In This Edition:

• Up Front: Editor's note
• News: Population Explosion
• Customer Care: Free Hosting Offer

Website Marketing:

• Rubber Stamp It
• Just the FAQ's
• Career Pages

Editor's Note:

BuildYourBusinessOnline.com NEWS is our way of bringing smart marketing tips, tools, and news directly to you by way of e-mail each quarter. To compliment the marketing resource section of our website and to better expound on some of the existing topics discussed there, this online newsletter will give you first glance at the latest and greatest low-cost and no-cost marketing strategies that we endorse and encourage you to use.

Driving traffic to your website requires a mix of knowledge, ingenuity, and creative effort. It also happens to be the purpose of this newsletter. We hope that the bits of information you pick up here, over time, will make your job of marketing your website easier and help you make your website successful.

Please send us an e-mail if you have any questions or have discovered a creative way of marketing your website. We'd love you to share it with us. In fact, for your contribution we'll give you a plug in our newsletter and provide a link from our newsletter to your site for our readers... and it won't cost you a nickel.

We'll also profile some of our client sites and focus on some of the special features of each. We'll look at why these features work for their businesses and how it might benefit yours. Who knows, it may inspire you to take your site in a new and exciting direction. This issue takes a look at Career Pages and Online Job Applications. We are featuring a client of ours, GiordanoRestaurants.com, who is a Wendy's franchisee that listed the job opportunities for their restaurants. They also backed that up with a "feedback form" so they can receive job applications via e-mail. After you read the articles below, take a look at their site.

Despite Dot-Com Bombs, Net Population Booms

The many commercial dot-coms failures may have dominated the headlines over the past few months, but the reality is that newcomers to the internet are having no trouble at all navigating the web. And as they make their way online, they are solidifying the internet's status as a mainstream medium.

Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, told "Newsbytes" recently that the group's new survey, "More Online, Doing More," reflects a view contrary to the collapse of many internet businesses in recent months, contrary even to some studies that have shown a recent reduction in time spent online.

In fact, every way you can slice and dice the population demographically, there has been growth online. All tolled, there was growth in usage among women, minorities, people with incomes between $30,000 and $50,000, and people with varying levels of education. "That's basically what made the argument for us that the population, every day, is getting more mainstream," Rainie said. This is good news for small service businesses, like yours, who have taken the important step of going online.

The survey estimates that the number of net-connected US adults grew from about 88 million to more than 104 million in the second half of 2000.

According to the report:

• Eighty-two percent of people in households earning more than $75,000 have internet access.
• 38 percent of households in the under-$30,000 income bracket have the same advantage, up four points from last June.
• The African-American online population grew 8 percent, a rate of growth over the earlier part of the year of more than 22 percent, according to the Pew research.

The report says that even people at the low end of the income scale are adopting the net rapidly. "I think that's a testament to the fact that lots of people are finding things they like online, and finding that the internet can be a helpful tool in everyday life," said Rainie.

Another continuing disparity in net usages is among people of different ages. The report says some 75 percent of those people aged 18 to 29 have internet access, but only 15 percent of those 65 and over have access. But there again, an increase in use is apparent. Only 12 percent of those over 65 had net access in the June survey.

"My notion was that so much of the coverage in the fall and at the beginning of the winter was that the dot-com world was imploding," Rainie said. "So it was interesting to see that even as that was unfolding on the commercial side of the internet, that on the user side more people were coming online and more people were doing more things."

Bottom line, Rainie said, the net is healthy - even if some online companies are not. "There continues to be robust growth of the internet population, and it's across the board," he said. "So it's beginning to look more and more like the mainstreaming of the internet population."

Rubber Stamp It

Here's the problem: you ordered 500 new business cards last month and new promotional shopping bags the month before. The problem is you just launched your website and your website URL (www address) is not on either. Do you have it all reprinted because it's really important to have your URL on everything? The good news is you can still use up those cards and bags.

Simply go to your local print shop or visit www.iprint.com and have them make a rubber stamp with your website URL on it. (In fact, iprint.com often gives them away as part of promotional offers, so check'em out). Then you can stamp the fronts and backs of your business cards. You can also stamp your checks, invoices, envelopes, letterhead, and what the heck, why not stamp the hands of visitors to your trade show booth, or the hands of the kids that come to your counter!

This inexpensive tool can help update your marketing materials while spreading the word about your new website.

FREE HOSTING!

Just the FAQ's

Congratulations! You've got a brand new site and it's doing pretty well. Your hits and page views keep climbing, your links are all in order and everything looks good. On top of that, you're getting e-mail now and then with praise about your website's offerings or perhaps a question or two.

Now is a good time to sit back and examine the questions that might come to mind for first-time visitors. Start by thinking about the original purpose of your site and then shift your perspective, thinking about it from the mindset of a new visitor. Put yourself in their shoes, and assume you know nothing. What questions would you have? Write down these questions or type them into a document as you think of them.

What you are creating is a list of frequently asked questions (commonly abbreviated as FAQ). These are questions that your visitors may have about your site, your business, or even about you. Just about any question a customer might ask or you might think of is valid, as long as it may also be helpful to other visitors.

Let's create an example of, say, a web site about model railroading. Now, what questions might you have if you surfed to that site? You might want to know "why is it popular?", "when did it start?", "how much does it cost to get into it?", "where can I buy them", "who repairs them", "how are they shipped", etc. The FAQ's answer questions that aren't necessarily answered in the the content or layout of the site itself.

Question like "why does this site exist", "what are they selling?", and "who built the site?" are questions you may come up with that may not necessarily be answered in the FAQ's, but can and should be answered in the design and layout of the site itself. "What purpose does this site serve?" is a good example of this type of question. You are not going to answer this in a FAQ page, but you will answer it indirectly by the information and services and convenience offered throughout the site in both content and navigability.

Once you've got your list of questions for your FAQ page, go ahead and answer them with brief, concise, friendly responses. Don't take your audience's knowledge for granted. Assume they know very little about your services and make every question seem relevant.

When you have a dozen or so questions compiled, have a FAQ's page added to your site. This serves both you and your customers. Your customers gain the convenience of access to the information and you gain relief from some phone call or e-mail inquiries. Plus, just because someone has a question doesn't necessarily mean they would have called you for the answer. In this way you are answering the questions that may not have been asked, increasing your chances of a sale or at least contact with a customer.

As you are adding your questions and answers, you will most likely come up with additional questions. By all means, add those to your frequently asked questions as well. Our webmasters like to include a form or e-mail link at the bottom of questions page to allow people to submit additional one's if desired. This is of great benefit for your FAQ page as well, as it is an easy way to improve your web site's interactivity - which is usually very good for getting people to return later. At BuildYourBusinessOnline.com we believe it is also important to include a link to your FAQ's page in a prominent place on every single page of your website, in part because you want people to have easy access to answers when questions come to mind.

FAQ's are great for answering simple questions that your visitors may have before they send you an email or place a phone call (or don't send an e-mail or don't place a phone call). They also help to get people to return to your website, where they remember that they can get their questions answered. In this way, your website is becoming a valuable "resource" for customers and potential customers.

One feature that almost every website can offer is a "career page" or "job opportunities page."

A career page provides insight into employment opportunities, positions that are open or that will becoming open within your firm, hiring criteria, hours, and benefits. On a career page you can also provide an online job application and an invitation to send a resume. BuildYourBusinessOnline.com client, GiordanoRestaurants.com, listed open job opportunities on their website for their Wendy's franchises. They also included a "feedback form" so they can receive job applications via e-mail.

While not replacing an official paper job application, online applications are a terrific way of making contact with candidates for the first time. They also give you a good vehicle for prescreening candidates before you have them in for an interview. And they serve as a "safe" way for candidates to gain entry into your company and learn about the work environment. In a tight labor market it's a good way to get people thinking about working for you.

Luring prospective candidates to your company with an attractive career page or job opportunities page may be the first step in a long, productive employer-employee relationship. Of course, as with any feature of your site, it should be marketed effectively to meet its potential and to serve you and your customers well.

If you have any questions about adding a career page to your site, or about marketing your exisiting page, don't hesitate to contact us.

In the next issue...

• Events, Press Releases, and Your Website
• Building on Benefits
• What Drives Repeat Visits
• Webmaster Marketing

Have a marketing tip or trick you can Share with us? We'll give you a link in our next Newsletter.

Click here to get a free quote on adding a FAQ's, Career Page, or Online Job Application to your website.

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