Small Business Design Resources

What is your Business Image Worth?

I participate in few forums here and there and provide website critiques on numerous of them. There was one website critique request that came from a website designer that wanted some feedback on a recently completed flower shop website. I was very disappointed and a bit angry with the web designer, because the designer took advantage of a small business owner by promising to deliver a site that sells flowers, but the look and functionality of this flower site didn’t even come close. I of course dug a little deeper and found background information on the web designer, which led me to writing an article What to look for in a Web Designer.

What was wrong with that website?

Well, there was nothing about the website that said, “We sell flowers”. I don’t mean literally, but when a visitors arrives to your website, they should almost immediately know what the website is about. On top of that, this website was built all in Flash, meaning there’s no way for search engines to crawl the pages of this website. Not having the website search engine friendly is a huge loss for this small business.

Is cutting corners worth losing your business image?

The design of that flower shop website wasn’t professional, it looked like a job of a student who’s still practicing design skills. Shouldn’t the beautiful flower arrangements that this shop sells be represented in the same professional quality website? Your website reflects your business image, many will see your website without ever meeting you. Many who visit a poor quality website will reflect that what you sell will be poor quality also. Do you want to make a sale or do you want to lose that visitor for good. It’s really important to have a quality website that delivers what your customers are expecting to see. Unless you’ve done business with that person before, you wont win a visitor over with a poor website where it’s hard to navigate and find what they’re looking for.

Before hiring a Web Designer

It’s to your business’s best interest for you to do a little “homework” on what’s involved in a website design. You don’t have to become an expert, but you should understand the basics. Don’t be afraid to ask questions! Any Web Designer that you choose should be able to answer your website design questions or at least find the answer and educate you on your options before proceeding with the design. In the case of the flower shop, the use of all Flash was a poor choice; this is where the Web Designer should have educated the owner not to go this route.

What to look for in a Web Designer

There are tons of people claiming to be web designers, the following are specifics of what to look for and what to look out for when choosing a web designer to work on your business website.

Skills

The number one thing that you should look for in a web designer is for their web site. You can usually tell what skills they have by just looking at their own website. Some web designers make excuses that they’re so busy on client’s projects that they don’t have time to work on their own website. How can a web designer say that they can design your business website if they can’t make the time to design their own? If a web designer doesn’t have a website or has only one page that says, “coming soon”, LOOK OUT!

Style

Each business has a certain style, so you want to make sure that the web designer you choose can design for your business style. For example, if you own a skateboarding shop, you would look for a web designer that is capable of creating grungy and sporty designs. Check the web designer’s portfolio to see their style. If a web designer doesn’t have a portfolio, LOOK OUT!

Testimonials

Anyone can rave about their work, but can they back it up with customer testimonials? Look for authentic testimonials! These can be written, but must be accompanied with at least a full name. The best authentic testimonials are in a form of a video recording, voice recording, inside a 3rd-party widget or found on a 3rd-party website. When someone has the capability to edit the testimonials the testimonials become less trustworthy, so LOOK OUT!

Expertise

You started to look for a web designer because you understand the importance of a business website, but you either don’t have the skills and/or time to design it yourself. A web designer should be able to steer you in the right direction and provide suggestions/support along the design phase of your website. Hiring a student or someone who can just throw a website together, isn’t really beneficial for your business image. Look for a web designer who has the expertise to showcase your business online and design a website that provides valuable experience for your target audience.

Keep in mind that most web designers are not programmers and vise versa, but many work together on website projects. Ask about your needs; don’t assume that they should know how to do everything. One can’t be an expert in everything, so LOOK OUT for those that say they are.

Social Media Presence

A web designer should be out and participating in some sort of Social Media activity. They could be writing blogs, interact in forums, be active on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube or any other social media platform. The whole point is that a web designer should know and grow with the online media to be able to keep up with the constantly evolving website demands and techniques. You can do a search in Google for a web designer’s name or business and if you don’t see any social media references LOOK OUT!

Using Social Media For Your Business

Flickr photo - Mouthing off by demi-brooke

Have you been following the Celebrity Apprentice? On Season 8 Episode 6, the objective of the game was to create the best viral video. A viral video is one that is emailed from person to person, thus spreading the word about your product. In this case they were advertising laundry detergent. Before the dawn of the Internet, companies spent some percentage of their advertising and marketing dollars on TV, radio and magazine commercials and depended to some extent on “Word of Mouth” advertising. People use to say that if you impress a customer, they will tell 3 other customers and if you disappoint a customer, they will tell 10 other people. Businesses often used to, and still do today, offer additional discounts to existing customers when they bring in new customers. Word of Mouth advertising is a tried and trusted fundamental cornerstone of business marketing.

Word of Mouth Goes Digital

Today, the concept of Word of Mouth advertising has grown to advertising via any means of communication, especially electronic communication, and we call it social media. Websites like twitter, facebook, myspace and youtube, started out being the domain of young adults, especially college students, and now are featuring prominently in mainstream company website strategy. That’s because the networking opportunities that are empowered by social media are huge.

In the case of a viral video, imagine how this works. Most of us forward emails of this type to more than one person, in fact, many of us have ever-growing distribution lists. If you forward to a distribution list of, let’s say 10 people, and each of them forward to 10 people, in just 2 forwards the viral video producer has just reached 110 people. If each of those people forward to 10 people the video reaches 1100 people. You can see how the numbers grow exponentially to reach thousands in just a few forwards.

How does this help the small business owner?

Small business can leverage the same ideas in their discussion forums hosted on their site to generate useful discussions about their products and services, get customer feedback, and get new information out to customers. The trick is to make your site interesting so that users will get the word out by sending links, messages, etc. and draw their friends to your site. Many businesses, including big businesses, are also putting links to twitter and myspace and other sites right on their website. Of course, you need to sign up for each of these services, but they are generally free. All it takes is time.

In the case of facebook and myspace, and similar websites, users aim to collect as many friends as possible on their webpage. Then, whenever they post message to their site, all their friends will see it.

Not Just For Customers

Website forums are not just for drawing customers. They are also useful for networking with merchandisers and others in your industry. They can help you stay informed about what your competitors are up to, where your business is going and what direction you may need to take it in the future. As a business owner you should be engaging actively in social media for generating partners and affiliates as well as creating an environment in which your customers can participate on your site. Don’t just have your own. Join your competitor’s forums and see if you can find their twitter page or their facebook page.

You can start by following me on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/designleap

Watch Movies of Visitors Browsing Your Website

Have you ever imagined that you can actually see what your visitors are doing on your website? No, no, I’m not talking about going through charts and pages of visitor statistics on Google Analytics or other similar analytics program. I came across ClickTale, which is a program that let you watch movies of your visitors’ actual browsing session. This is way better than just looking at charts and trying to analyze them. By viewing where your visitors’ mouse is actually going, what they type and what results they get from a click, you can evaluate the following:

• what on your website gets neglected
• what errors do users get
• what simply confuses your visitor and makes them leave
• why do they abandon your shopping cart

There’s so much more to this program so you just have to see for yourself.

How to Start a Website

I get many questions from small business owners asking about website basics. So much of what is written seems to be written by those, and for those, who already know what they are doing when it comes to having a business website. So let’s take a step back and review a few basics, because I know from talking to small business owners that there are many of you who will appreciate this information.

The two must have things to having a website live on the Internet for everyone to see are a domain name and a hosting account. Let me explain what those are and pointers on few other things that are needed to get your website online:

1. Domain Names
   A domain name is what you call your website. It is also referred to as an address or a URL. This is what the user will type in the browser to find your business. You must use a unique domain name that no-one else is using. The Internet is built using many large computers, called servers that know how to talk to each other using special addresses, called an Internet Protocol addresses or IP addresses. When you create a name like MyBusiness.com you need to register the domain name so that:
   • No-one else can use it
   • The internet servers will know how to find it by assigning an IP address to it

There are many organizations that will register the domain name for you, but we use and recommend startlogic.com.

2. Domain Name Extensions

By convention, a .com address is a commercial business and is the most widely used in the world. Other conventions used in the U.S. are .edu for educational facility, such as a university, .org for an organization such as not-for-profit organizations, and .gov used by government websites. After .com, .net and .org are the most memorable extensions. Different countries use different conventions, generally used to indicate their country. For example check out www.google.ca (Canada’s Google), www.google.com.mx for Mexico’s Google, and www.google.co.uk for the United Kingdom’s Google.

3. Hosting a Website

Some organizations only give you the name – they don’t give you a space for your website. Lets compare this to a P.O. Box. When you just get a domain name it’s like getting a P.O. Box address, you can’t actually move your stuff in there. The whole purpose to have a business website is to attract visitors to your products/services, for this hosting is required. Some companies will both register your domain name and host your website. However, domain and hosting providers can be different for one site. Again we use and recommend startlogic.com for your website hosting needs.

4. Building a website

Registering a domain name and signing up with a hosting provider does not necessarily mean you have a website live online. What you have is a space for your website to live online. Let’s take an example of a physical retail store. To have an actual brick and mortar retail store, you need to lease a space, so once you sign your lease you can move in your products and organize your store. Same goes for a website, domain name is your address, hosting is your space and now you need to build a website for your customers to view your products/services. There are two ways to build your business website. You can learn how to build your own or have a professional web designer do it for you. Building your own is the most cost effective way to put up a website but it means you have to spend time to learn something about building and maintaining it, that means taking you away from your business duties. Having a professional web designer create your website will assure you that your website is built right, user friendly and free you to work on your business.

5. Working with Design Leap

Choosing Design Leap to build your business website means you have a one-on-one relationship with a professional designer to guide you and answer all your questions while developing a business website that is targeting your ideal customers. This is the way to go if you’re looking to save time and money in the long run.