How to Take Advantage of Website Downtime

(Above is my custom "parked page")

You just bought your domain name and your ready to start building your first web page or you have an existing site that desperately needs an update. Your web hosting company will gladly provide you with a parking page full of links that describes your site as being “currently under construction” but don’t use it.

Why? You ask. Well because this is the perfect opportunity to start building a list; a list of potential customers that are interested in your product or service. For existing websites that are being redesigned it serves as a way to keep those still wanting to access your site aware of what is going on and when you will be back. A parked page doesn’t have to be complicated all you need is your company name, who you are, what you do and the fact that you site will be launching soon. Lastly, ask visitors to sign up for an update about the new site (launch date, any other news, etc.).

Don’t ask them to sign up by sending you an email by clicking a link with your email address prominently displayed. This is an opportunity to step into the world of email marketing using tools specifically designed to send your emails and to track them. If you’re totally new to this you may be asking yourself, “Why should I do this?” In part 2 of "How to Take Advantage of Website Downtime", I’ll tell you why.

Choosing a Website Host

My first step in transforming the Urban Beauty Online site was transferring my site back to my domain name provider GoDaddy.com. GoDaddy hosted my site initially and I have had no problems with them so I brought my site back gladly. I like the fact that with my hosting account comes with an email account with the ability to add several email address that point back to the single account. So not only am I able to separate my emails into different categories based on subject but I am also able to provide my visitors with a different address based on what content they are sending me. For example, I have a separate email address for myself as an editor, one for feedback and sales each branded with my domain name.

Urban Beauty Online.com Background

I started Urban Beauty Online.com back in 2003 as a website that provides beauty and fashion information for women of color. Response was great for a niche site; I was averaging 5,000 visitors per month. Later as the site began to grow it became a lot more difficult to maintain and at that time every site was moving to Content Management Systems so I decided to do the same and signed up with Squarespace.

Using Squarespace I was able add a lot more features to the site like blogging and interactivity. Eventually my visitors grew to over 7,000 per month. I decided to leave Squarespace after learning more about SEO and noticed that Squarespace’s policy on being able to optimize your pages for search engines differed with standard practices suggested by SEO experts.

I am ready now to take total control over my site in order to make sure it conveys all standards of web usability and search engine optimization. So I am using Dreamweaver & Fireworks MX 2004 and adding a strong email marketing strategy to deliver content and establish relationships with visitors and leverage that relationship to attract advertisers (I gotta get money to pay the bills for this site some way). So here we go.

Starting Goin' It Alone

I created this blog to serve two purposes:

• To chronicle the relaunch of my website to a new design, voice and business model.
• Give tips and information to other entrepreneurs, consultants, small business owners and home business owners that want to take advantage of web marketing to create relationships and grow their businesses.

As the title suggests I am a one woman operation seeking to generate traffic and create relationships that will promote growth of my website Urban Beauty Online. I thought it would be neat to have sort of a diary that could also serve as a case study for any other publishers and e-commerce site owners that don't have a marketing department ready to design, optimize and promote their website.