Small Business Design Resources

Professional Website Design: Is It Worth The Investment?

For a small business, every dollar counts. You think long and hard before you spend – and that’s the way it should be. But while there are certainly many unnecessary expenses that you should avoid, or cut from your budget, professional Web design is not one of them. Here are the reasons:

You Need A Strong Online Identity

As a long-term strategy, you want to separate yourself from the crowd and have your own online identity. You should have a unique logo, a unique website, and unique business cards. If you use do-it-yourself Web design templates, you may be saving money in the short term, but you are hurting your business’ chances of leaving an impression. Don’t let your business look just like thousands of other businesses. The right design can make the difference between a struggling business and a smashing hit.

Professional Web Design CAN Be Affordable

Many small business owners mistakenly assume that they simply cannot afford small business website design. But this is untrue. You should find a designer who specializes in Web design for small businesses because this type of designer will be more sensitive to your budget constraints than Web designers who typically work with corporations. In addition, you should realize that you can start with a very small website, which would cost considerably less – all you need are a few Web pages and a strong design. You can always add more pages and functions later, as your business grows and your budget expands.

Built-In Search Engine Optimization

I’ve seen countless websites that were built by their owners using a template and that are not optimized for search engines. This means that no one is going to find these websites! Typically, after a few months, they realize that they keep working on their website, adding content and tweaking the design, but it’s all worthless because their website does not appear in search engine results. A good Web designer will make sure that your site is optimized for search engines, and will also make sure that the design elements are light enough that the site loads fast – people on the Web are impatient with slow-loading sites. In fact, Google has recently announced that it now incorporates website load time as part of its ranking system.

Save Time, Save Money

Your time is worth money. The time you spend on fiddling with your website design could be spent doing something else – something more productive, something you know how to do such as growing your business. You may think that you are “saving” money by not hiring a professional to do your Web design. But are you really saving if it means long hours of working on your site design, hours that never translate into the visual image you have in mind, simply because you’re not a professional? In today’s complex world, it makes sense for each of us to do what we specialize in. For you it means growing your business, and letting design professionals take care of your website design.

The Wrong Website Can Kill Your Business

First impressions are important – I’m sure you’ll agree. And your website is the first impression that people get about your business. The wrong website design can essentially kill your business by driving your web visitors away, causing them to immediately bounce back and go directly to your competition.

Better make a good first impression! But how? Here are a few small business website design tips.

1. Avoid clutter. A cluttered website is confusing to users, who don’t know where to click or what to do and so they tend to click away. This could be good if your goal is to make money from ads on your site, because the path out of a site is often through clicking on an ad, but if your goal is to encourage your visitors to stay and browse, aim for a clean, simple design and make it easy for your visitors to navigate your site.

2. What is your website about? What do you offer? If a visitor can’t answer this question immediately, they will click away. Ask friends and family members to take an objective look at your website and to tell you if they can tell right away what it’s about.

3. Make it fast. A slow-loading website is painful for users. It’s one of the main reasons users give up on a site. Make sure your website doesn’t contain heavy elements that would slow it down, and use a third-party tool to test load time for your site. The fact that it loads fast for you doesn’t necessarily reflect other users’ experience.

4. Content IS king. Yes, this old cliché is true. Your website content needs to offer value to readers. It needs to be well written, free of typos and engaging. Even if your site loads fast and is clean and professional looking, users WILL bounce off if they discover that your content does not offer them any value.

5. Avoid anything that could be annoying or distracting to users, including flash, auto-loading sound or blinking text. Even if you’re trying to make people click on ads, remember that being assaulted by blinking, moving, loud ads will most likely cause people to close the page rather than click on those annoying ads. Ads actually work best if they blend into your content and offer value to your readers, just like your main content does.

6. Minimize clicking. Make navigating your site and getting to the important pages easy. If people have to click through 6 pages to get to what they were looking for, they will likely just abandon your site.

7. Make it readable. Even if your text is great, people won’t read it unless it’s easy to read. Make sure your font is large enough, web-friendly, and space your lines. It’s also important to keep your lines short and to avoid using dark text on a dark background, or light text on a light background.

8. Link correctly: include internal links whenever they’re relevant, so visitors can discover more parts of your site. Make sure internal links, unlike external links, open in the same browser window – users will resent having several browser windows open, all of them from your site. When you link to other sites, do make sure they open in a new window.

If you’re not sure how user friendly your site is, it’s always a good idea to ask friends and family members to take a look and give you an honest feedback. If you’re planning, or hoping to earn money from your site, using the services of a professional web designer is one of the most important investments you will ever make in your business.

Is It Time To Redesign Your Website?

I recently talked with a potential client whose entire website is based on Flash. Flash websites used to be extremely popular during the 1990s, but have since become pretty much obsolete, especially because it is very difficult to optimize these limited textual content websites for search engines. Take a look at this article to learn more about what is Flalsh and is it suitable for your business.

The client now wants a modern, content-rich, non-Flash website that search engine spiders can actually crawl. This is a very good reason to do a website redesign, which got me thinking about several more reasons why you should redesign your website.

Your Website Looks Old

The web is fast-paced. It is constantly updating and changing. Web users expect to see fresh, interesting design. They want websites that are user friendly, easy to navigate, and fast-loading. Above all, they want websites that catch their eye and make them want to stick around. Now take a long, hard look at your small business website and ask yourself: does it provide all of the above? If your website is older than five years and you’ve never redesigned it, chances are it has an outdated look and feel that is not going to appeal to users. And with so many options on the web these days, users can simply bounce off and go to the next website.

Outdated Content

Your website’s content needs to be constantly updated to stay fresh and interesting. Yes, content is king, which means you cannot just slap some content on your website and forget about it. The best way is to attach a blog to your website and keep adding new content for your visitors.

Search Engine Optimization

If you’re having trouble getting your website to rank well in search engines for your chosen keywords, even though you have optimized your tags and your content, you should consider a website redesign. Search engine spiders have a harder time crawling old websites than crawling new, modern websites.

Competition is Redesigning

Whatever your competitors are doing, you don’t want to lag behind. If they start using social media, you should do the same. If they are lowering prices or giving special offers, you should probably do the same. And if they are redesigning their websites, you should redesign yours too. Being the only old-looking website when the competition has fresh, modern websites will hurt your small business.

Low Conversion Rates

If you find that your conversion rates are low, or that people who land on your website quickly bounce off, there’s something about your website that is turning visitors off. A website redesign, whether changing design elements, functionality or content, is probably a good idea.

Outdated Design Elements

Some web design elements are considered outdated and should be changed regardless of any other consideration or problem. Flash, as pointed above, Frames and Tables were all used for web design in the past but are now considered obsolete and make your website difficult to maintain and to update. The same is true for features such as Intro Pages (those pages that load before users get access to the home page) – these are annoying to web visitors and could cause them to click away.

Remember that small business website redesign, where you hire a designer to redesign an existing website, is at least as complex as creating a website from scratch. Make sure you find a website designer that you are comfortable with and are able to trust. For more on choosing the right web designer, check out this article on What to Look for in a Web Designer.

What is Flash and is it suitable for your business?

Flash is software that uses animation to create multimedia elements for websites. Flash on a web page is usually used to establish interactivity with visitors. It could be a button, form, movie, cartoon, or even a game. Take a look at the following examples of different uses of Flash:

Flash focused sites (full Flash sites):
Moodstream (brainstorming tool)
Uniroyal Fun Cup (racing game)
Chipotle (restaurant)

Sites with Flash elements (not full Flash sites):
Atlantic Vegas (only the game selections are done in Flash)
American Academy Casablanca (home page has a Flash photo gallery)
Conference Torquay (home page has 3 small rotating Flash photo galleries)

To use Flash or not?
There are few things to consider when thinking about using Flash on your website: your budget, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and your industry type.

Consider your web design budget
A standard website can cost you anywhere from $500 to $3000 and that doesn’t include Flash. There are many factors that go into the price of a website, but Flash would be considered an added feature and therefore would cost you hundreds extra. So, when considering including Flash on your website, first take a look at your budget and see if you can afford it.

SEO and Flash
There are a couple of reasons why you would like to have a Flash site for your business, it grabs visitor’s attention and it’s interactive. On the other hand, you might not want to have a full Flash site for your business because they’re made up of graphics and graphics are not search engine optimized (SEO). It is very important to have your website be SEO friendly, but that’s a different topic. Your website can of course have Flash elements like those shown in the examples above.

Is your business in an industry that’s ready for Flash?
The type of industry that your business is in has also a factor of how much Flash on your website you should use (if you decide to use it). For example, if you’re in a Health Care industry your website doesn’t need any Flash, but you may still use Flash elements minimally. The main reason for this is because the visitors that would come to your website would not typically wait for the Flash to load, they just want to get in, find what they’re looking for and leave. But if you’re in the Arts and Entertainment industry, than it would be good for your website to have at least some Flash in it. I would at least suggest for your website to use a Flash photo gallery. When people come to an entertainment type of website, they are more interested to interact with your website and take their time to view things such as slide shows.

So before you consider to have your website designed in Flash, first thing about your budget, your search engine ranking and your industry type.

Is Printed Marketing Material Still Important?

What we couldn’t have possibly imagined just a decade ago has become a reality: everything has moved online. We shop online, we do our banking online, we play online, and we even socialize online. In addition, research shows that when making buying decisions, the first place people go to for researching their options is the Internet.

Which brings up the question, if everything takes place online these days, and especially if you’re an online business, should you still use printed marketing materials such as brochures as part of your marketing strategy?

Why printed marketing materials are still valuable

The short answer is yes. Marketing is never about just one medium. It’s always a mistake to focus on just one aspect of marketing and to neglect the others. A good marketing campaign utilizes many different mediums to generate many different leads, then nurtures them until they are ready to become customers.

So, while “online” is really hot these days, the physical world still exists, and there are enough potential customers who, after the initial online research, expect to see printed material. These people typically find it difficult to trust a business if it’s completely virtual. They need to know that you have a physical address, a phone number, and that they can see a brochure or other types of printed material before they commit to you.

If you ignore these consumers, you have just lost a segment of the population that could have been interested in your solution.

No doubt, when you plan your marketing budget, you need to pay special attention to online components, including your Web site, your blog and your social media accounts. Ideally, you want to have a great logo, and you want your logo to appear on all online venues (main site, blog header, Twitter background etc.)

To keep your brand highly unique and identifiable, you should also have the same logo appear on your business cards and on any printed marketing materials such as brochures and flyers.

How to create an effective brochure

Now that we’ve established the importance of brochures and of other printed marketing materials, here are a few handy tips for writing and designing an effective brochure:

1. Make it visually appealing. Design is extremely important when it comes to brochures. If the design is boring or cluttered, people won’t bother to read your text. Look for a small business graphic designer who has a lot of experience and can show you samples of their previous work. Better yet, make sure they have positive testimonials on their site, or on a third party site.

2. Focus on benefits rather than on features. Prospects don’t care about your product’s features. They want you to answer the question, “what’s in it for me?” and your brochure needs to be able to answer that question, or it will be tossed!

3. Keep it short. Do you really need a 10-page brochure? Generally, short, catchy brochures with a large font and a clean design are better than long, tiresome, technical brochures.

4. Make it personal. Write your brochure in a direct, conversational tone – as if you are talking with a person face to face. The more personal and direct your tone is, the easier it will be for prospects to connect with your message.

5. Include a call for action. Every marketing material should include a call for action, and this is true for brochures as well. A call for action can be as simple as ending your brochure with the sentence “Need ____? Call today” and your phone number. The idea is to present the pain, your business as the solution, and to encourage the prospect to take immediate action by calling you.

Whether you have a physical location or fully operate online, your small business marketing strategy should include online marketing materials AND printed marketing materials. This combination will make sure you don’t neglect an important segment of your potential market.