Website Design: Template or Custom (Part II)?

Last week’s post discussed the pros and cons of using a template for your website design.  Let’s now review the pros and cons of a custom website design.

Custom Web Design Pros

• Custom layout
• Search engine friendly
• Built for your needs
• Scalability

Custom Web Design Cons

• Takes longer to design
• Higher Costs

With a custom website coding and page design is done from scratch. Therefore it takes longer to create. However, a professional designer will give you a website that will grow with your company, blend with your printed marketing collateral (enhance your brand) as well as give you credibility with your target audience.

The more professional looking your website is, the better your chances of attracting customers, producing leads and phone calls. When deciding if you should use a custom or template website design, keep in mind that you want your business to stand out from the crowd and be memorable.

Having a website that looks nice is only part of the marketing package. Custom or template you will have to work on search engine optimization (SEO). So how do you choose? Ultimately you should find out the cost of each method. Include the time it is going to take you learn how to use a website template and compare that to the cost of a custom website design where you will have time to market or build your product in the same time frame.

Whichever way you decide to go, template or custom design, remember that websites are an extension of you and your business.  While templates may save you time and money in the short-run, a personalized design will always be more beneficial in the longer run.

Website Design: Template or Custom (Part I)?

I recently sent out a proposal for branding the company of a small business owner. For illustrative purposes we will call the client Joan.

Joan was on a very tight budget as all start-ups are.  I mentioned to Joan that instead of a custom website we could cut cost and time considerably if we customize a template for her. I told Joan a website is like building a house from the ground up or purchasing a ready-made new home. Here is what I shared with Joan to help her decide.

Template Web Design Pros

• Customizable
• Wide selection of premade and turnkey templates
• Quick turnaround time
• Very low cost

Template Web Design Cons

• Design not unique
• Customization may be limited
• Coding errors that prevent SEO (reducing chances that visitors can easily find you)
• Generic look of design (not branded)

With templates, the graphic design part of the work has already been done; you pay a licensing fee to use that template, as long as you comply with the terms of the license. Website templates are cheap, but like everything else you will get exactly what you pay for.

If you are a client looking to save money and time, we suggest going with a website template and finding a professional web designer that will customize a pre-made template design for you. Beware of web design scams from designers who sell premade templates as unique custom designs!

Next week I will share the pros and cons of custom website designs.

Using Social Networking to Promote Your Business

Obviously, taking your business to “where things are moving” starts with some kind of company site.  The question is—How do you use this site?  Or, even more pressing, How do you leverage the vastness of the web to bring people back to your valuable little corner?

Whist there are a myriad of different strategies and this topic has been discussed on numerous blogs in much depth, let’s close in on leveraging Social Networking.  I don’t think the argument needs to be made for interaction within these communities, but just in case, Christopher Carfi, an expert at building trust with the customer explained:

“Deceptively simple, online social networks contain great power. They change the online space from one of static web pages and stale marketing messages to a live, vibrant  network of connected individuals who share their abilities, expertise and interests.”

Originally posted on The Social Customer Manifesto

Heads up: ‘Social Networking’ is the big broad general term.  However, there are distinct differences between social networks, social bookmarking, social news, social media, blogs, and micro-blogging sites. (I know, that’s a lot!  More on these later.)

GETTING STARTED:

Before you or your employees unleash your efforts and dive headfirst into the “social sphere” you need to set some boundaries and define a few things:

WHO YOU ARE:

• Know the image you are projecting (literally and metaphorically).
• Come up with a slogan or catch phrase and stick to it.
• If you don’t own a URL yet, make sure you get one before you start your campaign so you can have everyone spreading the exact same links

Realize that you are climbing the “branding hill”.  Consistency is key!

KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE:

OK, here is where you’ll need to understand the difference between all the ‘socials’ involved in Social Networking.  Here’s a brief glimpse at each:

• Social Networks: like MySpace or Facebook. Meet friends and show the world who you are.
• Social Bookmarking: like Magnolia or Del.icio.us (or related recommendation system Stumble Upon), share your bookmarks with your friends and find what they like.
• Social News: like Digg or Reddit. Submit any type of content to be voted upon by other users.
• Social Media: like YouTube or Flickr. Share your videos or pictures and comment on others.
• Blogs: like Mashable (on social networking) or Technorati (on technology). Keep people informed by writing a post or article. Include visuals. Best online source for writing blogs is Skellie.
• Micro Blogging: like Twitter or Tumblr. Let people know what you’re doing, what you’re interested in, or whatever – sort of like an “away message” on instant messenger.

How do you know which ones to target?  It all depends on you and your business.  If your product is music, like mine, then you probably won’t be spending much time on a business social network like LinkedIn Instead you might use one like ShareNow.com – the creators of Lifestyle Social Networking (my current employer) where you can participate in different communities based on common interests.

INTERACTION:

You are you – so maintain your you-ness!  People don’t want a generic response, pretty sure they never did.  They are done with corporate emails and packaged statements.

While it may be time consuming to actually communicate with people, Aaron Uhrmacher at Mashable tells us that “Social media platforms help facilitate conversations between individuals, not companies” – you are absolutely relished by your consumers.

Your goal is to establish a relationship here.  You represent a company or product, but because you are still you people will take the time to listen.  You need their trust or you will be written off to the spam pile.  Once you’re in that pile it’s over.

The type of relationship you are looking to forge will give you an idea of what medium you will use to communicate (which will, in turn, shed light on the appropriate people within your business who should do the communicating.)  Should you be putting up funny video responses to spread virally?  Creating a fascinating blog?  Running contests and promoting them with micro-blogging?  Maybe you build a widget that can be embedded across the net… or eventually all of the above!

Don’t forget—be open and honest about who you are and what you do!  Otherwise you will be found out.  It’s inevitable!

PURPOSE:

Keep the bigger picture in mind!  Your only investment here is time, but the fact remains that time is limited.  Find the balance between infiltrating the entire internet to splash your link everywhere and only getting to know a select crowd on one or two communities.  Maybe you split your task into a job for two or three people.

Using Social Networking to promote your business puts you directly in touch with your consumers.  Have fun with it!

 

Contributor: Brad C. writes the Official Blog for ShareNow.com – the LifeStyle Social Networking community and spends most of his waking hours either riding his motorcycle or performing around Los Angeles

6 Tips To Using Stock Photography

Are you a new business that is looking to create a website, brochure, or produce other forms of marketing materials? If you’re not, you should be and one important thing you will need is photos. Here are some tips.

1. Endless Choices and Professional Quality
   Amateur photos never look as nice as the professional ones. Consider red eyes on your models or problems with inconsistent focus. These are small errors that occur often, but with stock photos, you can have flawless images without the worry or the need to turn yourself into a photo editor. Stock photography offers anything you can imagine in a photograph with millions of choices. Many websites are available that offer stock photos. Photos.com, iStockphoto.com, Jupiter Images and Getty Images are just a few of the popular sites that are worth looking into. Logo Design Guru also offers free access to stock photos included in all of our web and brochure package options. It both makes the creative process easier and more convenient.
2. Image Overuse
   Stock photo sites do have a ton of variety, but keep in mind; if they are available to you, then they are available to everyone else as well. When using stock photos, you often run the risk of using repeats. Standing out is important, therefore if you see the same photo all the time, the power and effectiveness of the image is lost.
3. Does Your Stock Photo Look Staged?
   It’s true that people in general have very short attention spans and most of the time, plain text on a page is not going to keep someone’s interest. Photos nicely break up the space and draw more attention to the content, even if the image is something simple, such as a random, smiling person. These types of photos can work well, but beware of the obviously staged image. If an image is too generic, it is clear that it’s a stock photo. This staged look doesn’t appear natural and can give off a bad impression.
4. Avoiding Copyright Infringement
   Often people think that if an image appears on the web, it’s free for the taking. This is unfortunately not true at all. Similar to pieces of music or artwork, photographs are often copyrighted and snatching them up from someone else’s site is breaking the law and can have unpleasant consequences. Images from free sites may also be copyrighted and you may be using them unknowingly. Some photo companies use search software to track their images and can tell if you are using them illegally. Stock photography eliminates this fear. Once you purchase an image, you are purchasing the rights to use it as well. It does cost money, but it is an investment that is well worth it and is law abiding.
5. Model Release Required
   A great advantage of stock photo use is reducing the worry of model release. A model release is a signed form, which allows a photographer and the end user to have full permission to use a person’s likeness for marketing, advertising or artwork purposes. The law protects a person’s right to privacy, even when the person is in public eye. Most stock photo sites have taken care of this for you, so that once you purchase the photo, you have purchased that permission as well.
6. Costs for Stock Photo Options
   The option of stock photography is a great way of saving on marketing costs. Although hiring a photographer will give you more control over what you want, photographers can be very costly. Stock photos can vary in prices depending on how they are sold. Some sites offer monthly or yearly subscriptions and others can charge by individual photos or photo quality or size. Depending on how often your company requires photo use, you can play around with the options and settle on something that works best for you.

Contributor: Joe Witte

Small Business Internet Strategies (Part II)

We continue the discussion of ways to increase conversions once someone has visited your website.

The Second Step
To catching a lot of fish is to think like them. Get in the mind of your clients and try to figure out what they look for, what’s important to them, and what other sites they compare you to.

• Does your site’s unique selling proposition (USP) stand out from your competition?
• Can they easily find testimonials?
• What do you want your prospect to do?
• Do you want them to register for your newsletter?
• Do you want them to purchase your product?
• Do you want them to call or fill out a lead form?

As simple as it sounds, once you determine the best course of action that will lead to the most sales, then you can gear your website towards this objective.

If you want your clients to fill out a lead form, I’d recommend putting a simple lead form on every page. If you want them to purchase your product, lead them to the pages that show your product or service and show that you have the best pricing, service, and product. Be wary of trying to drive your customers directly to the order form. Just because they are online, doesn’t mean that they will buy without some research.

Here Are Some Obvious, Yet Easily Overlooked Tips For Every Website.

• Ensure your company’s phone number is prominently placed on every page (people want to talk to the companies they are about to give their business to).
• Put a lead form on your home page. Be sure to capture the users name, email, phone and their interest.
• Get to the point- let people know what you do, and how it will help them, and why you are better than your competition within the first 2 sentences on your website.
• Include EXTRA buttons for the pages you want people to visit in addition to the navigation at the top or left. Give people multiple paths to go to the pages you want them to go to, and keep it above the fold.
• Feature the items or services you want to sell.
• Keep your website fresh. Give people a reason to come back and visit regularly. Think BLOG!

 

Joe Witte has successfully started 3 small businesses including CentricSource and Travel Ad Network.

Small Business Internet Strategies (Part I)

Are you attracting a lot of “fish” to your small business website but not catching them?

Think of your website as a fishing rod and online marketing (Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click, online advertising, etc) as your bait. Online marketing attracts fish to bite your bait. But what reels them in? Leave that to page optimization or website conversion techniques.

Conversion rates vary in every industry, but typical conversion rates are between 0.5 and 8 percent, with the norm running between 0.5 and 2 percent. So, if you aren’t converting 50 percent of your traffic, don’t panic. No one is.

You can have a major impact on tracking and improving the performance, or “conversion rate” of visitors once they come to your website.

The First Step
To catching these fish is observing them. There are two key ways to watch what people do on your site. The first is to ask people (friends or family) to go to your site, and observe what they do. What do they click on? Do they have a hard time finding the links or actions you want them to take? This will help you with any potential redesigns that may be necessary in order to increase conversions.

The next priority is to create a click stream analysis. A Click stream analysis allows you to determine what pages people are finding by conducting searches (entry pages), and where they go once they visit your website, and where they leave (exit pages). Google Analytics (a free tool from Google Inc.) is critical for small website owners to use and review to look at their site statistics. This will give you a huge amount of information to determine what pages people are finding, and where they are leaving.

You can then ask yourself, “Why do they leave once they get to my services page?” Then you can research and work on improving that page.

(Look out for Part II on 8/13/09)

Joe Witte has successfully started 3 small businesses including CentricSource and Travel Ad Network.

Building a Website? See Top 6 Questions to Ask Yourself

If you are ready to get a decent website, start creating a list of what you want your website to do, which will play a critical role in choosing the right vendor for you.

Here are some questions to ask yourself when analyzing what you want your website to do for you:

1. Do you need someone to write the content for you, or can you write it yourself? (If you’re busy, and have the money, hire someone who can write in an SEO format for you.)
2. How many pages will you need? Do you plan on adding any pages in the future?
3. What’s the purpose of your website? Informational/Credibility? Sell a product? Drive leads?
4. Are you selling lots of products?
5. What sort of functionality do you need? Do you need a calendar function to show events? Do you need a database to store and collect names or businesses? What do you want the database to do? Will you need to change the text on your sites on your website regularly (this will require a Content Management System or a “CMS”)?
6. What do you want your website to look like? (Hint: check out the leaders in your industry and your favorite websites for ideas).

Once you’ve mapped out how your site is going to function, and what it will look like, you will get a better feel for who can meet your needs based on pricing, and area of expertise. You may be surprised to find that creating a quality website may not be as expensive as you think.

Ultimately, I think you can expect to pay anywhere from $600 to $3000, depending on who’s writing the content and if it’s a custom design (verses a template, which is a “reused” design).  If you can’t afford all the bells and whistles that you want to add at this stage, let your designer/developer know what you may want in the future so they can easily be added without too much trouble or having to redesign the site.

This sounds like a lot, but really, it’s just as easy as rewriting your resume and applying for jobs on Monster, which you can count on doing if you don’t get that darn website up!

 

Joe Witte has successfully started 3 small businesses including CentricSource and Travel Ad Network.

Most Effective Source of Website Traffic

I wanted to get your input. After you vote, you’ll be able to see results and analysis of how different types of professionals answered the question.

What is your most effective source of website traffic? Is it White Papers, Blog, Online Ads, Direct Mailer/E-mail Campaign or Social Media?

Update—Results are in:

1. Social Media (50%)
2. Blog (0%)
3. White Papers (0%)
4. Online Ads (16%)
5. Direct Mailer/E-mail Campaign (33%)

Why Your Logo Matters (But Not That Much)

Building a Small Business Brand: Your logo just doesn’t matter that much and neither does your company name. So, for all you small business owners who are spending hours every day pondering over your company name, wondering if you should call it “Smith Jewelers” or “Jewelry World”, or calling Uncle Joe to see if he likes your logo in dark blue or light blue, I have terrible news for you, it doesn’t really matter.

How can this be, you say? Well, let’s take a couple real life examples and see how important their company name and logos were to their success. Ford, Dell, Hewlett-Packard—boy, they thought hard about those companies didn’t they? Hmm, what’s my last name? Great! McDonald’s (another winner of a name) has a big “M” for a logo. Nike has a swish, Microsoft has—nothing, just their name in an italic font.

Now, before you run out and name your company “Slobby’s Suit Makers”, it’s important to be aware of what is important when developing your brand, and where you should spend your time, and money. When it comes to a company name, there are some excellent rules to abide by when you are in the “naming” process.

1. Keep it short and easy to pronounce. If your last name is Stratklowvitz, you probably want to come up with another concept.
2. Second, try to be descriptive with a subtle name that can let people know what you do.
3. Pick a name that’s easy to spell, and someone can understand over the phone. Nothing is worse than having to repeat your company name 3 times until someone understands you.

Once you’ve decided on your business name, GET A PROFESSIONAL LOGO DESIGN. Find a reputable designer, but please don’t jump on Word and try to create your own logo. As a new business, you are building credibility, and your customers will know. Here are some rules to consider when you are giving your designer some input:

1. Keep it simple: Big, crazy, illustrative logos are hard to print and produce on marketing collateral. If your logo wouldn’t look good on a golf ball, it may be too complex.
2. Minimize your colors: Unless you own “Rainbow Dry Cleaners”- keep your logo to 2 colors. Ideally, your logo will look good in grayscale as well.
3. Make it memorable: A slick, original logo is optimal. However, keep rule #1 in mind.
4. Balance: If you use an icon, it is typically centered above the text, or to the left of the text. However, it’s ok to break the rules, if done with caution.

Your brand is something that you will develop and build upon, and, if you grow large enough, may even change. However, keep in mind that people won’t buy because your logo is red or blue, they’ll buy from you because you have a desirable product or service at a reasonable price.

Joe Witte has successfully started 3 small businesses including CentricSource and Travel Ad Network.

Bring Potential Customers To Your Business

You finally have a great looking website for your business. You spent a lot of time designing, revising and selecting just the right photos. It’s both cool and professional, unique and original, a perfect expression of your business and its products or services.

But can anyone find it? Do you ever Google your business’ name to see where your business appears? Is it on the first page of the results, or do you have to go through page after page of results before you find your website?

If your business has a great website, and you want potential customers to find your business, then you MUST invest in Search Engine Optimization for your website.

Search Engine Optimization is the active method of analyzing, improving, and reconstructing a website’s internal and external features to increase traffic and improve your ranking on the web’s major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

Not optimizing your site is like buying a high-end sports car, not putting any gas in the tank, and expecting it to take you anywhere you want to go. Optimization is the fuel that drives visitors, and more importantly—potential customers, to your site. It can be your most valuable marketing tool. Let’s look at some of the major benefits:

Visibility
You wouldn’t have an unlisted phone number or address for your business, so why should your most visible asset of your business be hidden from potential customers? Your customers are looking for your business! Make yourself easier to find. Search Engine Optimization helps move your website upward in search engine results for the keywords and phrases related to the services that your business provides. Search Engine Optimization brings customers that are already interested in you to your doorstep.

Affordability
Search Engine Optimization is one of the most inexpensive ways to market and advertise your business. Consider that Yellowbook and local print ads can run almost $2,000 dollars a month, and have a limited reach. Pay Per Click (PPC) rates and online banner advertising can cost up to $3,500 per month, and exist only for as long as your marketing budget does. However, Search Engine Optimization of your site offers a low–cost option (typically only $150-$600 per month) to promoting and advertising your business online. Remember, consumers are more likely to purchase from a high–ranking site rather than from one that has (obviously) sponsored ads.

Simplicity
Imagine going to bed each night knowing that if someone Googles “interior decorator California” or “Chicago accountant”, or “Philadelphia landscaper” your business will be right near the top, and you will have a new business opportunity waiting for you the next day. That is very possible with Search Engine Optimization. Take the work and the hassle out of finding new customers, and let your website do all the work.

Search Engine Optimization is a powerful marketing and advertising tool for any small business. By adding Search Engine Optimization to your professional web design, you will ensure that your business has at least one simple and cost–effective sales generating tool.

By Daniel Natale