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You are here: Home > Internet and Businesses Online > Web Design > Three Things You Must Do When Designing and Building Your Small Business Website |
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Casual Articles - Three Things You Must Do When Designing and Building Your Small Business Website
Job Searching During the Holidays? esign your website so the information it contains is easy to find. If you make it easy for your visitors to navigate your site, they’ll thank you with their dollars. Make it difficult, and they’ll leave your website before you can say “Google.”A common misperception on the part of job seekers is that the holidays are a poor time for job hunting prospects. As a professional recruiter, here are three reasons why the holiday period is in fact an excellent time to seek a new opportunity:1. New budgets generally call for hiring additional resources. The budgeting process for the coming year generally takes place the final quarter of the year. With new business strategies mapped out, senior management aggressively begin to look for prime talent. This is an excellent chance for candidates to passively market themselves through networked contacts or recruiters. Make yourself availab At the bare minimum, you should have a navigation bar on every webpage that includes a link back to your home page and to every top-tier page in your website. In addition, you should consider placing links back to the previous page visited at the top and bottom of the current page. Some websites use “bread crumbs” for this purpose – a “trail” of links that show each page visited since landing at the site. Las Improving Corporate Productivity by Motivating Employees: Hierarchy of Needs for Employees If you are going to have a web presence for your small business, it only makes sense that it should actually help you get more business. In order to do so, your website design should focus on performing only one function – and that’s to convey your sales message to your site visitors in an effective and efficient manner.The job of managers and executives is to get things done through the efforts of others. To do this successfully, effective leaders must be able to motivate their employees. Although this may seem obvious, it is often easier said than done.The theory and practice of improving productivity through employee motivation is a challenging subject, touching on several disciplines ranging from human psychology to the organizational environment and structure. This subject is usually not clearly understood and is very often poorly practiced in the workplace, but the fact remains that job performance is clearly a function of ability and motivat No matter what your web designer tells you, simplicity is best when building your small business website. While having a website with lots of bright colors and flashy interactive graphics might win web design awards, it will probably not help you win customers. In fact, the more complicated your web design, the higher the risk that your sales message will be lost amidst all the fancy bells and whistles on your site. For most small businesses, a simple and elegant four or five page website is all they need to get the job done. As an added bonus, such sites are inexpensive when compared to flashier multimedia sites. If you want your small business website to increase your profits instead of emptying your pocketbook, pay close attention to the following design guidelines when you build your site. Make Your Website Easy to Read In order for your website to get sales and/or leads, your small business website design needs to be user and consumer-friendly - that means it needs to be easy to read. So, short sentences and paragraphs, dark text on white (or very, very light) backgrounds and lots of white space should be the norm. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I’ll say it again - the purpose of having a website for your small business isn’t to win design awards. It’s to convey information about your product or service that guides the consumer toward making a buying decision in your favor. If you think that dark websites and colored text on colored backgrounds looks better, you may be right. However, as I mentioned earlier loud colors and excessive graphics only serve to distract attention from the sales message contained in your site content and makes your site harder to read. Remember: keep it simple and you’ll keep the sale. Also, remember that web users tend to scan text instead of reading it start to finish like printed text. Since the majority of your visitors will not read all your content, use headlines, subheadings, and bolded text that quickly convey your overall message. Done correctly, a visitor should be able to scan all your headlines, subheads, and bold text in just a few seconds and understand the central message of your site or page. Make Your Website Easy to Navigate Since the chief purpose of your site is to convey information, you should design your website so the information it contains is easy to find. If you make it easy for your visitors to navigate your site, they’ll thank you with their dollars. Make it difficult, and they’ll leave your website before you can say “Google.” At the bare minimum, you should have a navigation bar on every webpage that includes a link back to your home page and to every top-tier page in your website. In addition, you should consider placing links back to the previous page visited at the top and bottom of the current page. Some websites use “bread crumbs” for this purpose – a “trail” of links that show each page visited since landing at the site. Last Building a Home Internet Business - The Basics les message will be lost amidst all the fancy bells and whistles on your site.There a many things to consider when undertaking the task of starting a business, whether it be a physical bricks and mortar site or an Internet business from home.One of the most important things to consider even before building an Internet business is who your market is going to be. Exactly who are you going to sell your goods or services to? If there isn’t a market for your goods or services, it doesn’t matter how great your product is.Other considerations are how much time, money and patience you are willing to dedicate to your given project. A lot of businesses usually don’t make it past their first year. Some don’t even ma For most small businesses, a simple and elegant four or five page website is all they need to get the job done. As an added bonus, such sites are inexpensive when compared to flashier multimedia sites. If you want your small business website to increase your profits instead of emptying your pocketbook, pay close attention to the following design guidelines when you build your site. Make Your Website Easy to Read In order for your website to get sales and/or leads, your small business website design needs to be user and consumer-friendly - that means it needs to be easy to read. So, short sentences and paragraphs, dark text on white (or very, very light) backgrounds and lots of white space should be the norm. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I’ll say it again - the purpose of having a website for your small business isn’t to win design awards. It’s to convey information about your product or service that guides the consumer toward making a buying decision in your favor. If you think that dark websites and colored text on colored backgrounds looks better, you may be right. However, as I mentioned earlier loud colors and excessive graphics only serve to distract attention from the sales message contained in your site content and makes your site harder to read. Remember: keep it simple and you’ll keep the sale. Also, remember that web users tend to scan text instead of reading it start to finish like printed text. Since the majority of your visitors will not read all your content, use headlines, subheadings, and bolded text that quickly convey your overall message. Done correctly, a visitor should be able to scan all your headlines, subheads, and bold text in just a few seconds and understand the central message of your site or page. Make Your Website Easy to Navigate Since the chief purpose of your site is to convey information, you should design your website so the information it contains is easy to find. If you make it easy for your visitors to navigate your site, they’ll thank you with their dollars. Make it difficult, and they’ll leave your website before you can say “Google.” At the bare minimum, you should have a navigation bar on every webpage that includes a link back to your home page and to every top-tier page in your website. In addition, you should consider placing links back to the previous page visited at the top and bottom of the current page. Some websites use “bread crumbs” for this purpose – a “trail” of links that show each page visited since landing at the site. Las The Press Release Method to Get Great Publicity y to read. So, short sentences and paragraphs, dark text on white (or very, very light) backgrounds and lots of white space should be the norm.If you have had any experience in public relations or marketing, you probably know how well press releases can work. There are many, many companies who have increased sales by 100%-300% in a matter of months simply through using press releases.Most people don’t know how to write them, distribute them, or use them to their advantage in general. I’m not going to describe how to write them in this article, that’s for another day. However, I will outline the plan that I have used to generate literally millions of dollars in free publicity and advertising for my clients. It is a special program that I call the “24 week total publicity p At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I’ll say it again - the purpose of having a website for your small business isn’t to win design awards. It’s to convey information about your product or service that guides the consumer toward making a buying decision in your favor. If you think that dark websites and colored text on colored backgrounds looks better, you may be right. However, as I mentioned earlier loud colors and excessive graphics only serve to distract attention from the sales message contained in your site content and makes your site harder to read. Remember: keep it simple and you’ll keep the sale. Also, remember that web users tend to scan text instead of reading it start to finish like printed text. Since the majority of your visitors will not read all your content, use headlines, subheadings, and bolded text that quickly convey your overall message. Done correctly, a visitor should be able to scan all your headlines, subheads, and bold text in just a few seconds and understand the central message of your site or page. Make Your Website Easy to Navigate Since the chief purpose of your site is to convey information, you should design your website so the information it contains is easy to find. If you make it easy for your visitors to navigate your site, they’ll thank you with their dollars. Make it difficult, and they’ll leave your website before you can say “Google.” At the bare minimum, you should have a navigation bar on every webpage that includes a link back to your home page and to every top-tier page in your website. In addition, you should consider placing links back to the previous page visited at the top and bottom of the current page. Some websites use “bread crumbs” for this purpose – a “trail” of links that show each page visited since landing at the site. Las The Digital Revolution Has Arrived! ed in your site content and makes your site harder to read. Remember: keep it simple and you’ll keep the sale.60 billion emails are sent every day. 1 billion people across the world are online. Email changed the way we communicate, video is changing the world…especially for those who can see it!So now it is possible for you to send an email in video format (the recipient can see and hear you), instead of just plain old boring text, to anyone in the world! You even have the ability to do video blogging, podcasting, video IM, and live web broadcasting (all from one account if need be)!The Internet is evolving into a place where all media, entertainment and information meet. Today, approximately $2 Billion a year is being spent on streami Also, remember that web users tend to scan text instead of reading it start to finish like printed text. Since the majority of your visitors will not read all your content, use headlines, subheadings, and bolded text that quickly convey your overall message. Done correctly, a visitor should be able to scan all your headlines, subheads, and bold text in just a few seconds and understand the central message of your site or page. Make Your Website Easy to Navigate Since the chief purpose of your site is to convey information, you should design your website so the information it contains is easy to find. If you make it easy for your visitors to navigate your site, they’ll thank you with their dollars. Make it difficult, and they’ll leave your website before you can say “Google.” At the bare minimum, you should have a navigation bar on every webpage that includes a link back to your home page and to every top-tier page in your website. In addition, you should consider placing links back to the previous page visited at the top and bottom of the current page. Some websites use “bread crumbs” for this purpose – a “trail” of links that show each page visited since landing at the site. Las Keyed Cars, Christmas Scars, and Chi-town Seminars... esign your website so the information it contains is easy to find. If you make it easy for your visitors to navigate your site, they’ll thank you with their dollars. Make it difficult, and they’ll leave your website before you can say “Google.”I walked outside to my car and saw a disturbing sight. Someone had keyed the entire passenger side. It had to get fixed. Fortunately, I was covered.Of course they always hit the best looking side. And they didn't key my hood, which needed the most touch-up. Some of you are saying, "Hey stupid. Why don't you claim the hood as part of the damage? Your insurance wouldn't know the difference."Simple. That would be a lie...It was just prior to Christmas when I ordered a $500 correspondence course with an expiring $50 coupon for a total of $450. It arrived, but on the final week of the year, it goes on sale for $250. I could ha At the bare minimum, you should have a navigation bar on every webpage that includes a link back to your home page and to every top-tier page in your website. In addition, you should consider placing links back to the previous page visited at the top and bottom of the current page. Some websites use “bread crumbs” for this purpose – a “trail” of links that show each page visited since landing at the site. Lastly, make sure that there are no broken links on your website. Broken links may not seem like a big deal to you, but to a site visitor who was clicking on a link for more information they are a major frustration. Fix your broken links! Oh, and incidentally, making your site easy to navigate will also help the search engines to find and index all your pages, which might help you get more traffic over the long haul. Make Sure Your Website Loads Quickly Despite the fact that high-speed internet access has become very affordable and accessible in recent years, many web users are still using dial-up connections to access the internet. Note that these people get very frustrated when they have to wait five minutes for your webpage to load. You will lose these visitors if your web page files are too large and take too long to load. Keep photos, graphics, and animations to a tasteful minimum on your websites, and keep your total page size under 50K to ensure maximum usability for your visitors. In addition, avoid using background music on your pages unless it is absolutely necessary – music files take time to load, and can annoy your visitors enough to make them leave your site. By the way, smaller and faster loading pages make it easier for the search engines to spider and rank your site – an added bonus for keeping your page files small and your load times fast. ----- Hopefully, these guidelines will help you build a website that gets you more sales and leads for your small business. Remember, building a website that your visitors enjoy browsing will boost customer loyalty and encourage repeat sales. Create a fast-loading site that’s easy to read and navigate, and your visitors will thank you with their checkbooks! Copyright 2005 Modern Digital Marketing LLC
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