Here is another great article written by our guest author, Kabir.

Branding fanatics will surely enjoy this one. It is all about the impression you give to your prospective clients/customers.

Kabir Bedi is a senior web consultant at LeXolution IT Services, a professional web designing company that deals with a variety of web-based solutions like website design & development, internet promotion etc. he has completed many international web design projects in the due course of his career.

7 Things You Need To Include In Your About Us Pages!

The ‘About Us’ page of your website is of prime importance and are often ranked highly on many websites. However, not many realize its crucial importance and just throw in some bland words about the history and mechanics of the company. As the web becomes an integral part of interactions with people, the About Us page on your website is an easy and effective way to engage your audiences in a personal and more friendly manner. This is your chance to impress your prospects and sell yourself. So make sure you make the best out of it.

Here are 7 things that you need to include in your About Us page:

1. Your Brand Name

This is quite obvious! But still there is an alarming number of websites that forget to include their brand name in their About Us pages. However, simply mentioning the name of your company or business is seldom enough. What you need to inform your audiences is why is your company called what it is called. This is a great way to establish a personal connection with your visitors and present them with an interesting story about yourself!

2. Include Images

Images are not only a great way to enhance the visual appeal of pages but also earn the trust of your visitors. People like to see who they are dealing with and that is why you should always include photographs of your company or key business professionals on your website. This will let visitors see the force behind the website and trust you more.

3. Use the First Person

The best way to establish a personal connection with your visitors is to address them directly! So, instead of talking about your company or yourself in third person as it were someone else, use first person and introduce yourself directly. Not only will your content sound more personable, it will also create a stronger impact on visitors.

4. Address the Needs & Requirements of your Users

About Us page is the only place on your website where you can afford to be a little self-promotional and blow your own trumpet. However, it is important to make readers and prospects feel that they will benefit by contacting you. So while talking about yourself, make sure you present your business as the solution for the key concerns of your target audiences.

5. Keep the Content Up-to-Date

The content on About Us pages mainly traces the history of your company and business but don’t let the info become too stagnant. Make sure you update the content of your About Us page now and then. The News Room is a great place to update the recent events and happening pertaining to your business, but any awards or recognitions that you win sure needs to be showcased in your About Us pages too.

6. Use Crisp and Compelling Language

Even though About Us pages are an ideal place to provide detailed information about your company or business, don’t just go on and on lest you turn off your visitors. Instead, write only as mush as they would be interested to read. And use crisp and compelling language that entice visitors and build up their appetite to know more.

7. Place a Call-to-Action Button

So, they have read about your company and now know a little more about your business. What next? Where do you want your visitors to go after they have read your About Us page? Your portfolio? Your Contact Us page? Make sure you place a call-to-action button on your About Us page that will lead visitors to their next destination.

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It’s been hectic and chaotic over the past few weeks, but within all the madness, a lot of things got done.

In the summer I blogged about my intentions to have 2 new brands launched by year-end. I also purposely wanted these 2 new brands to be non-domaining related. Work on the Aeroplanes.com project has justifiably taken up the bulk of our time, and it will be some time still before Aeroplanes.com go live.

Nonetheless, I was determined to launch a new project using one of our top domain names. After much research, strategising, planning, development and hard work, we have now successfully launched Skull.net.

The idea behind Skull.net is simply “What were they thinking?!!” or better yet, “Have you knocked your head (skull)?”

It is a community where users can upload and share their funniest pictures and videos, and even audio. The pictures and videos can contain anything that people witness and manage to capture in their everyday life that is just out of the ordinary.

Users can easily share the pictures and videos that are uploaded in a variety of ways. They can embed videos, share the links and even copy and paste the links to their blogs, forums, websites, via email, etc.

Social bookmarking is also enabled, making it easy for people to share videos and photos on social networking sites such as Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, Facebook, etc.

There is also a social networking element built into the site itself, where users can invite their friends to join, make new friends in the community and comment on and rate pictures and videos uploaded by other users.

There are loads of other features. The technology is quite robust. However, this is just the beginning. We are getting ready to start work on phase 2, which will even give users the ability to share more funny stuff. Can’t say what’s coming next. You just have to wait and see.

This brand will play a strategic role going forward. Unfortunately I cannot share in public or private anything else about the technologies or plans, as we cannot afford to lose any competitive edge. This is the real world, where business is as real as it gets.

It’s good to share ideas, but what competitive advantage or benefit would one have if they openly expound their business/operational plan?

Skull.net should set the pace going into 2010. I have preaching from day one about branding. It’s now time to practise what I preach. We have some big and mighty plans for 2010 and beyond. So expect less domaining from me.

As I said before, this is a non-domaining venture. I doubt domainers will find Skull.net useful as it is becoming increasingly obvious that a lot of domainers don’t have a sense of humour. I can imagine as well that a lot of people will not “get” the logic behind this brand. Watch this space.

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2009 is drawing to a close. I can’t believe that another year has gone by so quickly.

One of the things that I had set out to do this year was to take web development to another level. We did redesigned the eBusinessDomains.com website and launch a few other sites such as BrandingSuccess.com.

We also wanted to launch 2 full-scale brands before the end of 2009. That will not happen as one project took most of our time. Well a lot of key developments here at eBusinessDomains.com and in my other businesses took most of the time.

So in the end we only did some serious work on Aeroplanes.com. We have been working on the Aeroplanes.com project for some months now. I am truly excited about what is coming.

The developers have been busy for some while now creating, customising and integrating a lot of technologies.

In the research phase I contacted a lot of developers. I did promise to have some web developers handle different aspects of the project. However due to the complexity and sheer scale of the project, I have decided to contract only one company instead. So, if you are one of the developers that I had previously approached, please don’t feel insulted or sidestepped. I’m sure that after the launch you will agree that this was a job for one company.

I was hoping to have Aeroplanes.com launched by the end of November. This will not be a reality, obviously. As they say, choose 2 and sacrifice the other of time, quality and money. I am not sacrificing any. Period.

The project is a huge and complex one. Another reason why we would not be able to meet the deadline is that one of the technologies that we are planning on using is still in beta, and we will not be launching until this technology is given the all clear.

So, this may take us into 2010. This will be my last blog post for the next 3 weeks. I have some urgent and pressing matters to focus on elsewhere. When those matters are dealt with, I will then need to give the Aeroplanes.com project my full attention. By then, we should be in the testing phases and I will need to be on the ball getting the project ready for launch.

I will also need to start focusing on the strategies that will need to be implemented prior to and after the launch.

So, as for the next few months, it will be less domaining for me, and more web and brand development.

eBusinessDomains.com will take a backseat until we get Aeroplanes.com at cruise control heights. Taking off is one of the most key aspects of a flight. So, we will be doing a lot of checking and preparation before take off, and then a lot of work once we are in the air, web and brand development-wise.

When we focus again on eBusinessDomains, our main and only objective will be to decisively take our business to end-users. By developing Aeroplanes.com we are now end-users, and as such we should have some very intimate knowledge about ebusinesses.

I say again, web development is hard work. Laugh all you want. It is not as hard as doing manual labour in the tropical sunshine. But, it is nothing close to the minisite-level of web development (design) that some people only seem to be able to associate web development with.

There is web design, web development, business development and brand development. If we were launching a mini site we would have had a site up in July without even having to wink. We would only need to simply send an email and a Paypal payment to one of those minisite service providers. Minisite creation is barely web design. We are doing full-scale business and brand development.

In 2010 we will shake off the domainer mentality, block out the noise, and get clothed in the entrepreneurial spirit by launching full-scale Internet brands and doing business with like-minded entrepreneurs.

I’m blogging about the Aeroplanes.com project here as we don’t have any sort of temporary functional website setup yet at Aeroplanes.com, and our corporate site (WidestMedia.com) won’t go live until next year.

If you want to be notified of the launch of Aeroplanes.com or participate in any of our beta tests, then you can subscibe via email at Aeroplanes.com.

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After over 3 months of intense research, conceptualising and planning, we are now ready to build the monster. Yes, Aeroplanes.com will be a monster of a website.

I cannot tell you in private or public what we are coming with. But even if you use your wildest imagination, I doubt you would even come close to figuring it out. I personally want the project to have the shock effect, so I’m not going to say any more on this project.

Given the sheer size and complexity of the project, it may still be a while before we go live with Aeroplanes.com. We were aiming to launch at the end of November, but given my schedule before Christmas, and the amount of testing and tweaking that will be involved, it could be as far as January 2010. Well, Mint.com took 2 years to be launched, so, as they say “good things come to those who wait”.

Aeroplanes.com will be powered by numerous technologies, from all around the world. Most of these technologies power very popular websites/Internet destinations on their own. We are talking about sites within the top 1000 Alexa rankings, some even within the top 100. Yes, some sites only use one, anyone of the technologies we are using. So, you should imagine the sheer magnitude of what we are coming with!

I am a very fussy guy. I take great care in what I eat, where I live, what I wear, what I drive, which women I date, and the list goes on. Of course you already know my obsession with quality domain names .

So, when I decide to launch a new brand, you know it has to be the crème de la crème of web development. Anyway, enough of the hype (although my hype will have loads of substance to support it ).

Aeroplanes
Well, if you read this blog you will know from the comments on previous posts that the word “aeroplanes” (airplanes) is not so popular with Americans.

I love aeroplanes. I’m truly fascinated by these man-made beasts. It’s really hard to imagine how these things take-off and stay in the sky under the perfect control of a human being.

The Airbus A380 Aeroplane
The world’s largest passenger aeroplane is the Airbus A380, which is a twin deck aeroplane.

What is truly fascinating about the Airbus A380 is how it is built. Now, stay with me. There is a reason why I’m sharing all of this with you.

The Airbus all-new design Superjumbo, the A380, is the world’s first twin-deck, twin-aisle airliner.

Airbus’s A380 aircraft sections is transported from sites in Broughton (UK), Hamburg (Germany), Puerto Real (Spain) and St Nazaire (France) in a specially constructed huge roll-on / roll-off vessel, the “Ville de Bordeaux”, built by Jinling Shipyard in Nanjing, China.

First, the front and rear sections of the fuselage are loaded on an Airbus RORO ship, Ville de Bordeaux, in Hamburg, northern Germany, whence they are shipped to the United Kingdom. There the huge wings, which are manufactured at Filton in Bristol and Broughton in north Wales, are transported by barge to Mostyn docks, where the ship adds them to its cargo. In Saint-Nazaire, western France, the ship trades the fuselage sections from Hamburg for larger, assembled sections, some of which include the nose. The ship unloads in Bordeaux. Afterwards, the ship picks up the belly and tail sections in Cadiz, southern Spain, and delivers them to Bordeaux. Doors were specially made by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited in Bangalore, India. A special IC was also made in India and delivered to Airbus specially for A-380.

From there, the A380 parts are transported by barge to Langon, and by road to an assembly hall in Toulouse. New wider roads, extra canal systems and barges were developed to deliver the massive A380 parts. After assembly, the aircraft are flown to Hamburg to be furnished and painted. Final assembly began in 2004, with first aircraft (MSN001) displayed in January 2005.

This is an aeroplane, with parts made not only in many factories, but many countries.

A Visual Representation of True Web And Brand Development
Now, I am going to provide a link below to a video on YouTube, showing the construction of the Airbus A380 in 7 minutes. I have always said that web development is hard work. It took me over 3 months just to conceptualise and plan the aeroplanes.com project, and to acquire/order all the relevant technologies (from various countries). This is before the developers were even identified.

Now, when you watch the video, use your imagination. I want you to imagine that they are not building an aeroplane, but rather developing a website (that will become a powerful brand). If you can do that, then you will understand my perspective of web development. You will also understand the complexity and sheer magnitude of the Aeroplanes.com project.

Click here to watch the video on YouTube - Building the Airbus A380.

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