ask NOT what you can do for your
website;
but rather, what your website can do for YOU...
or
The Things You Might Not Know, that CAN Hurt You
editorial by Donna
Vickery
Do you have a website for your Curly Horse business? Are you considering
a web site for your Curly Horse business? How do you
know whether your website is functioning at maximum potential, helping you
sell your horses, or whether you even need a website at all?
Let's start with those of you who do not
have a website. We assume you have an email address, and internet access,
since you found your way to this webpage. Do you need a website? In
order to answer that question, let's first have you answer these
questions:
Do you sell Curly Horses (Do you have one for
sale right now?).
Do you stand a Curly Horse stallion at stud?
Do you provide products or services of interest
to the horse community?
Are you selling all your horses for sale, all
the stud fees your stallion can provide, or all the products & services
you can provide - locally - to your neighbors?
If the answer to any of these questions (except the
last one) is yes, then, your answer might be yes, you do need a website.
A website is like your world-wide business card, your statement on the internet
that gives people a window to your farm/life/horses. There are exceptions
to every rule, but, in almost any endeavor, it will cost you more than you
can afford, NOT to have a website. If you do not sell or present yourself
online, and do it well, you may literally eliminate most of your potential
customers. If you only present your business offline, such as to magazine
& newspaper subscribers, and the bulletin board at the feed store, to
your neighbors, as a general rule, you will pay top prices, and make very
few sales. The costs of promotional advertising in newspapers, magazines,
and radio, are VERY ineffective, compared to a successfully presented internet
presence. Once you establish a tasteful online presence, you are then on
a level playing field with every other similar business presented online,
regardless of how much money you have or don't have, no matter how big or
small a business you run.
For those of you with a website already:
How do you know, whether your website is serving you as it was intended
to? And, is your website an asset to the industry in which you are engaged?
Again, let's ask ourselves some more questions, in order to find those
answers.
Are your horses selling fairly well compared
to the market average?
Do you usually get the prices you believe your
horses are worth?
Does your website generate a lot of email inquiries
about your horses for sale, your stallion at stud, or products/services you
offer?
Does your website generate email inquiries
about the industry you are engaged in? (notably in most of our cases, the
North American Curly Horse industry) This can indicate that your site comes
across as being knowledgeable and helpful, in terms of the industry at large,
or that your particular animals or products impress the visitor as being
an excellent representative of the industry.
How many hits (visits) are you getting on your
website? More than 1 per day?
Do you get unsolicited compliments on your
website from visitors? Do you get emails telling you your website
is appealing and enjoyable to visit? Or even suggestions? A nice site will
encourage visitors to report problems, to be helpful.
No? Perhaps something is wrong...? OK, NO WORRIES!
Let's fix it together... and it doesn't have to cost you an arm and
a leg, wither - I mean, either. For you do-it-yourselfers, if you
don't want to hire Curly Horse Web to improve your website - THAT's OK too!
We will still help you - for free: If you are brave & tough enough to
look at your website critically, we invite you to read over our collection
of links on the Website References webpage, and
help yourself to anything there that may be of service to you, in improving
your Curly Horse Website! OH! And while I am at it, let me just say right
now, I am "dissing" ME, as much as ANY one else out there, when I complain
about common mistakes our Curly Horse websites make on the world wide web...
I have made every mistake in the book, they are just too easy to commit!!!...
[and paid dearly for them all], and would love to help as many other Curly
Horse owners as possible, to avoid all those pits I fell into! So don't take
it wrong! This is intended to HELP not INSULT!! AND - this isn't about what's
fair or not fair - it's about reality and results.
First let's go over some terminology & procedures, so you understand
what we are talking about, when we start discussing comparisons & pricing,
etc., later on...
To have your own successful website, there are several steps necessary
that you need to be familiar with:
Domain Name. [URL] First obtain (secure) your own domain name.
There is a worldwide race going on to grab up all the good names, so if you
haven't already registered your favorite one yet, don't put this off too
much longer. You can even purchase (register) it now, and use it later if
you wish.
Good Examples: www.ABCregistry.org, or
www.CurlyHorses.org
(these cost about as much annually as ordering pizza delivered in for the
gang 1 night.)
Bad Example:
www.members.aol.com.fortunecity.com/millennium/...
...geocities/galaxy/angelfire/tripod/smith/curlies.htm
(this kind is free.)
Website, and HTML Webpages. You must build your website, or
have someone build your website for you - it must first be designed and then
created. "Website" refers to the whole site. "Webpage" refers to a single
page within the site. Website pages are built using "html" (hypertext markup
language) format files. There are all kinds of good html building / editing
programs out there, priced from free to very expensive. You can learn html
by yourself and build your own (write your own code) using only notebook
pad or wordpad - there are many free online html tutorials out there on the
internet that will show you how. Or, you can use automatic programs that
mostly do it for you: (WYSIWYG programs, or, "what-you-see-is-what-you-get"
webpage building programs.) Either way, building website pages does take
time.
Webspace. You must purchase your "share of the internet" where
you upload your website to. This is the webspace that you will use. In buying
webspace, you will usually get what you pay for! The company that sells you
your webspace, where your website will reside, is called your webhost.
NOW:
Webhosts. Some webhosting is free. The main ones we know about
are AOL Hometown, Geocities, Tripod, Angelfire, Fortunecity, Pets Unlimited,
and others like those. Although these are often used for getting started
and making do, while you are building your business etc, keep in mind, the
two things that are very bad, about choosing to use free webhosting:
The "free" webhosting companies HAVE to make money, and to do that,
they sell part of your space to popup advertisers, and popunder advertisers,
banners, etc.
When a visitor accesses a free hosted website, he first has to mire
through several other pop up pages. With many systems, these will actually
throw him offline or freeze up his computer.
After several popups and unsightly banners, he can view the free hosted
website. If he isn't too annoyed, he may bookmark it to return to again later,
but, chances are he will probably bookmark one of the popup advertisement
pages instead of the free webpage. Usually he won't even realize that until
later when he tries to return. If he does realize it, he has to really put
forth an effort to retrieve the free hosted website's real URL and save
it.
Then, when he exits the free-hosted website, he is usually rewarded
by popunders (convincing him not to return too soon).
Most free webhosted websites, will not come up well in internet searches.
That is usually because of the interference of the popups, the popunders,
& the banners at the top of the pages. Free-hosted websites are much
less likely to be found by someone doing an internet search.
Free webhosted websites too often suffer from poor "uptime." If a
webhost's server is down, the websites it serves are unreachable. This is
important, and is a bigger issue than many of us realize. If they are lucky,
the free-hosted website owner whose servers are down [yet again], may get
emails to alert them of that, complaining, "I can't access your website today,
what is wrong?" But if they are unlucky, their visitors won't even bother
to email them, they'll just go on to another website whose owner did without
pizza one night, and buy THEIR horse for sale.
Free webhosting companies spend little, if any, money on customer
support, which we sometimes end up needing more than we thought we would.
That leads to "problems" & errors being left on free-hosted websites,
for their visitors to view for longer periods of time.
In many free webhosting companies the website owner is provided with
a tin can template to build their site with, which does not lend itself to
a nice horse industry site.
Finally, free hosted websites can do more than affect the image of
the individual operation that uses them... collectively, they can actually
reflect poorly on the whole industry itself. (Fair or not.)
The other thing is, your URL. {Or, your webpage internet address.}
It will look something like, that example of a Bad URL above, under
1. Domain Name. A poor URL isn't the end of the world, however, it
is unattractive, and a clear warning of the site to follow: It has a way
of announcing "cheap & unprofessional" to the wary internet surfer. It
probably cannot help but reflect at least a little bit negatively upon the
website owner's horse program. (Fair or not.)
In the Curly Horse industry, we are already somewhat stigmatized with a
pre-existing reputation for raising pasture ornaments, and frivolous family
pets. (Fair or not.) But we can help reverse that image online by taking
steps to improve our world wide image - especially for future visitors new
to the breed. By doing so, we will all help reverse some of the negative
impact that has been made in the past, and build an exciting new image for
the future. The whole Curly Horse industry will benefit - we will ALL benefit,
from doing our individual best.
