5 Tips On Branding Your Website
Written by Justin G on December 26, 2007 – 1:40 pm -Branding livestock goes back to around 2700 B.C. Even paintings in the tombs of Egyptians show hieroglyphs of people branding oxen. This branding confirmed the ownership of the livestock. You may not be branding livestock, but this certainly applies to your website. It needs to be brandable so people will connect your website with a product, service, or other type of value.
Do you know how many people call HostGator and refer to us as GatorHost? A good number of people, but its our logo that people will never forget, this is just another part of branding yourself. If you surf the internet on any given day you will see the HostGator logo at some point. I can almost guarantee you that because it has been established across the internet. There are many aspects to branding your business besides the obvious sometimes. With that in mind, the following 5 tips will help you get on the right track to branding yourself better on the internet.
- Branding With A Domain
Have a domain which describes the name of your business as best as possible. Shorter domains are easier to remember. People can return to your website if the name is catchy and memorable. Avoid long domain names if possible, which detracts from the professionalism of your business.
- Create A Logo Thats Memorable
Make or have someone create a logo for you. This is also key for branding yourself. Remember, A picture is worth a thousand words. A logo, or image on your website will help connect customers, as well as potential customers with what your website is selling or promoting. You want to brand an image in peoples minds so they think of your business first when there is a service or product they need, or that their friends need.
- Have A User Friendly Website
Make your navigation simple and easy to use. A lot of people don’t realize that the user friendliness of a site is a part of branding. When you go to a website that is disorderly as well as looking and feeling complicated, would you rather stay and figure it out or find another resource that is simple and user friendly? If your website is simple and easy to use to purchase something, then people will come to you first over your competitors.
- Coin A Phrase
A motto is another great thing to be known by. Almost every large company out there that you can think of has a motto. The HostGator motto is, “We eat up the competition”. This phrase just makes perfect sense, and connects people with the HostGator image. If you have a Logo for your website, then it might be a good idea to create a motto that is easy to remember as well.
- Set Yourself Apart And Specialize
Setting yourself APART from the rest really encompasses everything from the last 4 tips. Make sure to be different from your competition. Know what you want to be known for. What aspect of your company do you want people to recognize when they think of your business? If you are selling a wide variety of power tools, would you want people to recognize you as a leader in the industry of drills? That would certainly be easier as a niche than competing with larger companies which offer power tools as well.
From the last 5 tips, you can see that branding is huge! If you are starting an E-Commerce site or have one already, but are lacking the success, then this is one of those things you have to take a serious look at and ask yourself, “why would people come to my site over my competitor”. Until you think like your potential customers, you may find that your business is lacking. If you follow these tips on branding, you will be building upon something that will have a lasting effect far into the future.
Posted in Tips and Tricks | 3 Comments »
Ugliest Website Building Competition
Written by Justin G on December 21, 2007 – 6:00 pm - 
Here at HostGator, we run across some pretty sad looking websites that could use some help sometimes. As I thought about how some people build and even sell horrible looking websites as a business, I thought it would be fun if we had a competition of who could build the ugliest website. The best part is we will be giving away a prize for it. The winner will receive a Free 1 year Swamp web hosting account.
Do you have what it takes to design something that strains the eyeballs, is disproportioned, or is absolutely user unfriendly? If you do, then read the list of rules and get started. Keep in mind that there will be one winner, so don’t be upset after its all said and done if you don’t win. The plus side however of this competition is that it gives you a good chance to get some traffic and exposure. We will be leaving the voting up to everyone that reads and comments on this blog as well as HostGator employees.
Website Contest Rules
- You may use a previously built website as long as it is yours.
- You MUST copy the code below and put it on the main page of your site.
- No site with any type of illegal content or questionable material will be accepted.
- Once your site is ready, you need to comment on this post with the web address to your site, so people can see.
- HostGator Staff will then judge based on viewing and your comments. More Comments can be found on the HostGator Forums. The winner will be announced on January 4th.
Posted in Uncategorized | 27 Comments »
Donors Choose FollowUp and Charity
Written by Justin G on December 20, 2007 – 9:26 pm -
We want to thank those of you who checked into different funds on Donorschoose.org. Especially those of you that gave us direct links to a particular fund. As you will recall, several posts back we gave you the readers, the opportunity to choose which would be the best school project to fund. We also agreed from several comments to the post, that we would match the $100 dollar donation. This means a total of $200 will be donated to the specific cause.
So we started looking through what you gave us and decided on “Thumb Drives to Fingerprint Success”. What a great way to take advantage of technology and save on paper, since so much paper is wasted everyday. This particular donation suggestion was referred to us by Josh. Thanks Josh, and all of you with suggestions! You can click HERE to view that project fund.
Charity Suggestions
Not to be forgotten is the Charity money that has also been raised from 404 error pages. We would once again like your input on this. There is about $50,000 dollars that will be donated this year. For which charity do you feel we should use this money for? Please let us know again with your comments and suggestions.
There is also a forum post that we would encourage all to share in which can be found HERE.
With that being said, thanks for all your support in making HostGator the great hosting company that it is today, and we hope we can be part of making a difference wherever this money ends up being donated.
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Paintball Was A Blast
Written by Justin G on December 14, 2007 – 5:53 pm -As you remember, we had a day where anyone who wanted could play paintball. It was a blast, and we have some pictures to show you. Brent likes to have these gatherings once in a while to let everyone from the office unwind and have a good time together. This office gathering was about shooting your fellow coworkers, and your boss. What a great time for payback! All in good fun of course. In the end, the man with the cleanest gear got drenched with paint. Enjoy the images, and click to enlarge.
Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments »
Beef Your Blog With Super Cache Plugin
Written by Justin G on December 13, 2007 – 7:00 pm -
WordPress is one of the greatest and simplest tools for bloggers today. WordPress uses PHP and thats great, but can at times not so great too. Why so? Receiving a lot of traffic over the period of a day is generally not an issue, however it can be an issue when you start getting a huge amount of traffic that is coming all at once. Unlike normal html webpages, PHP pages are dynamically generated. This means the server frequently re-compiles each page before displaying it to each visitor. This consumes more CPU than a standard webpage, so very popular blogs can quickly consume all available processor time.
Making Things Better
One of the best ways to combat against unnecessary recompiling of php pages (and thus greatly reduce cpu use) is to install and activate the WordPress Super Cache plugin. A cache is a temporary storage place for frequently or recently accessed data, and this is exactly what this plugin is designed to do. It takes the dynamic content in the form of php pages, and presents the results using low-overhead, generally static pages.
I think anyone that installs WordPress should always get this plugin no matter who you are. For the simple fact that when blogging, you may hit a subject or post something that catches on rather fast with social media based websites. The Super Cache plugin is based on the original cache plugin which was created by Ricardo Granada, and is just an overall solid wordpress plugin that is in my top ten favorites. Whats so great about the new over the old?
Difference Between Old and New
The larger difference between the original WordPress Cache plugin and the WP Super Cache is that the original, required manual work for whichever page you wanted to be cached, whereas the Super Cache is automatic. Keep in mind this plugin is not the solution to all your WordPress problems, but it will make a major difference when you are receiving larger amounts of traffic, especially in a shorter period of time than normal.
I would highly recommend that you would read thoroughly over the guide to this plugin to understand what it is intended for. You can read about and install the WP Super Cache plugin HERE.
Posted in Tips and Tricks | 2 Comments »
