Promoting Your Website

Last Updated: 25 October 2006


There are many important things you can do to market your website and business. Here are some of the lesser known successes and mistakes made by other people:

  • Make sure you promote your website in conjuction with all forms of conventional advertising. That is, add your web address and email address to all your business cards, letterheads, brochures, newsletters, answering machine messages, advertisements, and so on. We've seen many businesses have a great website but not make any effort to promote it. Even if you don't sell anything over the internet, your website is an important and cost effective marketing tool.





  • Banner advertising - is it really worth it? There are two main types of banner advertising:

    Paid. This is the main one that people use. This is simply where you will pay a website to put your website banner (logo) on their site. Your banner will usually be part of a group of banners from other sites that are randomly displayed every time someone visits the site. If you decide to go this way, it is really important that you get statistics on how many people are clicking on your banner - then you'll know if its worth it.

Unpaid, or reciprocal, banners. There are a number of websites around that will display your banner for free if you display theirs. This means setting up a rotating banner system on your own site as well, which many people don't want to do. However, the benefits of having free advertising on other pages may be worth the changes to your own website. For more information on promoting your web site through reciprocal links, click here.

  • Purchasing email lists. Be wary! This is NOT normally a good idea. You can purchase email lists from other organisations and then use those lists to email potential customers about your product or website. Whether these lists are worth the price is obviously dependant upon whether the people on the site will have any interest in your product or service. Therefore you need to consider carefully who you're buying the list from.

    However, purchasing (or worse, selling!) email lists can usually a bad public relations exercise. When I submit my email address to someone I don't want it passed on to others and then get junk mail. Others don't mind so much. Getting involved in buying or selling email lists can annoy some people who may be potential customers.

  • Whatever strategy you use to market your website, it is important to set up some sort of tracking system to monitor where your visitors came from. That way you can monitor which types of advertisements or links are bringing in the most visitors to your site.

  • Links. For information on how the right links can help you bring in visitors, visit our information page on links from others.



Contact us for further information about this topic.


Disclaimer: This page is designed to provide information only and is not a substitute for advice that is specific to your business. Before acting on any of the information above it is important you seek further advice from a professional who has taken into consideration the nature and circumstances of your business.

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