Your Website and Your Future by Jon Roberts In this article we will look at the options open for you in order to get control of your website, and increase your presence on the internet. Finally we will look at your future with regards what you need to look for in a website product.             Abandon the Old?             If I had a site now, that was doing well on search engines I would not want to risk changing it, especially if it was subsequently bringing in business. Alternatively, with the PADI CMS being so relatively inexpensive perhaps you can afford to launch a new duplicate site at the same time? This makes business sense until your old technology site is overtaken by the new and is the start of how the internet will evolve as 2nd and 3rd generation sites become the norm. Below is a solution representing the best practice with your eBusiness. Website performing OK - Get a duplicate website. Niche markets or different language (do not multi-lingual one website!) Website performing badly - Get a new website on your current URL . Even if your website is under-performing, the age of the URL will help (a lot!) Cannot update website - Very common issue. Abandon it, get a new website ASAP! Website too cluttered - You are probably suffering a bad operating system so your website is really a blog. Get organised, get a new website. The trend of having a single site is now coming to an end also for some businesses. Specific target marketing dictates that the smart money is being spent on attaining the novices, tech divers, kids and the fun divers separately through different sites. One company can run multiple sites increasing their capture possibilities.             With all these websites competing for business another more frequent comment heard is “well we all cannot get on page one of Google, right?” Wrong. Here’s an experiment. Type into a search engine, ‘Scuba Diving California.’  Now open up a new browser and type in, ‘Dive California.’ You will see that these common web searches bring up similar, but definitely not identical results. This is because you can only have so many ratings based on your keywords. What is happening is that the search engines will only rate you on so many instances which in turn give you an opportunity to target you chosen market, whilst stopping other businesses blanketing the web. Competition is good for the consumer, and good for you. Times they are a Changing The way your website is constructed was probably with dated technology now past its prime. In order to update your site you either have to use complicated methods via Content Management Systems (CMS) designed by Einstein, or the dreaded webmaster (sometime referred to as “He/She who drives that Porsche.”) A common statement is “I no longer have the control of my website as the person has gone away.” Again probably on some sandy tropical beach on the funds you so carefully put their way. But it’s no laughing matter when it comes to putting money in the bank. We love to dive, we love to teach, we love our dive centers but does that passion pay the bills? Invariably you started you dive center because it is something you love, diving. But most of your time seems to be taken up chasing business. A good website can bring in great results, and can pay for itself over and over in a very short time span with some concentrated effort. Now I am not saying an ‘expensive website’ but just a good one, there’s a huge difference as you have seen. The latest technology can bring you amazing results for the profit of a Discover Scuba every month, whilst increasing the number of customers exponentially. Content Management Systems as easy to use as Facebook are now starting to appear, and SEO costs being built in can save you hundreds of dollars every month. Be fussy about what you expect from your website but above all be passionate about its content; put your heart into it, as well as your business. Should you require further information, please do not hesitate to contact Hammerhead at sales@hammerheadcms.com