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17 Ways to Make Sure Your Website is Working for You

By Hannah Du Plessis in Featured

Is your website bringing in at least five new inquiries per day? If not, you need to look at its functionality.

Your website acts as a “storefront.” You should put as much thought and care into your website as you would to the display in your store’s window. Your website needs to attract customers and keep them coming back for more. The following should give you a place to start and a guideline of what a good website should have and what it should do:

1. Where Do Your Eyes Go First?

You only have a few seconds to catch a visitor’s attention. That means you need to make sure that you capture their interest immediately. You need a headline that stops them thinking whatever they’re thinking, and think instead: “hey, this looks interesting! I need to read this.”

2. Do You Know Right Away What This Website is About?

Don’t have any distractions from the message you are trying to get across. If you start talking about how great your company is instead of what the visitor is interested in, you lose them.

How to Work with Your Web Designer to Get A Profitable Online Presence Even When You Are Time Starved

By Cathy Goodwin in Featured

Many business owners find themselves putting “website makeover” (or even “website development”) on the back burner because they just don’t have time – even though they know they are leaving money on the table. Others are too busy working with their current clients to develop their own compelling online presence.

The truth is, you don’t have to wait till you get some time freed up, which might not happen for another decade. And you don’t have to settle for a half-baked website that looks pretty but doesn’t bring you clients, sales and traffic. You can get a new website up fast, when you apply just 3 strategies for working with your website designer.

Strategy #1: Create your content – all your content – before you even think about developing your logo, color scheme or website layout.

Many business owners call a web designer or even a web development company as their very first step. After all, most of us are conscious of what a website looks like. We’re often taught to associate “website development” with “web design.”

My clients have been surprised to find how much time and money they can save by starting their website makeover by writing content, either as a DIY or by hiring a copywriter first. Here’s why.

You can lose your place in the designer’s queue if you do not have your content ready. Your web designer can’t complete your project without content. When your designer has to wait for your content, he or she moves on to other projects. When you finally call to say, “Content is here!” your designer may be in the middle of another project. She needs more time to re-learn your requirements and you probably will be charged for the extra time. Besides, she can’t stop work on her current project. You may wait a month or more to get your project going again.

Your designer relies on your content strategy to create a header graphic and choose the colors. Otherwise the design you choose will not support your message and may even clash with your USP (Unique selling Proposition). For example, I worked with a client who had paid for a high-end graphic of a relaxed beach scene. When we reviewed her niche, she realized she needed an image that was stark and strong. Mountain cliffs and stormy waves would have been more appropriate. My client was then faced with a choice to keep a graphic that didn’t fit her strategy or acknowledge that she had paid for an online presence that would be confusing rather than compelling?

Strategy #2: Work with a copywriter to help you communicate exactly how your audience will benefit

When it comes to websites, many business owners focus on eye-popping graphics and they agonize for hours over website colors and typefaces.

Yes, when you stand out from the crowd, you earn more revenue with a whole lot less effort. You can command higher fees because prospects realize you are unique. However, they won’t respond if you just LOOK unique. Your prospects and clients want to be sure you haven’t just taken an old brown cow and slapped on some purple paint.

That’s where expert copywriters make the difference as they can paint word pictures and introduce you as a 3-dimensional, standout professional. The truth is, your copywriter can set up the content so your designer can’t help developing a website that’s your own version of a purple cow.

Strategy #3: Put your players in the best position to win the profit game.

Often, business owners expect the web designer to win the whole online marketing game single-handedly with color, design, traffic and navigation.

The truth is, if your website were a football game, the content would be the quarterback and the design would be your offensive line.

On the football field the quarterback calls plays and makes sure the ball gets down the field to score points. The job of the offensive line is to make sure the quarterback gets through, unharmed, without interference.

On your website, your designer’s job is to make it easy for visitors to read your copy. Just as good linemen protect their quarterback, your web designer makes sure your graphics support your message and your site is easy to read.

Your copywriter calls the plays: How do you identify your niche so you know how to reach them easily (and motivate then to take action on your offer)? Which pages get featured on the main menu bar? What metaphors and stories will frame your content?

Once these critical decisions have been made, your web designer can implement the technical and visual components of your site. Some copywriters will even guide your designer and manage the entire project, just as a football quarterback is the coach on the field.

Now, Are You Ready to Work More Effectively with Your Web Designer So You Can Start Getting More Prospects and Clients?

The simple strategies I described in this article will multiply your marketing efforts, whether you are a beginner who’s trying to develop a website while creating a new company or a seasoned veteran who is busy seeing clients but desperately needs an upgraded website to keep prospects in the funnel. Now you can skip the hassle and time-consuming detours that many business associate with online marketing.

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Master Copywriter Cathy Goodwin helps time-starved entrepreneurs and owners of professional service firms create a profitable website presence fast, even when they are short on time. Now, she invites you to grab her FREE 5 Point Website Profits Checklist – that should be used as a guide as you complete the website development process. Get your checklist now at: http://www.CopywritingWithCathy.com

10 Valuable Aspects of a Successful Homepage

By Terri Seymour in Featured

The homepage of your website is often the landing page and is critical to the success of your online business. When people land on this page, you have just a few seconds to capture their interest. This page will be a giant factor in your conversion rate which is the ratio of visitors that respond to your goal action. This goal action can be subscribing to your newsletter, signing up for your ecourse, ordering your products, etc.

Your homepage needs to contain certain elements to be successful in raising your conversion rate. Read the list carefully and check to see if your homepage meets all of the following criteria.

1. Color – The color you choose for your website can have a big effect on your visitors. The type of site you have should be a factor in the colors you choose. There are essentially two types of colors – cool and warm.

Browns, blues and greens are cool colors and can make you feel relaxed, calm and assured. These colors are good for sites pertaining to medicine, relaxation and other sites that have reassuring answers to your problems.

Yellows, reds and oranges are warm colors that bring out feelings of energy, excitement and happiness. These colors work well for exercise sites, sports sites and other energetic type sites.

Purple is a good color for fashion and jewelry sites. It emulates sophistication, royalty, and luxury, but it is also feminine and romantic.

The Biggest Web Design Trends of 2011

By Steve Loates in Featured

Since we are over seven months into the year I decided it was time to give my take on what may happen in web design in 2011. (At least I thought I should probably write it before the year was over.)

So, over the past several weeks I have read a number of my favourite web design magazines, web design blogs and articles and viewed a number of cutting edge websites, particularly outside of North America, so that I could share some thoughts about what appears to be some of the major trends in website design for 2011. There is nothing scientific contained here, just some observations.

1. Less Use of Flash

It is not the fact that Flash is not a great technology…(when used appropriately it is)…but in the past year or so it has been over used, misused, abused to the point that it has developed a bad reputation. Certainly, the ongoing shenanigans between Adobe (creator of Flash) and Apple (iPhone and iPad) are not helping the situation. Today, websites need to have a clean, uncluttered design, fast loading and above all must be Search Engine friendly. This is a problem for Flash and now with the coming of the new web coding languages of HTML5 and CSS3, together with the explosive growth of web surfing on mobile devices perhaps it is the beginning of the end of Flash in web design.

Bilingual Website Design – There Are Special Requirements

By Brian Stephens in Featured

In many countries around the world, there is a high potential for you needing to produce a bilingual web design. This could be anywhere that the website owner is trying to reach a wider audience. Perhaps by catering for ex-pats or in fact where a country has more than one native language.

You may have to produce a combined English/French site but this could easily be English/Spanish, Portuguese/Spanish or any other combination for that matter. Also it does not necessarily follow that English will be the lead language e.g. you could be producing a French/English arrangement.

So now the question arises of how the site should be structured in order to be discovered by the search engines and in a way that gives the site proper recognition and appropriate ranking; so that it gets listed in relevant search engine results.

There are a few general rules of thumb to adhere to:

* try not to mix languages in side-by-side or above/below translations
* identify individual pages in the language they represent
* use the meta tag for language to tell the search engine what language is being presented
* provide links from one language to the other that are easy to follow
* for sites that are multiple language sites consider an entrance page as the ‘index’ page that offers all the available languages so that the visitor can decide which set of pages they would like to visit i.e. they select their language of choice

Expanding on the ‘linking from one language to another’ statement a little, there are a couple of options available. You could provide a link that takes the visitor from the page they are onto the replica page in the alternative language, or you could just take them to the ‘index’ page equivalent for the alternative language and let them navigate from there.

The latter is obviously easier and has some benefits in that it takes the visitor to the main welcome/landing page for the site so that they get the site message before moving onto the detail.

But this may not always suit the visitor who may see it as an unnecessary click. This is really a judgment call and probably a decision that needs to be made by the customer.

Either approach works for multilingual sites as well, although the navigation is a little more complex.

There are a couple of preferred ways of approaching how the language pages are collected together. Folders can be created for the alternative languages or alternatively sub domains can be created for the alternative languages e.g. fr.mydomain.com

This general approach to bilingual or multilingual sites does mean that the web designer needs to be fastidious in his site updates and to ensure that all pages where required get updated appropriately in all languages.

With respect to Google there are assumptions that are made on a sites geographic location based on the domain name that is used, what server the site is located on and to an extent the language used. To ensure that the site is targeted to the correct geographic location you can use Google’s webmaster tools to define a location. But this feature does need to be used with caution and this makes it worth searching their help files for information on how and when to do this.

So if you are planning a website design in France or any other country that is going to be bilingual or multilingual make sure that the design is being approached in the correct way.

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Affordable Web Design is now available to everyone.

You can choose between a templated static website design or create a WordPress blog and configure it to look like a static site at very low cost.

What To Do When Your Website Sucks

By Bonnie Jo Davis in Featured

Every business, large or small, local or virtual, needs a website. You already know you need a nice looking site with content that is free of typographical and grammatical errors. What you may not know is that in order to create credibility and build relationships with potential and current customers you need the following:

A professional design: You have the option of hiring a web designer who will create a custom design for you, or you can choose a template or theme. Some templates and themes are free, while others are available for a minimal investment.

Consistent navigation: It is normal to have your navigation in more than one place on your website. Perhaps it is on the right side of your page and in your footer; but no matter where it is located, all navigation elements must be identical to prevent your visitors from getting lost!

Visible contact information: Only criminals profit from having their contact information hidden. If you are a virtual company, you do not have to provide an address, but always offer a telephone number and an e-mail address. If your visitors cannot find you, they cannot do business with you.

A list of products and services: Create uncluttered pages with your products or services on them, and give enough information so that readers can decide if they want to purchase from you. Include pictures wherever possible.

Website Personified: Making Your Business Website Interesting – A SPN Exclusive Article

By Kevin Pahlau in Featured

Creating a business website can be a difficult task. Not necessarily from a technical standpoint, but rather from a design and communication standpoint. How do you make a business or corporate website interesting and include some personality in it? You need a professional presentation but that does not mean you cannot be creative or personable. You need to create interest in the business and persuade visitors to venture further into the site and learn more about the company which can lead them to contact the company or make a sale on the site itself.

As a designer, it can feel as though your creativity could become stifled when you first begin to work on a corporate web design project. This does not need to be the case though. You should be able to incorporate some interesting and creative aspects into the design and ultimately make the visitor’s experience a pleasant one. But how?

Break Out of the Cold Shell

There are many types of businesses besides large corporations that can appear dull and send the visitor into a light sleep very quickly. Business websites like insurance agencies, real estate companies, wealth management and consulting firms can all appear cold and lifeless. Yes, they are professional in presentation, but that does not mean creativity and personality cannot be included in the website.

As a designer working with any type of business, you want to explain to your client the importance of making a connection with the visitor to their website. This does not have to be something distracting with a lot of animation or as a client once said to me, “We need more wiz-bang.” It can be subtle and still be direct.

One of the keys to accomplishing this is to find the starting point for a conversation with the visitor. Simply invoking the right question, or a laugh can be the perfect ingredient to make the visitor want to stay on the site just long enough to make your point or to make a sale.

For example, to help set the tone you may want to incorporate friendly or imaginative photos of the owner of the business or employees at the company on the home page giving the site a welcoming feel to any visitor.

Even if you just have graphics with calls to action, it could be enough to invoke your visitor to stay and find out more about the products or services that are being offered. There are many websites that feature these minimalist characteristics. Their presentation focuses mostly on typography. They ask the right questions or have a direct approach in saying who they are. They do not offer too much information or answers on the home page and invite the visitor to look further into the site and find out more. These are great ways to include a little personality and create interest at the same time.

Welcome the Visitor

Large businesses and corporations could learn a lesson from some small businesses. When a visitor arrives at a website, they do not want to feel like they just walked into the giant lobby of a company and there is nobody there to greet them, answer some questions they may have or direct them to their primary destination. You certainly do not want to drive people away from the website by not offering enough information.

Sometimes smaller businesses have an easier time making visitors feel welcome. This is true with both the brick and mortar businesses as well as their websites. Simply featuring a friendly photo or graphic on the home page of the website or maybe a quote about an approach to business, outside interests, or an approach to life itself can offer a small connection and invite the visitor to stay.

Incorporating the personality of a small business owner can also offer the right kind of personal connection. Using this approach can make the visitor feel like they know what the owner is like. There is a feeling of trust and value in their presentation making you feel like doing business with them. Showing the typical stock photo of a handshake, a missing puzzle piece or a picture of a large glass building are not the kind of elements that will draw the visitor’s interest. You want to make them feel welcome and offer them a reason to stay. They are taking time to stop by and visit your website, so welcome them and take advantage of the opportunity.

Tell Them More but Do Not Repeat

In web design, it is common practice to include an “About Us” – or a “History” – page on a site. Stop and think how often you see an “About Us” or a “History” link on a particular website and then you visit the page only to be disappointed in finding out that it is exactly the same information that you read on the home page.

Why? Why repeat what has already been presented and frustrate the visitor? The “About Us” or “History” page is a prime opportunity to make a personal connection with your visitors. On this page you should dig deep and elaborate more about who the company is or who you are as a business owner. This doesn’t mean you have to divulge a favorite dessert or a favorite sports team.

Depending on the type of business and the size of the company, there are many ways you can make a personal connection with potential customers. If it is an older established company, tell your visitors about the rich history of the company and how your approach to your customers has not changed through the years. If it is a fairly young company, then you could explain to visitors about how you can provide a more one on one approach to business as opposed to some larger companies where that personal connection may become lost. Take it a step further and discuss company or individual accomplishments within the industry. Has the company won awards or have people within the company accomplished achievements in their work? Is the company involved with any charitable organizations? Do employees take part in giving their time and talents to a particular cause outside of work? If this is the case, tell the visitors about it. Show how employees have been recognized for particular accomplishments or how the company gives back to the community. These are all great ways to make a connection with your visitors and show there is more to the company and its employees.

Conclusion

Creating an interesting business website by including some personality can be very beneficial. You want to grab the visitor’s attention in a professional manner. You want to let the visitor know what services or products you have to offer.

You also want to make a connection with the visitor and not offer a cold presentation. Hopefully the ideas and suggestions mentioned in this article will help you in creating a business website that is interesting and inviting to any visitor. By adding a little personality to your business website, you can create the interest needed that will persuade your visitors to stay and hopefully develop a long lasting business relationship.

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Kevin Pahlau is a web and graphic designer and has over eight years experience in web and multimedia development. He has worked in both broadcast and print media and has been a contributing writer for a variety of online publications.

Website Redesign Best Practices – Part 3

By Ben Kemp in Featured

In this third article on redesigning a website, we are going to look closely at off-page content issues, such as meta-tags, links, domain names etc.

Off-Page Content

The page Title tag is the single most important on-site element! There are also other opportunities for increasing the density of key words and phrases – some are listed below;

Title – The No.1 On-site Element

The maximum recommended length is 8-10 words, or 70 characters. Full manual control is important. In a CMS or ecommerce scenario, if all that can be offered is dynamic, it should be ordered as follows: Product Name + Category + Tagline :: maximum 70 characters. Do NOT use stop words, or irrelevant words. The best Title tag is one that is unique and strictly relevant to each individual page, and this is crucial to attaining top search engine rankings.

Website Redesign Best Practices – Part 2

By Ben Kemp in Featured

Site architecture can make or break a site’s chances of achieving prominence in the search engine results pages. There is usually no one single element at issue, more a combination of items that collectively add up to an overly high impediment to search engines. Improper use of Flash and JavaScript are common culprits, as is failure to use the most basic of website building blocks.

Site Architecture Issues in Detail

Search Engine Friendly URLs:

* URL’s should include a relevant keyword phrase specific to every page generated!

* Avoid capitalization AND spaces in file names. Use hyphens to separate words instead.

Search Engines can now cope with URL’s with multiple iterations of ?, & and = in them, but they are incomprehensible to HUMANS! But nonsensical URL’s do not provide any clue to the search engines as to what the page content is about. Search-friendly URLs are valuable components in the process of categorizing page content.

Why Does My Website Suck? – A SPN Exclusive Article

By Scott Kasun in Featured

I’ve spent considerable time over the last week bringing a new employee up to speed on a variety of topics. He’ll be performing many duties for us (such is the joy/curse of working for a smallish firm), and among those tasks will be consulting with prospective new clients about their current sites.

After I walked him through the analysis of several sites, he finally posed a question to me, “just what makes a website suck?”

That’s not an easy question to answer – at least not succinctly. The reality is that a website can fail in many ways, yet still be a success. The tricky thing is that most site owners truly don’t know if their site is failing or succeeding, simply because they’ve never established any kind of measurement standard. BUT…that’s not what we are talking about here; we’re speaking only of “first glance” evaluations of websites.

So with that in mind, here’s a list of things we look at when we evaluate the sucktitude of a website.

Design Failures
The first thing we consider is the overall look and feel of the site. For the most part, we’re trying to determine if the site looks like it was developed in the last year or two. Here’s the thing – the details that make your website look sparkly new are the very things that make it look dated quickly. Designers and programmers can sometimes get caught up in the most recent trends, which are fantastic if you plan to facelift the site every 18 months. Otherwise, they become the green shag carpet of the interwebs.

Another comment regarding design: it’s extremely subjective. The same site that makes me wince in pain elicits happy squeals from others. I get that, which is why this list stays away from criticism about color theory and other important (and more subjective) elements of design.

With that said, here are some obvious design failures:

• "Floating Island" syndrome
  For many years, websites were developed to be viewed within a screen resolution of 800×600. Today that resolution accounts for less than 1% of all screens, and 85% of all visitors use a resolution greater than 1024×768 (stats courtesy of w3schools.com). Sites that were developed for smaller screens look like tiny islands floating on a massive background. Visitors feel pity for the poor, tiny, isolated website – and it’s doubtful that’s the feeling you were trying to evoke.
• Annoyances
  Most of these items have been discussed ad nauseam (and thankfully aren’t as common as they used to be), so I won’t bother to address why they make your site suck – just know that they do:
• Splash screens or entry pages. You know, those pages that cost a ton to build and then everyone clicks the "skip this" link.
• Sounds. Any sounds. Yes, even those "super cool" sound effects when you click links.
• Gratuitous Flash or rotating images. This decade’s version of animated GIFs (shudder).
• Funky navigation. Don’t make me figure out how your navigation works – I’ll simply leave.
• Reverse text, particularly black background with white text. Ugh.
• Outdated information. In this day and age of technology and access, there’s just no excuse.
• Left aligned or full width websites
  Early websites were all left aligned or full width. Typically when you see this now, it’s on a neglected site, a government site, or a neglected government site. There are some very creative designers that can pull this off, but it’s rare.
• Cheesy stock imagery
  There’s a reason that good professional photographers make the money they do. They can see things through a camera lens that the rest of us don’t. Want to know the single best upgrade you can do to your site? Replace all the images with professional photos that are specific to your organization. It’s well worth the investment.

Functional Failures These are a little harder to quantify, but site killers nonetheless. Obvious functional issues include things like broken navigation, sites that don’t work in all browsers, malware and missing pictures.
Additional failures include:

• Narcissism
  No one cares about you, or your website. There, I said it.

  Your site visitors only care about whether or not something you have will benefit them. Answer that question FIRST, before you tell them "About Us" or about your awards or anything else. Take a look at your site’s navigation. What comes first – About Us, or information about your products and services? Most websites need to have their navigation reversed in order.

  Quick tip: when writing copy for your website, spend 90% of your time on addressing what your prospects want or need, and 10% on info about your company. When people send us copy, it’s obvious they have done just the opposite.

• No Clear Message
  Yes, the picture of the blossoming flower on your home page is evocative and inspiring. Here’s the thing – it does nothing to tell visitors who you are or what you do. Oh, and there’s this little company called Google that would also like to know what you’re about so they can help searchers find you. Much like people, the search engines will simply move on if it’s too difficult to figure out.

  Visitors should be able to determine who you are and exactly what you do in 3 seconds or less.

• No Engagement
  This is the area in which more than 90% of all websites fail. There should be clear cut call to action on the home page that encourages visitors to click and see more of your site. A call to action can be anything – a contest announcement, newsletter signup, a download, contact form, even simply driving visitors to current/updated information on your site.
• Poor Search Engine Visibility…or worse

  Some sites are built strictly for credibility’s sake; the site owner simply wants their clientele and prospects to see that they have a presence. There isn’t a need to spend extra time and money to optimize the site for the engines. But for the majority of websites, SEO is an important consideration. It’s very easy to determine what sites have had optimization done and the level of competency.

So what’s worse than poor visibility? Violating the guidelines, which can get your site delisted and erase any possibility that a visitor could even stumble on it. Most site owners are oblivious to the fact that their site is breaking rules.

Feel Me
The last element to be considered is the most esoteric of all – the "feel" of a website. What is the" feel"?

It’s the connection users feel to the website, the emotions that are invoked when they visit. It’s the sense that the visual impact matches the image visitors have – or want to have – about the product or service they are after. It’s the difference between the About Us page for Wilson Sporting Goods and the About Us page for Franklin Sports.

It’s the final factor that turns site visitors into site ambassadors.

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Scott Kasun is one of the geeks at ForeFront Web, a web design firm based in Dublin, Ohio. Follow him on Twitter @forefront.

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