Getting heard above all the noise on the web is becoming harder. The old mantra of, “build it and they will come” certainly does hold true on the web in many cases. There are many obvious success stories of this, ala Google, but as more of your competitors or even other websites compete for your customers eyeballs, standing out of the crowd is what you need to get right.

What is certainly true for all sites/products/services on the web is that information is king. He (or she) who holds the data and presents it in the most useful/usable format normally wins. Data can come in multiple forms: text, images, video, maps, news etc and can be presented in multiple formats: blogs, news sites, Facebook, Twitter, email, newsletter, etc.

So, how do you become successful?

1. Be interesting
Ego plays a massive part in developing a good web presence. Tell your visitors that you are good. A good way to do this with industry recognition, testimonials from customers etc.

So to stroke your ego, get connected on Twitter & Facebook and talk about yourself, your product and your site. Build up your network of followers to some decent numbers and compare yourself against your competition. Entice customers & new Twitter followers with interesting campaigns, maybe do a product discount when you increase your twitter followers to 100 (for newbies) or up it by 10% or some other strategic number.

2. KISS – Keep it simple stupid
Simplicity and usability are two of the most important factors on the web. It’s one thing having great data, but if your delivery mechanism isn’t good, it’s worth nothing. Change things slowly, introduce new concepts and see how they perform. Are you getting more visitor traffic through a new page or menu item you created since last week?

3. If you can’t measure it, how can you manage it?
Tracking is one of those vital feedback mechanisms. You need to know how people are getting to your site, what they are searching for, how long they stayed for, how many pages they viewed etc. (you need to track this via Google Analytics)

Analytics provides a FREE & amazingly powerful tool to track your users. You can also track ‘conversions’ and evaluate how these customers got to your site. Conversions can be a specific page view, like a contact form submission or a newsletter signup or even a product order.

4. Build, release. FAST (for online applications)
If your development cycle is months, by the time you have finished building it, is your product even going to suite the users? Taking a lesson from the Agile/Scrum approach to development, build something quickly and release it. Get user feedback comments and see if they like it. Customers know what they want, you can make an educated guess, but that’s exactly it, a guess. Stop guessing, release new features quickly, take a features poll from users and stop trying to understand the customers needs, get them to tell you what THEY want. Decide, build, release, get feedback, reiterate. (in 1-2 months cycles max)

5. Leverage your user base
Engage your users on Facebook, Twitter and other social media applications. Happy users are great promoters of your products. If you are selling something, create an affiliate marketing program, giving them a % of the revenue from the sale. The power of Twitter and other social media allows interesting products/services to go viral. When a new user signs up, encourage them to follow you on twitter. Possibly offer new features in advance to users that ‘retweet’ your message to their friends (this is a great way to get followers)

6. Offline Actions
The biggest debate always revolves around what offline actions one should take. Talk to as many people as possible about your product/service. Get networking, attend conferences, get invited to speak at conferences (this happens when you become the ‘expert’ in your field) and tell friends & family. Be passionate.

7. The bigger picture
Don’t expect overnight success, all these things take time to get right. Quality content & good presentation is the key, the more useful information presented in a good format, the more success you can expect to have.

Summing up
We often see companies advertising “Get listed on Google” or some other marketing tool, used to entice customers to signup for a website or web hosting, don’t be tempted, if it actually worked, everyone would be using it (even us and we don’t!). Customers also get a website built by someone else and then wonder why they don’t get any visitors.

Realistically it’s all about your content and who links to your content. Be interesting, put some effort into marketing your website and people will come, be boring and people won’t. Google Adwords is also the fastest way to get your website out there (you pay money for people clicking on adverts).

Read up on SEO (search engine optimisation) and SEM (search engine marketing) – start implementing these strategies, they do require a lot of time and energy, but they do really work.

Creating your first website or blog using WordPress can be quite a daunting task. Most people have in the past chosen to fully outsource their website and most probably still need to. Websites have evolved and many more people are launching their own personal and business blogs. WordPress is one of the most widely used blogging tools that can now easily be installed on your web hosting using the WordPress auto-installer we have developed in our MyRSAWeb control panel.

WordPress while primarily designed as blogging software can be used to build far more than a standard blog. We often see our clients hosting incredibly elaborate websites that have been built on WordPress. The Content Management System at the core of the software allows you to easily update website content and embed rich media like videos and photo’s easily via a web interface.

You can install wordpress manually or  you can signup for a business web hosting package with RSAWEB and install WordPress automatically from the MyRSAWEB control panel. This makes creating your site ultra simple without having to FTP or manually edit settings in random files. For the inexperienced user, we recommend this option to get you started.

How to install WordPress with RSAWEB:

1. Order a Linux Business Hosting package
2. Wait for the confirmation email from RSAWEB
3. Login to the www.myrsaweb.co.za control panel
4. Go to “Webhosting Services” and click on your new website
5. Click ‘WordPress’, fill in the details and click ‘Install’
6. Your site should be up and running! Go and check it out http://www.yoursitename.co.za – dont worry it probably wont look like much until you  enter in some content.



7. Now go to http://www.yoursitename.co.za/wp-admin/ and login. You will see the control panel (like below)



8. Create some new ‘Posts’ and ‘Pages’ and see what it looks like on your site.
9. Thats it! You now have a wordpress website up and running!

You will probably not be happy with the look of the site as its the basic WordPress default template. WordPress can be themed and skinned to your hearts content to get your website to look the way you want it. The next article in this series will tackle the design aspects of WordPress and help you make your website look amazing without the need for advanced design skills!

Manual WordPress Install
Installing WordPress manually can be a challenge and should only be attempted by those with a understanding of basic web development. If you want to do attempt the manual install yourself  this article will help.

WordPress is an easy to use website management system and also happens to be one of the most popular blogging platforms available out there.

Over the next few weeks we will be discussing WordPress, how to set up your own blog, as well as posting our thoughts and advice on how to get the most out of WordPress on a budget. Whether creating a large, high volume WordPress site or your average smaller site, the following tutorials will definitely assist you.

Topics include:

1. Setup – How to setup your first website/blog using WordPress
2. Design – Easy ways to make your WordPress site look world class with themes
3. Plugins – Pimp your wordpress website with plugins
4. WordPress Security – securing your site
5. Make a success out of your website

This series should put you on the right path to building a successful website and possibly even a sustainable business. WordPress isn’t for everyone, and although RSAWEB uses an alternative, Joomla for our main site due to the finer control it provides, our blog is a WordPress designed site.

That said WordPress is an awesome tool and always worth using.

Please let us know if you would like to see any further topics and subscribe to our twitter feed at http://twitter.com/RSAWEB to receive updates about any new posts. Click on the ‘Get Updates’ and ‘Get Tweets’ icons on the right to follow this series. RSAWEB offers WordPress Hosting with any Linux Business or larger package as an “Easy Install” option.