How to create the best website for you business

You have been preparing to start up your own business. The products look great, your got your work team, everything is all set. Now you are ready to let the world know about your new, amazing business! But how? Creating your own website is the very first and important step to promote your product to the large group of the audience. However, there are almost 650 million active websites…Sure you don’t want to let your webpage be buried in tons of other website, but it’s not a simple work. If you want the thousands or millions accesses to your website every day, here is the solution for you. Those tips can help you to create the outstanding website that attract people and convert the potential customers, or even the random visitors, to the fans of your company.


Purchase Domain Name

Not many people pay attention to the domain name, but the successful web owners do. Your own domain name will separate your website from the personal users or the ordinary small businesses by showing the professionalism. Almost all of the successful companies have their own domain names for their websites. Obtaining your own domain name will be the first easy step toward building the professional and successful website

Choose Reliable Host

There are so many, too many, options for the platforms. It is important to choose the reliable one for your company. Carefully compare the cost and their options; the more customizable options it has, the better your website will be. There are some free themes/ platforms, but do not choose to go cheap if you want your company to grow large in the future. If you want to compare the providers, here are the useful list of top 15 WordPress hosting, and its price.

Make Full Use of “Calls to Action”

Think about what you want people to do while they are on your website. Make a subscription for your channel? Or try your product? Utilize the Calls to Action, and tell them loud. The effective Calls to Action require some techniques. To learn some tips, check these 31 hacks you can use to create the Calls to Action that people cannot help clicking.



What is the Purpose/ Goal of the Website?

When thinking about the web content, first ask yourself “What is the purpose of creating the website?” Without the defined goal or the purpose, you cannot efficiently structure your website. Based on the purpose, you will decide the website hierarchy; what content should be on the main page, how many different pages you need, and so on.

The Content Creation is the Key

Even if you decided to hire an editor for your website, you have to complete the content creation by yourself. Because you are the only person who knows what the company’s goal, and what the message to the customers would be. So the content creation must be done by nobody else but you. Not confident about it? Don’t worry, you will find some helpful tips as you continue reading this article.

Content must be Concise!

Do you know, on average, how long each person stays in your website? No more than 59 seconds, or the others estimate it even less. That means you need to make a point, and get people’s attention within 59 seconds. List the essential points that you definitely want people to know, and also take advantage of the Calls to Action, which always draw their attentions visually.

Make People Feel Connected.

Build the personal connection between the visitors and your company. It is one of the most effective ways when converting the visitors of your website to the actual customers. But how can you make the special connection that appeals to the visitors? There are two easy tricks that anyone can do to achieve this. The first tip is to put the photo of you, or your team members, on the website. People are tend to find the company trustworthy when they can see its founders or employees. The other strategy is to tell your own story; for instance, why you decided to start your business, and what you desire to achieve through your business. It can make the visitors more comfortable about your company, and they feel close to you and your product.

Tell What You Can Do for Them

Many people often miss this point, but this is one of the most important things to know. When you create the content, make sure that you are telling the potential customers what they can get from you; in other words, what benefits they can expect from you. Did you find it ordinary advice? If you have already written the content, I want you to review it once again. Because many people finish up their web content with just telling what their companies do. What your company does, and what benefits to the customers are not always equal. That is not enough for the website to convert the visitors to the customers. As mentioned earlier, you have to make the clear points, and persuade people to be your customers within 59 seconds. So put yourself into the customers’ place, and consider what kind of content would appeal to you.



Learn from Other Websites & Pre-made Themes

Not everyone has enough budget to hire a web designer. But you can still learn from others’ work. There are millions of websites on the internet. Try to find the ones inspiring you, and learn from them. Or you can even purchase the pre-made themes, which will enable you to create a great website with much cheaper price than hiring a designer. Utilize the available sources to make your website look catchy and attractive. 

Do Not Hesitate to Make a Small Investment

I know you want to save some money. Everybody does. But be willing to make a little investment for your website. The website is a face of your company, and not a few people get the first impression of your company from it. Therefore, it is extremely important to ensure that your website has the best and professional look. When you choose the platform, theme, or the image, don’t be reluctant to spend a small extra money for the better quality. Those costs will not be the huge amount, and I can assure you that it will bring you the great payoffs.

Visual Images Make the Stronger Impressions

Imagine how all-text website would look like…Horrible, right? The visual images are the key to get people’s attention, and make them stay on your website. Again, make a little spending to find the great value of the image. Do not use the cheap, crappy photos. It will ruin your website and make it look unprofessional.

Your website will be the face of your company; many people will visit your website before knowing about your company at all. So it is crucial to ensure that everything is organized, and that it will give the impression as you intend to. But also remember, it doesn’t have to be perfect from the beginning. You can always make changes later according to the visitor’s responses. Learn as you go, and try many things so that you can improve your website for the further success.

Please leave a comment and let us know what you think!



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How to survive the first 5 years as an entrepreneur

How to survive the first 5 years as an entrepreneur

It is often said that 90% of the startups have the hard games only to be the failures. However, it is not because they are silly or unprepared. They did a lot of preparations and researches, and they created the detailed business plans just like you. It is because the business world is very severe and extremely difficult to survive. What should you do in order to be the 10% of the winners? Here, you can learn, from their mistakes, how to operate your business during the first five years.

To Begin With, Why Do Businesses Fail?

50% of the businesses close down within the first 5 years. This is very large number, isn’t it? All of those business failures have some patterns. By learning what to avoid, you will be able to protect your precious business from ding out.

Cannot pay the bills

The biggest reason of the failures is not to have enough money to keep paying the bills. The large companies usually have very steady cash flow. They took a long time to pay their bills; the average is four to six months. It is essential to know how to control your company’s cash flow like the large companies do. 

Offering the products that people are not willing to pay

The lack of the researches on the market needs always results in the failures. You need to consider extremely carefully about what kind of products you are going to offer and how much the price should be. What you want to create may not always be equal to what people want. Therefore, objective analysis on market needs is essential for the business success.

Adapt cost-inefficient marketing strategies

There are a lot of ways to promote your product, and its costs vary. Which medium is the best to promote your products to the targeted audience? Business failures often cannot find the best balance of the scale of the targeted audience and the advertisement cost.   

Not have skills to manage the team & company

Management directly affects the company’s success/ failure. Even if you have a great business idea, resources, and the work team, your business could easily fail without the reliable management source. Also, companies should make sure that they are operated by certain systems; not only by the “knowing-all” founder. 

Features Of Successful Companies

What 10% of successful entrepreneurs do? Just like the failures have some patterns, succeeded companies also have the patterns. 

Product fits the market needs perfectly

As mentioned above, it is essential to ensure that you are producing something that people are willing to pay for. No matter how greatly the business is operated, there will be no success if nobody wants to purchase your product. Successful companies are constantly offering the products that are right on point for the targeted customers.

Pay attention to everything

Successful companies never neglect or ignore anything brought up as an issue during the business process. It is because they know that “boring stuff” could be the key aspect of the business.

Have a strong team

In starting up a company, versatile work team is necessary. If your team has the great skillset and mindset, you are very likely to survive your first five years. Startups always have a lot of challenges; constantly make changes, adjust to the market, analyze the situations, and adapt something new. It cannot be handled only by the one-man competence. Also, a data shows that the startups with co-founder have the higher rate of surviving compared to the solo founder’s businesses.

Make the business grow fast

You may think that it is unavoidable for many companies to lose their money during the first two years; because that’s the hardest period of time in starting up the business. But it does not mean that you have to lose money too. Growing fast is not a unrealistic thing to achieve. If your company grows fast, you do not have to worry about running out of cash, which is the second biggest reason of business failures. In addition, it is much earlier for them to find the good investors because we all like the immediate profits.

5 Tips To Survive The First 5 years

What specifically should you do to avoid the business failure? What do you need to be a successful business owner? Here are the 5 tips that you can practice for your company.

1. Make commitment

Make a commitment to yourself that you are going to stay in this business for at least the next five years. And also what to achieve during this period of time. The strong will is important and has a great effect on your business growth, maybe more than you expect.

2. Take notice of long-term success

Always think ahead, and do not be swayed by the thought of a quick profit. If you have a solid long-term business plan, and follow it faithfully, your company will bloom soon. It may sounds conflicted about the fast-growing companies mentioned earlier. Growing fast is still possible for the companies, however, only if you do not sacrifice the future profits for a momentary gain. 

3. Build the good credit

Good credit is necessary for the leasing and other business transactions. However, you don’t need to worry about showing some losses at the beginning. It is unavoidable for many companies to have deficit when they just started operating their business. As long as your company is growing steadily, you will be able to establish the good credit for your company. 

4. Plan for success, but not failure

Do not take it wrong. It does not mean you don’t need the exiting strategies; All companies should know what to do in case of closing down their businesses. However, in terms of the business plan, you should build it based on the vision of yourself being successful.

5. Know when to make changes

As you are doing business, you will face to the time when you need to make changes; on your product, branding, or business plan. Listen to the customers and the market, and know when and what to change. The proper shift in the business can give your company the opportunity to enlarge the business scale and increase the profits.

Thing to know before going global: "spet zero" on how to take your company global

Why do companies go global? Some want to pursue further successes for their companies, and the other go global as responding to the domestic rivals/ competitors. Thanks to the technological developments and the globalization of the world, international business has become much more common and close to every business owner. It does not mean, however, that you can expand your business outside of the border readily. Without numerous researches and the thorough business plan, there is no success in taking your company to the global world. There is a lot of articles introducing the steps on how to expand the business internationally. But here, you will find “Step Zero,” the most basic but vital things you should consider before deciding to go global.

Why Difficult?: International Business v. Domestic Business

Almost 90% of the companies fails in expanding their business globally. Why? It could be due to the similar reasons as the domestic business failures; such as intense competition, insufficient financing options, or lack of invention just like the failures in domestic business. However, most of the companies fail because of the lack of market knowledge and understandings of the language/ culture. Operating the international business is completely different from the domestic one. You know how the business works in your country. You can make the assumptions on how the following elements work in operating the business.

                • Wage and work environment
                • Government requirements
                • Add/ change locations
                • Customers’ preferences
                • Payment method
                • Social media uses

When you cross the border, however, everything that you’ve taken for granted will no longer fit your formula. The government may have much more strict regulations that prevent you from operating your business as you used to do. Customers in the targeted country may have completely different taste and preference, and there is no demand for your product. Failing to understand the differences of these elements will result in the miserable failure. Therefore, you should get rid of all the assumptions you have had, and take each step of going global carefully and steadily.

Benefits of Operating Business Internationally

Taking your company global is very risky, but there are reasons why many companies still try to do so. If you can manage to put your business on track in the new country, its payoffs are incredibly beneficial for your company.

Increase sales

One of the biggest reasons companies go global is that the international business can boost the sales of your company. There are new/ more resources or knowledge available in other countries. It can help your company to create the better products. Or it may greatly cut your expense in producing your products. Additionally, simply by expanding the business globally, you will gain much larger targeted audience.

Reduce dependence on the current market

Unexpected things could always happen. What if a serious natural disaster occurs tomorrow? What if your country goes into the recession? By operating business across the countries, you can reduce the risk of losing your business all at sudden. When your business is not doing well in one country, you can sift your focus to another country.

5 Questions To Ask Yourself Before Going Global

Going global is not necessarily the best solution for all businesses. Some companies may be more successful when they stay local and concentrate on the small group of the audience. To determine if you should expand your business internationally or not, ask yourself these questions.

1. Will the product be sold well in the targeted culture?

Cultural difference is the huge barrier that you need to overcome. Analyze your own product to see if its features will be welcomed by the targeted group of the audience. And also, ensure that your product does not have any cultural/ religious taboo in their culture. The first impression is very important for your company’s strong brand image; you don’t want to give a wrong impression simply because of the misunderstandings or lack of knowledge about their culture. Determine whether your product is ready to be introduced in the targeted country by comparing the product’s features and the cultural trends.

2. Is the targeted market familiar with your product?

It will be much easier to set up your business foundation if people in the targeted country are already familiar with your product. But don’t worry even if they have never seen your product before. If you are the first one to introduce it to the community, the name of your company/ brand could be equal to the product’s name. Of course, you will need to invest much more time and money in introducing your product, so you have to be ready for it.

3. Do you have enough money to deal with unexpected situations?

No matter how much time you spend on researches, unexpected things will still happen to your company. There are a lot of things you can never know until you actually start operating your business. Ensure that you have enough fund to deal with those unpredictable situations.

4. Can you adopt the price level of the targeted country?

Once you cross the border, you cannot always sell your product at the same price as in your country. Each country has different price standard, and you have to much your product’s price to it. In addition, don’t forget that all other operating expense will change as well. Consider every single cost including, the office rent, employees’ salaries, supplies, transportations, and so on. Ensure that you will still be able to make a profit in stepping into a new country.

5. Do you have the exiting strategy?

Nobody wants to think about failing. It is essential, however, to make a plan on how to exit the market in case your business doesn’t do well in the targeted country. What if your business fails and you’re not ready to deal with the situation? As mentioned earlier, 90% of the companies fail after expanding their business internationally. To minimize the loss, it is essential to think ahead and make the exiting strategies.

Taking your company global is a big move for your company; it is risk-taking, but its payoff is worth it. The key is to conduct thorough researches about the targeted country, especially focus on its society, culture, economy, and politics. The more you prepare yourself, the more likely your business succeeds.


7 Questions To Ask Yourself Before Going Global

How to Take Your Company Global 

Why International Business

Sales tips & how to determine sales leads priority

Sales tips & how to determine sales leads priority

Every single lead is a precious pipeline to increase the sales. In the average company, however, 79% of leads are never converted to the customers, and more than 30% are not even contacted by the company at all. It’s unavoidable because the time and labor are limited? No. Take a moment to consider how to make the best use of the limited resources of your sales team. By applying the appropriate strategies on the sales skills and the order of priority, the sales will jump with much less time and effort. Combine those strategies with your business communication skills, and you will soon find the positive change in the sales performance.

4 Tips To Boost The Sales

Response time

Immediate response will boost the contract rate. introduces the relationship between the responding time and the percentage of leads who answer the calls. They are 100+ times more likely to answer the phone calls when they receive responses within 30 minutes after filling out the form on website. Note that the answering rate decreases dramatically after 30 minutes. The contract rate changes accordingly; if they receive the responses while they are still interested in the company or its product/ service, there is much higher possibility to convert them into customers.

Figure 1: The percentage of sales leads who answer the sales calls & Responding time

In reality, however, the limited resources make it almost impossible for companies to respond to every single lead within 30 minutes. The average time required for the companies to respond is 38 hours. But no worries, there is a solution for this. Later in this article, you will find how to speed up your responding process and the proper way to prioritize the sales leads.

Positive comments brings positive results

One big myth of sales is that talking ill about the competitors makes people choose your company. In reality, it does not work, or even has negative effects on the sales. It is because psychologically people cannot help associating those negative words with you. If you want the leads to choose you, you should spend most of the conversation talking about the benefits of your product, not the shortcomings of your competitors. Additionally, remember to always start the sales conversation with positive comments; it can be anything such as a little anecdote or about the good weather. There is an experiment showing that if a waiter in hotel provide a positive weather forecast in the beginning, the tips from the customers increase by the average 27%. Positive conversations lead you to the positive results while negative comments bring you down.

Patience and persistence

Sales requires the persistence. The average times of calls required to convert a sales lead to a customer is 6. Do you know how many times a sales representative calls to each lead on average? 1.5 calls per potential customer, which is significantly lower than the necessary numbers of calls. Do not give up too soon. Especially a potential customer has the high priority in the lead scoring, always remember to practice the “6-calls” rule.

Go for the emotional side, not for logic

The 4P’s Method says “We buy with emotions and justify with logic.” Try to persuade the potential customers with the emotional appeals, not by logics. They actually don’t care the numeric statistics of your products. If they want your product, they will buy it; and the logic comes after it. The important thing is to make them picture themselves using your product. Main task for you is to make the leads to have the clear image of themselves being satisfied with your product. 

Prioritize Sales Leads

Not all the sales leads are equal; some visit your website by chance but not really interested in your business, and the others are almost ready to purchase your product. With the limited resources, contacting all the potential customers is almost impossible, and also waste of time and efforts. It is very difficult, however, to prioritize and decide which leads to contact, and which ones not. Actually, each sales representative spends the average 40% of one’s time looking for which sales lead to call. You cannot say it’s a smart way to spend time because, as mentioned earlier, the responding time is one of the essential keys to increase the sales. Here are some tools that can help you to objectively determine the priority of the sales leads.

Take advantages of lead scoring

In order to identify the people who are most likely to be your customers, the objective analysis is vital; not the sales representative’s subjective intuition. Setting up the lead scoring on your website is must-do to fairly prioritize the potential customers. The lead scoring works based on the leads’ personal information and the engagement with your website. It will make your job much easier to prioritize the sales leads, and to determine who to call next. There are a number of sales leads platforms offering you the helpful tools to generate and organize the leads. Check each platform carefully and pick the best one for your company’s features and needs.

Analyze the high-converting lead sources

Sales leads is not the only one that needs to be prioritized. The lead-to-opportunity conversion rate is one of the effective ways to determine the proper allocation of the resources. There are various sources of sales leads such as website, customer & employee referral, webinar, social medias, and so on. Therefore you need to make the priority of the sources. By knowing the conversion rate of each sources, you can logically determine which sources should be the main focus.

Prioritizing the sales leads is not an easy task because so many factors affect each others. If you’d like to know more about sales leads priority, offers an free e-book “Predictive and Prescriptive Selling Guide.” 

Sales is very time-consuming and requires a lot of efforts. You will never ever have enough time or labor in your sales team to deal with all of the sales leads. That is why you need to be a strategist. Applying these sales strategies and prioritizing tips will help your team to maximize the sales with the minimum efforts.

How to build a strong brand

Before starting the discussion about the strong brand, let’s re-thing over the definition of “Brand.” It is a commonly used word, but the meaning of it is very ambiguous. Brand is not just a logo or its products, but is something invisible and more profound.

Brand – The intangible asset of the company including its ideas, trust, credibility, and market.

(Definition by Bitesize Business School)

There are countless brands interacting with people in their daily lives, and surviving in this competitive world is not an easy task. The message the brand delivers to the customers is more important than the product itself. If the brand does not have the strong and solid message, its products slip away the customer’s mind, and no impression will be left. On the other hand, strong brand talks to people. It creates an mutually interacting relationship between the brand and a customer. Would you like to make your brand strong and impressive? Yes, everybody wants to. In this article, you will find some tips and know how in building up a strong brand identity.

Plan & Develop The Foundation Of Your Brand

In determining the key elements of your brand, always keep in mind that “focus” and “consistency” are the two main pillars directly affecting your business success. Be specific, and stay in that way. Your specific target will follow you if you keep sending the steady messages appealing to them.

Who is your targeted audience?

As the very first step, determine who you are going to talk to. The targeted audience is the mix of internal and external groups of people; it includes customers, business partners, industry analysts, employees, and so on. Keep in mind that the targeted group has to be specific. Do not go general aiming to attract broad range of people. You can answer the customers’ unique needs and concerns only by targeting a specific group of audience.

What are the business goals?

The detailed business plan and concrete business goals are vital for a strong brand identity. Know your short-term and long-term goals so that you can determine the characteristics of your brand based on it.

Main message of your brand

Shape the core message that you want to deliver to the audience through your brand. This is something the customers will receive through your products and brand, which is the most important element forming your brand. It should match to the specific needs and the unique characteristics of the targeted audience. If you are unsure about what kind of messages your brand should deliver, “Brand Building That Inspires People and Impacts the Bottom Line” will help you find out the best brand building idea for your business.

Various Tactics To Deliver Your Messages

Once you decide your core message and the brand identity, the next step is to make a strategy that fits perfectly to your business purposes and goals.

Position your company as influencer 

Online blogs and news letters are great ways to position your company as a leader in the industry. Deliver your messages with the most advanced knowledge or the latest information; of course the information that is related to your brand or the products. As you turn yourself to be an influencer, more and more people will listen to you and share your brand within their personal networks. It will increase the brand awareness and improve your brand image. 

Social media

Social media is the must-use medium to spread your words to wide range of people. The periodic and continuous posts on social medias are effective in two ways; Sending messages to existing customers regularly, and also introducing your brand to the new audience. Each social media has unique features and specific audience patterns. Do not forget to do some researches to determine which social medias fit your business goals.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is helpful to improve your company’s ranking on search engines. Utilize SEO to make sure that you are going into the proper direction of delivering messages. Your ranking on specific keywords or key phrases should be doing well so that the targeted audience will reach your websites without fail. A good way to start improving your SEO is to summit your company’s blog into a Blog Directory getting it listed in a high authoritative domain.

One Thing You Should Never Do

Dilution is the must-avoid thing when promoting your brand. Many businesses try something new or different in order to engage with the larger group of audience, which often fail to lose existing customers. This is because the non-related messages delivered through products or social media posts often confuse them. What if one day, your favorite Italian restaurant serves you Chinese food while its sign still says “Italian restaurant?”  You went to that restaurant to have some Italian food. No matter how good Chinese food they serve, it is not what you expect from the Italian restaurant. Expanding the targeted customer groups is not simple; you will not achieve it just by increasing the variety of the products.

Dilution And Re-branding Are Different

I mentioned that dilution could lose your loyal customers. However, re-branding is a different story. If you reach the conclusion to re-brand your company, after the thorough considerations, it may help you to improve your business situations. But always remember that “consistency” is the key for the strong brands. Be very careful when you decide to go for the re-branding; do not change the core messages or targeted customers too much or too often. If you are unsure whether you should re-brand or not, the articles “5 Signs It’s Time to Rebrand” and “The 8 Must-Follow Rules for Rebranding Your Company” may guide you to the right decision.

There is no one simple way to improve every brand’s identity. Each brand has unique characteristics, targeted audience, and needs. Even if you copy exactly what a successful company does, there is no guarantee that its strategy works for your company as well. Deepen the understandings of your own company to determine the best strategy for your brand.


How to Build A Strong Brand Image

5 Tips for Building a Strong Brand Identity

Brand Build – How To Build A Strong Brand

Brand Building That Inspires People and Impacts the Bottom Line

5 Signs It’s Rime to Rebrand

The 8 Must-Follow Rules for Rebranding Your Company