Thanks to Travis, our HTML & SEO expert, who recorded his workflow on this project!

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:

• What is your company name?
• Where are you located?
  (are you located close to me)
• How long have you been in business?
  (are you some start up that will you be gone tomorrow when I need you, or will you be there for the long haul)
• What products or services to you provide?(clear description of what you do if you are a service business,
  photos of your work if you create – think a landscaper,
  some photos of your products and store if you have a retail location,
  an ecom store if you sell products retail but do not have a storefront)
• Who do you work with?(if I call you with what you need, are you going to be interested in helping me)
• What sets you apart from everyone else offering the same thing?(why the heck should I bother to call you rather than Joe down the street)
• What do people say about you?(I wonder what your clients think about after they’ve worked with you)
• How much is your work going to cost?(quote request form is often appropriate if  you don’t have only fixed products and prices like a book)
• Who are you, and what are your company philosophies about how you do business?(if I call, who are the people I’m going to be dealing with, and how are you going to treat me)
• How can I get in touch with you?(telephone number, contact person and email are the minimum)

Many websites have a page ore more of their website devoted to each one of these questions.

If you are just starting out, you may choose to answer more than one question per page.

The bottom line is, each page on your website has a specific purpose, of educating your potential client, and making them want to call you.

If you leave out certain information, the perceived risk of wasting time, or making the wrong decision, will prevent certain people from picking up the phone to call.

Educate your website visitors and answer their questions,

and they will feel that contacting you is worth the effort!

Hi Inga,

This is me smiling! I mean really smiling!

I feel a sense of relief….I am done and I feel great about my decision on the design, AND I feel over the moon delighted with the gorgeous and beautiful masterpiece you have created for me!  I have a elegant beautiful deign , a company name that says a lot, wonderful pics with accompanying inspirational words…what more do I need?

Tonight it is time to raise a glass and I will be raising a glass to you..Ms Brilliant and Creative!

So over to you…it’s a wrap!

Until Later,
Smiling Karen

Visit Spirit Renewed at: http://www.spiritrenewedcoaching.com

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 http://spiritrenewedcoaching.com.   We suggest for any start up company, to choose and register a domain name first, before making a final decision on the name of your company, as this is ideal.
2. SECURING THE BUSINESS NAME -  If you have chosen a message or keyword targeted domain as your primary domain, and this is not the name of your company, you should ALSO register the name of your actual company. You can point this secondary domain (yourcompanyname.com) to the location of your website, so if someone types in yourcompanyname.com, they won’t be disappointed.
3. COMMON USE OF WORD – The more frequently a word is used in everyday conversation, the more likely it is that people will remember the address of your domain.  Again, the rules of demand dictate how many of these domains using common words, phrases and expressions are available.
4. SHORT IS SWEET – General principal: domains gain value when they decrease in length.  Realistically however, the shorter the domain name is, the more likely it is that it is already owned by someone else, and would be very expensive it is to buy if you tried to acquire it.  Three word domains are fine, four word domains are less ideal.
5. THE SPELLING –  You don’t want to loose clients that go somewhere else because they can not remember how to spell your domain name (this also applies to registering your own name if the spelling is at all unusual). Avoid words that have the same sound as another word but are spelled differently (for example, whether/weather).  Also, avoid numbers and hyphens unless you’re purely registering a domain for search engine optimization purposes, and don’t expect clients to be typing in the domain name directly.
6. DOMAIN EXTENSION – For Canadian companies, the best domain extension is still .com, followed closely by the .ca version of the name.  If at all possible, if you are able to register a .com that works for you, make sure you register the .ca version as well if it is available.
7. WHAT IS THE COMPETITION DOING? – If .ca of the domain you want is available, however your competitor down the street is using the .com of that name, it is inadvisable to go with the .ca. Most people will automatically think and type “.com” when going to a website, and you don’t want your customers going to your competitor by mistake. Only register a .ca domain if the .com domain can not be mistaken for you: for instance, they offer a completely different service, or they are located in a different part of the country, and you are targeting a local market.

How do I actually apply all this?

At this point, you may feel overloaded, and think to yourself, with all those rules to follow, how am I ever going to find a domain that is available, and follows all these principles? Rather than try to type in hundreds of ideas by hand to check if they are available, try using a tool like this:

• (exact domain checker): if you have an amazing idea for a domain, and want to see if it’s available, you can save the amount of time you have to spend typing in options, hitting search, and waiting for results… go to http://ajaxwhois.com, select .com and .ca as your favorite extensions, and the system will instantly tell you if the domain you’re thinking of is available, no waiting involved.
• (domain suggestion tool): if you are located in Chicago and want to have your domain include the word “Chicago” and end with “cleaning”, type “Chicago” into the keyword box, and type “cleaning” into the suffix box – the generator will find you dozens of available domains that include your keywords.
• (domain message brainstorming tool): if you want to express a concept with your business/domain name, and don’t know where to start, type in a number of related keywords into this tool, for some great suggestions.
• Once you’ve found a great domain (if you have found two or three, and can’t make up your mind, give us a call and ask!) you can register your domain yourself, for usually $12 – $15/year per domain.  There are many registrars available, however we suggest you use http://domainsatcost.ca, we prefer your registering with them, as we know the interface, and can help you if you need.  There

Follow these simple guidelines to picking the right domain name for your business, and you’ll be off to the right start. Just remember… If you get stuck, you can always call us for help!

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.

NAVIGATION SYSTEMS- A set of text links / graphics buttons /drop down boxes etc. which visitors to the website can click on to view different pages. The location of the navigation system is usually along the left hand side or on the top of the page under the company name.

ANIMATION – Images or text that move on a website. Best used very sparingly for particular purposes and to save bandwidth for modem users. Good animation used sparingly can add interest and beauty to your website. Animation used without discretion distracts from the content, is annoying to the viewer and takes away from the style and quality of your website. Mostly animation is done in FLASH (see Flash later on this page)

ROLLOVERS- The effect you see when you move your mouse over a text link and the color of the text or the image changes. This is usually done using a type of code called JavaScript, or using special tags in the HTML (called Dynamic HTML, or DHTML).

FOOTER – text and/or links at the bottom of a page of a website which is usually repeated on every page of the site. It may be a repetition of the navigation, your address & telephone number, and/or a copyright notice.

COLOR SCHEME – A combination of colors that go together using the principles of color and design. A monochromatic color scheme uses all colors that are variants of the same color, and a high contrast color scheme often uses opposing colors to add drama to the site.

FONTS – The main font for the website needs to be chosen very carefully as it sets the style for the entire site. This is another area where the old adage “less is more” comes into play. A maximum of three fonts should be used on a page to keep it looking cohesive.

FLASH – The expression “If all someone has in the tool belt is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail” perfectly expresses some web designers’ usage of Flash, who make things bounce, squeak, jiggle and, well, flash just because it is possible. We believe that Flash used in moderation can add to your site, however without distracting from the feeling and content being presented.

3D TOUR – A photo that you can rotate with your mouse to get the impression that you are in the center of a scene and turning around 360 degrees to see everything.

STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY – Using professional quality photos is essential to achieving a professional look for your website. We license (buy permission to use) photos from companies who keep huge numbers of photos in stock for this purpose. Our clients have a choice of thousands of professional stock photos at no extra charge through an arrangement with our stock photography vendor.

SERVER/ HOST – For a website to always be visible on the Internet, it has to be located on a special computer running special software that is always connected to the net. The software on this computer works with the way the Internet is set up to show people anywhere in the world your website whenever they want to see it.

(You can think of this as being an apartment in a building… you have a key to the apartment and your site files live there, but you pay rent to have that space). The companies that specialize in providing space for hire on these computers are called Hosting companies or ISP’s (Internet Service Providers), and they charge a fee every month for the space that you rent. We offer quality hosting for our clients including a content management system (CMS for short) that allows you to update your site without needing to know HTML.

DOMAIN NAME – To have a website that people can access by typing in a domain name, you need to buy (actually lease) a domain name through a provider such as West Coast Web. This costs a small fee each year to retain this domain name, a portion of which is paid to the central domain registration authority on your behalf.

The domain functions as a “Street Sign” to your “apartment” on the hosting company’s server. When someone types in your domain name, their computer looks up this domain in the central database maintained by the domain registration authority. They then tell the computer which server the files are located on, and off the computer goes to visit your site!

INTERNET ACCESS- The ability to connect through a telephone line or ADSL cable to the internet. There is a monthly fee associated with this from $8 – $45 depending how fast you want to access information and how many hours you would like to spend connected to the internet each month. You need internet access along with a website if you wish to receive email. If you do not have internet access at the moment, we can recommend several companies who offer this service.

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?
4. What are the links to some sites that I like the look of so I can show my designer the look and feel that appeals to me?
5. Do I want a splash page? (the first page you see when you reach the site, designed for maximum impact like the cover of a magazine)
6. How many pages of content would I like to have? (Common Pages: About, Philosophy, Services or Products, References, Contact, Home
7. Am I going to be selling products from my website?
8. Would I like to process credit card payments online or simply have the order emailed to me and process the credit card off-line? (this option saves you a lot of money)
9. How many products will I be selling, and how often do they need to be updated?
10. If products need to be updated daily or weekly, does someone at my office have time to do this? If not, would I like to have someone in my company trained to do the updates, or have my web development company take care of all updates for me? Or would I prefer to be able to update my site myself using a secure online administration section, and have the freedom to instantly update my site products without knowing or using html?
11. What features would I like/ be interested in possibly having on my website? (for instance: forms, mailing lists etc)

You won’t know all the answers to these questions, but we’ll help you to make the right decisions for you!

The core elements of starting up a successful small business are:

• Make sure you know your product, and have defined your target market.
• Do your market research.  This is more than talking to friends and relatives and getting them to function as a cheering squad… they are not going to pay your rent if your idea bombs.  Market research means researching your competition, learning what they do that works and does not work, and calling potential clients on the phone, and doing informational interviews, to find out WHAT they need, WHY they need it, and WHAT does not work about their current solution).
• Price properly.  Charging market rate is ideal.  However if you are not making sales at market rate because you don’t have the work portfolio to back you up, try pricing at 70% – 80% of the going market rate to get some clients in the door when you’re starting out.  Do it as sales, not as lower rates: you don’t want to lower your rates too much, or they’ll assume it’s because you don’t have a good quality product or service. Read “Pricing for Profit” by Dale Furtwengler for more information on pricing.
• Calculate how much money you need to make to survive, and run worst case scenarios, to make sure you can survive even if business is not booming from the start.  Best case scenarios are great as they provide motivation, but it’s the worst case scenarios that are you reality check.  Figure out what the minimum number of sales is that you need to make to keep your head above water, and figure out if you’re confident you can achieve that baseline.
• If the numbers work out, register your company, you can do it yourself online if it’s a proprietorship, if it’s a limited company, get an inexpensive lawyer to do it right for you…
• Build your visual business branding: Logo, Website, matching business cards at the very least. You can add more print materials on as you need them. You need a good brand identity. Branding does not just mean corporate organizations the size of Pepsi.Branding is essential for every small business starting up, that wants to get taken seriously in it’s local market. Potential clients will assume your product or service is the same quality as the quality you’ve put into representing yourself.
• Write good content for your website, which collects leads via a form or a white paper request…You can’t help those people that need your services, if they don’t talk to you. The most helpful source for information about how to write good marketing copy, is located at http://www.psychotactics.com. . A little bit of information about choosing a good writer is here, if you don’t feel like marketing copy is your strong suit.
• Push, push, push building Google SEO (Search Engine Optimization) so your target market can find you. You can use Google Adwords to get an immediate response, while waiting for the organic SEO to catch up. Your new business is dead on the water without your target market finding out about you, and the least expensive way to reach your specific target market, is using SEO. A few very basic points about SEO are located here, but if you’re going to get into doing SEO yourself, you have weeks of work ahead.  Some assistance and a coaching session from an experienced SEO guru is going to do wonders to lay your SEO ground work.

At this point, you have a product, target market, business name and bank account, a brand, business materials and marketing copy, and a stream of new clients contacting you.

Success from here on in, will be based on your having a good product or service, that your target market wants and needs.

All the best with your new venture!

The problem is that many website owners don’t realize that this also applies to the standards used in web design, not only big software development projects.

Have a look at these two sites designed for different screen resolutions.
Which one makes more of an impact on you?

• Website built for 600*800 *by another company* (this was the design standard six years ago):
  http://www.pwacmanitoba.com
• One of our websites, designed for 1024*768 +:
  http://www.majorinv.com

Today’s Web Design Industry Standard

The screen resolution standard used by the web design industry, is set according to the statistics, of the most common screen resolutions in use, by the users of the web.

As of January 2010, internet users are broken down by the following %:

• People viewing the internet at the 800*600 screen resolution = 1% of users
• People viewing the internet at the 1024*768 screen resolution= 20% of users
• People viewing the internet at at a higher resolution than 1024*768 = 76%

Here’s some examples of our other recent designs, which use the full screen resolution.

• http://paragonpacificmortgages.com
• http://breizhservices.ca
• http://foreverfitworkout.com
• http://columbiaintegratedhealth.com
• http://limboschildpsychology.com (content under construction)

Is Your Website a Victim?

If your website is huddled in the middle of the screen, or off to the left, you are not making the impact on your viewers that you need to have.
I highly recommend that as a part of your looking at your website and your brand,
you take time now to upgrade your website to a new design which

• is targeted at today’s screen standards.
• is clean, unique, and memorable.

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:

• If Bob decides to use generic company emails like “admin” or “sales” this does not allow any concept of personal contact to the client. It is suitable when you have a group of people answering one email address, and the response to the email address, is more important than who will be reading or responding to it, such as “support@domain.com”. This kind of email does not depend on personal relationships.
• If Bob wants to build a corporate impression, and will have many staff members, we would suggest something like bjones@domain.com (gender neutral, people not sure who they are emailing)
• If Bob wants to have a more personal corporate impression, he could use bob.jones@domain.com. (full name gives people information about if it’s a woman or a man, and who it is)
• going with bobj@domain.com or bob@domain.com is great for a small business owner, if they want to show off the fact that they are all about personal service. This does also show that it’s a smaller company, as this naming convention does not allow multiple people with the same first name to have the same type of email.

So the rule is, yes, if you want to be taken seriously and build your brand, you need to have your email @ your company domain. However within that, you have levels of naming convention that provide different impressions of the connection between your clients and your staff… choose the one that best matches the email’s purpose, and your business identity.

A lot of small business owners approach other business owners with their products or services via email.

Responses to this communication however can be varied, and many people get discouraged and get up.  If you feel like giving up on your email marketing, and looking only to other solutions, assess WHY the emails you send out are not getting you sign ups.  Let’s say you own a business where you collect emails from business owners, and send them an email asking them to sign up for your free website service.

• Do you address the business owner and make reference to a conversation you’ve had with a member of the staff, or are they generic?  If you personalize your emails, they are much more likely to get at least a cursory glance, rather than getting deleted as unsolicited spam.
• is the copy of the email addressing a specific problem they have to capture their attention, and offering a solution? Busy people usually have their brain half focused on how to solve an existing list of problems, if you tap into one of those problems they have already taking up CPU cycles in their brain, getting their attention is way easier.
• does your email have a clear “to do”?  Is there a clear next step you are asking them to take, or are you just dumping information on them? Without a clear call to action “Click here for your free report!” or “Call for a complimentary marketing evaluation!” you may loose their attention right at the end of the email, and you will not get any response.
• Is the email template you are using a visual marketing tool, or just plain text?  An HTML email with well designed graphics matching your site, will be more effective at marketing than a black and white text email.
• Are you tracking if the emails even arrive, and if so, how many times they are opened, and if they are clicking through to your site or not? A tool like Salesforce, which allows email delivery tracking and individualized emails based on an HTML template, combined with tagging click-through traffic from that specific person with Google Analytics using custom variables, allow you to see where the point of failure is.
• Do you have Google analytics installed on your site, to see what actions visitors are taking when they reach your site?  Is there a clear call to action on your website?

POSSIBLE POINTS OF FAILURE:

• delivery success (are the email addresses you are getting correct?)
• response to the content of the email (are they captivated, and paying attention? do they keep the email and open it more than once?)
• call to action (are they actually clicking through to your website from your email?)
• the response to the website once they click through. (read bounce rate, Analytics page overlay showing if they click through to the signup button, Hot page script overlay tracking mouse movement to see if they are even SEEING the sign up button, etc)
• finally, the signup process… install analytics on the various pages, to see if there is a point of failure in the process (where they start to fill out the form and give up at one point, or they take one look and run, etc)

Once you break down potential client responses into the four component parts, you’ll be able to identify your point of failure in the process. With this information, you’ll know where to focus your efforts to make changes.

Yes, it takes lots of work. But the tools are there to allow you to see where the problem is, if you take the time and effort to dig in.

Needing a logo completely depends on what market you are pursuing.

If you want to charge as though you are a freelancer, to be hired by clients that are looking for a “cheaper solution” than hiring an established company, a logo may work against you. A logo makes you look like a company, which will make people to expect a higher level of service and market rate prices.

If you want to charge as a company, you WILL need a logo. A logo is an investment into image, which usually represents a commitment to build a long term presence.  Prospective clients respond to your illustrated confidence in your long term presence, by a greater confidence in purchase, and a higher valuation of the work provided.

So the long and the short of it is this: if you want to charge below market rate, don’t get a logo. If you want to charge market rate, you need a proper brand, including a properly designed logo and web design.

As a rule I suggest putting all company information on the contact page that is relevant to your clients getting in touch with you; the purpose is to provide the information that is going to WORK for your clients and your company.  Posting every detail on the contact page is not necessarily the best way to go.

Channeling your business communication

For your contact page, you may want to try:

• a brief and friendly invitation to pick up that phone or click that email link, is often helpful, as many people hesitate to make that final step of picking up the phone.
• Standard information includes your mailing address, as browsers on your website often visit contact pages in order to find out if a company is located in their geographic area.
• Also standard is at least one telephone number, and one email.

The purpose of the contact page is to channel your clients’ wish to get in touch into the channels that will allow them to be successful, not frustrate their efforts.

If for instance you don’t have time to answer Skype calls most of the time, don’t post the information.  You can provide that information on an as needed basis to specific clients.

On the other hand, the communication also needs to be controlled to allow you to run your company without being pulled in ten different directions at once by too many people trying to get in touch with you via different methods.  If you have more telephone numbers and emails than you have dedicated staff to keep on top of the different locations of the voicemail and email, communications will get delayed and lost, causing frustration and headaches on both sides of the company/client relationship.

So figure out how you want to communicate with your clients to best serve their needs and be able to get their work done efficiently, and post that contact information.

P73SJ2NQ5RV8