Silke and I have reached that point in time that we had marked on our calendar. It's the time to step back from everything and take a long hard look at what we've done and what we have yet to do. We patted ourselves on the back for the things we accomplished and shook our heads at the things left unfinished. All in all we have accomplished quite a bit in a very short amount of time. We'll continue down the path that we started, keeping in mind the goals we had set up for ourselves from the beginning.
There is one thing that we're looking at that can't be shaped or defined. Every business talks about the on-line presence. They go to great lengths to compile enough information that can be translated into 'web content' and they layout a design for what their web-site will look like. Silke and I have been fortunate in that we have done all this work ourselves. I can't imagine what kinds of costs we would have encountered if we had hired people to put all this together. This was a classic 'shoe-string' budget.
So, we've got all the information together. The web-site is up and running. We've even gone back and updated the content. We now have a web presence and our product is ready for mass consumption. We informed all our friends and family and we slowly saw our web traffic increase. After all the hype and family and friends viewed the site we reluctantly saw our numbers dwindle and realized the party was over. The 'hard part' wasn't getting on the web it was keeping the site alive. The question that every company asks 'How can we get customers to our site?' We've incorporated blogs and web press releases. Backward links and forward links. Keywords that best describe our product. Its all very time consuming and you really have to work hard to keep up with all of it. I don't have all the answers and theres plenty of books on the subject matter but I can't help but wonder how much time I can invest in this line of marketing? Would time be better spent with direct marketing? More advertising of the printed variety? Ad words?
We've both agreed that we've done all we can for the web-site and that its time to spend our efforts elsewhere. (i.e. new product development, health food fairs, and direct sales contacts) It's been a learning experience and we still find new ways to change the content all the time. It's time to leave well enough alone and concentrate on the other aspects of the business.
Any thoughts on this matter or personal experiences that you would like to share are more than welcome.
