Top 10 Internet Marketing Mistakes: 3) Fuzzy Branding

Fuzzy branding can apply to multiple aspects of your online business. It can be as obvious as a bad domain name or it can even be how poorly you have designed your website. Fuzzy branding is any fault in your website, marketing, or other aspects of your online presense, that is an Internet faux pas, and makes it difficult for your prospects to associate your name or brand with the product or service you are offering. Instead, they are left scratching their heads trying to figure out what your site is all about.

Domain Names Are Very Important

After you have your niche in mind, it is time to start getting the elements of your website together. First you will want to register a domain name and start to think about the organization and branding of your site.

If you are selling fishhooks online, you want to try to include that in your domain name somehow. A good domain name is short, descriptive, and tells the customer in a few words what your business is all about.

Obviously, many domain names have already been takn, leaving you less choice on what to name your site. If you must pay someone else for a name, be sure it is a very well branded name that is going to stick with your business for a while.

Is Your Home Page Clear And Concise?

Most people will log into your top-level domain first, meaning they will arrive at your website on the home page. If this is cluttered with bright fonts, a disorganized menu, a bizarre or confusing design, and copy that does not equate to your business, you are going to have a number of people leaving as quickly as they showed up.

Eben Pagan, one of the top Internet Marketing specialists of all time, says there are three questions your home page must answer in the first few seconds immediately after a visitor arrives. This is my wording but the concept is the same:

1) Who is it?

2) What is it about?

3) What do I get?

The idea is to provide immediate answers to these questions and get people interested in your site enough to browse it some more. Make your home page as clear, concise, and descriptive as possible.

The look and feel of the website should also reflect the brand or image you are trying to associate with your business. An office supply website will look more professional, with muted colors in blue, gray, or black, and be highly organized. A website for web scooters might try to attract a younger, fun-loving crowd by providing colorful snapshots of scooters while having a fun domain name.

Pay Attention To Content

Next comes content. In order for people to find your site, your content should be optimized for major search engines, using Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques.

While search engines are very important, content should, first and foremost, also be written with an eye for headlines, white space, lists, and other sales copy techniques that make it easy for a real person visiting your website to briefly scan your copy and to pick up the most salient points about your products and services.

This just scratches the surface of dealing with fuzzy branding on your website. Contact me for help correcting fuzzy branding on your website and across your Internet Marketing presense.