Professional Quality Make-Up and Supplies for Face Painters and Body Artists
When you want it done right...Build Your Own Website
by Erika Harrison
by Erika Harrison
Being artists, we typically have a very specific mental image of the things that we want...like our clothes, our house, our make-up, our photographs, and our website. We often find ourselves disappointed when we leave these things up to someone else and get back something other than what we had pictured. So why do we keep handing these jobs off to someone else? For me, it is usually a matter of time. Either I don't have the time to do the project, or I don't have time to learn what I need to know in order to do the project.
About a year ago, I decided that I would stop trying to "just get by" with my website and would turn over the work to a company that specializes in building websites. They talked a good game and had me convinced that the new website would have tons of cool features, would be super easy for my customers, would be easy for us to manage, and would rank high in the search engines. All I had to do was stock up the warehouse in anticipation of the flood of orders.
Well, what I got ($4000+ later) was a website that was almost (yet not quite) what I had envisioned, that spent many days offline due to hosting issues, that many customers found impossible to use, and that was invisible to search engines. My new website was created with these dynamic pages, which sounds really awesome when someone tells you that it generates a new page every time someone searches for an item on your website and that thousands of pages will show up in search engines. However, the reality is that search engines do not readily index dynamic pages...especially pages with a URL that looks like this http://www.amerikanbodyart.com/index.php?option=com_virtuemart&page=shop.browse&category_id=7&Itemid=2. And those really awesome features, like our fancy new shopping cart, frequently broke down and were impossible for us to fix. While it was a lovely website, as far as design goes...and we did get a really great logo from it...it left much to be desired. I think our website was just much more than the average website builder can handle
Completely fed up with trying to figure out how to find someone who could fix these problems, I decided that it was time to stop passing the buck. It was time for me to just do what needed to be done. I bought the book Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Dummies and then I searched online for a website building program that I felt comfortable trying to use.
I had used Microsoft Publisher to build websites before, which was easy to use, but with that program, the text on the webpages is in frames which essentially turn your text into a picture instead of text. Search bots search for text, not pictures. So if you want higher ranking in search engines, you need to have text on your web pages. I had also tried Front Page, and it might as well have been written in Chinese for all I could understand. I was tempted to get DreamWeaver, but it seemed like it would be another difficult program like FrontPage and it was very expensive. So what I knew was that I needed a program that would give me customizable templates, but that was created by a company who understood something about search engine optimization.
So what I found was WYSIWYG Web Builder. The acronym stands for What You See Is What You Get. I was able to download the program for $40. I picked a template, changed the colors, and got right to work building my website. Everything you might need on a web page is in a menu on the left side of your screen. You simply click or drag and drop to add text, photos, and other features. You just click and drag to add a Paypal button, then double click the Paypal button to add the product price and information. If you have to create a similar page to the one you are working on, you just click Page, and then Clone Page. This program is even simpler than Microsoft Publisher. And there is a forum on WYSIWYG's website where users and staff can answer your questions. I'm actually very excited about how easy it has been to create this website and more importantly, I'm getting the website that I had originally wanted.
If you need to build a website, I highly recommend WYSIWYG Web Builder. And even if you have a website, I would recommend buying the book, Search Engine Optimization for Dummies. There are some very simple things that make all the difference in the world when it comes to having your website picked up by search engines and getting your website to rank higher for your key words. Had I read this book a year ago, I could have saved myself $4000 and a year's worth of grief. I should feel bitter about the whole situation, but as my husband is fond of saying, I took a $4000 seminar. Because that's what it took for me to finally learn how to create my own website and to hopefully get the search engines to notice it. Whether you are a face and body artist or a supplier, your website is your number one marketing tool. Even if you trust someone else to build it for you, don't trust them blindly. Learn about the process and principles of search engines so you know whether or not your web building company is really doing what is best for you. This is advice that I have always given to people who allow others to do their taxes, so I'm surprised that it took me this long to take my own advice. But better late than never.
I hope you're having a wonderfully prosperous summer!
~Erika
About a year ago, I decided that I would stop trying to "just get by" with my website and would turn over the work to a company that specializes in building websites. They talked a good game and had me convinced that the new website would have tons of cool features, would be super easy for my customers, would be easy for us to manage, and would rank high in the search engines. All I had to do was stock up the warehouse in anticipation of the flood of orders.
Well, what I got ($4000+ later) was a website that was almost (yet not quite) what I had envisioned, that spent many days offline due to hosting issues, that many customers found impossible to use, and that was invisible to search engines. My new website was created with these dynamic pages, which sounds really awesome when someone tells you that it generates a new page every time someone searches for an item on your website and that thousands of pages will show up in search engines. However, the reality is that search engines do not readily index dynamic pages...especially pages with a URL that looks like this http://www.amerikanbodyart.com/index.php?option=com_virtuemart&page=shop.browse&category_id=7&Itemid=2. And those really awesome features, like our fancy new shopping cart, frequently broke down and were impossible for us to fix. While it was a lovely website, as far as design goes...and we did get a really great logo from it...it left much to be desired. I think our website was just much more than the average website builder can handle
Completely fed up with trying to figure out how to find someone who could fix these problems, I decided that it was time to stop passing the buck. It was time for me to just do what needed to be done. I bought the book Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Dummies and then I searched online for a website building program that I felt comfortable trying to use.
I had used Microsoft Publisher to build websites before, which was easy to use, but with that program, the text on the webpages is in frames which essentially turn your text into a picture instead of text. Search bots search for text, not pictures. So if you want higher ranking in search engines, you need to have text on your web pages. I had also tried Front Page, and it might as well have been written in Chinese for all I could understand. I was tempted to get DreamWeaver, but it seemed like it would be another difficult program like FrontPage and it was very expensive. So what I knew was that I needed a program that would give me customizable templates, but that was created by a company who understood something about search engine optimization.
So what I found was WYSIWYG Web Builder. The acronym stands for What You See Is What You Get. I was able to download the program for $40. I picked a template, changed the colors, and got right to work building my website. Everything you might need on a web page is in a menu on the left side of your screen. You simply click or drag and drop to add text, photos, and other features. You just click and drag to add a Paypal button, then double click the Paypal button to add the product price and information. If you have to create a similar page to the one you are working on, you just click Page, and then Clone Page. This program is even simpler than Microsoft Publisher. And there is a forum on WYSIWYG's website where users and staff can answer your questions. I'm actually very excited about how easy it has been to create this website and more importantly, I'm getting the website that I had originally wanted.
If you need to build a website, I highly recommend WYSIWYG Web Builder. And even if you have a website, I would recommend buying the book, Search Engine Optimization for Dummies. There are some very simple things that make all the difference in the world when it comes to having your website picked up by search engines and getting your website to rank higher for your key words. Had I read this book a year ago, I could have saved myself $4000 and a year's worth of grief. I should feel bitter about the whole situation, but as my husband is fond of saying, I took a $4000 seminar. Because that's what it took for me to finally learn how to create my own website and to hopefully get the search engines to notice it. Whether you are a face and body artist or a supplier, your website is your number one marketing tool. Even if you trust someone else to build it for you, don't trust them blindly. Learn about the process and principles of search engines so you know whether or not your web building company is really doing what is best for you. This is advice that I have always given to people who allow others to do their taxes, so I'm surprised that it took me this long to take my own advice. But better late than never.
I hope you're having a wonderfully prosperous summer!
~Erika
August 2009
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