Give Your Online Business a Million-Dollar Image

Go to any website and you'll see that most have a little logo that appears next to their URL in your browser. You can create one of these 16x16 images, save it as "favicon.ico" and upload it to your site's root directory (where you site's index page is), and it'll appear in your visitor's browser when they go to your site. Click here for more on adding a favicon to your site.

Every large company has one, and so should yours. Even though most people don't bother to read them, just seeing that you have one speaks volumes about your business. It doesn't have to be fancy or written in legalese. It can just be a simple statement that says you don't share, rent, sell or otherwise give away personal information.

Big companies always have graphics, like these from LegalZoom.com, on their sites because they know when potential customers see them, they feel safe buying from sites that display them.

While most sites can't fit
McAfee Secure into their budget, if you can, get it. You can catch a computer virus just by visiting a website so seeing their logo makes people feel safer.

Trustworthy logos every site should have are:

To register your site with the Better Business Bureau, click here.

If you have a Privacy Policy on your site, click here to register your site with TRUSTe.

Click here to get a Copyscape logo.

Businesses put their copyright on everything, and so should you. Put yours at the bottom of every page of your website and on your product. If you built your site this year, it would say: ©2009 YourSite.com.

Be sure to update it every year so people don't think your site is a ghost town. Next year it'll say: ©2009 - 2010 YourSite.com.

Get an ISBN for it. Open any paperbound book and you'll see an ISBN, or International Standard Book Number - "a 10-digit number that uniquely identifies books and book-like products published internationally." Imagine how professional your ebook would look to customers if it had one. Click here to learn how to get an ISBN for your ebook.

Having a (TM) or (R) next to your product's name ups the ante on your professional image. If your product has a unique name, trademark it. But don't be like Entrepreneur(TM) and Realtor(TM) magazines. They trademarked words that are pretty darn handy so now you cannot legally use those words. Only do it if your product's name is unique. Click here to learn how to get a trademark.

Nothing says "real business" like seeing an "Inc." or "LLC" after a company's name. And owning a business has its advantages. If you have an S-corp, for example, you get to write off expenses, like your health insurance, 401K, and even a corporate gym

[You've been wanting a Bowflex for quite a while now ].

And it's affordable. Go to LegalZoom to form your business and put your company's name at the bottom of your website.

When we see an address, like 123 Maple St., it looks like someone's home address, and that's not very impressive, and unless your company is a household name, one that's a PO Box just looks spammy or fly-by-night. But seeing an address with a suite number in it says, "Real Company." Don't worry - you don't have to rent office space to get one. Just rent a mailbox at a local UPS store, instead. That way you'll have an actual street address with a suite number in it. Plus, if you receive packages, their employees can sign for them for you.

When you go to a product's site and click on 'Support' and see something that looks like this:

If you need help, send an email to bob (at) SomeSite (dot) com

...or worse, to a free email account (gmail, Yahoo, etc.), the image they built in your mind crumbles.

But when you see a HelpDesk on a site, you just assume that there's a whole team of people available to help you. Do like the big companies do and add a HelpDesk to your site. Your visitors will never know that you are the support team.

Having one email account - YourName@YourSite.com - for your site doesn't portray a very corporate image. Most hosts let you have lots of email addresses so create one for support@YourSite, sales@YourSite, webmaster@YourSite, etc. and use those email addresses when contacting potential customers.

Big companies always do. If you don't have a logo, use a small banner ad for your site.

When you go to a site and see that they have a toll-free number you can call to speak to a real person, you just feel better about buying from that company. You can get one for your business for a few bucks a month and set it up so that it forwards calls to any phone number you choose (your home phone, cell phone...). Click here to see how easy and affordable it is to get your own toll-free number.

Or better yet... a toll-free number that's unforgettable — 1-800-YOURBIZ. Click here to get a vanity number for your business.

Picture Nike's logo. Amazon's. Microsoft's. When your logo is embedded into
people's minds, like those are, that's branding. Come up with a
good-looking logo for your company (not one that looks like a 10th
grader whipped it up in art class) and use it on everything to start
building your brand.

Want the Logo Design Guru to design a slick, professional logo for you? Click here

You can have all of those things (a trademark, a toll-free number, a HelpDesk...) but if your site looks even remotely homemade, you'll still project a small-potatoes image. The only way your online business is going to look like a million-dollar company is to have a site that looks professionally designed.

To get a slick, professional-looking site fast, you have three options:

#1 - You can buy a minisite template from a site, like InstantHeaderPack, or if you have a site with multiple pages, from a site like TemplateMonster, but you run the risk of having a site that looks like other sites.

#2 - You can have a web designer, like:

KillerCovers,
BronsonDunbar
or
1800HomePage

...design you a custom site with a matching product cover and "Buy Now" buttons, or...

#3 - For less money than it would cost to hire a designer one time, you can
learn to design your own professional-looking web graphics.

Like the old saying goes, "Fake it until you make it." Project a million-dollar image and turn your small-potatoes website into a super-successful, money-making site.