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Frequently small business owners spend hard earned cash for a web site and they get little return on the investment.

The first step in designing or redesigning your web site is to clarify the goals you want the web site to achieve. What is the purpose of your web site? What do you want your web site to do?

One of the goals of your web site should be to attract the attention of your target market. Most small business web sites fail to do this. Typically, these web sites are filled with information on the firm’s services, products and credentials.

These types of web sites do little to attract new customers, simply because they are “me” oriented. In other words, they don’t offer what the customer is looking for.

Most users of the Web are searching for information and solutions to problems. If your web site doesn’t provide easily found solutions the customer will quickly leave for other options.

Is your target market searching for the content you have on your web site?

Many small businesses have web sites in order to establish credibility. The mere presence of a web site is not going to convince prospects you can help them. To establish trust you need to demonstrate your expertise and qualifications.

One method for establishing credibility is by featuring testimonials. Comments from others are perceived with greater credibility than descriptions of your features and benefits. This will help differentiate your business from the competition.

What are you doing to differentiate your web site and build credibility?

Generating leads is one of the most important objectives for a small business web site. If people come to your web site for solutions, you want as many of them as possible to contact you.

It is also desirable for your web site to differentiate people who are not ready to buy from people who are ready to make a purchase.

Visitors to you web site need to be given direction and incentives.

Does your web site prompt people to supply contact information and contact you? Is there motivation for them to give you their contact information?

Of course the most important goal of your web site should be to help make you money. If you sell services and products it should be easy for prospects to find them, along with comprehensive information about each product.

Ideally, you will want individual sell pages for each product or service. Again, you will want the content to discuss solutions to customers’ problems.

Is your web site helping you sell more of your products and services?

It is your customers’ problems that maintains your business. You need both customer problems and solutions to keep your business operating.

Customer problems are the fuel that provides the power to your marketing engine. Fueling your marketing engine requires a constant focus on customer problems. The better you can address customer problems the more powerful your marketing engine.

What are the concerns of your target market? What problems do they have that you can solve? What problems do they want solved?

Prospects want to see themselves and their concerns clearly identified in order to feel confident that you understand their needs. Don’t start talking about features and benefits until you have identified the problems that the prospects want to solved.

Switch to using your prospects problems as the core to your marketing message and you’ll be amazed at how quickly your marketing will accelerate your business.

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Today is Christmas Day, December 25, 2008. Besides being Christmas, the day we celebrate the birth of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, this is also the day that I celebrate 10 months of being without a JOB. Wow, what a thing to celebrate you might think.

As I was sitting, looking at our Christmas tree early this morning before the family woke up and praying I had a thought. I remembered that it was just 10 months ago that I left my full-time job as the I.T. Manager at the big furniture store. Was that my idea? Well, yes and no…

I had been planning to leave my job there since starting my own part-time business three years ago. Like many of you I was spending hours and hours on the Internet and spending lots and lots of money buying and trying lots and lots of things to find something that would work for me so that I could quit my job and have my own home based online business.

The last half of 2007 I was working hard to help transition into my own business without leaving my employer, and especially the owner of the company who had been very good to me, in the “lurch” without my help. Not that I thought myself irreplaceable but, I did not want them to experience problems when I left. No one at the company was doing what I had been doing in several areas so I felt that I needed to make sure that things were taken care of before I left.

A year ago my friend Jeff Mills asked me to consider joining him to work on building his business and help to take it to the next level. We discussed what that would look like and when it would happen. We decided that I would begin to work with him beginning March 1^st of this year and that I would give my notice by mid month so as to not have a lapse of income between leaving the IT job and starting my pay from Jeff.

So I was very much ready but at the same time surprised to walk into work on Monday, February 25^th and have my supervisor and the HR department manager intercept me on the way to my office. Within less than an hour I was on my way home… the dream of being on my own and running my own online business was already starting.

After some brief surprise reactions from my wife we were both thanking God for His hand in all of this. As the Bible teaches, man makes plans and the Lord directs our steps.

So this morning as I reflected on the past 10 months and the past three years, I was finding answers to my questions and prayers for what is ahead for us. I know that I am to continue to make my plans and trust in God to direct my steps. I know that leaving my job last February was a gift from God.

With so many people including friends that I know who have lost their jobs in the past few months, and more to come as the US and world economies continue to seemingly spine out of control, I want to pass along to you a word of encouragement as my Christmas gift to you.

You may be a Christian or you may not, either way I want to tell you that I know that God is a loving father and He does indeed care for you. He wants only the best for you and your family but His viewpoint is usually different than ours. He can and will take care of us if we put our trust in Him.

Trying to figure out how to start an online business can be really confusing and the truth is only a few people are going to succeed in making a living online. So how to you know if you are going to be one of those who will make it? I wish I had a 10 point test that I could give you that would help you to see the future on that question.

I do have some ideas about what it takes to succeed in business online. I have looked at things that successful people in this Internet Marketing world do that I think can give us clues to what it takes. If you wish do know what they are I would love to share them with you.

If you would like to discuss your ideas for business, questions about getting started or technical “how-to” things that you are struggling with, get in touch with me and we can schedule some time to talk. You can contact me by clicking on the About Henry link at the top of this blog page and then select Contact Henry in the drop down menu.

I hope your Christmas was a Blessed one and pray that next year’s will be even better. Perhaps next year you can say that you, like me, are blessed to be without a JOB.

Todays’ anniversary is my Anniversary of Freedom… freedom from my J.O.B. which I happily left on February 25th this year.

Today I celebrate not only the end of my first 6 months of being self-employed as an Internet Marketing Technology Consultant and online marketer, I celebrate the transformation that God has done in me and in my life to prepare me for this time.

As I walked around our neighborhood I thought about how many people that I have meet in the past couple years who also wanted this kind of freedom. Some had attained this freedom while others had not. I thought about what the difference is between them.

Why is it that some people start out to build their home based business using online marketing and the spend hundreds of dollars and hundreds of hours working at it and never even make their first $100?

Do people fail because the technical stuff is too hard to learn?

Do people fail because they can’t figure out what niche to be in or what product(s) to sell?

Do people fail because they just go from one “Newest and Best’ thing to the next without really working fully at any of them?

Do people fail because they just don’t have the money to run their businesses?

Or, do people fail because their character is lacking in some area?

Here is a definition of character from The Free Dictionary:

1. The combination of qualities or features that distinguishes one person, group, or thing from another. See Synonyms at disposition.

2. A distinguishing feature or attribute, as of an individual, group, or category. See Synonyms at quality.

3. Genetics A structure, function, or attribute determined by a gene or group of genes.

4. Moral or ethical strength.

5. A description of a person’s attributes, traits, or abilities.

Read the full definition Here.

I believe that failure to succeed in any area of life and specifically in building a business online or off-line is tied to all of the above but most importantly, success is dependent on a persons character. This is perhaps why people that come into a large sum of money from an inheritance or perhaps by winning the lottery often spend the money quickly and soon find themselves in the same place, or even worse off, then they were before the money came to them.

One of the very first books that I read back in 2005 that started me on my road to self employment and building my online business was, ” The Power of Focus” by Jack Canfield.

If you are trying to build your own online business and are not achieving the level of success that you wish for, you should get a copy of Jack’s book. I pull it out often to review and re-focus myself.

If you need help to overcome the technical aspects of online marketing, please use the Contact Henry link at the top of this page to get in touch with me.

I would be happy to schedule a free 20 minute review session with you to see what needs you have and if I can be of service to you.