Golf Marketing

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Finding the Right Golf Website Designer

Hey When designing a new golf website, or redesigning an older website, there is a delicate balance between the creative-the look and feel of the website-and the technical-which is what makes the website work.

Thinking Over-emphasis of one, or the other, will result in a golf website that either looks great, but doesn't function that well, or will create a website that functions great but doesn't look good at all.

I think many golf website designers are either very technical or very creative. Seldom do you find a website designer who is great at both dealing with the technical issues of building a website and who is also a great graphic designer.

Ideally, you will want to find an individual or company which can provide you a high level of expertise in the look and feel of the website, and provide outstanding technical solutions. While graphic designers can generally create beautiful website designs, their ability to create complex technical solutions may be very limited.

And conversely, a programmer or web developer who is very technically savvy may not be able to give your website design that extra sparkle it needs to truly shine. Programmers create applications or software and typically have no training or expertise in how a website should look or function.

Most programmers, while technically competent, know computer languages inside and out and can code your website, but programmers typically have no graphic design training. Most programmers come from a university's computer science curriculum, and few, if any, will take a graphic design class an elective. While you want your designer to be able to solve technical issues or at least oversee them, website visitors are visually interacting with your website, so the look and feel of your website, navigation and organization of information is extremely important.

Truly great golf website designers will have the ability to look beyond the challenge of creating your website, and will also want to know where your website fits into your overall marketing strategy, and what the primary goals are for the website. Too many websites are created without paying close attention to what the website will actually accomplish.

Establishing primary and secondary goals for a website is very important. However, building the ultimate website that misses the mark or fails to achieve basic website goals is just a waste of everyone's time and money. You can usually tell if your website design resource is looking beyond the immediate project by the questions they ask-or don't ask.

A great golf web designer such as back9clicks.com or mousecodestudio.com will be knowledgeable, but will not resort to using excessive techno-babble to confuse or overly impress a client. Great web designers know what they are talking about, but should not talk down to you, the client.

Educated clients are the best clients. You don't have to know everything your developer knows, but you need to know that they are truly competent and they can communicate effectively with you. Think of your website designer as being a sort of partner in your company's marketing efforts; a part of your overall team.

Most good Hong Kong web designers are organized and can manage their time effectively. Often, technology projects take far longer then they need too because too little attention is being paid to project progress and resolving issues that are stalling a project.

Your web developer should be a self-starter, and should not rely on you reminding them that the project is behind schedule. If you are using a company to create your website, make sure there is a project manager involved, who can provide weekly status meetings and who is pro-active in resolving issues that will affect the time-line of the project and the website launch date.

Professionalism

While many people and companies provide website design services with a high degree of expertise, the level of professionalism varies from individual to individual and company to company.

When first contacting a potential website designer, look for signs of professionalism-or lack of professionalism. When you call them, do you receive a call back in a timely fashion? Does the developer or company keep regular office hours? When you send an email, is it answered promptly and are the responses professional?

It is always best to try and avoid working with a less than professional company, but evaluating someone before you have a chance to start working with them can be difficult. From the first contact you make with your vendor, be on the lookout for signs that someone may be less than professional.

Working with an individual or a company that is not professional will only lead to frustration on your part as the project moves along or grinds to a halt. But working with someone who understands the business world and values your time, returns your calls and emails promptly and professionally, will help make the project experience much more pleasant. See www.back9clicks.com for your golf website design

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Monday, November 2, 2009

Five Tips for SEO


Launching an innovative golf product is undoubtedly one of the largely stressful and complex times for any golf website entrepreneur. Whether it's your first product, your fiftieth, or your hundredth, knowing just how the marketplace will react is something that you can never do through intuition alone. Although the most popular and successful golf marketing entrepreneurs are said to have the 'personal touch' that can predict a product's success, they're more than often wired up to the hard data when making any major decisions. While focus groups and beta testers are often without of the financial means of many internet entrepreneurs and marketers, it's easily possible to use the massive search traffic of Google as an useful replacement for traditional marketing test groups.

By running AdWords campaigns that are specifically targeted to your own market, you can gain some massive and valuable insights into your market's performance, consumer preferences, and general price for any product. Simply put up a series of advertisements that test for several variables of your product, either price, name, and product description, and let the results speak for themselves. Whether you're looking to sell 10 copies or 100, the information that an AdWords campaign can bring to you is priceless.

Need some guidelines? Here's a simple example, using an eBook as a demo product:

You're trying to market an eBook that you've written yourself. With five potential product names, 10 potential product descriptions, and no idea of the price, you need to gather as much information as quickly and cheaply as possible.

First, run five different Google AdWords campaigns, using the book's potential titles in the ad text or headline. Everything else on the ads needs to stay the same, and there needs to be no mention of pricing or approximate costs. See which one performs the best, and then lose the others.

Then, run your ads with ten different product descriptions. The titles and headlines should be consistent and identical, with only the advertising copy changing. Find out which product description works the best for your audience, and lose the others.

Then, run the same tests over and over again, but this time to determine price point. Set ten different prices, and see which one continually leads to most people to both click on your advertisement and read through your product description and sales copy. At the end of the page, put a "name and email" form and collect details for potential customers.

By using this simple strategy, you've created a marketing database, an easy email list, and given yourself the opportunity to market to people directly once your product launches. Not only that, you've determined the best name, description, and price for your online product. Not bad for a little AdWords spending, and certainly more cost effective than the traditional methods of gathering market information.

Original article here.

For more info about how to market your golf website visit www.back9clicks.com

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