I guess there are more “How to Get Rich” websites then there are websites actually selling a product.

The reason for this is most people do not know how to make money online so instead of building a website that sells a real product or service (something they are unable to do) they build websites that sell information on how to make money online.

If I said that 98% of all websites online are not making money, I’d feel like that number was too low.

The sad truth is that there a more people designing websites then there are people making money with their websites. Most Web designers use call centers, newspaper ads, yellow page ads, and other means of off-line advertising to drum up customers.

I am telling you this because I want you to understand that making a living online is not something easily done. It takes hard work and dedication or lots of money.
There are certain steps needed to make a living online and none of the step are more important than the next.

The first of course is the website design.

The purpose of the website design is to get the attention of the web visitor. When someone lands on the site you have 3 seconds to get their attention and keep them interested.

The website design does not need to be flashy, fancy or show off the talent of a Web designer however it does need to be clean, easy to navigate, easy-to-understand, quick to load and have a call to action that will guide the web visitor in the direction you want them to go.

It sounds like we are taking all the hard work out of the Web design by removing the fancy flashy look but that is far from the truth.

The color of the cart button, the background color, the placement of the call to action, the size of the logo, colors used on the site, text size, text color, font, phone number placement, content, and so much more will affect the reaction of the web visitor when they are on the site.

Other words, a truly affective website is an art unto itself.

Making a living online is a difficult thing to do and it’s something that 98% of businesses that are currently online are not successful at. There are a lot of reasons for this and those reasons increase when websites leave the US.

To start with websites outside the US do not have as many people purchasing items online and for this reason the marketing and the website design have to be much better than those in the US.

A website needs to build trust, guide the visitor in the direction we want them to go and help them to make the purchase.

A major problem in any country is finding a web designer that understands marketing, web design, graphic design, programming and most of all conversion.

Let’s take a look at asicamericas.com.

The website was designed for smaller browsers which are rarely used today and what makes it worse is that the design is not centered. It hangs in the top left corner of the screen like it’s scared to be seen.

Every time someone is forced to click the mouse to find information there will be a percent of visitors that will leave the site never to return. By not having contact information on every page of the site we force visitors to click links and hunt for information.

If it’s a real business then the phone number and contact information should be in the header of every page. And the header and design of the site should tell me something about the business before I ever read the first line of text.

You’ve got less than 3 seconds to get me interested in your product and this is done on the graphical side of the website.
And colors will affect my reaction and the action I will take on your site.

Red indicates anger. It’s a strong color that conjures up a range of seemingly conflicting emotions from passionate love to violence and warfare. Red can have a physical effect, increasing the rate of respiration and raising blood pressure.

Blue would have been a better color to use. It is often associated with depth and stability. It symbolizes trust, loyalty, wisdom, confidence, intelligence, faith, truth, and heaven.

Blue is considered beneficial to the mind and body. It slows human metabolism and produces a calming effect.
Another problem with the site is the scrolling text; it causes your eyes to be pulled in that direction and forces us to read the information at the speed the website decides.

The website has no call to action and in no way tries to get me to purchase any type of product.

On the SEO side of things the website has less than 8 links pointing to it and not meta tags. Meta tags are used by search engines like MSN who will be spending $100 million on advertising their search engine. By ranking on their search engine you get some of the benefit of the 100 million they are spending.

Java script and other coding was left on the site, it should have been pulled out of the code and placed in external folders to make it easier for the search engines to read and understand the site.

It doesn’t take long to come to the conclusion that this site has never made money online.