by robert adams » Sat Feb 09, 2008 9:39 am
I think one thing that would help you here is to stop calling sites "frontpage" or wordpress sites etc.
frontpage is a web page creation program that you install on your computer just like MS Office. It allows you to create web pages , put them all together into a "site" and upload the whole site at one time.
dreamweaver is the same thing.
wordpress is a blog software that you install on your hosting account. It creates a blog so that you can post whatever you want and let others comment on them. Now it so happens that you can also change up those blog style pages and make them look like normal web pages. However, WP allows you to change, update those pages very easily. That is why it is being used to create regular web sites.
a web site is a website, it does not matter what program you used to create the web pages.
frontpage is just a tool for creating web pages ( and therefore web sites) just like dreamweaver , xsitepro, etc.
A web page is just a web page when you are done.
The html is basically the same no matter what you create it with. ( frontpage and dreamweaver and xsitepro do add a bunch of extra code, but you never see it. )
I think your question should be what type of content should I add to my website to be able to attract the type of visitors that I need.
Of course, you first have to decide what type of visitors you want and exactly what you expect those visitors to do while you have them.
Once you know that, you can then plan the content of your site and the things you have on it. And , use the whatever tool you like, to create it.
If I understand what you are trying to do, then what you need is something that would draw people looking for a mortgage and get them to fill out a form on your site.
For that , you could possibly get away with just a couple of basic pages.
If you have that report you were talking about earlier, you can have a simple page to talk about the report and what the benefit of the info would be to your prospective lead. Then give it to them , put up a simple form to fill out with whatever info you need from them.
let them download the free report after they fill out the form.
then you do whatever it is you are going to do with that lead info.
'
For this type of thing, you do not need a bulletin board, or a blog, or much of anything like that.
The easiest way to do it is with a simple two page site.
On one will be the pitch for the report and on the other will be the form that they fill out.
That form will email you the info, and you can manually email them their free report.
A better way would be the same two page web site.
Only this one will automatically put the form info into a database, automatically send out the free report and automatically followup with that lead to try to sell them something.
My opinion ( you know what they are like ) is that until you have a NEED to be able to blog your opinions about something etc, that you don't worry about wordpress.
If you have frontpage or dreamweaver or any other type of web page creation/design software, then learn how to use it and create your basic web pages.
use that program or just simple ftp to upload those web pages to your hosting account.
once that is done, you will have a website ( collection of web pages ).
you can then expand from there.
luck,
robert