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Planning Your Website
I sometimes get an email from someone who wants me to take
a look at their site and give them some advice.
I include my most recent reply updated for a general readership
I hope someone gets some use from it, any questions and feedback
would be appreciated.
When I created my web site I concentrated on building traffic -
so I studied the search engines and experimented, and my visitor
counts are now quite respectable.
With the benefit of hindsight I did it the wrong way round.
Your first task should be to establish what
you want to achieve with your web site and
who your target customers are.
Do this analysis and then write down the
results so that in a years time
you can measure performance.
Once you know what you want your site to do and who your
target audience is you can build the web site
so that it performs in such a way as to
produce the desired results as defined above.
You can then start to build traffic to the web site.
We have started a workshop that will explore ways of
making your website sell. The workshop is based on
the book by Ken Evoy 'Make Your Site Sell'.
If you have a website or are thinking of getting one
then this book is for you. Buy the book at
http://www.sitesell.com/amcho.html
If you are following the workshop we are now on day 7,
having covered the following subjects:
Day 1 - initial impressions, goal definition.
Day 2 - how the goal will be achieved
Day 3 - The 5 pillars affiliate system - documentation.
Day 4 - MYSS Book extract - Submit to Yahoo.
Day 5 - Target your Customers
Day 6 - HTML and META tags and Search Engines.
Day 7 - Affiliate Programme Agreements
For some time it has been possible to send an email to a
fax machine. Recently I have noticed that in the US you can
set up a telephone number that will act as your fax and
send any received faxes to your email address. A similar
service has now arrived in the UK so I now have two
fax numbers in the States and one in the UK that will allow
anyone with a fax machine to send me an email:
US fax number: (707) 220 7603
US fax number: (209) 755 9149
UK fax number: 0870 088 6960
Please feel free to send me a fax on any of the
above numbers.
It is nice what a bit of deregulation does:
not only can you have your own 0870 phone numbers
free of charge, but you also will earn 1p a minute
when someone calls you. I haven't been able to
find any downside so get your own numbers at
www.amcho.com/request0870.htm
Try it out and give me a ring on 0870 740 7683
Webmaster Tips
This section contains random snippets of information
that I thought were interesting or useful:
Put your URL on every web page so that if someone
sees something useful on your page and saves it to disk,
or prints it out they can get back to your site.
A course on 'Coping with Email'
I receive some 200 emails a day and it is becoming a bit
of a problem to deal with it all!
I have just subscribed to a course on how to handle email
and it contains some useful info especially if you read your
email using the pegasus mail reader. For example I have been
sorting my email into quite a few folders and these were becoming
difficult to organise.
I was aware that trays existed but had never used them before,
I now have a single tray to hold all my customer folders, and that
has reduced the folders on the main menu significantly.
If you want to get your email organised
take the TalkBiz.com "Efficient Email" course.
send a blank email to emailcourse@privatesites.com
My current favourite email newsletter
This is going to be a regular slot - each issue I
will review one newsletter that has recently got my
attention with some good or interesting material:
Ryan Adams of www.clickquick.com has a very good site
that deals with associate programs -
Ryan also publishes a bi weekly newsletter
(mailto:subscribe@clickquick.com to subscribe)
A recent newsletter contained some useful
information on what to do if you find that someone
has copied your web site.
Scams (How to avoid them)
You may have noticed the recent news about webmasters
getting an email apparently from their ISPs sending
them to a website to reregister their credit card numbers.
www.wired.com/news/news/email/tip/technology/story/21572.html
It is very easy to get caught by this one: I recently
received a phone call from British Telecom.
After a long discussion about the merits of various
mobile phones I was ready to purchase, and the salesman
asked for my credit card. The thought crossed my
mind 'why can't the amount be added to my BT bill'.
Followed by 'is this a genuine call or a very clever scam',
after all they phoned me - they could be anyone.
I refused to give my credit card details, and phoned BT to
check and to complain about being called and asked for my
credit card number. It was in fact a genine call. But I
still could not get anyone to take my misgivings seriously.
My advice is NEVER hand out your credit card details unless
you have initated the transaction.
© 1999 Amcho Computer Services Ltd. All rights reserved.
Feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone you want to.
but please check with us before reproducing the content,
normally all we will ask is a link to our website.
All feedback is welcome: mailinglist-feedback@amcho.com
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Mike Choroszewski
Amcho Computer Services Ltd
Little Honeycombe, Tamar Way, Gunnislake, Cornwall, Pl18 9DH. UK
phone: 0870 740 7683 or 01822 833 690
UK fax number: 0870 088 6960
US fax number: (707) 220 7603
US fax number: (209) 755 9149
www.amcho.com/newsletter199909.htm September 1999
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