You are here: Home

Six Web Design Mistakes to Avoid in Small Businesses

March 31, 2010 By Jay Leave a Comment

Whether you’re creating a web site for your small business on your own or hiring a web design company to do it for you, here are six common mistakes that you should avoid to ensure that success of your web site and your small business.

1. Using Images That Are Too Large
Picture paint a thousand words but if you’re using high resolution pictures on your homepage and just merely pulling the corners to shrink it, you should be aware that these may take a while to load depending on the connection of your readers. And in this age of quick results, the 10 or 20 seconds required to load your gamut of pictures may mean the difference for people to stick around or move on to the next site.

2.  Creating Pages That Are Too Large
Be conscious of the size of the page. You may have selected or designed a site with an unusually large resolution, meaning that people who visit your site won’t get the complete picture of the site initially. People would then be required to scroll left to right just to view the complete site, something most people won’t be willing to do if they’re in a hurry. Be sure to choose a resolution that can be viewed by most monitors, say 640×480 or 800×600.

3. Forgetting to Update Content Regularly
If you’re site has been around for a while, be sure that you update the information on the site, this includes the contact information, areas under headings such as “latest news”, and especially the copyright information, if you have one. If you’ve got items in this section which are 5 or 6 years old, then these are no longer news, they’re history so file them in your archives. Readers want to be kept abreast about the latest activities in your business or site, so make sure you post the most recent articles, items or information.

4. Creating Unfriendly Navigation
Don’t let your visitors get lost within your site, make sure you have user friendly navigational tools, such as buttons, clear links or drop down menus to make things clear and easy to understand. If you’re hiring someone to do it, treat your site like an outline and give web designer a written outline of how you want your site to be and what topic falls under which category.

5. Putting Up Blank Pages
Avoid blank pages, they’re a waste of time, space and money. Additionally, this would give readers the impression that you don’t maintain your site regularly. If you find yourself with a blank page, either fill it up with additional information or discard it, it deserves closure and you need clients.

6. Self-Designing Without Having the Required Skills
Unless you’re truly web savvy and know your HTML for your Java, it would be advisable for you to hire a professional do your site. Getting the services of a small business web design company saves you time when your site could be running and the frustration of figuring out how things are done. What is important is you know what you want and you can clearly articulate this idea to your designer then all you have to do is tweak the site based on the output. Be conscious of the fact that a professional looking website reflects on your company.

Filed Under: Small Business Web Design, Web Design Tips Tagged With: ,

Keyword Targeting for Your Small Business Website

March 28, 2010 By Jay Leave a Comment

Nowadays, if people want to look for something, whether it’s an answer to a simple question or the location of the nearest pizza delivery place, they use search engines. Gone are the days of using the yellow pages and area maps. Search engines like Google and Yahoo have forever changed the landscape of how things can be found.

As a small business website owner or operator, you should tap and maximize this trend by making your website more visible to search engines through these keyword targeting and search engine optimization tips.

Focusing on Specific Keywords Related to Your Business
A website, no matter how large or small, should include at least some related keywords in the title tag or body of the pages. These keywords are then used by search engines to generate results for users. Keywords are not merely disjointed single words but can actually be phrases which should be able to adequately define exactly what your website and company offers while being simple enough to be easily understood and found through searches.

In selecting these target keywords, make sure you avoid these common keyword targeting mistakes that people make:

  • Too little or using only one word as a keyword
  • Too much or using words that are too common or general and lastly
  • Too rare, by using words which are too specific or specialized.

The trick in making your website stand out in search engine results is actually striking a balance with all three factors.

Too Little
Too little, meaning using single words for your title tag will likely not translate into getting higher ranking in search engines which will also mean that the site will become less visible to potential clients. Imagine owning a custom-made pillow company, if you were to put “pillows” on the title tag then you’ll likely rank pretty low on the search results. This is because people searching for pillows by simply using the word “pillows” will have to sort through roughly 73 pages of results, including some rather disturbing ones, I might add.

Too Much
Too much or using general words also wouldn’t work. It doesn’t mean that just because you use more words, the results would improve, by putting “custom-made pillows”, the terms are still pretty general and will probably still result in a low search rank.

Too Rare
Conversely, one should also consider that being too specialized in your title tag would be counterproductive to getting hits on your site. For instance, lets us return to the pillow company for a moment and change the tags to say “abrazador pillows dophin designs”. You’d probably get a top stop for the searches for this specific query but then how many people will actually be looking for that specific item?

The key therefore to make your title tag and key words stand out in order to target those visitors who would be interested, if not actually searching for the service or products you have to offer.  Instead of putting “pillows”, why instead not use “custom-made pillows” or better yet specify a location in your title tags like “custom-made pillows New York” so that clients who are looking for that product can easily determine where you are.

In the case of “custom made pillows New York” you immediately narrow down the search field and you’re more likely to get a higher ranking in search engines. Remember that in designing your site, you should always think about what you would do if you were searching for something. If you were living in New York and looking for a custom pillow store, you wouldn’t merely type in “pillows” unless you want to sort through all those pillow sites in hope of finding one that is in New York in the first few pages. You’d probably narrow your search down.

There are certain tools which can provide necessary information on how to customize your site based on the different search engines. Try checking out the following keyword tools:

You can also hire Search Engine Optimizers (SEOs) whose job it is to make sure that your small business website can get near top results among the search engines. But be wary of the SEOs you select. If you are no familiar with SEO, you can read Google’s explanation about the subject in Google Webmaster Central.  It is pretty nifty and has a number of useful tips for starters and advanced users, as well.

Again, remember that the goal is to get more customers to avail of your services or products and your small business website is an excellent tool to help you do this. Your objective is therefore to make sure that your website performs its purpose by optimizing to get as much relevant hits as possible, which can hopefully translate into sales.

Filed Under: Small Business SEO Tagged With: , , ,

Small Business Web Site: Three Basic Design Tips

March 17, 2010 By Jay Leave a Comment

The success of your small business on the Internet will depend mostly on the how effectively your web site can grab and retain visitors’ attention. Remember, visitors will not know you have great products or services if your small business web site cannot grab their attention. Once they’re on your web site, your site’s content must be able to provide information that your visitors want so you can keep them on your web site (and get them to buy your products or services).

Here are three web design pointers that you can follow to help ensure that your small business web site can grab and retain your visitors’ attention.

Tip 1: Catch the Attention of Readers
Make the homepage stand out and immediately capture the attention of visitors. You can do this by using striking colors, fonts, and images, which complement the business theme — it gives web sites visitors an immediate idea of what the web site is about.

The colors and images that make up a small business web site have the critical role of conveying the company branding and the impression a web site visitor will take away from the site. The other pages should then focus on the written content, making sure that the content are not overshadowed by the too much graphics.

Tips 2: Balance Images and Text on the Web Site
Balance is necessary because, more often than not, visitors are more interested in the content rather than pictures. Many small business web sites have an abundance of images and graphics, while some have too few. The former can be considered visual overload and, therefore, distract the readers from the true purpose of the web site. Others are too desolate, making the web site seem too bland.

Try to keep colors at a reasonable number to complement the company logo and the homepage — I personally try to limit web site colors to three to four colors.

With regards to images and graphics, add these to the pages by inserting attractive headers and logos but utilize simple graphics for everything else. The sidebars and navigation tools are an important component of any web site. These should be simple and easy to use with easily identifiable buttons located on only one side of the page. Scattering these will probably just confuse readers and scare them off.

Tip 3: Publish Content That Help Your Visitors
Once you’ve gotten your readers’ attention, it’s time to get them to the meat of your small business web site — the written material. Many people aren’t keen on reading novel-like content on a single web site page. Therefore you should avoid using long paragraphs, and instead use short sentences or bullet points which are concise, easy to understand but are still able to deliver the necessary information.

Remember that the importance of any web site is its content. But for people to be interested in that, the first challenge is therefore to get the attention of visitors, the next is and maintaining their interest.

Filed Under: Small Business Web Design Tagged With: ,

Five Easy Ways to Improve Your Small Business Web Site

March 3, 2010 By Jay Leave a Comment

Your web site’s usability, navigation, and content are critical to business, especially if yours is a small business. Do you want to improve your small business web site design? Here are five easy methods that you can implement to help ensure that your web site visitors will always have a positive user experience.

1. Don’t bother with splash pages on your small business web site.
A splash page is typically a page that people put on their web sites as an introduction. The page commonly holds some sort of picture along with a large click here to enter sign, or sometimes people don’t say anything and just hope you will click on the picture to enter their web site. Splash pages are somewhat senseless and it’s just producing a lot work for your visitor as they have to click the mouse button an extra time just to see the content of your small business web site. By getting rid of the splash page the visitor can get to see the better parts of your web site immediately, without being forced to wait for a worthless page to load.

2. Keep your web site navigation simple.
To put it plainly if your navigation is too complex and visitors do not understand how to get around your website this is a big web design mistake. If a visitor doesn’t know how to navigate around your small business web site they will get disappointed and end up leaving. Keep your navigation plain and try to avoid enforcing scripts or complicated flash supported menus, not all web browsers support scripts, therefore a lot of your visitors could be missing out on important.

3. Keep paragraphs short and readable on your small business web site.
Although bearing lots of relative and informative articles on your small business web site is great, it’s a terrible idea to have the blocks of text too big. Not everybody likes reading and too much could discourage a visitor. Whenever you retain your paragraphs in moderate lengths, it’s much simpler for a visitor to read and absorb.

4. Use CSS for styling and fonts.
Be sure your text is clear and readable by using a basic fonts which are compatible with different systems. Although a lot of fonts may appear good on your computer but other visitors may not have that font installed. It’s a good web design practice to apply cascading style sheet (CSS) when building a website for your small business. CSS is a flawless way to set up and adjust your websites font and size settings. The good thing about applying CSS is that you are able to convert the look of your whole website just by editing the one file.

5. Check how your web site appears on different web browsers.
When you are building your website and still in the Web design stage it is significant to check how it looks on different browsers, just because it appears fine in Internet Explorer doesn’t mean it looks good on Firefox or Opera. A lot of visitors use secondary browsers and, if your web site appears like a complete mess, you will lose those visitors. You can check the web site design for your small business to make for sure it complies with the World Wide Web criteria at the w3.org web site. Validating your Web page will help to assure it functions decently on different browsers.

Filed Under: Web Design Tips Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,