I love purchasing a new website address, don’t you?
(A website address is also known as a “domain name”, or a “url”)
I’ve purchased about 60 website addresses over the last few years. For clients, friends, and for myself.
I get the same rush of adrenaline every time I do it.
It’s so exciting because it’s much an amazing opportunity.
The opportunity is that you can write a message and expose that message to the whole world!
Wow!
Your vision for your amazing website content starts to form in your head even before your purchased the website address.
And when you’ve made the purchase things start to get real.
You realise that it’s quite a big job to translate your vision into a website with images, text and code.
Here’s where you slow down a bit and think to yourself “Well, we better get something up there!”
How about a “coming soon” sign to start with?
Sound good?
…
NO!
3 Reasons Not To Put “Coming Soon” Anywhere On Your Website
1. Because Visitors Assume You’re Lying
- When you say “coming soon”, visitors to your website think “liar!”
- It’s not your fault. They have been burnt many times by that promise so that’s why they don’t believe you this time
- In fact, that’s why spelling mistakes, small errors, and stale blog content can be so damaging to your brand – all these things remove credibility and trust
- What chance have you got of making a sale later if you start by destroying your credibility and your audiences trust right at the start of the relationship?
2. Because You’ve Missed An Opportunity To Say Something Useful
- Imagine if you spent one hour and wrote a short list of bullet points to explain what you do and how you can help your audience
- Imagine if you included your phone numbers and email address
- Imagine if the design of your website was quite rough, and certainly not even close to your vision for it in the near future
- Do you think that visitors would appreciate this instead of a site with zero content and just a cheesy “coming soon” or “under construction” sign?
- Yes. Yes they would. So make that. Do it yourself, or spend a couple of hundred bucks getting a half decent one-page website as your starting point
3. Because Google Won’t Send You Free Visitors
- Did you know that Google isn’t a search engine? It’s actually a connector.
- Google connects people who are searching for answers to questions, with website that have those answers
- All you need to get free visitors from Google is a one page website that answers a few simple questions, and has a few links pointing to this website from other websites
- A page with “coming soon” isn’t going to do it. But a website with the elements I described above will.
Need Help?
Talk to a friend of mine, Steve Turner, he builds websites. Call him on (07) 575 8799.
Tagged as:
Domain Name,
Website Address
Did you meet Laura Rietel (and Nick Churchouse from Lightning Labs) on Thursday 2 May 2013?
If not, you missed a great night!
Laura shared her experience with Business Accelerators.
I loved her presentation style. No slides. Just a few notes, lots of stories, and lots of questions.
Casual and friendly, it felt less like a seminar and more like a chat with an wise friend.
If you didn’t already know, Business Accelerators like Lightning Labs in Wellington have 90 days to turn ideas worth zero into companies worth millions!
So if these accelerators take 90 days, what does everyone do for the other 275 days of the year?
Recover!
90 day business acceleration programmes are a very intense period for everybody:
- The participants who give up their lives, jobs, and family time for 90 days to be there
- The organisers who put in 12 hour, or 18 hour, or 20 hour days to ensure the teams have everything they need
- The mentors who pour in their expertise and knowledge (for free)
- The investors who pour in the money before day zero (when the companies are worth zero), on the hope that on day 90 they’ll be worth millions
It was interesting to hear how the top business accelerator in the world, TechStars, tried to cram 2 programmes into a single year and burnt out every stakeholder group involved.
If they can’t do it, no one can, so don’t even try.
Why Are Business Accelerators So Awesome?
- Because you compress 2 years of business growth and learning into 90 days
- Because a fast failure is a good thing
- Pivots make you stronger (75% of teams pivot), but “spivots”, when you spin around and around make you dizzy
- The value comes from the mentors advice and how you react to “mentor whiplash”, when you get conflicting advice. It’s up to you to extract what you can and make your decision
- Mentors sometimes become investors, and sometimes the CEO!
- The 5 most important factors: Team, Team, Team, Market, Idea
- The best team have worked together for years
- Teams are either 2 or 3 co-founders. Solo entrepreneurs don’t get in (unless they can find a co-founder before all the fun starts)
- You can’t be the coder/tech and run the startup too. You can only wear one of those hats
- You must be coachable. Don’t be precious. Don’t be defensive
- It’s bloody hard work. You need support from your family
- The hottest categories at the moment: Mobile, Cloud, Fashion, Education, Middleware
Who Pays? Who Gets Paid?
- 50% funded by the Government for writing programmes, salaries for operations team, fixed costs and infrastructure
- 50% funded by an Angel Investor Fund. In return the Angels get:
- 6% stake in each accelerated company
- Due diligence
- The fast tracked, pressure cooker startup phase
- Each participant gets $6000 to help them survive the 90 day period financially
Before You Create An Entrepreneurial Ecosystem In Your City…
- It must be led by entrepreneurs
- Take a long term view (20 years)
- Be inclusive. Embrace weirdness. Attract creativeness
Want to come to seminars like this?
You can subscribe to my email list and I’ll let you know about the next one: http://eepurl.com/pCoPX
Tagged as:
Laura Reitel,
Lightning Labs
How To Handle Negative Reviews About Your Business
February 21, 2012Have you ever looked up your own business online and found a negative review somewhere? Maybe you own a restaurant and you’ve just found a negative review on a restaurant directory written by someone who was grumpy that night and they have lashed out at you? Maybe you own a motel and you’ve just found
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