Longview Washington Business Directory Blog

Website Design As It Applies to Longview Washington Businesses

Website Design and Marketing for Businesses in Longview Washington

I have been involved with Internet Marketing for over eight years and still feel the pain of the Website Design and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) trials and errors. I had the for thought and the need years ago to market my business nationally as that was the industry trend and a requirement to be successful. I can still remember my first Website I had Designed!! I was so proud of it. It was cool, flashy, and it seemed what my customers would want. The Website was Designed by a Graphic Artist who had all the right answers to my questions. He knew a few terms and phrases that impressed me as to his knowledge. Terms like Search Engine Friendly, Search Engine Optimized, Search Engine Optimization, Flash, Java Script, Html, PHP, Dynamic and the such. It took me about a year to figure out after much reading that my Website Designer, or commonly called a “Webmaster” didn’t know jack-diddly! Sure he Designed a Website that was pretty, and it was eye appealing but it was not Engineered to be a Marketing tool. You couldn’t find it on the Internet with a shovel. It was hard to navigate, meaning it wasn’t easy to move from page to page and information was not easily found. A properly Designed Website for Business is a marketing tool. It should be easy to find the information you want in its contents. A Business Website is a valuable source of information. The purpose of a Business Website is to give your prospective customers information about yourself, your company, and the services or products you are offering to your customers. I started studying Website Design and Website Search Engine Optimization and then I figured out my current Webmaster not only was amateur, but took my money and delivered a Website that was basically useless. Anyone can Design a Website that will show up in the Search Engines when you type in the company name. Even a out of the can Website you can get from some Webmasters will do that. A properly Designed Website that is Search Engine Optimized should show up in the Search Engines for the Keywords that are relevant to the services or products you are offering your customers. That is where Website Marketing comes in. Sadly enough in my experience with working with several Webmasters very few of them know anything about Website Marketing or Search Engine Optimization. Through the years I have learned the basics and have with the help of my Webmaster learned to Market my Websites on the Internet both on a national and local level.

Effective Website Design for businesses in Longview Washington, is it needed?

Research has shown that in some sectors of business up to 80% of searches for products and services are done on the Internet. Even though at this time my Website www.longviewbiz.com is young in its development it is being used by over 1100 individual residents in Cowlitz County a month. I expect it to exceed over 4000 per month in a year. It is also being used by residents in surrounding communities. I suspect it is a combination of people using the Internet to find businesses that have a service or product they might need prior to shopping in Longview Washington. Some I am sure are tourists or people on business trips staying in one of our hotels while in town. That is a lot of traffic to a Business Directory in this size of a community. These are viable people looking to spend money. There is a saying that I know to be absolutely true. If you want to know who your competition in business is look to Google, because your customers are! I am amazed at the number of businesses in Longview Washington and surrounding communities that do not have a Company Website, not to mention the number of businesses that have a Website that is not properly Designed or Optimized.

 Why Businesses in Longview Washington would benefit from having a Company Website

1.  Gaining prominence in the business community.
2. Make your business information more available to the Cowlitz County residents.
3. Very cost effective Advertising, once a Website is live it works 24-7 around the clock.
4. You don’t miss the interest in the products or services from customers that you are marketing. Remember the explosion of customers using the Internet as a resource.
5. Not only as a effective advertising tool, a properly Designed Website offers your customers information they desire and need to make purchases. Think of the time spent on the phone with customers. What if 20% of those customers got their information from your Website rather than keeping a employee or yourself on the phone. The growing number of customers actually would rather get their information from the Internet. This fact is substantiated by research. This is the computer age, even here in small communities like Longview Washington.

For any Internet marketing or Website Design and marketing questions feel free to call me at 360 431 8082 and ask for Jim, my e-mail address is Jim@longviewbiz.com or you can view our Longview Washington Business Directory by clicking the link.

For some additional reading about the progress of Longviewbiz see: http://longviewbiz.com/blog/2008/09/kelso-longview-washington-business-directory/