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February 23, 2011

Must-haves for a Business Website

We’ve covered the top 10 unforgivable mistakes, now here are the top 10 must-haves for a successful business website.

1. An Effective Landing Page

A landing page is your chance to make a good first impression on potential customers, and should be designed specifically to engage new visitors. It should provide an overview of the business and provide a clear call to action.

2. Intuitive Navigation

Navigation is your chance to direct your customers and provide a clear path outlining your site’s content. Good navigation plays an important role in making it easy and simple for the visitor to move to the desired page and seek information or complete a transaction.

3. An About Us Page

The “about us” page provides an overview of the business. This is your chance to describe your company’s philosophy, goals and history.

4. Contact Information

It is easy to focus on collecting your potential clients’ information, but don’t forget that you need to make it easy for your customers to contact you. They may want to interact with you in a variety of ways: email, postal mail, phone calls or social media (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc.).

5. Visually Appealing Design

The aesthetics of a web-design plays an important role in getting and holding your customers’ attention. Avoid clutter and hard-to-read text, and choose a design that is appealing and fits with the look of your brand.

6. Your Own Domain Name

While there are some web-hosting services that provide a free domain name, it is always better to go ahead and register the domain of your choice with paid services like GoDaddy. The right domain name establishes the online identity of your business. Choose one that is simple, unique and easy to remember. This will also get you a critical SEO boost – a website with its own domain will get higher search engine ranking.

7. Reliable Hosting

Avoid free services when it comes to hosting your website. You get what you pay for – free services can come with unfavorable terms and conditions, your data is never your own, backups are not warranted and uptime isn’t stated. You need a host that gives you a good uptime so that your website is always available.

8. Customized E-mail

Having customized e-mail addresses gives a professional touch to your online presence. You should have addresses to match the website domain, so make sure when choosing a hosting service that this is available. Avoid using free services like Yahoo for doing business.

9. Search-Engine-Optimized Website

You’ve built a great site, now how will people find it? Search engine optimization can help bring customers to your homepage and make your site effective. More traffic means more business. Contact us to learn more!

10. Customer Support + Social Media Presence

Having a strong customer support system helps establish the trustworthiness of the business. The same holds true for online presence of the business. Even new clients want to see that you have a mechanism to provide ongoing support and address any issues that may arise.

Is your website lacking something? Feel free to call or e-mail us and discuss it!

August 5, 2010

Search Engine Truths

Frequently people will ask us how they can improve their website rankings in search engines. Over the past four years, we have developed the following list of suggestions.

  • Use unique and meaningful title information on every page. When title information is repetitive, the search engine assumes that the pages are too. The same is true for meta description.
  • Include your listing on relevant online directories such as Yellow Pages, Yahoo, Yelp, local service directories or professional groups.
  • Remove technology like frames and excessive graphics, especially if they include text. Text should stand on its own as HTML. Otherwise, it is guaranteed not be seen by search engines.
  • Keep a good balance between text and graphics. Search engines will ignore your graphics and focus on your text, but actual visitors will respond to both.
  • Keep your message accurate and current. More frequently updated sites tend to be indexed more. More usable updates satisfy visitors. Look at ways to add to your content. Blogs or regular site updates can be helpful.
  • Look for online communities to participate in. Freely exchanging information and providing expertise about your field will always increase success.
  • Monitor visitor activity and trends. Review activity and change your website to produce the desired results.

June 25, 2010

How strong is your web site?

We all know that the web experience has changed a great deal in the past ten years. Users are more sophisticated and expect to have their needs met. Competitors who may have inferior services can easily have a superior web site. Here are some of the major shifts – and what you can do to make sure your site measures up.

Old rule: The best designed sites dominate the market.
New rule: A pretty site that isn’t seen by anybody isn’t worth a dime.
Once upon a time, before Google was a verb, a good design was all you had to consider. But for years this has not been true. And a website that has great traffic and activity but is poorly designed is bound to be a disappointment. In the current business environment, a comprehensive web solution is critical. Read more…

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