We recently invited a random sampling of Homestead members to take a short survey about their plans for their businesses in 2009. Here’s Sharna with a summary of the results – Rochelle
Thank you to everybody who took part in our recent survey about members’ New Year’s resolutions for their businesses online. From the results I’ve summarized below, it looks like many of you are planning to explore new online strategies to grow your business in 2009, while still maintaining focus on what you know works. With the hope that some of these ideas may help others, here are the results of that survey:
Things you plan to start doing this year
- Search Engine Optimization: Over 50 percent of you want to “Search Engine Optimize” your site, while only 16 percent have done it already.
- Video: 46 percent of you plan to add video to your site, while only 14.6 percent currently have video on their sites.
- Analyze Traffic: 45 percent of you want to start analyzing your site traffic and online advertising to improve sales; 19 percent do it already.
- Online Directories: Over 45 percent of you are going to list your businesses in online directories, while 25 percent are already listed.
- Email Campaigns: 50 percent of you want to start emailing your customers regularly with promotions, while only 16 percent of you are currently doing this.
- Sell Online: 35 percent of you plan to start selling your products online; 37 percent already do it.
- Advertise on Search Engines: 39 percent of you said that you wanted to advertise on search engines, and nearly the same percentage said it wasn’t a priority this year.
- Gearing Website to New Customers Only: Over 20 percent of you will stop gearing your sites to new customers only, and will work to make them useful to your existing customers as well.
Things that are not a priority in 2009
- Monitor Customer Reviews: 64 percent of you said that reading and/or responding to customer reviews on sites like Yelp.com is not a priority, and only 8 percent of you are currently doing this.
- Start a Blog: Over 51 percent of you said you didn’t plan on starting a blog or commenting on forums related to your business, and only 16 percent do it already.
- Advertising in Print Media: Only 24 percent of you will continue to advertise in print media like the yellow pages, 68 percent of you have never advertised in that kind of print media, and 8 percent of you said that you would stop.
- Cleaning Up Website: 31 percent of you will continue to clean up your websites on a regular basis to make sure all links work and that your contact information is up to date, while 36 percent said that this is not a priority.
- Targeting Global Customers: Only 5 percent of you will expand your customer targets to include global customers; 43 percent will continue to target local customers only.
That’s it for now; if you have any other ideas of your own, please let us know. And to those of you who participated, thanks!
February 2, 2009 at 6:42 pm |
It is always great to see that many Homestead users are considering improving their websites function and planning on optimizing this coming year.
Please note the Homestead Connection Forum is moving to another home.
We are still providing help to webmasters which includes tutorials and information to aid in marketing, optimization and creating sites that meet usability standards.
Our new url will be easier to remember and we hope your readers will use the aids we provide – our new address is http://www.homesteadconnectionforum.com
Thank you
Judy Long
February 3, 2009 at 9:45 am |
Interesting. Thank you. It serves as a good checklist for thinking about my site.
How will Homestead be using this data? What are YOUR New Year’s resolutons?
Kathy
February 4, 2009 at 7:16 am |
Interesting survey results. Love the priorities! As usual Homestead users as a collective group are targeting the things that matter most to the welfare of their sites. I’d like to see ‘Advertise on Search Engines’ swapped out of the Things To Do This Year category and ‘Cleaning up Website’ moved into it’s place though. There is just no substitute for a well-optimized website (which includes a clean site) when it comes to being found and placing well in searches. This includes advertising – save those hard earned dollars and put the effort into good SEO.
The HC Forum (http://www.homesteadconnectionforum.com) is a great place for Homestead users to get information about search engine optimization as well as help with using SiteBuilder. We also offer site reviews to help the webmaster improve the effectiveness of their site for both New and Existing Customers. The Forum includes a Directory where Forum members can easily submit their sites for increased exposure to both viewers and search engines. Come join us and we’ll help you make your New Year’s resolutions a reality.
Thanks Homestead for the survey results and for keeping your finger on the pulse of users.
Keep on Webbin’
Susanmj
February 16, 2009 at 6:39 am |
Great post. I need to integrate a blog with my Homestead website. I’d like to use WordPress.
1. Does WordPress work well with Homestead. If not, please advise as to what works best
2. Can I use hostgator?
February 19, 2009 at 8:14 pm |
This is an excellent article. The first eight items are very important for achieving a greater level of success on the Internet.
Two of the most beneficial things that have mastered are website optimization and collecting email addresses. These two go hand in hand for generating daily traffic and selling items on the Internet.
March 16, 2009 at 2:33 pm |
The only thing I keep missing with homestead is a dropdown menu !!!
Should not be that difficult !
If you ask me that SHOULD be a priority for this year’s development !
It would make the sitebuilder up to date again, compared to other webbuilding software programs
July 23, 2009 at 7:07 pm |
I am trying to get more backlinks and optimize keywords