Tag: web design

Importance of Professional Web Design for Your Business

The emergence of free content management systems such as WordPress has greatly benefited website owners around the world. There’s no longer any need to pay for web development services because absolutely anyone can download WordPress, install a free theme and have a working website.

There’s a very large problem with using a free content management system and free design template, though: Your website will look exactly the same as thousands of others. For a business that needs to project a professional image and build a brand identity, having a website that looks like everyone else’s is exactly what you don’t want. Do you think that there isn’t enough room in your digital marketing budget for professional web design? It may actually turn out that you can’t afford not to have a professional website design. Here’s why.

Customers Make Snap Judgments

A user will form his or her first impression of a website in just 50 milliseconds. That’s not enough time to read even a single word of text. In fact, 94 percent of the people who visit your website will base their initial opinions solely on the way that your website looks. Since first impressions are notoriously difficult to change, having a website that looks unprofessional in a potential customer’s opinion will probably prevent you from ever having a chance to earn that person’s business.

Customers Care About Appearance

Having a website that projects a professional image doesn’t only help with creating a good first impression — it also improves the overall perception of your brand. In a survey about business website design, 94 percent of respondents reported that an unprofessional website design was reason enough not to trust a business. If a website’s design is unappealing, 38 percent of visitors will leave without engaging with the website’s content. Most importantly, 75 percent of consumers will judge the apparent credibility of a business solely on the basis of the appearance of the business’s website. If you have a great looking website, people will trust your brand and investigate further. If your website looks unprofessional, people will assume that your business is unprofessional and shop elsewhere.

Customers Expect Websites to Work

Professional web design doesn’t just affect the way a website looks; it also helps to ensure that everything works as it should. A website needs to load quickly — especially for customers who use mobile devices. Reducing page loading times by as little as one second can increase a business’s sales to mobile customers by 27 percent. It is also important for a website to be free of technical problems. If the images on a website fail to load, for example, up to 39 percent of visitors will leave the website immediately.

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It’s time for a professional web design that gives your business’s online presence the level of professionalism it deserves. Email us for web development and all other digital marketing services.

June 13, 2017
Your Business: To Be or Not to Be Online?

Why Should Your Business Need To Be Online?

Giving your small business an online presence means more than simply putting up a website with your address, email and phone number. It means setting up a virtual version of your business, the face and branding of your company and a social presence such as a Facebook page. In this digital era, more people search online for the products and services they need as opposed to searching through a phone book or browsing store to store. Ignoring this reality in marketing is like saying, “I don’t need any new business I’m making the money I want.”

The Digital Age, A New Economy

It’s no secret that the Internet has created a new economy. Since 1991 when the NSF first allowed commercial use of the Internet the world changed how it did business. Since then we changed our perception and the way we do business. Think of Jeff Bezos founder of Amazon. He set up his business in his garage. Now his net worth is worth $34.7 billion. There is no doubt that this was all due to his small business having an online presence. However, in order to be successful online, you don’t have to be a giant like Amazon or eBay. Many small and mid-size businesses succeeded in building online businesses quite lucratively. Small and mid-size companies will be the main growth force of e-commerce in the digital age.

The Internet Is The Perfect Place For Business

Where do you think more people enter the Target across the street or Target.com? In order to make a sale you need visitors to come to your store. Online there are no lines, no wait, no open and closing hours, no, well you name it. You’re a click away from customers. With proper marketing and a web design company to back you up your Internet storefront can have more buyers than you ever can get in a physical shop.

Low Start Up Cost

How much does a store cost these days? Building a website doesn’t require that kind of investment. There are many tools available for small business owners that won’t leave you hurting in the bank. Tools like WordPress can help your business get a boost online. With a good web design company, you can have a site build in a relative short amount of time. Not bad for opening your business to the world.

Business 24/7

Could you be at work 24 hours a day 7 days a week? Well you can if your store was online. The biggest advantage of online shops is that they are open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Your online store never closes, never takes coffee breaks, doesn’t have vacation time, doesn’t take lunch breaks and doesn’t complain about pay. Your store is open while you sleep and you can sleep sound that you have a web team behind it, protecting it.

Corporate Image

Today everyone has a digital presence. We are all on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. Even your Corporation has a digital image. Whether you sell a product or a service you have a presence on the Internet. Those that don’t have a presence on the Internet are under the illusion that they have a business when in reality they aren’t even in the sights of the competition. For example, if you have a company that sells electronics but isn’t online, how can it compete with the Best Buy and the TigerDirect down the corner? Most people don’t take you seriously when they ask you for your business’ website and you don’t have one. A nice corporate site definitely increases the image of a company, especially if it has great product or service related content to go with it as well as good SEO.

Physical Presence Anywhere

Imagine being on your vacation on the beaches of Hawaii and knowing your business is running just fine. The Internet allows you to do business from any part of the world. Your physical location, except for few cases is not that important since you conduct your business online. Your portal to the world is on the palm of your hands.

Provide Better Customer Support

Business owners can’t control how good of a day an employee or a customer is having. When the customer visits the store and has a bad experience it’s mostly out of the owner’s hand. Thanks to the Internet, business can provide customer support and care more effectively. This means better customer satisfaction and increase of profitability. When connecting your site with your social media such as Facebook you can keep connected with your customer base. You’ll have more accurate feedback from the people you’re trying to attract to your business.

Information Easily Available To Customers

How can you give a present to a customer? In old times companies used to require days to deliver products or services or up to date information to their customers. This is not the case anymore. Now you can add or make any changes to your company and product related content virtually in a matter of hours. Publish on your site and share with the whole world the latest news to your customers.

Reduce Costs

Your online presence helps you streamline the business process. This allows you to cut costs in almost every aspect of your business. Companies reduce their maintenance, repair, and even the cooperation costs by using e-business solutions such as online shopping carts. No more slip and fall frivolous lawsuits.

Global Presence

If you open your pharmacy and they put a Walgreens and a CVS on each side can you compete with them? Thanks to the Internet, you instantly become a global player. You don’t have to invest large amounts of money opening up your business in every corner. Your business has a radius of action; the online world gives you a global radius.

Have your business online before you are out of business.

The longer you wait to have an online presence the harder it’s going to be for you to reach your customers. In the long run do you think more people are going to buy at the corner store or on an online company? If not you then think of the next generation who’ll be the consumer base of the future. Are they buying everything online now? How about 5 years from now? Take your business to the next level. Find yourself a web design and marketing company and give your business the advantage it needs.

March 13, 2015
Understanding Google Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for begginers
Found several great articles on getting started with SEO and some of the basic ideas/techniques behind search engine optimization.

Create unique, accurate page titles

A title tag tells both users and search engines what the topic of a particular page is. The <title> tag should be placed within the <head> tag of the HTML document. Ideally, you should create a unique title for each page on your site. If your document appears in a search results page, the contents of the title tag will usually appear in the first line of the results. Words in the title are bolded if they appear in the user’s search query. This can help users recognize if the page is likely to be relevant to their search.

The title for your homepage can list the name of your website/ business and could include other bits of important information like the physical location of the business or maybe a few of its main focuses or offerings.

Accurately describe the page’s content
- Choose a title that effectively communicates the topic of the page’s content.
- Avoid:
  - choosing a title that has no relation to the content on the page
  - using default or vague titles like “Untitled” or “New Page 1”
Create unique title tags for each page
- Each of your pages should ideally have a unique title tag, which helps Google know how the page is distinct from the others on your site
- Avoid:
  - using a single title tag across all of your site’s pages or a large group of pages
Use brief, but descriptive titles
- Titles can be both short and informative. If the title is too long, Google will show only a portion of it in the search result.
- Avoid:
  - using extremely lengthy titles that are unhelpful to users
  - stuffing unneeded keywords in your title tags
Page titles are an important aspect of search engine optimization.

Make use of the “description” meta tag

Summaries can be defined for each page

A page’s description meta tag gives Google and other search engines a summary of what the page is about (1). Whereas a page’s title may be a few words or a phrase, a page’s description meta tag might be a sentence or two or a short paragraph. Google Webmaster Tools provides a handy content analysis section that’ll tell you about any description meta tags that are either too short, long, or duplicated too many times (the same information is also shown for <title> tags). Like the <title> tag, the description meta tag is placed within the <head> tag of your HTML document.

Description meta tags are important because Google might use them as snippets for your pages. Note that we say “might” because Google may choose to use a relevant section of your page’s visible text if it does a good job of matching up with a user’s query. Alternatively, Google might use your site’s description in the Open Directory Project if your site is listed there (learn how to prevent search engines from displaying ODP data). Adding description meta tags to each of your pages is always a good practice in case Google cannot find a good selection of text to use in the snippet. The Webmaster Central Blog has an informative post on improving snippets with better description meta tags. Words in the snippet are bolded when they appear in the user’s query. This gives the user clues about whether the content on the page matches with what he or she is looking for.

Accurately summarize the page’s content
- Write a description that would both inform and interest users if they saw your description meta tag as a snippet in a search result.
- Avoid:
  - writing a description meta tag that has no relation to the content on the page
  - using generic descriptions like “This is a web page” or “Page about baseball cards”
  - filling the description with only keywords
  - copying and pasting the entire content of the document into the description meta tag
Use unique descriptions for each page
- Having a different description meta tag for each page helps both users and Google, especially in searches where users may bring up multiple pages on your domain (e.g. searches using the site: operator). If your site has thousands or even millions of pages, hand-crafting description meta tags probably isn’t feasible. In this case, you could automatically generate description meta tags based on each page’s content.
- Avoid:
  - using a single description meta tag across all of your site’s pages or a large group of pages
Use description meta tags to provide both search engines and users with a summary of what your page is about!

Hope this gives you a basic idea of how to get started, there are many steps to SEO and many techniques out there impossible to list them all but if you at least understand the basics it’s a great start! If you need help with your sites SEO or do want to do this on your own please do not hesitate to contact us today.
February 19, 2015
Featured Work

July 10, 2013