As a martial arts school owner, you have a million things on your mind. Student recruitment, testing, curriculum, overhead – the list goes on and on. The last thing you’re probably worried about is your website.

However, more and more consumers are going online every day to research products and services before they buy. And, many of these consumers are doing their buying research after hours, when you aren’t open. For such consumers the internet is the primary way they research their buying decisions.

Consider the fact that over 200 million searches are done on search engines like MSN, Yahoo and Google each day, and you start to get an idea of just how important your website is to your continued business success. But if you’re like most small business owners no one has ever shown you the basics of marketing your business on the web.

Not to worry – once you understand a few simple principles, you’ll be well on your way to effectively marketing your business on the internet. To help you get started, here’s a list of common mistakes you should avoid when marketing your business on the web.

Mistake #1: Failing to Realize the Importance of Having a Web Presence

You may not realize it, but your business website can be a 24-hour-a-day sales machine. Rain or shine, weekend or week day, it will work to promote your business to a market segment that you desperately need – affluent, educated professionals who are already looking to buy what you offer. But in order to do that, you need to make certain your site is designed properly, which bring us to mistake #2…

Mistake #2: Ignoring the Customer’s Motivation

When someone goes online to research a product or service they are thinking about buying, they don’t want to hear about how great your company is or how many industry awards you’ve received. And, they certainly don’t want to read a bunch or corporate-speak gobbledy-gook or Madison Avenue marketing hype.

What they do want, however, is information – the type of information that lets them know what your product or service will do for them. So, avoid excessive self-promotion (like listing every martial arts rank and certificate you have collected over the last 20 years) and confusing language (“sabumnim”, “kwoon”, etc. – besides us martial artists, no one else knows or cares what those words mean) on your website, and focus on telling the consumer how you can solve their problem.

In other words, you must answer the all-important question that burns in the mind of every prospective customer: “What’s in it for me?”

Mistake #3: Websites that Are Hard to Read

In order for your website to get sales and/or leads, it needs to be user and consumer-friendly and it must communicate your sales message clearly. That means it needs to be easy to read. So, short sentences and paragraphs, dark text on white (or very, very light) backgrounds and lots of white space should be the norm.

If you think that dark websites and colored text on colored backgrounds looks better, you may be right. However, your website’s purpose isn’t to win design awards – it’s only purpose should be to convey information about your product or service and guide the consumer toward making a buying decision in your favor. That’s it.

Excessive colors and graphics only serve to confuse the sales message and make your site harder to read. If you want to see some good examples of this principle, just check out Amazon.com and Apple.com and you’ll see what I mean.

Also, remember that web users tend to scan text instead of reading it left to right and top to bottom like printed text. So for those visitors who will not read all your content, use headlines, subheadings, and bolded text that conveys your overall message. If this is done correctly, a visitor should be able to scan all your headlines, subheads, and bold text in just a few seconds and understand the central message of your site or page.

Mistake #4: Websites that Are Hard to Navigate

Your website needs to be easy to navigate. Remember, the chief purpose of your site is to convey information – that means you should design your website so the information it contains is easy to find.

At the bare minimum, you should have a navigation bar on every webpage that includes a link back to your home page and to every top-tier page in your website. In addition, you should consider placing links back to the previous page at the top and bottom of each web page. Some websites use “bread crumbs” for this purpose – a “trail” of links that show each page you have visited since you first landed at the site.

Make it easy for your visitors to navigate your site and they’ll thank you with their dollars. Make it difficult, and they’ll leave your website before you can say “Google.” Oh, and incidentally, making your site easy to navigate will also help the search engines to find and index all your pages, which can theoretically help you get more traffic.

Mistake #5: Websites that Are Slow to Load

Despite the fact that high-speed internet access has become very affordable and accessible in recent years, lots of people are still using dial-up connections to access the internet. And, these people get very frustrated when they have to wait five minutes for your webpage to load. You will lose these visitors if your web page files are too large and take too long to load.

Keep photos and graphics to a minimum on your websites, and keep your total page size under 65K to ensure maximum usability for your visitors. Incidentally, smaller and faster loading pages make it easier for the search engines to spider and rank your site – an added bonus for keeping your page files small and your page loads fast.

Mistake #6: Websites that Don’t Get Seen

Regardless of how great your site design is, how well-written your content is, or how easy it is to use, if no one ever sees it it won’t do you a darned bit of good. So, after you’ve developed a great user-friendly website, you must follow through by promoting it to consumers.

How do you do that? Well, for starters put your web address on everything. This includes business cards, company vehicles, ads, yellow pages listings, emails (use the signature file function in your email client), your street sign, your letterhead – put it on every single thing you can think of that will potentially be seen by a customer.

Next, you need to properly submit your website to the search engines…

Mistake #7: Incorrectly Submitting a Site to the Search Engines

If you already have a website, you’ve probably received one of those emails, “Submit your site to over 300 search engines for just $19.95!” Take my advice, don’t waste your money.

Depending on which company merged with what in the past week, there are only five or six major search engines, and only three that you should really focus your attention on: Google, Yahoo, and MSN. These three search engines receive the lion’s share of visitors and searches, which is why the smart money and effort is on getting listed and/or indexed in each.

A good place to start is to submit your site for free to Google. Expect it to take from several weeks to four months for your site to be reviewed and indexed (however, my web design and online marketing company can usually get your site indexed in Google within one week). You can also pay $299 to be listed in the Yahoo directory, but there’s no guarantee you’ll be selected for inclusion..

Remember, if you submit your site improperly you may be wasting your time and money. You might even get banned from the search engines if you really muck it up (or if you hire a discount search engine submission service that “spams” the search engines). So, it’s best to either research site submission carefully beforehand or hire a professional web design and SEO firm like ours service to do it for you.

Mistake #8: Websites That Don’t Collect Contact Information

What’s the first thing you do when a prospective customer calls your business? That’s right, you get their name and phone number, and address when appropriate so you can follow-up if they don’t buy. (You are doing this, right? If not, slap your wrist with a ruler and go sit in the corner.)

So, when someone visits your website you should be doing the same thing, only automated. Now, there are several ways to do this, but the simplest way is to have a small form on each of your pages that asks for the site visitor’s information.

Of course, you have to convince your visitors to leave their information, and giving something meaningful away is a great way to accomplish this. By offering a discount on their first purchase or free information in exchange for filling out a contact form, you can capture a substantial percentage of your site visitors’ information.

And, by using contact list management software, autoresponders and other automation technologies, you can easily follow-up with your customers by sending them news of special promotions and buying incentives, thus increasing your sales. This is probably the most powerful yet the most-overlooked benefit to having a website for your business – ignore it at your peril.

Mistake #9: Not Letting the Visitor Know How to Contact You

It seems like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised how many websites make it difficult if not darned-near impossible for the visitor to contact the business. Just having a “contact us” page is not enough – you should have your contact information on each and every page on your site.

However, be warned – if you have email address hyperlinks on your site, you will have your email address spoofed and spammed by every spammer on the internet. So, include your email address but do not make it an HTML hyperlink.

Also, include your phone number on every page and if appropriate, place an updated MapQuest map with driving directions on your contact page as well so your customers know how to come visit you at your location.

Mistake #10: Websites That Are Designed for the Wrong Purpose

This is a big one for you martial artists out there who think you need a 600 page website to generate sales. Nothing could be further from the truth. While such websites are great for providing students with more information and curriculum support, they’ll do nothing for your lead generation and sales.

For lead generation purposes, all you really need is a simple, one-page sales letter website that collects information from your visitors. Most schools will want a larger website, which is fine so long as you make sure your home page contains a lead capture form so you can follow-up with site visitors.

In keeping with this theme, a solution to “site bloat” might be to keep all your support materials and curriculum in a password-protected, “students and members only” area of your site.

Mistake #11: Forgetting to Ask For the Sale

If you just assume that if the buyer sees value in your product or service they will buy it, you’re wrong. You have to tell the customer both how to buy and when they should buy your product.

Seasoned business owners, sales professionals, and ad copywriters know just what I am talking about here. This is what is commonly known in sales and marketing circles as the “close” – a term I’m sure you’ve heard numerous times. So, make sure you tell your site visitors how to enroll at the end of every page.

In Closing
There are many different ways to close a sale in your web content and copy, too numerous to list and detail here. However, simply realize that your website needs to tell the visitor what to do next in order to get your product or service. So, be sure to give your visitors clear instructions on how they can buy your product or service.

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