Marketing your Arabian Horses the WEB Way!!!

The Internet has become the most indispensable resources for Arabian horse owners. Never has there been another advertising medium that allows a person to include significant levels of information about their business, in such a cost-effective manner while visually dazzling the user every step of the way.

Features of a Website:

The primary purpose of a website is to provide unlimited amounts of information to an endless number of interested clients worldwide anytime. A well designed website enables farms and businesses to advertise to an increasingly savvy and articulate client base by displaying information in an engaging and user friendly manner. Websites today are essential for all businesses large or small and are the best and most cost effective medium for reaching the global Arabian horse market.

Examples of web page features include:

• Farm information
• Horse sale lists
• Full pedigrees
• Stallion listings (breeding fees, offspring, nominations, etc.)
• Breeding and training contracts
• News and events at your farm
• Show results
• Client information
• Fees for services offered
• Videos
• Blogs
• Facebook and/or twitter interactivity
• And MUCH MORE!

Benefits of a Website:

There are countless reasons to having your farm, product, service or business online. The first of many benefits is that a well-designed website allows your potential client to view and retain pertinent information on your business at their leisure, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, from anywhere in the world.

Another benefit is the time-savings earned by displaying basic information to the public, allowing the business owner to concentrate on actually running the business. The third most important benefit deals with the cost savings resulting from the effective use of advertising dollars. YOUR MESSAGE IS RECEIVED BY MORE POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS FOR FEWER DOLLARS.

In addition, The Arabian Horse Network seeks to provide increased visibility to our clients' web pages by creating a online communities dedicated specifically to Arabian horses. These communities provide a larger presence on the Internet by connecting individual sites together for marketing purposes, thus generating more traffic to more sites with less work needed by the web surfer.

What is needed to Develop a Website?

The first decision you need to make when taking the leap into cyberspace with your horses is "who is going to design your website?" You can design your own Home Page or contract with a professional web design firm to create it for you.

The primary advantage of designing your own website is cost. You will need to learn a few pieces of software to develop your own site, an image-editing program such as Image Ready or Photoshop, a web page layout program such as FrontPage and a FTP program to get your files to your Internet service provider. A few other considerations are where you will host your site and who will list your site with all the search engines. If you have the time and artistic/technical capabilities, developing your own site could be a good option if you have an extremely limited advertising budget. The disadvantages associated with designing your own website are the lack of visibility, functionality and who is going to market and promote your image in a mammoth information system such as the World Wide Web. Only a network such as The Arabian Horse Network can instantly plug your farm or horse's site directly into a larger Website that already generates huge amounts of traffic - and not just any traffic, traffic of people looking to buy, breed to, or simply learn more about Arabian Horses.

The most important part of a successful Website is how easily a person can navigate through the site to find the information they want. Second there needs to be a balance between graphics and text. A textual home page is less appealing and will not encourage people to return to your site. A home page that has large and pointless graphics will take longer to download and people may not be willing to wait. Internet users want to log on to a site and be able to get the intended information and move on.

Contracting with a Website design company with experience in the Arabian horse industry, while slightly more expensive than creating your own site, will lead to a more professional Web presence for your horses and your business. There are thousands of Website design companies to choose from, but few that design Websites specifically for Arabian horse farms.

When selecting a company to design and host your Arabian Horse Website, be sure to look at Websites they have completed. Then ask yourself: Do they understand the industry? Are their Websites attractive, error-free, and interesting? Are their Websites logical and easy to navigate through?

A very important factor in selecting a Website design company is the ongoing relationship you will have with the staff and how they will promote your site. The responsiveness of a company's staff is vital. A Website is a dynamic, constantly changing entity; you will want to change it often to keep it interesting and up-to-date. Ask any company you are interested in for references, and when you contact those references, specifically ask about customer service, quality of design and how they promote their client's Websites.

Happy Surfing, from The Arabian Horse Network!!!

Scott Bailey & David Cains are owners and operators of the Arabian Horse Network. We saw the potential of the World Wide Web and the benefits to our industry and created arabhorse.com to showcase Arabian horse farms and horses. With more than 300 custom websites created for farms all over the world and an online stallion directory surpassing 500 horses, arabhorse.com is the most successful Arabian horse networking website on the Internet. The Arabian Horse Network has been creating websites for our industry-leading farms and horses for since 1996. We can be reached at: info@arabhorse.com, or on the Web at www.arabhorse.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

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