I’ve been thinking about starting another business, in addition to what I’m already doing now, but a little more specific. Don’t get me wrong, Geeks on steroids has done great in the past and has exceeded my expectations, as well as has been a joy to work with. I’ve learned a lot and I owe it all to Geeks on Steroids. But, I’m seeing more and more people starting businesses that are becoming successful, and are tailored to a specific niche.

Other words, instead of going after web designers you would go after something a little more specific, like shopping cart web designers. So basically you would do nothing but shopping carts. Reason I’m leaning towards this is that the web design industry has grown to the point that it is just about imposable to have a one shop, do it all, kind of business. Someone just starting out would have a hard time putting together a team of programmers, designers, writers, conversion specialist, salesman and marketing people on a shoe string budget.

By being specific in what market you’re going into, for example osCommerce  shopping cart web designers or  WordPress shopping cart web designers or for that matter even e-commerce shopping cart web designers. The neat think about being niche specific, is that people immediately assume you are an expert.

By going into a specific industry you are able to become an expert in that industry, because you are able to spend all your time in that one industry. As it is now we could do a Joomla site this week but may not do another one for 2 or 3 weeks. On more than one occasion I’ve entered into a control panel in a CMS and had to relearn the controls.

The other thing is that by being niche specific you are immediately seen as the expert.

Let’s pretend that I have a Corvette that I need to take to the shop. The first mechanic I talk seems to know a lot about everything, and he works on everything, but I am not sure how many Corvette with my problem, year and model he’s worked on.

The next guy I talk to does nothing but Corvettes. He eats, lives and breathes Corvettes. I know this because he told me so. The problem is he’s a little more expensive then the first guy.

But here’s the truth of the matter, if this is a project I want done correctly on the first go, then I am willing to spend a little more money and go with the expert. It’s the reason I don’t buy no name aspirins when I have a headache. When you want it done right the first time you are always willing to spend a little more.

So…being an expert allows me to demand more money for my services than somebody who is not in my specific industry.

And the third thing is that it’s a lot easier to market. Instead of going after the very competitive keywords like website designers or web designs, we are able to go after niche specific keywords like osCommerce conversion or osCommerce website designers we are no longer going after the main industry keywords.

Trying to rank for osCommerce shopping cart web designers is a lot less competitive then web designers.

Okay, I guess what I’m trying to say is that I can see a lot of reason to go after a specific niche versus the whole topic.

Geeks on Steroids have spent the last 8 years building and selling custom website designs. It’s been a very lucrative as well as a very stressful business. One of the things I’ve always liked about building and selling websites is the community associated with web designing and online marketing.

It seems that someone is always giving away some form of opensource software that meets the needs of the next project you are about to undertake.

I’ve never really thought about the downside of this until late yesterday afternoon. I wanted to build three websites for myself and it was time for everyone to go home. Since there was no one around to build my sites I bought 3 templates from template monster and will have my guys customize them on Monday.

But this got me to thinking, for $62.00 a template there is absolutely no reason in the world why someone should have an ugly website design. Ugly websites just don’t work and some of the templates are darn nice templates, a couple tweaks here and there and you’ve got yourself a kick ass website design for under $200.00.

I am sure the custom web design industry will always be around but I am equally sure that the cheap templates have taken a bite out of the custom web design industry. This afternoon I decided to sign up as an affiliate an stick some template on my site to see how they do.

At this moment I have no idea how long I’ll be leaving them on the site but it does give me some incentive to do a little online marketing.

I was reading a post today about how ranking on page two or three in the major search engines will convert better than a page one ranking.

This may be true as long as all your competitions websites suck.

However, if the competition has a powerful and emotional website that is able to show the website visitor that his or her life would be more complete better, easier and more productive, more profitable and happier, if they owned what it is that site is selling, chance are they will never make it to the second search result, much less the next page.

Rankings are good, but your website has to be able to convert or the site visitor will be off the site and on to the next one.

People focus on ranking more than website conversion and it’s the only reason someone would have to go to page three in the search results before making the purchase.

I read somewhere that 98% percent of all sites online are not turning a profit. The only reason those numbers are that high is people do not fully understand how to make a website convert.

And the sad truth is that I see more web designers pointing out really cool flash sites, then I see web designers pointing out websites that convert. The web design industry needs to spend more time educating their clients and less time trying to add the next cool thing to a web design.

“Website Design Companies”

I know that I sometimes come off as being very critical of the web design industry, and I don’t mean to be.

I do believe that most web designers and web design companies are gifted people and the web design community puts out more free resources than any other community I know of.

It doesn’t matter if you’re looking for textures, Photoshop brushes or WordPress themes, there are lots of freebies created and given away by web designers and web design companies all over the internet.

But all that doesn’t change my desire to point out what I feel is a bad design when I come across one however I also enjoy pointing out good designs.

This one was pointed out as being a really good design on another blog however, after checking out the site I was very disappointed, so much so that I had a desire to blog about it.

My problem started the second I landed on the site and couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to do. And once I figured that out and entered the site it didn’t get any better.

Why do people build entrance pages that serve absolutely no use?

I would imagine this site loses half its traffic at the entrance page. The unlucky find their way into the site.

You can check out the site here.

Quality Web Designs

Quality is one of those words you hear used a lot when someone is describing their services or products. And I’ve heard it used a lot in the web design industry.

I believe that there has to be a third person in the designing of a website to make it a quality website. You have your web designers, your programmers and then you have your quality control guy/gal.

I’ve got a client we design between 10 to 15 websites for every year. Once the graphical part of the website is approved he always says, “Okay, now I need the Janeth touch”.

The Janeth touch is where I or someone who works for me comes and looks the site over.
We look for things like;

1. Conversion; is there a call to action and does it look like it will convert the traffic? Does it stand out?

2. White Space; yes, one of the most important aspects to a quality website design is text that has enough white space that it makes me want to read it. I look throughout the design for the spacing within all the elements of the design.

You have look at the whole design, the big picture, and decide where you have too much and not enough white space.

3. Pixel Detail; when designing a website it’s important to understand how important it is to add a little shadow here or there to bring out the details in the design itself.

However, the correct use of shadows can also draw attention to certain areas of the page that you want a site visitor to take note of. Borders, lines and shadows don’t have to be huge to be affective.

4. Typography; Header tags need to be big, bold and lots of space while site content needs to be smaller but still using larger sized fonts because they help to create and open space.

And keep in mind that white space is very important.

If you want a truly great website, then remember, the Devil is in the details.