Affordable Website Promotion

3 May

It is easy to build a web site and even easier to make mistakes. Avoid these 5 pitfalls at all costs and your website is already heaps closer to succeeding.

3 - Design for paper
Not having a dig at graphic designers (as some work very well on web sites), but there are also stacks that do not get their head about the fact that a piece of paper is totally different to a website. Quite a lot of times I have been given layouts that work on a widescreen, but would necessitate horizontal and vertical scrolling on a typical sized screen. Or the layout calls for a variable screen width, but all of the components are fixed width.

You have to allow for the fact that there are a myriad of browsers, operating systems and screens in use and they will all display your site in a different way.

4 - Just test your site in one browser
Different browsers will display your web site in different ways. The formatting between, for instance, Internet Explorer and Firefox can be slightly different when using certain techniques. A site that works in one browser does not always look its best in another. It is a difficult and frustrating process, but you have to check your site in different browsers, different operating systems and different screen sizes.

5 - Build a site and sit back
I am always astonished at the number of people that think that building a website is the lifeline their business needs. Pay a few hundred for a web site and then they will be run off their feet fulfilling orders.

This is not the case. Only because you pay for a web site, this does not mean that it will be an overnight runaway success. With every new website you need to market it. That means promoting it to customers and local marketing, promoting it through social media and article writing, pay per click schemes, optimisation and a whole lot more.

Without marketing, your website is as good as non existent.

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3 May

5 Web Site Design No Nos - Part 1

It is easy to build a web site and even easier to make mistakes. Avoid these 5 pitfalls at all costs and your website is already heaps closer to succeeding.

1 - Use a load of colours
applying ample of colours is a sure way to get carried away and take the stylish look from the website. Too much is only that. You just need a handful of colours that compliment each other. Yes, using 30 different colours on different flashing backgrounds may make the links stand out, but at what cost?

Also, be very aware of the colour palette you settle on. I was recently asked to use a theme on a site, with part of it red text on green and the rest green text on red. An out of the ordinary mixture, especially as the web site was for an opticians, who can be dealing with red-green colourblind customers...

2 - Hide the navigation
Unbelievably, a lot of people design web-sites and miss elements of the navigation from the screen. I've had graphic designers pass me final proofs to work from, that the customer has signed off, that straight away I look at and spot an essential part of the navigation is omitted.

It does sound unfeasible, but on shopping web-sites I have seen designs that are not there simple bit for instance a link to the shopping basket or checkout. If a customer adds a product and then goes back to view more, but then wants to checkout, they straightforwardly cannot buy from you.

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4 Apr

Choosing a domain name is the start of registering and getting your website online. What should you consider to make sure you pick the best possible name? Here are my 5 top tips.

Your website name is the shortcut that your visitors will use to find your website. Every website has a numerical address that identifies it uniquely, but this address is, for most people, difficult to remember. Instead, we use a combination of letters and numbers to give our websites addresses that we can easily remember and talk about.

And choosing these names can be both extremely difficult to do and vital to get right! Here are some important pointers.

1 - Look For A Good Website Name
Your website name not only acts as a shortcut to the website, it also give a first impressions. freds-new-site might be available to register, but if you are wanting to give the impression of a high class, quality law firm, does the name match?

You might want to base the name around your trading name or you might want to base it around key search terms you are expecting your visitors to be searching for. But consider shrinking the name if it is very long, Haskayne Pet And Country Equestrian Centre might be a good name for one of my customers' shop, but as a website name, it is too much to type in.

2 - Check For Other Sites Using The Name
At first it might seem useful to register a misspelling of a competitor's name in the hope of getting traffic from their website, but the authorities who maintain domain names do not permit this on the whole. If your competitor finds out, they could demand that the name is transferred over to them.

And it is not just competitors. Finding and registering an unused extension of a Google address might also seem clever, but once again when they find out, they could reclaim the website name.

3 - Register The Website In Your Name
If you are registering the website name yourself this should happen anyway, but if you have a website designer or another company registering the name for you, make sure that it is registered to your name and address. Many will try to register the website in their own name, but this can cause you many problems later on, for example if you try to move to a different designer. Do not pay their bills in full until they have changed it to registered to you.

4 - Avoid Hyphens
Where possible, avoid hyphens in the name as most people will ignore them and type the name without them! This could mean traffic going to a different website instead of yours and a waste of your offline marketing efforts!

5 - Think Of The Extensions
Should you by the .com generic name, or the .org? Or maybe a local name such as .co.uk?

It is a big decision, but the answer can sometimes to be buy both. My rule of thumb is that if you are aiming at traffic just in your own country, by a local name. If you want to target the site internationally, then you need to look at the .com extensions.

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