The Power of Keywords

This week we were learning about keywords and AdWords via Google.  I found it interesting to note that keywords aren't usually just one word, and that a keyword can definitely become too specific. I also learned that there are negative keywords which are actually a good thing in the land of AdWords.

Keywords are words that we want to use to attract buyers to our wares.  It is the bread crumb as it were for Hansel and Gretel, though it isn't going to the evil witches house, but rather to the site the consumer was hoping to find.   If we utilize them correctly and in a unique manner we can attract the audience we are specifically looking for.  These are the people that we are likely to convert rather than just get empty clicks from.  However, using keywords should not be like using a large fishing net (we don't want everybody coming to our sites)  It should be more viewed as a harpoon to catch those special "fish" that we might see value from.

As we focus on the special ones, it becomes much easier to make those conversions.  They are the ones that were specifically looking for something that we can provide them. 

Part of this targeting method, is also pushing away those that we aren't interested in attracting.

In class there was an example that I really liked and was easily understandable.  If we were selling women's yoga pants, we may think of using yoga as a keyword.  Yes, the use of yoga as a keyword would draw a large audience.  However, a large part of the audience probably are not looking for yoga pants, let alone women's yoga pants.... this is where negative keywords can come into play.  We can say that yoga mats are a negative, along with yoga studios.  This helps weed out those who wouldn't benefit from our site.

As you can see with a little work and forethought keywords can be extremely useful as we continue to build our businesses.

Legal Structure

This week we studied about different legal structure within businesses.  There are several and each seems to have many pros and cons.

I personally feel that choosing a legal structure for your business is almost as important as choosing your business itself.  You need to decide what type of liability you are willing to take with your business.  How large your business is, or will become etc.

I chose to stay with a legal structure that I was familiar with.  I chose to stick with a Sole Proprietorship or DBA (Doing Business As).  I and my mom have a business we have already set up as a DBA, so this was one less step that I had to take in order to get my online business up and going.

This particular legal structure holds us completely liable for all taxes and any other problems that may arise as a "business entity" because the business entity is really just us. This may sound a bit scary, but our business really doesn't have a large risk with it.  We sell handcrafted items such as blankets, jewelry, etc.  None of the items we sell tend to be "big ticket" items, nor items that have a large potential of causing personal harm or injury. 

As you can see there is a lot to think about when choosing your legal structure.  However, with the right planning and talking with the right professionals you can choose the right legal structure for your business, and have a much easier first fiscal year.

Designing a Site

This week we started thinking about and discussing what it take to design our site.  We learned a lot of different information including that the average person spends less than 5 seconds on your site before they judge if they are going to stay or leave.  This is a very critical time, and we need to make sure that the site looks professional, welcoming, and accessible.

Another thing we discussed this week was implementing PayPal into our site.  We had a chance to use a website to create a button for our website.  There were several different buttons to choose from, each of which would fit into a different business model.

I am going for a manufacturer business model, and so I found it very easy to pick a button.  I feel that an add to cart button would be best for my scenario.  This allows the customer to add the item, and select other items if they choose before "checking out".  The could also use a Buy Now button, but I feel that, that comes off a bit too forward for my liking.

This week really reminded me of my past classes and understanding of design and user-interface.  It feels a bit like a culmination of a lot of my previous classes, and the principles and theories I have learned from them.

Site Hosting and Builders

This week we learned a lot about different options that are available to make our e-commerce site function.  There are several options from creating a web page that has a lot of custom coding, to ones that only allow you to "drag and drop" but in their pre-made templates.

Before this week I wasn't aware of the large array of different options to build a website there were. However, that wasn't all that we learned this week.

We learned all about hosting engines.  This probably sounds a bit more complicated than it actually is.  There are several options when you are thinking about hosting.  A host is the company that "stores" your website on their servers allowing people across the world to find it, if they click the right link or are aware of the web address of your domain.

Several e-commerce site builders have hosting built into their model.  However, you can still choose to use an outside host to "host" your page with. 

After some research I decided that shopify seems to fit my needs the best out of any site builder, and it includes hosting as part of their fee for allowing you to build your website using their software.