Small Business Design Resources

Three Reasons To Add A Blog To Your Website

If you’ve built a well-designed website for your small business, congratulations! You’re already ahead of the competition. Good small business website design is very important, yet browsing the Internet, I often can’t help but notice how poorly designed many websites are. A clean, bold design, easy navigation and high-quality content, along with basic search engine optimization of your website’s copy and title tags, will do wonders for your website and will help you strengthen your brand and establish yourself as a reputable business.

Now to the bad news. Just a decade ago, a great website was all you needed to establish your business online and to impress prospects. But things have changed dramatically over the past few years. Having a great, well-designed website isn’t enough anymore – you now need to have an interactive, social online presence. Customers, clients and prospects expect more these days from their online experience. They have come to expect interaction – they want to interact with you online, or at least have the option to do so.

To enable prospects to interact with you, you need to be active in social media, and one of the oldest forms of social media is also one of the best – blogging. Here are the three main reasons you should add a blog to your small business website – today.

1. Strengthening your brand. A well-written blog transforms your website from static to dynamic. It creates a vibrant website that keeps getting updated with fresh content, which gives visitors a reason to come back and also gives search engines a reason to crawl your website more often (more on SEO benefits in the next paragraph). You can use a blog to provide your visitors with new info, tips and ideas; to create a buzz around your website by posting contests and giveaways; and to give your customers and prospects a place where they can interact with you through voting, polls and comments.

2. SEO benefits. A blog gives you a wonderful opportunity to enrich your website with your main keywords. This is especially important for e-commerce websites that typically have very little content. When search engines are crawling your website, trying to index it correctly, they need to have something to work with – they need text that will tell them what your website is about and what are your main keywords. While your website’s URL and title tags provide search engines with the basic info, a blog reinforces that information and, overtime, can help you to rank better for many different keywords.

3. Your competitors are doing it. Even if you’re not convinced that your website needs a blog, but your competitors are adding blogs to their websites, this should be a good enough reason to add a blog too, especially if you know that customers in your space are participating in social media and reading blogs. If your competitors seem more up-to-date than you are, if their website is more fun and interesting, prospects will not hesitate to choose them over you.

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.

Small Business Profile: Ellen Hart, Careerbags.com

(310) 491-1460	ellen@careerbags.com			www.careerbags.com

Tell us your story of why and how you decided to start your own business.
In 1990 I was unable to find a business case that fit my needs as a professional woman. I designed a collection and sold it to a major luggage company called Hartmann Luggage. I stayed involved in the sales and marketing of the collection for many years but eventually went on to create other products. Four years ago some of the retailers that I dealt with called and asked to have the collection redesigned and updated because there were no lines out there for women professionals and students. I researched the Internet and found some fantastic designers and decided that there were plenty of options out there but not one great place to find them all. I grabbed the domain name Careerbags and started my business a year later.

How would your customers describe your business?
Great selection, well organized and fun place to shop. Grateful to find a store that carries such a wide variety of products specifically for women.

What’s unique about your business, how do you differ from your competitors?
We focus on the professional woman, listen to their ideas and suggestions and follow the fashion and technology trends. We are always available to guide them over the phone and be a personal shopper to help them find just the right product. We like to hear about what their career, personal style, what they carry to help them find the perfect solution.

What’s your most popular product?
17” laptop bags are flying off the shelves and we just cannot keep them in stock.

How do you market your business?
We have several blogs like our www.laptopbaglifeline.com and we use social networking like twitter and facebook, outreach to other bloggers and we wait for our HARO (help a reporter out) emails to show up and pounce on any opportunity for PR.

What role does your website play in your business?
That is my business and without keeping it updated and fresh and working with Design Leap to find out what we can do to make it better on a weekly basis, I wouldn’t have much of a business.

What would you say to small businesses who currently don’t have a website or have neglected it?
It is vital and the most cost effective and expedient way to reach their market what ever that may be.

Anything additional you want to tell us about your business that we don’t know yet?
Visit the website and see for yourself and I am always open for ideas. Life on the Internet changes everyday and I cannot wait to see what’s next!

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.