Small Business Design Resources

Website Critique: Independent at home

Independent at home provides home medical equipment and supplies to aid individuals independence and safety. The video website critique of www.independentathome.com covers some points where the website can use some improvement to make it easier for shoppers to browse and search engines to index the site.

Overall Improvements

• Take it up a notch into making the website more professional and organized.

• Let a professional design your business logo and use it throughout the website and all your marketing materials.

• Remove all “empty” categories. Finding an empty category makes the user think that they’re waisting their time and can move on to a competitor.

• Make all your photos the same size to make the products look more professional.

• Make “Add to Cart” button stand out to prompt action from the user.

• Add more links to your inner pages. Each category should have some text at the bottom with keywords that link to the inner pages.

• To help out the search engines, add more description text to each product. Search engines love content, give it to them!

Homepage

• The top header can be more attractive and more professional looking.

• Add a call-to-action before listing all your products. When a visitor comes to a website they have a task in mind to accomplish, steer them in the direction of what you want them to accomplish on your site.

Other recommendation

Add a blog to the website and keep adding relevant articles with keywords that link back to your product pages to boost search engine activity.

More website critiques

Of course there are more things to dive deeply into making this site better such as search engine optimization, but this is a whole different subject and will require it’s own review.

If you’re viewing this review and want to add more suggestions, please add your comments below.

Disclaimer

The video website critique and suggestions are for you to review and take what you feel will better your business website. There’s no guarantee that the suggestions mentioned will improve your business. Design Leap is not held responsible for any negative outcome.

Q & A on “Designing Your Business Website” via Twitter Chat

Thank you everyone who joined me on Tuesday December 2, 2009 via Twitter #SmallBizChat discussing Designing Your Business Website.

If you’ve missed the discussion, you can download the transcript Designing Your Business Website Transcript

Read my interview with SmallBizLady at Website Design Basics for Start-up Businesses

Find out what is #SmallBizChat

How to Participate in #Smallbizchat

Follow me on Twitter @DesignLeap

Quick Tip: Add your business to local search listings

Get your business seen by local searchers! Some listings are free and some have a fee.

Now you can see how your business is listed in popular search engines all from one place. Take a look at www.getlisted.org and make sure you take the time to add your business information to at least the free listing services.

Adding your business to local listings increases chances for people who are looking for your products and/or services in your area to find you faster.

Website Critique: Hollywood Style Scrubs

Carey Bennett designs clothing for a popular TV show SCRUBS among other shows. Now you can get these soft, stretchy, and sophisticated scrubs for real health care professionals. The following website critique is for www.BestEverScrubs.com where you can buy these Hollywood Style scrubs and accessories.

Every website should have a predetermined action that they want the visitor to complete when he/she arrives there. Help your visitor get where you want them to go by creating a call-to-action. A call-to-action can be in a form of a button or some type of message that tells the user what to do. For example on Best Ever Scrubs website this call-to-action can be “View our new PocketShirts” where a button takes the user directly to the PocketShirts page.

Overall Improvements

• Reorganize the navigation. Make the navigation that the users will use to “shop by” as the primary accessible and easy-to-use. Currently the top navigation gets users primary attention, but it really doesn’t assist them in the buying process.

• You have a great opportunity to promote your products by showcasing the celebrities that wear them. Don’t hide those images just inside a portfolio section.

Home page

• Stop the Flash animation from auto replay and minimize it so it gives room for more important information.

• Bring up your offers and new items to the top where users can see them immediately. Most people don’t scroll all the way to the bottom, so having your new items and promotions there makes you loose sales.

• It’s great that you’re participating in all the Social Media, but listing them on the homepage where you have it, takes up room from promoting the things that you want to sell.

• Reorganize your homepage where you have a call-to-action that prompts the user to do something. Currently just viewing the Flash animation doesn’t prompt the user to explore your products or perform any other predetermined task.

• Grab peoples attention by placing “As Seen On…” the homepage. It doesn’t have to be big, but it will get more interest than the Flash animation.

About page

• Your story is great, just add your photo so people can relate better.

More website critiques

Of course there are more things to review to make this website better such as search engine optimization, but this is a whole different subject and will require it’s own review.

If you’re reading this review and want to add more suggestions, please add your comments below.

Disclaimer

The video website critique and suggestions are for you to review and take what you feel will better your business website. There’s no guarantee that the suggestions mentioned will improve your business. Design Leap is not held responsible for any negative outcome.

Balsamiq Mockups – Software Review

Balsamiq, a mock up/wire frame software that makes the job easier for developers, designers, product managers; well pretty much anyone who’s involved in creating software or websites. Balsamiq is a small company with currently just four people, but their software and customer service is outstanding. After seeing the following review, you’ll want to buy your own copy of Balsamiq Mockups at www.balsamiq.com.

Working with Balsamiq Mockups lets you focus on the structure/wire frame of the software or website that you’re developing. The great thing about it is that it looks like you’re sketching, but it takes less time and it’s so much easier to “erase” and replace an item. When you present a sketched wire frame, your team takes the focus away from colors and perfection. The sketched look lets everyone focus on the most important aspects of your project. For example, when I use Balsamiq Mockups for website design, it’s easier for my clients to focus on the placement of the navigation buttons and the arrangement of other elements on the page without concentrating on the gradients, colors, or try to choose “better” images at this initial stage.

Overall Pluses

• Sketched look, everyone feels more comfortable giving honest feedback.

• Faster than using pen and paper and your artistic skills aren’t criticized.

• “Sketch It” a feature that turns any image into a sketch, this is really cool and impressive.

• Works with keyboard shortcuts, makes working much easier and faster.

• Over 60 controls to choose from, plus there are plugins and updates added on Tuesdays on the Balsamiq Blog

• Easy-to-use control panel where you can further size, adjust, group and perform other various functions.

Some things to Adjust
• When importing an image perhaps have options on the import for image to “fit to window”, “scale proportionally”… Currently the image gets skewed (auto fit to window).

• Similar auto fit to window issue for the Cover Flow, but I haven’t noticed that there’s a way to adjust after important, so may be this is something to add.

• In the icon pop-up box, it would be great to add a Social Media category to find all the popular social media icons faster. Also, may be have an image import right in here that makes images “icon size” right away.

More website critiques

Balsamiq Mockups is a great software and there’s a lot that it can do, so visit www.balsamiq.com try a demo and buy your copy, because it will save you a lot of time when working on your software or website project.

If you’re reading this review and want to add more suggestions, please add your comments below.