nice thing is that once you have achieved this, your market starts to sell you to others.

Word-of-mouth is the best advertising, because it’s others saying you’re great at ___. Once you get to this point, and you keep providing great value, your influence grows exponentially.

Thank you for stopping by,
Theresa

Thank you for coming by!

I’m so glad that you think Evernote will help you organize your projects.

Remember to download it on to your computer too. This way everything will be easily accessible no matter where you are.

Thanks again,
Theresa

Many thanks for the heads up on these two apps. I can see how Evernote would be beneficial. I have projects that require multiple parts to be pulled in at the same time. I will be loading it to my iphone this evening.

I appreciate your letting me know about this.

Many thanks.

KJ

Thank you for stopping by. I love Evernote too. It is a super way to capture so much and have your notes available on so many platforms. Not to mention you can take a picture of something and then email it to your Evernote account. That’s great organization!

Thanks again – Theresa

Thank you for your comment. These two tools have help me tremendously, hope you find them helpful too.

Theresa

Stop by again,
Theresa

Thank you for stopping by, I’m glad you liked the piece.

Thank you for providing the link for more keyword research resources. Keyword analysis is so crucial and there is so much to learn, I’m always looking for new information.

Wordtracker is a great product and the education (webinars, publications, emails, the blog) that your company provides is excellent.

Thank you for your comments,
Theresa

Thanks for mentioning Wordtracker in your post. There are so many people writing about Wordtracker, but few write so clearly and with such good business sense.

We’ve lost more material in our marketing Academy that will help your readers with their keyword research. You can find more about keyword research. There’s a free keyword research guide and lots of articles and videos.

I hope that’s useful.

Kind regards
Justin
CEO, Wordtracker

Thank you, I’m glad you find the information helpful.

Stay tuned for more…

Theresa

You’re right, online and offline shopping is very similar. I’ll be covering how to set your site up to get found by your target market. This information might help you bounce rate.

Thank you for stopping by,
Theresa

You’re welcome. I understand that once you make plans, life happens. The main thing is that you keep work at the goals you want to obtain. The information is here for you to complete at your pace.

Thank you for your comment – Theresa

Thank you,
Ramona

Great I’m glad you found the information useful. I have a lot more planned! So, stop by again.

Thank you for taking the time to leave a comment – Theresa

I’m glad you found the information helpful. The whole purpose of this site is to help you build your online presence. If you have any specific questions, please leave a comment in the Comment Box at the end of the articles or send me an email by going to the Contact Page at the top.

Thank you for your comment – Theresa

Thanks for clarifying your thoughts on playing the PI thing. Indeed, you provide a great point in suggesting that people should have a feel for their industry.

As I go on to the next segment in this series I will be address each point in more detail and I will include your point. My thought with playing “Internet PI” is that I want people to visit sites in their industry and get a feel for what others are doing.

Please visit again, you make great points! – Theresa

One thing to note though: One should be careful when evaluating a competitor’s website. Your judgment can easily be clouded by your mindset/subconscious intent (a competitor instead of a user looking for a useful product). It’s easy to misread (and overread) cues and usability factors when you’re looking at a site from a competitive perspective. I’ve seen many sites that look bad but are actually very usable to a lot of people (and thus generate sales). Conversely, I’ve seen a lot of beautiful sites that fail to attract any sort of traffic conversion.