In todays technological world, small business owners are beginning to fall behind. Here are the top 10 small business online marketing mistakes.

1. Domain Name! The most COMMON mistake is the companies URL! Most small business owners who do not consult a marketing consultant and end up choosing a very long url. Such as thisismyurlandyouwillneverrememberit.com. The shorter your URL the better! Having keywords in your URL is a very imperative thing as well. So you need to consult someone to find out what the best mix is. A URL means everything and can truly be the difference between making your website work or not.
2. Cheap Marketing! While it may be tempting to use your husbands friend’s kid to do your site cheap and dirty, I would stop and rethink that. Most business owners do not have the money to seek the expensive experts, which is understandable. However, again, your website is your store front, your MAIN piece of advertisement, your bread and butter. You NEED to make sure your website is unique, professional, and relays the correct message. By hiring someone cheap, whether a company or freelancer, 9/10 times you walk away with something you think is great, but ask a professional and they will probably think otherwise. A website can LOOK pretty (or look really bad) and still NOT give your customers the correct message, in return decreasing your conversion rate.
3. Only Paper Ads! There’s a large portion of small business owners who are still into the news paper ads and old school advertising (or not advertising at all!). BIG mistake. Those types of advertising are fine, however you need to also explore the web since that’s the first place people go now a days.
4. I Don’t Need a Website! Than you have the “I don’t need a website” population. These are the people who believe that they don’t need a website because either their business is doing well without it or they think that in their industry people don’t use the web to find people. First off, I don’t care what industry you are in! People STILL search the web! If anyone can tell me otherwise, please tell me! Also remember, always save for a rainy day. It’s better to be over busy than not busy at all. If you get busy HIRE people! Don’t not advertise if you have the income to spend it. Getting set up on the web takes time so if your business takes a nose dive you will not have a quick way or the money to get your website to the point where it will sell itself.
5. Templates! Another situation that occurs is when people go to one of those cheap $30/month sites like Vista Print and put up a template. The issue with that is, if they are selling you that template they can be selling that to EVERYONE. You want to be unique, not the same as Joe down the road.
6. No SEO! Most owners put up a website without actually utilizing it. It’s great to have a website up, but if your not getting traffic to your site, it’s pointless! It’s like having a store and not telling anyone it’s there. You can find an SEO company for $400.00/month. It may seem worthless in the beginning, but trust me, you are probably getting more business and you don’t even know it. You don’t need to ask every customer, “where did you find me?”, but I guarantee that if you did you’d be surprised how many say “the web”.
7. Coming Soon: I’m like the neighborhood watch dog. I am always scouting out what all the local company websites are doing just to be curious. You’d be surprised how many actually have “coming soon” for days, weeks, and months. Than if they get their site up, half the pages say “coming soon”. Don’t publish an incomplete website! If it’s not complete, finish it, than publish it. If you are building a new page, don’t display it until it’s complete. If you want to tell people you are putting a new page to get the buzz going, create a section on the homepage, put it in the news section, or blog about it!
8. Boring! One thing that people do that really urk’s me is how people put up their website and than don’t update it for MONTHS. Believe it or not, it really does make a difference! By not putting anything new on your website you aren’t giving people a reason to come back. By publishing new content you are not only giving the search engines another reason to come spider your site, getting new potential users with new keywords, but you are also giving your current customers a reason to come back to your site.
9. Browser Check: I can’t tell you how many sites (even BIG companies!) I have seen that look great in one browser  but awful in another. It doesn’t always have to look 100% identical, but make sure it at least looks good! This is another reason why hiring a cheap designer will not do a small business any justice. To master IE 6,7,8,9 Firefiox 2,3,4, Chrome, Safari 2,3,4, and now the mobile web is a talent!
10. Web Hosting: One major issue people have is that they always choose the cheap or free hosting. This is not the right solution! The reason is because most of the time these cheap hosting companies have a reason why they are cheap. I have had clients sites go down and than ask me, “why is my site down”. And my answer is “you chose a cheap hosting company”.

So to be honest I could probably come up with 5-10 more mistakes small business owners make when creating their online presence. But I think you all get the point. The moral of the story is you get what you pay for!

What do most people who work extra hard look forward to you ask? TAKING A BREAK! However, when you are in the online marketing industry this could be one of the worst mistakes to make. Of course everyone deserves a break and needs a little vacation here and there. But just because you are taking some down time for yourself doesn’t mean the rest of the world is right there with you.

Not to discourage you from taking a vacation, I have to mention that there can be many negative side effects in doing so. Robin Neifield, CEO and cofounder of NetPlus Marketing Inc., seems to think so too. In her article, “Taking a Break,” Robin leaves us with nine possible expectations if you plan on taking a short or long leave of absence in the online marketing industry.

Still thinking about taking that break? Well, here’s what you can expect if you do:

INCREASED COMPETITION
The second you decide to relax, you have to remember that there will always be someone who is still working. By backing off, you leave an open door for competitors to strategize and formulate ways to attract new customers—some of which may have been your own. These could have at one point been loyal customers, but since you are nowhere to be found, they had to seek out other options, which is where your competitors come into play.

When you surrender customers, this of course strengthens the competition. Therefore you must make sure to, “prioritize your current customer base if circumstances force you to make drastic cuts or pause programs. If you can do nothing else, hang on to regular communications with them,” as Robin would put it.

POTENTIAL CUSTOMER/SALE LIMITATION
Upon leaving, you also risk the factor of gaining new customers. By pausing or stopping your productivity in online marketing you are ultimately limiting your potential when it comes to sales or future customers.

As Robin says, “you may benefit from some limited passive referrals but you are sacrificing scale. Scale brings efficiencies and a more stable position in the marketplace.”

Also, you may be intently focusing on your current economics, markets or samples without approaching other addressees or options. And this is what could lead to a major downfall for your company.

LOSS OF CREDIBILITY
In layman’s terms this is simply the loss of credibility between your company and your customers. This can happen at an alarming rate, especially when it is involving social media. Whatever your company may have in the public domain has the chance to rapidly become inapt and obsolete.

HALTED OPTIMIZATION
Taking a break puts attaining knowledge from optimization at risk. In certain areas such as display media, the stop and go theory insists on a revamp stage for your company to be able to rebuild traffic, and also gather new data produced from the traffic. And of course this would all be in effort to enhance the top placements, messaging, creativity, etc.

LOST DATA
Collecting data is very crucial to a business. It allows us to follow trends and find just where we stand. So missing out on this could be very negative to your company. When you take a break you put yourself at risk for losing trending data.

Also since things are always changing in the online marketing industry that means there is always something new to learn. According to Robin, “Seasonal learning is compromised or missing when activity is frozen or dramatically altered during key periods, including those periods just before and just after. Gleaning actionable data from intermittent periods of activity with wildly different objectives does not provide a clear picture of year-over-year or month-over-month trends.”

That being said, it is much more difficult to get an overall vision of the direction you want to head toward, when you have holes in your information. That is why you do not want to skip out on always having current data.

COMPLACENCY
Normally when you’re on a little getaway contentment settles in. But complacency is something you will want to avoid when it comes to maintaining discipline. This applies to areas such as regular program testing, maintenance, optimization and reporting. By staying in check with each of these areas it increases the chances of improvements throughout your organization.

Robin adds, “without that critical feedback, sites, language, promotions, and approaches can decay and staff can get lazy.”

Consequently, you may be tempted to stop watching your competitors, and learning what approaches they are taking. This potentially puts your company’s well-being at risk due to missed opportunities to respond to the information you have acquired.

LAY-OFFS
Unfortunately, the online marketing industry is a cut-throat business. If you or your team does not stay on top of their game it could possibly lead to one, some or all of you being let go. This could compromise the success of your company—if you are a small company having to make a budget cut it may lead to losing smart people with influential wisdom.

On a larger scale, if you are involved with an agency partner you may lose continuity with people who have personal intelligence within your business but they have to be relocated or laid off completely.

And then you will always have your good workers who need a challenge and strive to succeed. If they are met with a halted or reduced program, they may choose to leave on their own to find something more challenging.

INEFFICIENCIES
Every time you need a break, or decide to put your company on hold, there is much relearning that will have to occur. Being out of the game can lead to much inefficiency.

During your period of dormancy there are plenty of tasks that can stack up labor time, which means that there will be higher costs associated with this, all of which could have been prevented and spent on more productive areas such as actual media.

In fact, longer, consistent programs offer room to discuss pull, which in the long-run will assist in making your media money more effective.

FAILURE TO CAPITALIZE
Without actively participating, you may be missing out on the unexpected. Since we cannot predict what is going to happen, that makes it all the more important to stay on top of things. Taking breaks can lead to failure to see or capitalize on these things.

Like Robin says, “any pause creates a disadvantage with the landscape moving so fast,” and I think she makes a great point with that.

So even though you may be very deserving of, and very much in need of a vacation, you should stop and think about what it really means. Can you afford to take a break; is it the right time; is it going to cost you in the long-run? Sometimes you may not have a choice and may have to take an unwanted break. If this happens just remember to keep in mind not to forget about your work for too long—the longer you are away, the worse it may be when you try to return. So take a break…with caution!

Source: http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/1734855/taking-break

Why do you want to create a business website? The obvious answer is to make money online. However, creating a mere web design won’t be enough unless it looks professional and your market can see it.

To ensure that you succeed online, your web design must depict professionalism and it must be accessible by your market especially when they are actually searching for your services. This is the ultimate way of winning the trust of your market and growing your business.

So, how should you create your web design? Well, here are some powerful techniques that will allow you to create a winning web design.

Explore Your Competitors

Research and development is an important part of every business, because it helps you determine what steps you should take to effectively compete in today’s tough business world. It is also important when you are ready to create your business website.

You need to see how your competitors have created their presence online. The purpose of this exercise is not to copy anything, but rather to determine how you can come up with a better and more effective design.

Create Your Strategy

Once you go through the designs of several competitors, you now need to sit down with your designer and discuss how you can beat them in terms of professionalism and elegance. Your audience won’t be able to see you physically, so you will need to create an engaging atmosphere/design that will make them stay on your site.

If your target market will realize (after visiting your site) that they will get what they are looking for, they will surely spend some time on your site and eventually become your customers. Hence, quality design with quality content along with strategic placement of content will help you win the trust of your market.

Write and Organize Your Content Nicely

Now, as your content (along with the design) will help you win the trust of your market, you need to ensure that your content is powerful, benefit-oriented as well as visible. There is no need to hide your most powerful punch lines somewhere down. Make them visible to grab the attention of your market. Ensure that your copy can engage your visitors and eventually convert them into customers.

Create Simple Site Navigation

Make it easy for your visitors to browse your website. You must have come across dozens of websites where you felt lost due to excessive links all over the page. Don’t give the same feeling to your target audience because it can put anyone off. It’s not good to make it difficult for people to find your products. You need to make their lives as easy as possible.

Be Found Online with Your SEO-friendly Site

All the factors that we have discussed above will be useless, if your market is unable to find you. One of the best ways to reach your market is through search engines. If you reach them – right when they search for your products – your chances of converting them will increase significantly. So, ensure that you create an SEO friendly site to increase your visibility in search engines.

So, folks, based on experience, these are some powerful tips that will allow you to create an effective web design and grow your business.

Source: http://www.sitesketch101.com/enhance-your-design-to-grow-your-business