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Why Your Website is Worthless

By Sarah Simmons in Web Design

You may have put a lot of money, resources and hours into your website, but if it’s not reaching your target demographic and generating business, your website is worthless! A website that seemed great a couple of years ago is probably not doing the job nowadays without any updates. Read on to find out why your website just isn’t cutting it anymore.

TMI

The popular web acronym TMI, or too much information, doesn’t just apply to people - your website can have TMI too! If people find too much information about your product or service on your site, they won’t be motivated to call you and find out more. Words or text on your website don’t always convey what you are able to do and whether or not you are reliable. Too much information on your website can prohibit the “person to person” sales techniques that have worked for businesses for many years.

Too Little Information/Poor Navigation

While you don’t want to give visitors too much information, you don’t want to leave them in the dark either. If your site has too little information, or poor navigation prevents users from finding the things they want to know, you’re unlikely to get any business.

A Case of Sloppy Site-itis

Sloppy site-itis is how I would diagnose sites that look like the website equivalent of Pig-Pen from the comic strip Peanuts. If your website looks like it was put together in about 5 minutes, without any thought or care, why should someone trust you to put time into their product or service? As little as one hour of maintenance can make a world of difference to the look of your site. Go through your site and make sure all the links work, check for spelling errors, and make sure all formatting, fonts and colors are consistent throughout the site. After a while it’s easy to miss mistakes that you’ve been looking at every day, so it’s a great idea to have a friend check for you too.

People Can’t Find Your Website

More and more consumers are turning to the internet to find the goods or services they need. The most important reason why your website is worthless is if people do not know about your website. You could have a multi-million dollar design, and the best product available, but if people can’t find your website, it can’t generate business. This is simple enough to understand, but short of standing on the corner waving a sign with your web address on it, how can you help people find your website?

Get on the A-List

If you’re not listed with a business directory on the top search engines, many times your website will slip through the cracks. To generate more business it may help to put your website out there on business directories along with a brief ad describing what you do. Ads that are easy to read, informative, to the point, and don’t overload the customer with information they don’t need to know are best.

You don’t have to completely reinvent the wheel, just do your research. See what your competitors are doing; look around on Google and Yahoo! to see what is ranking, and go with what is proven

One of the easiest ways to find reputable online advertising companies and business directories is to Google the keywords you think your customers would search for. When the page pulls up, scroll through the links on the first page and find a good business directory. Getting your website seen through multiple linkings on top business directories will help your website rankings and give you the business boost you need.

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Sarah  Simmons - TenList creates a win-win situation by connecting local businesses with local customers to provide a business directory with True Local Results for all. For a fraction of what other business directories charge, TenList can drive unlimited search engine traffic to your business.4

5 Things to Consider Before Choosing a Website Design Firm

By Oliver Feakins in Web Design

It seems that everybody knows somebody that does “website design”.  The term can refer to anyone from a high school student working on the weekends between book reports to an established professional website designer. Because of this, you need to be careful when choosing a website design company. Choosing the wrong individual or firm can mean the difference between having a website that turns out sales and ending up with a website that turns off customers. You need to do your due diligence when you sit down with your designer (or web design firm) to ascertain the level of competency and professionalism they have.  It is important that business owners ask the following five questions in your initial conversation with any potential web design firm or individual.

1. Can you show me your work?

Web design companies will tell you that they have done wonderful work for fantastic clients but ask for a list of client names and website addresses. This is the very first thing that you should do and will set the tone for the initial conversation. Reputable firms have a gallery or portfolio of websites that they have designed. This is where the proof is in the pudding.  Take the time to actually go to the sites and check them out.  Take note on how the site looks, how clear the site’s purpose is and how the site ranks in search engines. It is acceptable to call the design firm’s past clients and ask how their overall experience was during the design process and after the website design services were performed.  If you hear a common negative theme, you may want to consider moving on to a different firm but keep in mind that there are two sides to every story and you should check with the firm to verify the validity of the negative comments.

1. Can you see the project through to completion?

You’ve seen the work, now let’s find out who’s going to be doing it. It is very common for web design firms to use contracted web designers to assist with overflow and you should ask about this up front. You’ll want to know that this firm has the resources to be able to continue the project if that contracted employee leaves. Similarly, This if you choose to go with a self-employed web designer and that person gets sick, leaves or becomes uncooperative, you have nowhere to turn.  Web design firms usually have multiple employees and a chain of command to ensure your concerns are addressed.  Just be sure to clarify what will happen should the person working on your project become unavailable.

1. How much will this cost?

Cost is a sensitive issue to any website design firm. It’s not unusual for to pay anywhere from $800-$8,000 for a 20 page static website design, depending on the level of design and functionality included. I always consider the level of work the firm can produce, as well as the relationship and customer service. A firm that is going to stick with me and keep my business needs at heart (even after the site is completed) is worth it’s weight in gold. “You get what you pay for” really holds true in website design and development. I’ve had customers come to me because their sites completely crashed a week after launch and they can’t get a hold of their economy priced design firm. There is a tradeoff between price and service and I always suggest that you stay in the middle.

1. Do they build search friendly sites?

I have long sung the benefits of working with a web design firm that truly knows the benefits of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and its practices. Many firms will say they create SEO friendly websites, but the only optimization on the site are a couple meta tags that give virtually no value. This is NOT and never has been SEO! It is rare to finding a design firm that truly understands how to optimize sites and can create powerful SEO websites but this combination of talents truly separates that web design firm from the rest of the pack.

Ask your web design firm about SEO and see what they say. If they emphasize meta keywords and make no mention of link building or site architecture RUN AWAY! Also, if they promise first place rankings right away, turn and run in the opposite direction since it takes time to rise in the search engine ranks.  Test the sites in the firm’s portfolio for SEO by seeing where they rank in search engine results for the company’s targeted keywords. This is the true test of any web design firm claiming to be able to perform SEO

1. What kind of feeling do I get with this firm?

As funny as it sounds, first impressions do make a difference and the gut feeling you get from interviewing a firm can go a long way. Whether you feel that you can trust the firm or alarm bells are going off inside your head, listen to your instincts, because they generally are right. To me, the relationship is the most important thing - it is the one thing that will outlast any project and is the most valuable service a web design firm can provide. Without a good relationship, the project is doomed to fail.

Picking a design firm is as important as picking a valued employee and maybe even more so.  The design firm will be designing the voice for your company that will be speaking for you 24/7 and all over the world.  Take your time and find the design firm that truly fits with your company and understands your needs.

About The Author:

Oliver Feakins is President of the Internet Marketing and Social Media Company WebTalent, a Lancaster web design and SEO firm based out of Central PA. Besides a having a client base throughout the USA, Oliver is a favored speaker at universities and other organizations.  He also writes expert articles for outlets such as Promotion World, WebProNews, ITWorld and Social Media Today. Visit http://www.webtalentseo.com for more information or call 877-496-3327.

When Should You Fire Your Website Designer

By Ajay Prasad in Web Design

Your online business is not a wild crazy idea, but a source of your income. Trust the right people to design your website. Your 17 year old nephew may be able to create your website or you can get a free one from several services…they might even be kind of pretty. In my research and experience, less than 2% of businesses that have websites have planted the seeds to online success. Many of them are your competitors.

The problem is web designer’s focus on the technical aspects of the site. They don’t have a clue how to build a website that makes you a ton of money, drives floods of traffic, and gets you top placement on search engines.

Why Do You Have a Website?

The reason you have a website for your business, no matter what business you are in, is you want to rake in bundles of cash. May be not now but definitely later it should be bringing returns on the investment. .

Your Website is Like Your Business.

Make sure that your web designer owes a successful online business and knows about how to run it.

Your sole purpose in having a website should be to use it as a marketing and communications tool. It is not there to be pretty. It should not be there to win awards. It is there to make you money. Even if you have a better product or service than your competition, the one who attracts more prospects and customers - wins! Being the best at marketing is all that matters.

Online Marketing Is Completely Different Than Marketing Offline

All of the tools, techniques, communication, etc. in the online world are different than those offline. A very common mistake is to think because it works offline you can just put it on the website! It’s important to realize the reader of offline thinks and processes information in a different way than someone reading online copy. What works offline may be a complete flop online.

They are two different worlds. For example, online marketing REQUIRES you to know how to get your site ranked high, very high, in the search engines like Google and Yahoo….so you routinely appear on the first page for the optimal search terms for your business.

Of course, this assumes you know how to find the optimal words for your business, your marketplace, your niche, etc. Just so you know, the “include all words” strategy has proven to be a total failure.

And, most designers and businesses do not know that SEO (search engine optimization) is not SEM (search engine marketing). If you do one and not the other you will probably be very disappointed with your results.

Studies have shown that you need to be on the first page of search engine results to get enough people coming to your site. SEO and SEM are not optional for online success - they are mandatory!

Increase your ROI: Only Work with People Who Know Website and Online Marketing.

When you are planning your financial future, you hire a financial planner or an attorney who specializes in that area of law. When you want plastic surgery you don’t go to a podiatrist, unless you want to end up with your nose looking like a foot.

Did you know that 99% of web design companies don’t know how to devise online sites that actually market your products or services?

You need people who can help you with how to create “hot” products or services that your customers really want.

You need people who make it possible for you to have a “money tree” business. People who can produce money like it grow on trees. People who have the communication skills you need to capture the attention and “cash the order” with your customers. Online or offline. (That means using multiple marketing channels and starting with the lowest cost = online!)

You need people with real world experience as well as online experience that can combine the two for the benefit of…YOU.

No one has the time to learn everything about their business, the internet, marketing, copywriting, finances and so on. That is why…

“The price of ignorance is paid forever!”

Successful entrepreneurs value all the real-world experience they can get. Where do they get it? By surrounding themselves to a team of experts, who can provide the knowledge, guidance and successful experience for a wide variety of businesses.

Always Remember Your Website is your Marketing Machine

It is all about driving people to your website. This is more than “being found” for the right search terms. This is about having a comprehensive strategy that links your offline and online marketing together to create leverage for your business and get maximum results.

You need to be sure your online partner can:

• Create a site that entices visitors to convert from information seekers to paying customers
• Generate a stream of online and offline leads
• Show you what functions of your business can be automated to save you money…and put that savings to good use…getting more customers
• Show you the secrets of capturing information and how to utilize it for easy access and follow up
• Show you how to make more sales with your existing customers
• Help you set up marketing campaigns that get real results and build customer loyalty
• Help you use email marketing ethically and effectively

Seriously, if your web designer/dungeon master/graphic Zulu cannot do ALL of these things and more, FIRE them now. You are wasting time and money! And time is often worth more than money!

Test, Test, and Test Some More & Collaborate Results and Changes

If you really want online success, or even offline success, then you must understand the importance of successful marketing testing. It is Crucial.

Businesses that are wildly successful with their offline and online strategies are always rabid about testing and knowing how and what to test.

Track and Measure…Correctly

You want to know everything that is happening on your website, or not happening. All of that testing will do you no good if you are not measuring and tracking all of the data associated with it.

Here are some of the tracking measures you should be talking to your web designer/builder about. In fact, they should be talking to you about these things. If you have to bring them up you are already in trouble, with a capital T.

• How many visitors are coming to the site
• How many of the visitors aren’t visitors (i.e. spiders, crawlers, etc. from search engines)
• How many visitors are new vs. old
• How long does each visitor stay on your site
• What does each visitor look at
• What graphics, words, pictures, etc are generating the most responses
• Which search engines are getting you the best prospects
• Where else are your customers coming from
• How many pages does the visitor look at
• What are your website rankings
• How much money have you made from the average visitor
• Who are your biggest money-making customers
• If you use PPC is it working and paying for itself
• Which links are bringing your visitors and are they converting to customers
• And so on

This is not a comprehensive listing, rather, it gives you an idea of how many things you could or should be tracking when it comes to your online marketing.

If you are like most people, you are thinking “there is no way I could remember all of that, much less do it.” You would be right. Remember, that is why we all need a team of experts around us to do the things we either don’t know or don’t have time for.

But, if you use these kinds of tools and tracking you will join the 1-2% of successful online businesses. You do want to make money with your website, right?

It is simple; your website should bring in more money than it costs to maintain it!

Some Final Thoughts

Today, you must be ONLINE with a WEBSITE to be successful. Research has shown that people are abandoning the yellow pages and many other ‘traditional’ forms of advertising. The internet is the #1 SOURCE for information on virtually every topic or subject you can imagine…and still growing rapidly.

It is as it has always been - survival of the fittest. Those businesses which combine their offline and online strategies to maximize their effectiveness are going to survive and thrive. The others will die. And in these times there will be more deaths than usual. You see it, the ‘for lease’ signs appearing everywhere, the ‘announcement’ each week of another big business failure, the empty spaces in office buildings.

The key to lasting success is to create lasting value. Turn transactions into relationships. In fact, the last sentence may be the most important and valuable one you read.

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Ajay Prasad is founder of Global Marketing Resources LLC that runs a number of ecommerce websites under it’s umbrella. Ajay’s functional expertise includes website strategy, marketing management, business development, consumer research, market analysis and strategic planning. GMRWebTeam is an Orange County Website Design company that aims to develop an overall website strategy for your site.

Top 5 Signs That Your Website Sucks

By John Metzler in Web Design

Small business owners may not have the resources to invest heavily in their web presence and finding solutions to problems can be like finding a needle in a haystack. You know something’s wrong but don’t have the faintest idea how to fix it. Is it a technical issue? Are your ads not performing well? Don’t know what kind of traffic you’re getting? Website problems can fall into a myriad of categories. So if you think your website sucks, a) it probably does, and b) you should read on.

1. You Aren’t Getting Traffic

You’re excited about the big, expensive job the design team just finished on your site. It looks like a million bucks! Well it’s a shame it isn’t making you a darn cent. Just because it exists doesn’t mean people know about it. Announce it to the world by submitting it to reputable directories and sharing your useful content with others on social bookmarking sites (you do have useful content, don’t you? If not, I’ll cover this later). You can even do some link exchanges — provided the sites you exchange with are reputable — just to get your site crawled early on. Further optimize it for search engines by following good SEO practices, building quality content and generating inbound links from other sites. Once you do that, you’ll need to monitor progress with web analytics software. Google Analytics is free and it has a slick interface. And we know you like pretty things seeing as how you broke the bank on your web site design.

If you’re looking for high ROI, invest your own time in learning search engine marketing. Better yet hire a qualified SEO firm if you have the budget for it. Don’t settle for quick-fix promotional ideas. Build long-term exposure and a solid reputation by attaining high rankings, keeping email/newsletter lists, targeted ad placement and social media participation.

2. You Have Worthless Content

What defines worthless content? Without knowing what topic your web site covers it’s tough to say, but if you have nothing that sets you apart from your top competitors then I’d say you aren’t in good shape. If you don’t know what kind of content people are looking for on the Internet today, take a peek at what’s popular on social bookmarking sites. Observe some of the story titles on the front page of Digg.com:

• “Guinness Stout Beef Stew Recipe for St. Patrick’s Day”
• “In Move to Digital TV, Confusion Is in the Air”
• “Kim Jong-Il Interprets Sunrise As Act Of War”
• “Automatic bacon dispenser?”
• “The 5 Best Obama Photomosaics on Flickr”

Words I would use to describe these topics, in order, are: seasonal, informative, satirical, comical, and trendy. This information is popular because it’s appealing in its uniqueness and is relevant to today’s market. To set yourself apart from your competition, you need to get creative. If you’re the kind of person who had trouble painting by numbers, then hire someone creative. Professional copy writers can be well worth the investment. Create free tools your customers will want to use; write funny or interesting commentary in a blog about your industry; put a new spin on a traditional product or service or offer seasonal discounts. Create a comprehensive F.A.Q. on your site that covers topics your competitors don’t.

Take the time to beef up your content. Be innovative - don’t be afraid to think outside the box. Use the top competitor in your field as a measuring stick.

3. You Have No Call-to-Action

Poor promotional language can have a sabotaging effect if visitors aren’t drawn to your conversion pages. A conversion page is any page that acts as the final step in a visitor submitting a form, making direct contact or purchasing a product online. Obscuring those pages or confusing the visitor on where to go next can make them leave your site. Internet users have a short attention span - give them a clear direction when navigating your web site.

Use your web analytics software again to find out what pages visitors are landing on first. If your home page gets the most traffic, make sure there are clear links to your sub-topics. If inner pages are your most popular landing pages, find out if the traffic is targeted. Once you know the type of visitor and the specific page they land on, then you can start marketing your content more accurately.

The bottom line is to always make clear why, and how, visitors can buy your product. Don’t get too cute with multiple steps, options or convoluted language.

4. You’re Getting Traffic But No Sales

Are you sure the traffic is relevant? If you’re running a pay-per-click campaign, ensure your ads are geo-targeted properly and your ad text or landing pages appeal to your customers. For organic search engine placement, have you done keyword research and analysis before optimizing your content? Look at your web stats and see where your visitors are coming from. What keywords were they searching for when they landed on your site? Are the referring sites relevant to your industry or topic? How much time does the visitor spend on each page? Sales won’t come if your visitors aren’t interested in what you’re selling. This is why preliminary keyword analysis is so important to search engine marketing.

If you’re running ads it’s always good practice to experiment with different ad campaigns. If you put all your eggs in one basket you run the risk of losing out on potential revenue. Elements of your ads that you can change are:

• ad text
• landing page
• specific network your ads are shown across
• topics on which you focus the campaign
• geo-locations targeted

Remember, it doesn’t pay to skimp on initial product/market research and analysis.

5. You’re Getting Relevant Traffic But No Sales

This problem could signal a technical error or navigation problem with your site. Make sure you thoroughly test all functionalities on various web browsers and systems. Submit test forms. Do a link check to spot possible broken links. Is your web hosting service reliable?

If you’ve ruled out technical issues as the cause then turn your attention to the content and customer base. Has your market taken a downturn? Can the lack of sales be attributed to the poor economy? Have you fallen behind your competition in product quality, selection or pricing? Does your web site’s navigation system confuse users? Your web site is the first line of contact between the business and potential customer, but it’s not the only step you need to worry about. Telephone operators or online payment systems can present their own issues.

This is moving away from web site problems but if any part of the sales process takes place away from the site, investigate those areas of your business as well.

If you’re pulling out your hair over a problem with your site and these tips still haven’t helped, feel free to post a comment and I’ll personally have a peek at your site.

With eight years in the search engine marketing industry, John Metzler of FreshPromo knows what works and what doesn’t regarding website success. His strong grasp on visitor usability and analysis, along with a highly-skilled SEO perspective, can be seen through his professional SEO services. Read the FreshPromo blog for more free tips and commentary.

15 Essential Checks Before Launching Your Website

By admin in Web Design

Your website is designed, the CMS works, content has been added and the client is happy. It’s time to take the website live. Or is it? When launching a website, you can often forget a number of things in your eagerness to make it live, so it’s useful to have a checklist to look through as you make your final touches and before you announce your website to the world.

This article reviews some important and necessary checks that web-sites should be checked against before the official launch - little details are often forgotten or ignored, but - if done in time - may sum up to an overall greater user experience and avoid unnecessary costs after the official site release.

Favicon

A favicon brands the tab or window in which your website is open in the user’s browser. It is also saved with the bookmark so that users can easily identify pages from your website. Some browsers pick up the favicon if you save it in your root directory as favicon.ico, but to be sure it’s picked up all the time, include the following in your head.

• <link rel=”icon” type=”image/x-icon” href=”/favicon.ico” />

And if you have an iPhone favicon:

• <link rel=”apple-touch-icon” href=”/favicon.png” />

Titles And Meta Data

Your page title is the most important element for SEO and is also important so that users know what’s on the page. Make sure it changes on every page and relates to that page’s content.

<title>10 Things To Consider When Choosing The Perfect CMS | How-To | Smashing Magazine</title>

Meta description and keyword tags aren’t as important for SEO (at least for the major search engines anyway), but it’s still a good idea to include them. Change the description on each page to make it relate to that page’s content, because this is often what Google displays in its search result description.

• <meta name=”description” content=”By Paul Boag Choosing a content management system can be tricky. Without a clearly defined set of requirements, you will be seduced by fancy functionality that you will never use. What then should you look” />

Cross-Browser Checks

Just when you think your design looks great, pixel perfect, you check it in IE and see that everything is broken. It’s important that your website works across browsers. It doesn’t have to be pixel perfect, but everything should work, and the user shouldn’t see any problems. The most popular browsers to check are Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8, Firefox 3, Safari 3, Chrome, Opera and the iPhone.

Proofread

Read everything. Even if you’ve already read it, read it again. Get someone else to read it. There’s always something you’ll pick up on and have to change. See if you can reduce the amount of text by keeping it specific. Break up large text blocks into shorter paragraphs. Add clear headings throughout, and use lists so that users can scan easily. Don’t forget about dynamic text too, such as alert boxes.

• Writing for the web

Links

Don’t just assume all your links work. Click on them. You may often forget to add “http://” to links to external websites. Make sure your logo links to the home page, a common convention.

Also, think about how your links work. Is it obvious to new users that they are links? They should stand out from the other text on the page. Don’t underline text that isn’t a link because it will confuse users. And what happens to visited links?

W3C Link Checker

Functionality Check

Test everything thoroughly. If you have a contact form, test it and copy yourself so that you can see what comes through. Get others to test your website, and not just family and friends but the website’s target market. Sit back and watch how a user uses the website. It’s amazing what you’ll pick up on when others use your website differently than how you assume they’d use it. Common things to check for are contact forms, search functions, shopping baskets and log-in areas.

• Silverback - guerrilla usability testing

Graceful Degradation

Your website should work with JavaScript turned off. Users often have JavaScript turned off for security, so you should be prepared for this. You can easily turn off JavaScript in Firefox. Test your forms to make sure they still perform server-side validation checks, and test any cool AJAX stuff you have going on.

Validation

You should aim for a 100% valid website. That said, it isn’t the end of the world if your website doesn’t validate, but it’s important to know the reasons why it doesn’t so that you can fix any nasty errors. Common gotchas include no “alt” tags, no closing tags and using “&” instead of “&amp;” for ampersands.

• 10 reasons your code won’t validate (and how to fix it)
• W3C validator

RSS Link

If your website has a blog or newsreel, you should have an RSS feed that users can subscribe to. Users should be able to easily find your RSS feed: the common convention is to put a small RSS icon in the browser’s address bar.

Put this code between your <head> tags.

• <link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”Site or RSS title” href=”link-to-feed” />

Analytics

Installing some sort of analytics tool is important for measuring statistics to see how your website performs and how successful your conversion rates are. Track daily unique hits, monthly page views and browser statistics, all useful data to start tracking from day 1. Google Analytics is a free favorite among website owners. Others to consider are Clicky, Kissmetrics (still in closed beta yet), Mint and StatCounter.

Sitemap

Adding a sitemap.xml file to your root directory allows the major search engines to easily index your website. The file points crawlers to all the pages on your website. XML-Sitemaps automatically creates a sitemap.xml file for you. After creating the file, upload it to your root directory so that its location is www.mydomain.com/sitemap.xml.

If you use WordPress, install the Google XML Sitemaps plug-in, which automatically updates the sitemap when you write new posts. Also, add your website and sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools. This tells Google that you have a sitemap, and the service provides useful statistics on how and when your website was last indexed.

Defensive Design

The most commonly overlooked defensive design element is the 404 page. If a user requests a page that doesn’t exist, your 404 page is displayed. This may happen for a variety of reasons, including another website linking to a page that doesn’t exist. Get your users back on track by providing a useful 404 page that directs them to the home page or suggests other pages they may be interested in.

Another defensive design technique is checking your forms for validation. Try submitting unusual information in your form fields (e.g. lots of characters, letters in number fields, etc.) and make sure that if there is an error, the user is provided with enough feedback to be able to fix it..

Optimize

You’ll want to configure your website for optimal performance. You should do this on an ongoing basis after launch, but you can take a few simple steps before launch, too. Reducing HTTP requests, using CSS sprites wherever possible, optimizing images for the Web, compressing JavaScript and CSS files and so on can all help load your pages more quickly and use less server resources.

Besides, depending on the publishing engine that you are using, you may need to consider taking more specific measures - for instance, if you are using WordPress, you may need to consider useful caching techniques to speed up the performance.

• Best practices for speeding up your website
• Web page analyzer

Back Up

If your website runs off a database, you need a back-up strategy. Or else, the day will come when you regret not having one. If you use WordPress, install Wordpress Database Backup, which you can set up to automatically email you backups.

Print Style Sheet

If a user wants to print a page from your website, chances are she or he wants only the main content and not the navigation or extra design elements. That’s why it is a good idea to create a print-specific style sheet. Also, certain CSS elements, such as floats, don’t come out well when printed.

To point to a special CSS style sheet that computers automatically use when users print a page, simply include the following code between your <head> tags.

<link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” href=”print.css” media=”print” />

Download the Ultimate Website Launch Checklist!

Just recently Dan Zambonini has published a very detailed checklist that covers both the pre-launch and the post-launch phase of the web site life cycle. Among other things his Ultimate Website Launch Checklist contains checks related to content and style, standards and validation, search engine visibility, functional testing, security/risk, performance and marketing.

Lee Monroe - Freelance web designer from Belfast Northern Ireland - http://www.leemunroe.com Web design portfolio and blog

Tips for Getting the Best Website Design for Your Money

By Kevin Kielty in Web Design

Eventually every small-business owner realizes that they will need a website for their business, but figuring out where to start can be a challenge. Just understanding the technical lingo and all the options can be confusing, but with the right preparation you can have an impressive and easy to maintain website for your small business in no time.

Check The Competition

The first place to start on your website project is to look at some competitor websites in your industry. You will want to know what your potential customers will comparing you to. You will also want to find out what the standard is for your industry in terms of the number of pages, the type of information and the general look and feel. If for example, your competitors have large sites and many interactive features then you will want your site be comparable, but if your competitors have small simple sites, then you know that you won’t need lots of bells and whistles.

Prepare Your Information

Before you meet with your web designer, gather some examples of competitor websites that you like. List what it is that you like and dislike about those sites. If you have any pamphlets or brochures for your business, have those ready for your designer as well. Choose some colors or have an idea of some color schemes that you like and if you have won any professional awards or have any important professional affiliations, put that information together because you will probably want to feature that on your website.

Do You Need A Content Management System?

One important decision that you need to make about your website is whether or not you are going to need a content management system. Content management systems are typically used on larger sites, to control text, video, pictures etc. A content management system allows you to easily change and update the information on your site. This is useful for a website on which, for example staff photos and bios are added often or a newsletter archive is maintained.

If you anticipate making many changes on your website, a content management system can save you time and money. With a content management system, the owner of the site can make the changes as needed, without having to wait for a web designer or webmaster to make the changes for them. This can be a very important feature because it allows you to keep your website current at all times so you’re making the best possible presentation to your customer. It can save you money because you will not have to pay your web designer to make the updates for you.

Typically, a website that is more than 15 pages would be a good candidate for a content management system. The more information you have on your website the greater the chances are that you are going to need to keep that information updated. If your website is less than 15 pages, you probably will not need a content management system.

WordPress As A Content Management System For Small Business

WordPress is popular as a content management system for small businesses for several reasons. One it is that it is relatively easy to use. You do not need to be versed in HTML or any other programming language to handle WordPress. There are also many training videos and materials available on the Internet and also a number of plug-ins so that you can customize the software for your needs. WordPress is also useful for blogging which can help to keep your website information up to date. If you would like to show up higher in the search results, then WordPress is a good choice for that as well. Google has stated that WordPress is one of the easiest systems to crawl so it can help you come up higher in the search engine results.

When you begin planning for your small business web site, start by checking competitor websites in your industry. This will give you an idea of approximately how many pages you will need as well as what type of features you will want on your site. Your goal will be to have your website look as good as, or better than your competitor’s.

By planning ahead and knowing what your potential customers will be comparing you with, deciding how large you want your site to be, and what type of features you will need, you will be equipped to get the best possible website for your small business.

About The Author:

Kevin Kielty writes for Internet Marketing Advantage in Raleigh. Web design is his area of expertise. Internet Marketing Advantage specializes in Raleigh website design at: http://www.raleighseocompany.net/

Making your Web Page Sell

By Mario Carini in Web Design

With today’s technology, selling has taken a new meaning. The door-to-door salesman is a thing of the past. Though the method of selling a product or service may be different, the basic rules are still the same and need to be reflected on your web site.

The Internet makes it possible to sell your product worldwide, but it lacks the personal touch that a face-to-face meeting could do. Your site has to work a lot harder if you hope to convince a viewer to buy your product.

A flashy website won’t always lead to lots of sales. Unless you have something positive and informative, most viewers will move on.

In order to keep your customer at your site, you need to entice the reader to read every sentence until he reaches the end of the page and wants to order. Your first page is the most important part of your website.

So what should your first page of your site contain? Preparing a website means doing more than throwing up a flashy page. There is to be some kind of organization to the site. A professional site is easy to navigate. If you are selling something of value get a professional to design a site for you. Consider yourself as a teacher educating your customer about your product and service.

It should show your product clearly. Your customer wants to see product not clever graphics or advertisements that have nothing to do with what he’s looking for. The customer wants to see what you have on that first page, not on page 20. Customers buy solutions, not the products or services.

A simple presentation. Your site can’t be cluttered up with banners, text ads and graphics. White space is important. Links should be clearly placed. The door-to-door salesman of the past sold only one item, whether that item was a hair brush, cosmetics or a vacuum cleaner. Keep your site simple, direct and easy to understand.

Persuasion. Your product or service should provide a solution to the customer. It should demonstrate to the customer that he is better off with your product than he would be if he just saved his money. Position your site as the low-risk provider of your product and service. The customer always looks for the lowest price for whatever he wants to buy. Persuasion addressees the customer’s fear of making the wrong decision when buying your item. This should come across in your web page. Overcoming the customer’s fear means placing a money-back guarantee if he isn’t satisfied.

Establishing trust online isn’t easy to do, but the one way of getting around this problem is to make yourself available. That means posting your email address, phone number and even your address as necessary. It’s a good way to establish a good relationship with a faceless customer. Remember that trust does not end after the first sale is made. Your are not just selling a product, you are working for your customer. That after-sales service should make up a part of your first page. Offer incentives that keep him from forgetting you and coming back to buy from you again and again.

Provide some incentives. You want your customer to buy from you and not surf over to the competition. You should offer up some kind of freebie or offer up a special discount if he responds immediately.

Take the time to design your front page. It’s the first thing people see before they make the decision to view the rest of your site. Your front page is like the outside of your home. If it isn’t attractive, no one will want to know what the inside looks like.

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Mario Carini is a freelance writer who has had many of his articles published at Helium, Suite 101, eHow, Constant Content and his blog at Word Press. For more info on his work send an email to: MrMaGca@gmail.com Among his interests are running an affiliate business where you can both buy and sell your own products. You can find more about this at: http://www.tripleclicks,com/71130/go

5 Things You Need To Know Before You Begin Designing Your First Web Site

By B Hopkins in Web Design

In today’s world, if you are in business, and you want people to take you seriously, then you need a website. The common response to needing a web site is to just throw up a couple of pages about who you are and what you do and then hope for the best. Unfortunately, because everyone and their aunt does that, your website tends to look and feel like everyone else’s, and your results end up being less than stellar in their performance. Before you put your first page out on the Internet, it is important to have a well-planned Internet Business Strategy. To improve your chances of receiving more exposure and business for your website, you should know these 5 important things before you ever begin to design your first web page.

1. Who is your target audience? This isn’t just the generic term like “my target audience is people with money to spend”, but who is your target audience really? What are their likes and dislikes? What kind of words and phrases are their “hot buttons”? What are their fears, and what kinds of problems do they have? What services to they require in addition to yours? If you don’t have an answer to any one of these questions, then you don’t really know your target audience enough to target your website specifically to them.
2. What makes you different than anyone else in your field? You are a unique individual and have your own special way of serving your clients. Why would someone want to do business with you instead of your competition? Remember, people buy experiences along with the product or service. What is unique about your customer’s experiences with you? Can you articulate that? If not, you need to be able to do this because you will need to put this on your website.
3. How do you want people to find you? This can be a 2-part question. If you want people to find you through the Internet, and via search engines, then you need to know what search terms your audience is using. Not what you THINK they are using, but what they are ACTUALLY using. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve received a list of search terms from clients that they want to optimize their website only to later discover that their target market doesn’t even search for the terms they optimized their site for. Sure, the terms may sound reasonable off the top you your head, but that may not be where their target market is coming from. Investing in a decent keyword research tool will pay for itself within the first year.
4. What do you want people to do once they get on your website? This is the biggest and most important thing that you will want to have clarity about. It doesn’t matter how many people come to your website. If they don’t take the action you want them to take, then all of your efforts are lost. You will need to be clear about what action you want them to take and when. Make it as easy as possible for them to take that action and don’t make them work for it, or you will lose them. You should limit the number of things people can do on your website if you are using your website as a lead-generator, or to sell something from. The more choices you give them, the higher the chance that they will do nothing. People can’t be inundated with choices or they will just leave your site.
5. How do you want to lead people through your website? There is a flow that you may want to take people through when they get to your website. What is the flow? You will want to understand and know what that flow is, and what to do when people come to your website in the middle of the flow. How will you guide the through in that case? Once you have your flow, you will know how to set up your website and where to place your navigation links, and call to action.

Understanding and getting clear on the things you need to know before you begin designing your first web page will save you time and money in the long run. Time from having to redo things and money in losing out on sales you could have made if you had set your website up to maximize returns in the first place. If you haven’t done these things yet, it is never too late to start.

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B. Hopkins develops and implements Internet Business Strategies for businesses so their websites generate residual income. Discover exactly what you need to quickly get your web site ecommerce enabled with our free online ecommerce course called “Sites That Sell”

Website Design - Identify Your Target Audience

By Grace Alexa in Web Design

Creative designs can attract a web visitor, but it cannot cast any major influence on the buying decision of the web visitor because the website has failed to address the target audience. So before a website designer decides to start working on a particular website design they need to analyse about the potential target audience are and to whom they are trying to communicate through this website?

It is obvious that you are creating a website to register your web presence and you intend to attract web visitors to know about your services. So it becomes your responsibility to make the visitor understand what your website design is trying to convey to them and what is it all about?

After finding the group of people who are likely to visit your website the next important phase for the web designer is to define the remaining part of your website development. Like who will read your contents? which graphics and sounds will be appreciated? what keywords will bring you more visitors and all? Once you identify your target audience it is really important to understand that you cannot communicate with everyone around, which means if you are targeting a woman then it will not be useful for the men to read through your webpage’s.

So web designer should wait to analyse the pros and cons of particular web design initiative. It does not matter what kind of website a website designer envisions but they can determine their audience. So it’s important to design a website which communicates with the beginners.

Website design gains momentum if it is interactive. Interactivity is possible only when you reach out to your target audience in reality to understand their views and their needs. So interviews or surveys some of your target audience will help you to pick the insights. This lessens the issues or errors in the final project. Remember the end user to finally approves your web design is the person with whom you are trying to communicate, not the person who is paying you.

Marketing segmentation which helps you to arrive in desired website design is:

1. Age group: Define clearly to whom you are intending to present your products or services.
2. Education: Whether you are aiming at school children or college going student or professional, their educational background will help you to come into the conclusion about the lucidity of the language to be used during website design.
3. Technical knowledge: If you are dealing with some technological services then analyse which type of technical knowledge your end users possess as this will help you to analyse about their strengths and abilities.
4. Graphical orientation: Judging the taste of the customers will help you to arrive into the correct graphical orientation to drive sales to your website.

So when the web developer clearly outlines all these aspects of website design by studying the target audience all other things become easier. Like the screen resolution, graphics format, fast load times, language etc.

So by understanding the needs of the target audience it becomes relatively easy for the website designer to solve many questions that come up during web design.

About the Author: Grace is an associate editor to the website http://www.sigmainfotech.com.au an Australian based Website Design Website development firm specialising in cheap Website Design web Application Development and Web Development Australia.

SEO can lead a Horse to Water but you Can’t Make it Drink

By Kevin Gallagher in Web Design

A good search engine optimization firm can get you to the top of the search engines for your chosen key phrase; however this cannot be a substitute for a bad business model. If you own an ecommerce website and you aren’t making sales then SEO can definitely put your website in the face of people that are activity seeking what you are selling but can’t make the sales for you.

However there are many other things you need to get right on your website to make sure you conversions increase with all this new targeted traffic that you will be receiving from the search engines. Let’s discuss what some of these essential factors are and how you can improve them.

Website Design

Website Design is a large subject in its own right and covers a wide range of factors. The overall look of your website has to have credibility and has to have a professional design. Every second a visitor is on your website they are making assumptions about how credible your website is. We have all done this, we visit a website and we see that the design is of poor quality and we instantly think that we don’t want to give our credit card details to this site as it looks like its been done on the cheap and perhaps they may rip you off. Of course there are many good companies out there that have websites like this but loose out on sales because their website does not reflect their professionalism.

Site architecture

If your website is hard to navigate and isn’t instantly easy to use you will infuriate your visitors and with everyone having very low tolerance on the web when surfing this will also result in people leaving your website. If you don’t have a search function on your website I suggest you get one now. A search function can also reveal statistics on what people are looking for on your website and what areas they are having difficulty locating.

Cart Abandonment

If the process of making an order on your website is not done in clear steps and you don’t offer the correct information at the correct time this can lead to cart abandonment. Some of the things you can do to improve this is offer a live chat feature within every strep of your ordering process and if anyone has a question at this stage they can always ask a questions without abandoning their order. Another tip is to include a link to your returns policy that opens in a new window that does not force you to abandon the sale. Having clear returns policies is essential as this one of the top concerns when purchasing from a website.

Pricing

If you pricing structures are not inline with the rest of your industry this can lead to the loss of sales. You can price yourself out of the market by being too expensive or even being to cheap. You need to research your industry to make sure you are offering quality products at fair prices.

Making the Horse Drink

Search engine optimisation as I have said can bring you the traffic your website needs but making the horse drink can be a different matter. You must TEST, TEST and TEST again. You website must be in a constant state of testing. So how do you test your website? Below I will explain some excellent tools to help you do this.

Google Analytics - An excellent way to analyse visitor behaviour and see what pages people are visiting and track what keyphrases that bring you traffic. A whole book could be written on this subject as Google supplies a wealth of information on your website within the Google analytics console. You can also setup sales conversion goals to track how many sales you are making through your website.

Website Optimizer

Google also has a tool that lets you display different content and styling to different visitors to track which of your sales copy and designs lead to the most conversions.

Search bar

Analysis your search queries that people are making on your website this can revel a wealth of information on what people are looking for and also what they can’t find. This can even give you ideas on new product ranges that you may never have though of.

At the end of the day you must react to how your visitors interact with your website. This all takes time but will be worth it in the long run.

Author Bio

Kevin Gallagher is the SEO Manger for Moovin On Up offering ethical SEO services and bespoke website design solutions.

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