Let’s Design A Website That Sells

Posted by johnnyo in Site Blog      Comments Off

Feb
18

Would you buy meat from a grocery store that left the bad meat in with the good meat or wasn’t clean? Would you buy a car from a sales lot that had totaled automobiles on the front lot? I wouldn’t and neither would you. Your website is your grocery store; your car lot. You must have an atmosphere that is pleasing to buyers. One that tells that buyer that you are not an amateur, but instead a trained, seasoned professional. Your site is a direct reflection of your product and that is why that having a well designed website can make or break your sales.

The first thing to keep in mind when designing your website, is “surfability”. Take a few minutes a look around at several web pages. What makes them appealing? Were there some that you closed out of immediately? Why? Take notes and do your research. Keep in mind that when a person visits your site they have a goal in mind. They are either seeking information or shopping for a product. Give the person what they want without having to search for it. Be sure that all the information on your site is relevant to your product. Make the buyer think that they need your product to solve their problem.

Your main page serves a very specific purpose. It should be an avenue by which the customer can shop your site. It should be easy to view and load very quickly. This is your first impression and we all know that first impressions can either close the deal or loose the deal. Make it simple. It is best to have links that are easily viewable by the reader that will navigate them to where they want to be. Tables are often a great choice when deciding on a way to design the main page of your site. Your main page should load very quickly, chances are if it takes the page more than ten seconds to load even on a 56k modem, the customer will click away to save time, hoping to find the information or product elsewhere. To increase the loading speed of your main page you should avoid large graphics or excessive graphics. Too many banners or special effects can cause a page to load slowly as well.

To make your web site more appealing to the eyes, you should stick to mild colors. If your site is a content site where the user will be doing a lot of reading, it is best to stick to black and white. Color can be added when using tables, as a way to brighten up the page, but remember to keep the overall look of the page professional and appealing to the audience that will be visiting most often. Since screen resolutions vary among monitors, it is a good idea to set the pixels to a standard 800×600. You may also choose to set the tables in your web page to span a percentage of the page rather than a set number of inches. This will be sure to accommodate all screen sizes. You should remember that a lot of Internet users will not use the same browser as you, and therefore you should be sure that your site looks as good on other browsers as it does your own. You can do this by downloading several browsers through which to look at your page.

Be aware of the fact that the overall look of your website is a way to make money. The appearance of the site, if designed properly, can be an excellent marketing strategy for your product or service.

Advantages of a Custom Website versus using a Website Builder Tool

Posted by johnnyo in Site Blog      Comments Off

Jan
30

Advantages of a custom website versus using a Website Builder Tool

The internet has revolutionized business all around the globe. Almost every competent new or existing business wishes to exploit the incredible potential of the internet, and the first step is to have a web site designed done and maintained by a professional web site design service or build and maintain it yourself. One of the first things to consider is your computer ability. If you despise computers and software and find them confusing and frustrating then building your own website can be quite a task. One that you may not want to undertake. However, if you enjoy working with computers and learning new things or if you just have the patience to stick with it, then building a website is within your grasp. You may also decide to do it yourself to save cost. If you still feel that you want to build your own site you should choose software that is easy to use and user friendly.

Your website should be as unique as you and your business. You should select the website that is specialized in what will meet all your needs, both now and in the future. Custom based websites are for those who already have a website but are looking for those special finishing touches that quality custom graphics can provide. Designer graphics can make your website stand out above the rest and a custom website specializes in taking your original graphic or photo and turning it into a unique work of art. Quality graphics make an incredible difference in the visual appeal of your website.

Actual site “content” continues to be essential to the success of a website. More often than not though, visual appeal is the determining factor as to whether or not a client or customer will remain on a website long enough, to actually see the product or service the business is providing. Custom websites are for those who don’t have the time to design or create, but want to get things mush better and fast with a nice graphics.

Web site builders are online tools which anyone can use to build a professional looking Web site without programming and have it hosted instantly. No software to buy, no code to learn, all you need is to be a little Internet savvy and know how to click your mouse.

Most business owners today know that having a web site is an essential component of marketing. In the past, the choices were to hire a professional web designer, hire a local teenager to create a site for mall money, or learn to do it yourself. The last two options, are the least expensive, and were the preferred method for small businesses. The results are often not what businesses need to grow, reach, and impress new potential customers, however. They seem good at the start but quickly become limiting.

If you operate or manage a business, you surely must realize the increase in e-commerce taking place today. Many businesses find themselves searching for the best way to increase their exposure on the internet, and for most a website is the first course of action. As most businesses operate on firm budgets, finding cost effective solutions are usually one of the first thoughts when looking to make new purchases. When it comes to creating a website there are many affordable software programs that can produce professional results. Business software should be capable of handling your needs today and in the future. Business are always changing, adding new products, changing or removing old products, offering specials, having sales, etc. By choosing a business website builder over a professional web designer you will be able to make changes to your website whenever you want to. Another benefit is that you will be avoiding the high costs associated with developing the website and costs for making any necessary changes.

Website Builder tools advantages to you are increased revenue, cost control, caters to the large demand existing for web designing in the SME sector and can increase the client base without adding to your overhead. The advantage that your customers gets is a professional quality website, up and running in minutes and a User friendly and easily customizable interfaces that gives a complete website with all its frills and features and a nice attractive design. The downside is that you are limited to the look and functions of the tool and the templates or designs they provide.

On of the advantage of a custom website design is that the web site will look and function exactly as you want. A custom made web site can promote your brand and increase sales. The functionality and design of your website is important, because the images and text on the screen can make an indifferent visitor turn into a keen client, and the goal is to optimize your site to evolve maximum traffic conversion.

As more and more people are starting their own small home business many are finding that having a website is an important factor to consider. When one starts to consider building a website, especially the novice, many questions arise including…. can I create a website myself or should I hire a professional?

Hiring a professional is a great way to go if you can afford it. Although there are several things to keep in mind: how much will it cost? How much will ongoing maintenance cost? What will changes cost? How long will changes take? etc. As a result, many people opt to build their own website and begin searching for software that can easily help them.

As you start searching for an easy web site builder, there are some factors that you should take into consideration so that your new software will serve you now and the future.

There is quite a variety of easy web site building software and content management(CMS) based websites on the market today. In addition, some of the software available today is very expensive, geared more for the professional web designer, and come with a huge learning curve.

The options for small businesses to get a site developed have changed from the past. There are now sophisticated “site builder” tools available to small business owners, bundled with many web hosting packages. By using templates, and a content management system to manage updates to the site, it became easier to set up and maintain a web site, and many development companies have canned this functionality, for a fee. Hosting providers are increasingly offering tools to automate the web site building process, and with good reason. This new option has many benefits, as long as the business owner recognizes that there are trade offs and limitations to getting a web site this way. Some of the downsides are…the design is limited to their predefined templates. The functionality is limited to the tool. Also, in most website builder tools it is hard to perform search engine optimization, which is essential for a site to be found in the major search engines.

One of the biggest attractions for site building tools is the cost. It won’t necessarily cost less to get your site this way, but it does provide a way to spread the cost over time. The cost for a custom website varies as per the feature and function it carries with itself.

Many people are concerned with building their own website, fearing boring designs and complexity. However, it is now becoming apparent that there are many custom web site builder software products on the market that promise dynamic layouts, professional templates, and user friendly web design tools. The professional web designers know there are a few more things to know, but sometimes they find some irony in the fact that web developers, in their quest to improve and better the web, have made themselves “optional”. Most site building tools today are very robust, making it simple to add forms, searching, maps, guest books, calendars, and a whole variety of elements to a web site. Even better, the hosting company sometimes offers an entire suite of services – the site builder, email marketing, search engine optimization and statistics, all in one package along with the hosting.

There is also a possibility that the service will require you to keep some branding on the site telling people that you used their website designs and tools. This is more common with the free site builders – which pay for themselves by putting ads on your site. If your goal is to build a business web site, it’s really not worth sacrificing your professional image by getting something free, which screams CHEAP.

Low quality websites sometimes attempt to sell expensive products or services. These websites cannot succeed. Studies reveals people spend more time on a well designed web page than on a low quality web page. There is a comparative relationship between the amount of time that an average visitor will spend on a web page and the amount of time that was spent building the web page.

Websites are an important aspect of online businesses. They are the first face of interaction between the user and the business. The website creates the first impression on the user and hence needs to be effective and impressive too. It is the job of web design services to make the website user friendly and search engine friendly too, so that it can serve the purpose of both effectively.

A tool can make things happen – but if you don’t know what to make happen, it is either a useless tool or a dangerous one. There is a learning curve in knowing how to present information online (called information architecture in the profession), as well as for using the site builder. In other word, the fuller featured the tool; the more there is to learn. If you aren’t familiar with color theory, use of typography, information architecture, navigation and interface design, and page layout and design, you can potentially make something that will hurt your business more than help it. So, unless you are already computer and web savvy, figuring out all the features within your web hosting and site builder package can be time consuming and frustrating.

In the end there are ways that a business can take advantage of these new options and still create a functional and professional web site. One way is simply take your time and research the available website templates, and find the one that has the most features and flexibility, that meet your functional requirements. In other words, spend the time to learn the things a seasoned pro would bring to the table. The internet is a massive library of “how to” information, where you can literally teach yourself anything – and with enough time spent, you could potentially learn how to layout information, what colors and fonts work well together, how to conduct your marketing online and optimize the site for search engines. The second is choosing the best suitable custom website design company and work with them to build a professional website that meets your needs get your imaginations carried and make business a greta success.

Thumbs Up for Web 2.0

Posted by johnnyo in Site Blog      Comments Off

Jan
28

The next popular trend that’s making waves after the Online world is your so-called Web2.0.

Web 2.0 defines a more recent incarnation of the World Wide Web typified because of the transition that come from the typical website hosting HTML/XHTML pages, into a platform that provides a point of presence (sometimes known as a Web portal), that will any of the following interactions may occur.

Web 2.0 is the philosophy of mutually maximizing collective intelligence and benefit for each participant by formalized and dynamic information sharing and creation.

While on the topic of Web 2.0, we cannot stop discussing in regards to the way many people welcomed its entry.

With all the entry of Web 2.0, it is obvious the fact that dimension of venture on the world wide web has changed completely and other people have started trying the technology for their convenience.

There are various individuals that eat, drink and sleep on the world wide web but still not aware of the uses of Web 2.0 along with the various Web 2.0 sites.

The earliest Web2.0 conference that locked in 2004 was considered the giant step towards making the Web 2.0 popular. This Web 2.0 conference was within a way the pioneer for a lot of such conferences that followed.

Based on our experts there are plenty of companies or supplements that embody these principles in his or her description of Web 2.0-ness.You can find four stages Web 2.0 applications. To get started withLevel-3 applications, by far the most “Web 2.0 Application”-oriented, only exist on the world wide web, deriving their effectiveness coming from the inter-human connections and from the network effects that it makes possible, and growing in effectiveness in proportion as people make more utilization of them. A number of the Web 2.0 sites that fall inside this category are eBay, Craig list, Wikipedia, del.icio.us, Skype, dodge ball and Ad Sense.

In talking about Level-2 applications that support Web 2.0, we mean those Web2.0 applications that may operate offline but gain advantages from logging on. Flickr is arguably one such Web2.0 site, which pluses from its shared photo-database and from its community-generated tag, database. Next comes Level-1 applications that operate offline but gain features online.

Writely (now Google Docs & Spreadsheets) and iTunes (as a result of its music-store portion). Level-0 applications work well in offline as well as in online. Map, Yahoo! Local and Google Maps (mapping-applications using contributions from users to advantage can rank as “level 2″). Non-web applications like email, instant-messaging clients along with the telephone fall further from above hierarchy.

When we talk about Web 2.0 Technologies, Web 2.0 are inclined to foster innovation within the assembly of systems and sites composed by pulling together features from distributed, independent developers (a variety of “open source” development and an end with the software-adoption cycle, the so-called “perpetual beta”). Web 2.0 technology encourages lightweight business models enabled by syndication of content and of service and by simplicity of picking-up by early adopters.

Web 2.0 marketing is just getting the best away from marketing over the internet. A number of the commonest Web 2.0 strategies include social Book-marking, RSS marketing, video marketing and Blogging. It involves getting repeated viewers against internet page but this can only perform when we supply the users with good quality content.

A Business Without a Website is Like… a (Business) Man Without a face!

Posted by johnnyo in Site Blog      No comments

Jan
25

A Business Without a Website is Like…
a (Business) Man Without a face!

A business man without a face has no mouth to tell you who he is, how to reach him, what times he is available, what services or products he has to offer. His lack of any features and inability to communicate mean that it will be hard to get know him or decide whether you can trust him.

A business in the 21st century without an Internet presence is like that man. How will they know what you can do unless you have the ability to tell them? How will they know what you are like unless you can show them? How will they be able to find you unless you are able to direct them?

Big display ad in the Yellow Pages? Forget about it! Most people won’t cross the room to find the big yellow book in order to search through the arcane categories only to fail to find what they are looking for.

You’re phone number is in the White Pages, right? Surely, your customers can find you there. They can but they won’t! A majority of people now use a Search Engine to find the phone number of the the business that they already do business with, not a phone book!

In fact, half to two-thirds of the searchers who come to a business web site put the name of the business in some form or other into a Search Engine. They didn’t write down the number the last time they called it. They didn’t program it into their phone. Why bother with that when they can find a phone number in a few moments by searching the Internet for it ?

Of course, that assumes that when an existing customer or prospective customer comes looking for you by your name that you have a web site so it can show up and tell them what they want to know. They wanted something, your phone number, your hours, your location, details on your products or services but they didn’t get it! Not from you, anyway. So, if you don’t have a web site, and somebody want to get in touch with you but can’t, what will they do? Maybe they will find it somewhere else. In any event, you already have a strike against you. You’re still operating your business in the last century while most of your customers are living in this one. Think about it. Only a customer with perseverance will succeed in finding you when you’re operating in Internet stealth mode by not having a web site!

You, yourself, probably use Search Engines frequently to get information about businesses that provide products or services that you need. Everybody does…but if you have no web site to tell your story, they won’t find you!

The absence of a web presence in the Internet age is devastating. People are searching on the Internet for exactly what you do! How much are you spending to find new customers? What are you doing to help them find you? So, if you don’t have a web site, you need to get one! Any web site is better than none. Even a crummy web site will allow your existing customer’s to stay in touch with you but why stop there? It’s not very hard to have a good web site that will be found by prospective customers. We’ll be talking about that in a subsequent post.

Bottom line: If you’re like a man without a face, your competitor’s may be attracting your customers away from you and also getting the new customers that you should be getting. It’s time that you start planning to find your voice, tell your story, let them know who you are and why they should give their business to you. Stay tuned. Help is here!

Why renting a website makes sense

Posted by johnnyo in Site Blog      No comments

Jan
5

Renting a website makes sense especially for start-ups, small, and medium size companies. We offer a premium website for a small monthly payment. Why spend hundreds or thousands of dollars upfront on a website when you can rent a website for as low as $29.95 a month.

Maintenance, hack protection, virus protection,  back-ups, and hosting your website are very important considerations too.  At Websites You Can Afford we do all of the above on state-of-the-art servers. In other words, we do it all so you don’t have to!

Rent-to-own buyout program is available (we can continue to maintain and host your website if you wish)