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Library: ‘Setting up your Website’

What missing information prevents visitors from turning into clients?

01 Apr

Too often, I see a website that was built to attract clients, but it actually is creating a feeling of unease in the viewer, because the owner of the website did NOT include the correct information.

If you are looking for someone to do something for you, or you are looking for a specific product, picking up the phone to contact a new company, learn about what they do, and see if they are a good match for what you need, is hard work.  The job of your website content, is to make it feel easy for the visitor on your website to call you.

Follow this simple guide, to answer the right questions on your website, and make it easy for that potential client to pick up the phone!

Visitors expect to be presented with simple answers to the following questions: Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Posted in Composing Your Website Content, Setting up your Website

 

The 7 Principles of Choosing a Great Domain Name

31 Mar

Choosing a domain name for your business website, especially if you are still working to find a name for your business, can seem overwhelming.  Below is a thorough breakdown of the elements that go into making this decision correctly, and finding a name that will work extremely well for the market that you are targeting.

  1. CHOOSING THE TYPE OF NAME
    • KEYWORDS & LOCALITY – If you sell widgets locally, it’s ideal to have a name that includes at least a part of what you do/your location in the domain, to make it easy to remember: think http://WestCoastWeb.com for example – our Web design company located on the West Coast of Canada. Having your keywords in the domain, also may help a bit for Google ranking, although how much benefit you see from this, depends on how heavily everyone else in the same market is optimized.
    • MESSAGE – Another way of choosing a domain name, is by choosing the core value of message of your company, and naming your company and your website for that: for instance Read the rest of this entry »
 
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Posted in Setting up your Website, Startup & Branding Advice

 

A non-geek’s guide to web design lingo

19 Mar

So you are thinking, the reason I’m hiring a web design company is because I don’t want to have to learn all this! Well, you don’t have to! We will explain everything that you need to know in simple terms. However if you would like to learn a little about web site nomenclature for your own satisfaction, read on…

SPLASH PAGE GRAPHICS- A “splash page” is the first page you see when you come to a site which is made for the express purpose of looking impressive. You can think of it as the cover of a magazine with lots of photos and a little text. A word to the wise: A splash page is not needed or advisable for every business. For some types of businesses it is better to let your user go straight to content. Once you enter the site you come to the

MAIN PAGE GRAPHICS – the graphic layout such as the banner and left side navigation bar and any other repeated images on the content section of the site (where you read pages of text and see the information about products and services)

GUI – stands for Graphic User Interface. A fancy way of describing the layout of the page including the navigation, which the user navigates to get to where he wants to go. Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Posted in Setting up your Website

 

A few questions to think about before building a website

19 Mar

You may very well not be sure of the answers to many of these questions. These are questions that we will go through with you and help you to answer. However, reading through this list and thinking about possible answers can help you prepare for having your site designed.

  1. Why do I want a website? What result do I expect?
  2. Do I have any ideas of what I would like my domain to be?
  3. Who is it for: mostly for an existing client base or mostly to attract new customers? Read the rest of this entry »
 
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Posted in Setting up your Website

 

What email should I use for my business?

23 Feb

It is important to use an email associated with your domain name, it is a part of your brand. Just as you’re not going to hand out generic sticky notes with your name written on it if you want to make an impression, you don’t want to use generic emails when you are building your business brand.

Using an email@yourdomain.com is a constant reminder to clients and prospective clients who you are, and where to find all the information about you.

How you choose to name your email, depends on the purpose of the email, and what impression you want to give.
Lets take an example of a business owner named Bob Jones, going from least personal to most personal: Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Posted in Setting up your Website

 

What are Meta Tags?

15 Feb

META TAGS

Once your site is up and running, the final thing you need to do is for pick your keywords (if you have not had us do keyword research as a part of SEO) so that the search engines will know what your site is about.

The most important part of this is the page title, as Google will ignore any extra keywords. You should not put more than 3 keyword in the title, for instance: Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Posted in SEO - Search Engine Optimization, Setting up your Website

 
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