Orange Beetle Vintage

A Look Back Over Many Orange Beetle Websites and What Really Makes a Website Like This (and yours) Sell

Let me say upfront; You need too understand this - marketing isn't a singular event, it's an endless cycle of being creative and breaking into new things as well as building a core message that identifies you as your buyers only choice. It's also the ability to get your message and product or service in front of the eye of your buyers day in and day out.

So today I wanted to share something with you some stuff I was going through over the weekend. It's a handful of the O.B. website home pages and some of the changes I have made on Orange Beetle since the year 2000. They should go back to 1999 but I can't find that home page.

Some Direct Marketing History with Orange Beetle Online.

• I saw the potential of working online from around 1996 although I began my marketing consultancy and writing before the web arrived.
• I created my first website maybe 1997 for one of my hairdressing salons.
• I had another website called... MoreSiteSales.com that flopped totally!
• I then had the first incarnation of the Orange Beetle idea called... TheBigForrest.com (I know it's a bad name ;-) that worked but look like total crap!

Eventually I bought OrangeBeetle.co.uk in 2000 because the COM was taken by a software company. Then one day around a year later I got an email telling me I owned OrangeBeetle.com as I had back-registered it for free and the software guys had forgotten to renew it. The software guys weren't happy as you can imagine.

The WHY 'Orange Beetle' name story is on my about page.

Today 95% of my business through Orange Beetle is done online yet there is a definite trend for more face-to-face meetings. Anyway ...

17 Years Later OrangeBeetle is Stronger Than Ever... Why?

The following is something of note that most company websites ignore; You cannot build a website and expect that website to work forever. The web really doesn't work that way because people don't work that way. The exposure and over exposure to messages creates a forced change that can make your message redundant very quickly. This is the opposite to what the majority of marketing men will tell you yet this is the way marketing is in 2016.

Think of your website more like a magazine. The magazine cover only works for that month and then what takes place? The cover changes completely. Why? To keep the marketplace interested. I try and make significant cosmetic changes every month. Some good and some clearly flop. All the same I make the changes just like I would change  shop window.

Now I have probably changed my website home pages or covers every quarter or three months at the latest so I just cannot share them all here. So here are a few going from the very first Orange Beetle home page up until the current page.

I can't remember the exact month or year of any of these page so enjoy them as they are. The year is guessed but close.

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Now if you are really smart you will see a few things that have never changed.

I'll help you try and understand them as these are the elements that have consistently created a website that has generated hundreds upon thousands of pounds and more since it's inception in 1999.

They are also the same elements that have delivered myself some of the best clients any person like myself could ever hope to work with. This website has also given me a life where I can have the freedom to do more or less as I like with my time, work remotely on any day of the week and continually pull in incredible business with incredible people.

Of course the results go beyond the home cover.

The Critical and Essential Elements of a Successful Orange Beetle (this isn't everything)

• Positioning
• Perception
• Presence
• Power
• Triggering
• Buzz feeds
• Seeding
• Framing
• New services
• Innovation
• Market leading
• Core messages that feed my hungry targets
• Carefully thought out words that generate a response
• Carefully thought out images that feed into the current mind feed
• Carefully thought out colours according to the market place
• And tried, tested, proven and tested again and again and again layouts, formats and more that deliver the results I need from my online business

Now the images above are nothing compared to the images I have created over the years. I have no idea but maybe at least 100-300 new images per year?

Either way this has been a strong feature of success in my websites since I started them way back in 1999.

Why is this valuable for you?

Clients like yourself have come to me for years asking how to make their website work. Most clients would like to be able to make the change overnight and then expect the change to create a massive surge in sales and traffic.

Yet.

Despite what the 'new expert' tells you ... It really doesn't work like that.

For seventeen years I have been using OrangeBeetle.com to build my life. I cannot build a life unless I create sales. If I create no sales I have no cash. If I have no cash I am broke. If i am broke I have to go and get a job and that isn't a good thing for a rambling non-conformist like myself.

You must never forget this with your website.

A website is a testing ground. It has to be targeted. It has to be scientifically calculated. It has to be focused and worked on every single day. You must bring in the people that are experts and know how to help you grow. Otherwise it isn't a real business. Would you do surgery on your own heart? Would you attempt build a house with no experience? Would you repaint your prized car despite knowing zero about a car?

The answer is obvious so why play around with your business like a child plays around with Lego? As far as I am concerned there has to be money in the bank and that money comes via my main website. How serious do you take your website?

A recent Google update almost killed me ...

Recently after a rebuild of our websites and the very latest Google update we found ourselves in the unfortunate position of losing almost all of our listings. These listings had been there for well over a decade.

That meant traffic into our websites at www.SalonPunk.com and OrangeBeetle.com and YogaBusinessAcademy.com had all but vanished overnight.

For the past six weeks more we have researched, paid experts, hired experts, microscopically searched whilst tearing back every aspect of the sites until we eventually found the issues that Google didn't like and now we are fixing them. It's a slow job but a very real problem online.

It did remind me of heading into Pret a Manger the coffee shop near St Annes Sq. in Manchester. I went recently only to find the whole road closed because they are installing a new tram system along that road. This meant I couldn't find a way to get into the cafe. After some time I found my way and went in. Now you have to remember this place on a Saturday morning is always packed. Getting a seat isn't easy.

When I finally walked in there was myself and another woman with a young son. That was it. The funny thing for me was why is such an established company like Pret a Manger not doing everything they could outside to make sure people still went into their shop?

So coming back to websites and website marketing - YOUR website.

I wanted to share some behind the scenes stuff for you to help you realise that a website alone simply isn't enough. The number one mistake I see out there is this.

• Businesses trying to do everything on their own.
• A lack of experts being hired or brought in to help.
• A lack of investment into a website because it isn't tangible.
• Trying to do a website cheap makes as much sense as cheap medicine!
• Taking far too long to get any real progress done.
• Spending six months trying to work something out that can take less than a day to work out.
• Lack of research and frontline knowledge.
• Too much advise from inexperienced marketing experts that only know what they learnt from college.
• Over reliance on agencies.

IF YOU ARE NOT TAKING YOUR ONLINE BUSINESS AS SERIOUS AS YOUR OFFICE BUSINESS IN 2016 YOU'RE SCREWED!

More behind the scenes.

Most of my graphic work I do myself but I also have two graphic people I work with. Yes I have to pay them both. That isn't cheap because direct marketing imagery is very different from simple imagery.

All our websites I lay out according to proven direct response selling  technique that are tested online. Although I do a lot of the testing etc I have technicians that do the building of the technicalities. Yes I pay them. The build can take three months for the basic shell but this isn't just a website this is a sales machine we build.

We then spend three months at least testing and tweaking and changing things until they work. Everything is tracked. Everything its measured. Any changes are down within one hour of results!

We then spend the rest of the following six months continually adjusting and fixing and innovating. Once that is in place the site just rolls on its own with us continually putting the fuel into the sites make sure the website sells like crazy.

And of course never forget the website is simply part of a bigger machine. The Orange Beetle machine also includes emails, email capture, courses, copy, scripts, telephone, a real office, trainings and even furniture and new computers. Everything can be seen as a cost but when it all works everything is simply an investment.

Please never forget this: If you want to be in business using the web to bring you enough cash to create the lifestyle you want, no one is going to rush at you with payments of any kind if you don't treat your web presence the same as you would treat a physical office.

Finally...

I hope you learnt something from this behind the scenes article. I also hope you found the images useful.

Our new ICONOCLAST workspace/office/training opens on may 1st. We are innovating new training and education for you guys. One of the days we will be doing for you is a WEBSITE MENTOR CLASS for those that have websites but they want the websites to sell. There will be more on that very soon.

In the meantime make sure you stay in the loop by subscribing to OrangeBeetle on Facebook or YouTube or simply stay attached via email.

Now as always I am always searching for incredible clients to work with. Is that you? I am responsible for creating a five million pounds month for one client from his website. I have also created websites that generate over £400k a month for my clients.

Maybe you simply want to get on that road and get your online business selling? That's fine just hit me up and lets talk. By the way I don't and we don't build websites. We do have a specialist services for selling online using all of the above strategies I spoke about above. We can refer you to the tech guys that do our stuff but bear in mind they simply build the machine, we install a very powerful engine to that machine after its built. They do websites - we make websites sell!

I hope we talk very soon.

Your rambling but hugely successful direct response consultant

Alan Forrest Smith

If you like  BREAKTHROUGH with your business all you need to do is ask. If you'd like a MENTOR at the end of the phone 24 hours a day all you have to do is ask. If you'd like a critique from an expert that has created sales going into the millions for clients since we started selling on the web all you have to do is ask.

Text: UK (00 44)  07793069486 Once the text is received a reply will arrange a time to talk.

Email: alan@orangebeetle.com

Or if you're a fan of contact forms go over to this page, fill it out and hit send.

Feel free to leave at a comment at the bottom of this page. Add your link as we get tons of traffic so it'll be nice to share it with you.