Website Design

A Small Business Website is A Great Marketing Tool

by blogmistress on June 27, 2011

small business websiteThere are still small businesses out there that don’t have a website! They are missing out on one of the most effective and least expensive ways to reach their potential customers. Did you know that if your business does not have a website, you may be invisible to a majority of your target market?

Here are some tips for getting started online:

  1. Start small – if you are just getting started, or are strapped  for funds, start small. Make sure you get a website that can grow as you grow. If at all possible, include a blog with your site. A blog allows you to easily update your site on a regular basis.
  2. Be sure to include a call to action. Give people a reason to interact with you, come to your business or contact you in some way. Offer a whitepaper or something of value to your visitors.
  3. Use keywords in your content. Help your target market find you by placing your keywords in your page titles, content and alt-tags.
  4. Include a picture to help break up your content – you don’t need a ton of pictures – just one is often enough.
  5. Write good content – make sure your content is compelling and interesting and simple.
  6. Use a content management system (CMS) for easy updating.
  7. Do it NOW! Every day you wait is a missed opportunity!

If your business is not online – get started! Your customers will thank you and so will your cash register! We are now offering a starter small business website that can grow as you grow for a great price. This is a limited time offer! Click the button below to get the details!


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SEO Strategy In Website Design

by blogmistress on June 15, 2011

SEO Stragegy and Website DesignAre you thinking about SEO strategy in your website design? When most businesses look for a website design, they want an attractive website that is easy to navigate. However, there are several things a savvy web designer can do to help your business website get found online by search engines and your potential customers.

XML Sitemap – a sitemap (small s) is list of pages on your website. An XML Sitemap (capital S) is a document structure and encoding standard used as the standard for web spiders to find and parse Sitemaps. You can find out if you have an XML Sitemap for your site by looking for the Sitemap URL, ie. www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml. If you have an XML Sitemap, you will see a list of your pages and the date they were last modified. If you do not have an XML Sitemap, you will get a “page not found” error.

Bing, Yahoo, Ask, and Google use the same protocol. An XML Sitemap lets the four biggest search engines have the most updated page information. An XML Sitemap is the best way to let search engines know about your website.

CSS – In the old days of web design, all of the style elements of your site such as font type, size and color, background color, etc. were included in the code that makes up your website. Now, all of that code is usually included in the cascading style sheet or CSS.

Using CSS gives you some important advantages. First, because the style is separate from the code that makes up your website, your keywords are more apparent to search engines because they don’t have to navigate through all that style information. In fact, your style sheet can be a separate document from you web pages, allowing you to make a change in style to the style sheet and have that one change effect all of your web pages. Second, you can create style sheets that will render your site differently for different devices such as mobile devices or printers.

Keyword Placement – Once you have selected several keywords that you have researched and decided are right for your business website, the placement of those keywords will help search engines know that those are the words that are important for your site. To do this, the keywords should be placed in your page title, the text of your page and perhaps the alt tags of your pictures. You don’t want to “keyword stuff” as we have discussed before here, however, you do want your keywords to be in the right strategic places.

Having a pretty site that doesn’t get found and/or doesn’t help you grow your business does you no good. Many web designers will be familiar with XML Sitemaps, CSS and Keyword Placement, but there are still some out there that haven’t caught up yet. Ask questions and do research to make sure your SEO Strategy is included with your website design!



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Thinking About A Website Redesign?

by blogmistress on June 10, 2011

Turns out there is a lot of website redesigning going on. We really enjoyed HubSpot’s Mike Volpe’s presentation on the science of website redesign yesterday. Today, I am sharing a few take aways and my thoughts from the webinar.

Why?

The reasons that people redesign their websites were varied. However the most sited reason was to modernize the site.

website redesign

No reasons were given for the need to modernize. The businesses that we talk to often need to modernize because their site is not visable across all browsers or not mobile friendly. Another reason businesses want to redesign is to put their site in a content management system (CMS) so they can make changes themselves.

Another key take away was that consumers don’t really care about your design. Consumers want to be able to find the information they are looking for easily! That means that a lot of consideration must be given to the navigation of the site.  Our rule of thumb is to keep the number of clicks required to get to a page to no more than 2 (and preferably only 1).

When?

The study also found that most people advise a redesign every 1 to 2 years. However, consumers preferred that sites they visit be redesigned more often. I think this is because consumers crave new information. When consumers visit sites, looking for information, they want the freshest, most up to date information available. In this case, a complete redesign may not be what is necessary.

Businesses that keep content up to date are the ones that are pleasing the consumer. Of course, as we have stated many times, a blog is the best, most effective way to continually add fresh content to your site.

How?

A website redesign can be fraught with pitfalls. The pitfalls listed in the website redesign webinar were:

  • removing valuable content
  • losing value of inbound links
  • losing SEO rankings
  • losing social media mojo
  • changing good conversion points

These points are often overlooked by web designers. In a recent live seminar that I attended, attendees were told that after a redesign, their traffic would initially drop but would pick back up within 6 month. This happens when businesses and web designers don’t measure the assets of the current website and protect them going forward. Assets can be protected by preserving content that is working and creating redirects from old URL’s to new URL’s to preserve the SEO.

To redesign the right way, HubSpot recommended:

  • Know your website’s purpose
  • Get metrics in place
  • Set a goal for the redesign – have metrics for that goal
  • Benchmark vs. competitors
  • Audit your website’s assets to protect them

The study found that businesses that had a clear goal for the redesign and measured before and after were the happiest with their redesign.

Thanks to HubSpot for another great webinar full of really useful information. HubSpot is always on the bleeding edge (they have passed the cutting edge). That is why we are Certified HubSpot Partners!

Schedule Hubspot DemoLearn how to grow your business with HubSpot’s
award winning marketing software!

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Types of Small Business Websites

by Admin on June 9, 2011

types of websitesYou’ve decided to take the plunge and set up a website for your small business. The first thing you need to decide is what you are trying to achieve with your website. Will your website simply be an online brochure, or will it be an e-commerce site where people can buy online? Or would you like to make it more of a lead generator where you are more involved with your customers online through a blog or discussion board?

While there are more, I will be discussing three basic types of small business websites. They are:

  1. The Online Brochure Website
  2. The “Lead Generating” Website
  3. The E-Commerce Website

The Online Brochure Website
This is the most common type of website, usually containing 3-10 pages. As the name implies, it resembles a standard paper brochure. The content of these websites is usually limited, containing contact information, products and services offered, and a description or history of the company. These sites are usually static, meaning they are not updated very often. Brochure websites are relatively inexpensive and require little in resources to create and support. Brochure Websites are akin to Yellow Page ads.

The “Lead Generating” Websites
This type of website is more advanced than the “Online Brochure” website. It can be used for lead generation. It might contain a blog where you post several times a week on issues relevant to your business, products or services. You might create eBooks and White Papers for downloading. Due to the substantial and unique content, updated regularly, such a website would be of more interest to your customers and potential customers, and will increase their trust in your business. This type of website requires more in resources. There needs to be someone dedicated to running it daily. But the benefits of such a website are well worth it for many businesses.

The E-Commerce Website
This type of website is used to sell products or services online. Visitors to the website will be able to view your products/services and buy them online. This type of website demands more in human and financial resources to develop and support. So, be prepared to spend more time and money.

Key Take Aways
Every small business should at least have a “Online Brochure” website, and for some businesses, this is all they need. For many small businesses (particularly those with longer sales funnels), the “Lead Generating” website will be the most effective choice. The “Lead Generating” website can generate qualified leads for small businesses. If you want people to be able to buy online, you need an “E-Commerce” website, but be prepared to spend more time and money.

When taking your small business online, you should consider your objectives before deciding which type of website you will need.




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HubSpot Certified Partner – Why We Did It

by blogmistress on June 1, 2011

HubSpot Certified PartnerPeople ask us why Wharton Marketing became a HubSpot Certified Partner. What if there was a methodology for getting your business found on the internet, converting visitors into leads for your business and then a way to measure the results to make sure you are going in the right direction? What if there was a software package that had all the tools you need to do this well with the tools being well integrated? The answer to both of those questions is – “There is! It’s called HubSpot!”

The HubSpot inbound marketing methodology of:

  • Get Found
  • Convert
  • Analyze

is one that has proven itself over and over with thousands of businesses.It has gotten the attention of investors who have recently added $32 million of additional venture capital to HubSpot. One of the investors, Sequoia Capital says,

Sequoia Capital has a long history of partnering with founders to help them build long-term, multi-billion dollar companies, including Google, LinkedIn, AdMob, YouTube, Yahoo!, Apple, and Oracle. “We back companies that are transforming their industries,” said Jim Goetz, General Partner at Sequoia Capital.

HubSpot is transforming the internet marketing industry. We use the methodology and the software ourselves, and it has literally transformed our business. We used to offer website design and SEO. Now, we have tools to help businesses grow in a very meaningful way to meet their goals, and we can measure ROI. What we do still includes website design and SEO, but it is soooo much more.

We didn’t have to become Certified Partners to work with HubSpot. We could have been resellers (VARs) who also used the software. However, we took the additional step of getting the training and passing the certification exam because we wanted to be actual partners with a company that is transforming its industry and helping businesses that are serious about growing and reaching their marketing goals.

I even took an additional step to become a HubSpot Certified Educator. Now, not only do I use the inbound marketing methodology, I teach it to others as well as use it to help our customers. By the way, this same methodology is now being taught at Harvard Business School.

What are your marketing goals? Are you serious about growing your business? If you are committed to growing, we can help by partnering with you and committing to help you grow.

Schedule Hubspot DemoLearn how to grow your business with HubSpot’s
award winning marketing software!

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Need CMS? WordPress!

by blogmistress on May 2, 2011

WordPress CMSAt a recent workshop, Joanne Steele from Rural Tourism Marketing recommended that business owners make sure their websites are built using WordPress. We agree! We have been using WordPress for years and have several reasons why we think it is a good choice as a content management system (CMS).

  1. It is open source. This means that thousands and thousands of developers contribute to the functionality of the platform. What that means for the end user is a highly functional, robust platform that is continually updated and improved.  The updates are distributed to all users free of charge. In addition to adding more function, developers are also continually adding more security to WordPress. There are also thousands of plugins available which add functionality to WordPress, many of them free. There are tens of thousands of web designers who use WordPress, so changing web designers is not a problem.

    In contrast, if you use a design company that has created their own CMS, they have to update the CMS with more functionality and security themselves.  If you are looking for a specific functionality, that company will probably charge you for the development of it. If you should decide you no longer want to use that company, you are out of luck. Moving to another designer means starting over with a different CMS.

  2. It is easy to use. Once the site is setup with WordPress, the end user only needs some basic word processing skills to make changes and updates themselves. There is no need to purchase any software. There is no need to make the change and then upload it to a server. Changes are easily made on the fly with no programming skills needed.
  3. It is SEO friendly. WordPress code is clean code that will not interfere with your SEO. It also has plugins that can enhance and help you with your SEO.
  4. It has built in blog functionality. You don’t have to find a blog platform that is compatible with your website because WordPress has blogging functionality built right in!

WordPress began as a blogging platform but has evolved into a robust, highly functional CMS and is the most used platform as a website CMS in the world.

WordPress as CMS

 

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Internet Marketing – Not Your Grandpa’s Marketing

by blogmistress on April 15, 2011

Internet MarketingInternet marketing is very different than the kind of marketing my Grandpa and family did when I was growing up.

I grew up in a family of small business owners. I remember many family gatherings where there was much discussion about marketing and advertising. There was discussion of competition and strategy. As kids, we were told this was “dead man’s talk”, which meant whatever we heard was not meant to be discussed outside of the family. As I write that last sentence, I’m thinking it kind of sounds like mafia, but it wasn’t anything like that- just business talk among family.

Marketing has changed a lot since those days (don’t I sound old?). In those days, marketing was interruption based. Commercials would interrupt your favorite TV shows, commercials would interrupt you while you were listening to your favorite tunes on the radio. Telemarketers would call you while the family was having dinner. You get the idea. Businesses who were advertising had to interrupt you and get your attention to market to you. TV and print ads focus a lot on “getting your attention.” Print advertisers think a lot about colors and fonts and placement. Everything is designed to get your attention away from reading an article and on to their advertisement. Those techniques are still used in those media.

The internet is a different kind of medium. Internet Marketing is permission based. The majority of people now start the purchase process online. When people search for a product or service online they are looking for the site that gives them the best information. Yes, they like sites that are aesthetically pleasing, and an attractive site is important. They want to be able to easily move through your site, so good navigation is important. However, when someone is searching for your product or service and they land on your site, what they are really looking for is information.

Unlike old interruption marketing, once people find you online, you don’t want to interrupt them from finding the information they are looking for by having things that are flashing or jumping up and down or popping up on the screen. You want to give them information that will give them confidence to take the next step in doing business with you. So give them visual cues as to what to do next. The next step depends on your sales cycle. If you have a short sales cycle, the next step may be to click on a “buy now” button or call you and make an appointment. This would be the case for retailers or services like plumbers or electricians. For others, the sales cycle is longer, so you may have to give your visitors a call to action that just gets them in your sales funnel so you can start nurturing them through the sales process. This would be the case for real estate agents or for businesses selling big ticket items.

Marketers of the past would have been astounded at the possibilities offered by today’s internet marketing. Unfortunately, there are still some marketers who want to cling to the past and are still trying to tell us that new marketing is a fad. We have heard it for years, haven’t we? The internet is a fad. Well, they don’t really even try to say that anymore. How about the old style marketers that say Facebook is a fad and that you will never get customers from Facebook? How many of you have gotten customers from Facebook. I know we have.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that all old marketing is bad. I certainly don’t think that TV, radio and newspaper ads are going to go away any time soon (well maybe newspapers, but we won’t go there). The truth of the matter is that internet marketing is here to stay until something better comes along. I’m sure the newspaper people didn’t like it when radio came along and started taking advertising dollars from them to use on radio ads. In the same vein, I’m sure radio people were not to excited when TV came along and started offering TV advertising. In the same way, today, all of these media are not really excited about internet marketing, but this is the way of the future, whether it is a website, social media or mobile marketing, internet marketing is here to stay.

My Grandpa died at the age of 94 last August. He was a very smart man, and I think he would have loved new marketing!

Key Take Away

  1. Marketing has changed and continues to change. Smart businesses use effective marketing that will grown their business and get them customers.

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SEO vs Lead Generation

by Admin on April 11, 2011

Lead GenerationDo you need SEO or lead generation? We often have clients come to us asking for SEO when what they really want is lead generation. Many businesses and website designers get SEO and lead generation confused. Many think they are the same thing. They are not. Clients will often say, “if I can just get more visitors, I will sell more.” While this may be true to some extent, it’s not the most effective way to use a website.

I believe this idea of more visitors equals more sales stems from old style interruption marketing. With interruption marketing, it is important to have a large audience because you are only going to gain the attention of a small percentage of that audience. You are interrupting what they are doing (watching TV, listening to the radio, reading a magazine, etc.), so you must distract them from that activity and get their attention focused on you.

With inbound (permission) marketing, you already have their attention, in fact, you have their permission. Visitors to your website are there because they were looking for your products or services. You don’t have to distract them from another activity. They are there because they chose to be. The question is “after visitors come to your website, what are you going to do with them?”

The answer should be, “turn them into customers or clients.” One of the most effective ways to do this is to first turn them into “leads”. Once they are leads, you can nurture them until they become customers or clients. In order for your website to be a serious lead generator, it must have the following:

  • calls to action
  • offers
  • tracking codes
  • a lead nurturing system

The best system we’ve found for lead generation is HubSpot software. We use it, and it has been very effective. So much so that we first became resellers for HubSpot and have now become certified HubSpot partners. HubSpot is an all in one marketing software that helps you attract visitors, turn them into leads and then nurture those leads. It helps you with your website, social media and blogging.

The folks at HubSpot are experts at inbound internet marketing, and they insisted that we be experts as well before we could be certified partners. There is no short-cut to becoming an expert. Believe me, we spend several hours a week on research and study to stay current and cutting edge to better help our clients as well as readers of this blog who come here to read our articles and get help with their internet marketing.

Key Take Away:

  • While SEO is important in getting visitors to your website, it is just as important what you do with those visitors once they get there. SEO is a tactic while lead generation is a process.
  • One of the best things you can do with website visitors is turn them into leads.

What to do next:

Interested in learning more about HubSpot software? Contact us to find out more. You can fill out the email form on the right or call us at 870.404.1985.

 

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What’s It All About?

by CDW on August 31, 2010

  • What is web design? Is it about color, fonts and logos? Is it about where the words and pictures go?
  • Should I have a web designer make all my updates or should I do it myself? Can I do it myself?
  • My web designer uses terms I don’t understand like URL, DNS and CSS. If I don’t understand completely, what are the consequences?
  • I have a Facebook page and Twitter account. Can I incorporate those with my website and make them all work together?
  • I have an idea what I want my website to look like, but I’m not sure I know everything that is available to make my site better. Where can I find out that kind of information?
  • My site is okay, but I’m not getting the leads and customers from it that I think I should be getting. What can I do to change that?
  • I’ve been burned by web designers who didn’t listen to me, didn’t return my phone calls, didn’t do what they said they would do. What should I do to avoid being burned again?
  • Once I have launched my website, who is going to look at it? Who do I want to look at it? How will I know who looks at it?

If you have ever asked yourself any of these questions, be sure to come to the Arkansas Small Business and Technology Development Center Class – Website Strategy and Planning. We will answer these questions and more in a casual and relaxed setting (no tests!). Each participant will receive a workbook with lots of resource information and practical information you can actually use!

Sign up at ASBTDC

Locations, Times and Dates are:

Tuesday, September 07, 2010
1:00 PM to 4:00 PM
Arkansas State University SBTDC
ASU Delta Center for Economic Development
Jonesboro
Cost: $40.00

Wednesday, October 06, 2010
1:00 PM to 4:00 PM
Batesville Area Chamber of Commerce
409 Vine Street
Cost: $40.00

Tuesday, October 26, 2010
2:00 PM to 5:00 PM
ASU Mountain Home Campus
Rm. 107 McLain Hall
Cost: $40.00

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Breaking Out of the Chains

by CDW on June 29, 2010

Remember back in the old days when almost all websites were static and you paid a developer not only to create the site but for all changes made to the site as well? Businesses were tied to their web designer/developer at the hip and often were at the designer’s mercy. Well those days are gone. At least, in most cases. Sure there are times when a static website is all that is needed, but not very often.

Enter, the Content Management System (CMS). CMS is designed to allow website owners to easily change and maintain their site without knowledge of any programming language. Changes can be made from any computer with an internet connection and a web browser.  Making changes in most cases is as easy as making changes to a Word document. There is no need to call or pay a web developer to make changes or maintain your site.

However, setting up a CMS can be a bit complicated up front so you will probably want to hire someone to do the initial setup and this is where things could get tricky. Some developers create proprietary CMS so you can still make changes easily, but you are also still tied to the developer for any updates to the CMS or any additional functionality such as shopping carts, forms or social media integration.

Don’t worry though, there is another option. Open source CMS is available and there are some really great open source options. The top three open source options are Drupal, Joomla and WordPress. What are some advantages to using an open source CMS?

  • No licensing fee – open source options are available to download for free.
  • You can contract with any open source CMS developer to create your site and if, for some reason, something happens to them someone else can easily take over without having to learn a proprietary system.
  • Open source CMS makes it easy to implement social media and other web 2.0 integration.
  • SEO is enhanced because the coding is clean and adding content is easy.

The wider the distribution of an open source CMS means a larger user base and user community. The community of people work on the software, patch bugs, create add-ons for greater functionality, create new and better versions and more. And, the best part is you get all that benefit for free!

So what are some of the disadvantages of open source CMS?

  • Open source CMS requires more specific hosting. WordPress, Joomla and Drupal work best in an Apache environment and require PHP and MySQL.
  • Initial implementation costs may be higher. While open source CMS is free to download, the initial setup and configuration is more complicated than static HTML. However, in most cases, the savings of being able to update and maintain your site will more than make up for the initial setup cost.

While there are a lot of great open CMS options available, for now, you might want to stick to those top three – Joomla, Drupal and WordPress. They all have strong communities built around them. They all make regular updates to add greater functionality and all have  extensive plugin/extension/add-on libraries.

Those old days are long gone and the future looks more exciting than ever for business using the powerful reach of the internet to attract new customers and grow their business!

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