Business Growth Insights

A well-designed website is vital for the success of any business. Your choice of designer will depend largely on whether you wish to work with someone face to face, or if you are willing to work remotely.

In any case, here’s what you need to consider when contacting web designers in search for the best one for your business:

* Observe how much they ask you about your business. A good web designer will want to know everything and more about your company, because this is the only way in which they can design a website that mirrors you and your business to perfection.

* Check out the websites he has designed to confirm that you like them. Notice if all the sites look alike or if they vary according to the client.

* Ask if the designer created the graphic and layout design of the sites or if he just took care of the programming.

* If he doesn’t do graphic work, ask if he can recommend someone.

*Confirm he has an organized planning process to guide you through the design phase, and that every discussion and decision will be documented. The more you can participate in the planning, the better.

* Investigate the designer’s knowledge about Internet marketing and search engine optimization. Be sure the site he will create meets your marketing and business goals. Just “pretty” doesn’t cut it; your website must be easily found by your clients and prospects so as to generate sales.

* Ask about his fees and the cost of the website you desire. In order for him to give you a good estimate, he will have to know about the content and features you want in the site.

* Ask how he will charge you and if you have to make deposits or pay him directly. The web designer could bill you monthly, or as he finishes phases.

* Notice if he aims to stay within budget or is always suggesting new features that elevate the price. The budget is your responsibility, not his.

* Talk to several of his current clients to see what their experience is like. The web designer must possess good project management and communication skills, and he must be a good listener.

* Ask if he does maintenance work after the website is up and running and how much it will cost. Some designers are only interested in creating websites, not maintaining them; in this case, you have to find an assistant to help you run your website.

* If you are going to do the maintenance yourself, ask the designer if he can keep the design simple and easy to maintain by the owner.

* Ensure the contract says that you own the copyright to the whole website. Everything you hired someone to do for you should be owned by you.

* Make sure you own the domain name, even if the designer registered it for you.

* Ask the designer to give you original and editable source files, otherwise, you or another designer, won’t be able to edit the website.

* You have to enjoy talking and working with the designer. You have to like him, trust him, and enjoy his conversation.

* You shouldn’t feel he is wasting your time. There should be business chemistry between you, and he must offer valuable feedback about your website’s design.

* Make sure the designer can meet your deadline. The best web designers are very busy, thus, you may have to wait in line. If you can be flexible, work with him to create a schedule that works for you both.

It is important to research and interview several professionals to ensure you hire the one that is really capable of giving your business, and you, what you need.

If you liked this article, tell all your friends about it. If you have a blog or website, you can link to it or even post it to your own site (don’t forget to mention www.OneCoach.com as the original source).

Many people believe that social media is just a fad, or that perhaps it’s not for them. This change, however, isn’t going away. Nearly everyone’s target market is on social media. Consumers are now looking for advice and reviews on a product or service at social media sites. It’s a way of building brand awareness and reputation.

As with any type of media, it takes time to catch on, but social media has experienced an explosion in growth like no other type of media. Look at how many years it took to reach 50,000,000 users for each of these mediums:

• Radio: 38 Years
• TV: 13 Years
• Internet: 4 Years
• iPod: 3 Years
• Facebook: Less than 9 Months

Businesses are educating themselves on the proper strategies to use social media as a platform to help take their business to a new level of customer interaction. Are you doing the same for your business?

Below is a video produced by Eric Qualman of Socialnomics. It highlights the impact that social media has made in our personal and professional lives.

Social media is now an integral part of business. In order to survive and thrive, many small businesses are implementing this application. Is your business taking advantage of social media? Amy Porterfield of Social Media Examiner shares important news on what is happening in the world of social media. Here are a couple of the major recent findings:

By 2010, 26 Million (1 in 7) U.S. Adults Will Use Twitter Monthly. Studies have shown that in 2009, Twitter will be accessed by 18 million U.S. adults on a monthly basis (which is a 200% increase over 2008). It will continue to grow an estimated 44% in 2010.

In September 2009, Facebook officially hit the 300 million-user mark, making the social networking site nearly as large as the U.S. population.

Americans Spend 17% of Online Time on Social Media Sites. Americans are now spending a lot more time on social networking sites as social media platforms continue to grow. There has been a 6% increase on time spent at social networking sties.

Advertisers are paying attention to this trend as online ad spending increased by 119% to $108 million in August 2009.

Want to know more? Click here to read the full article.

In the last six years I have analyzed over 500 websites. It is incredible how the exact same mistakes keep appearing time and time again.

The main reason for this problem is that a great percentage of web designers forget that a website is a way of communicating and growing a business. They feel they need to shock their clients with animations and cool graphics.

Don’t get me wrong. Clean and professional graphics are a very important component of a successful website. But they are not everything.

I’ve put together a list of the seven most common mistakes that website designers make and how you can avoid them.

Overlooking the goal of the website
Every website has a goal. You probably sell products online. You probably offer professional services and want your visitors to fill out a contact form or find your phone number. You probably sell software and want your visitors to download a trial version.

No matter what your goal is, you have to make it easy for your visitors to take the action that you expect them to take. As a rule of thumb, you need to use contrast to emphasize the element that you want your visitors to see (add to cart button, download now button, contact us link, etc.)

Make it obvious for your visitors and you will convert many more of them into actual leads or customers.

Not writing excellent copy
A clean, professional, and easy to navigate design is very important. But it is not enough.

When people visit your website you have less than 3 seconds to give them a good reason to stay or they will leave. You have to be able to communicate why your business is better than the competition and why should your prospects give their business to you and not to someone else.

You know your industry better than anybody else. Think about the major motivation that moves people into buying the product you sell. Is it product quality, price, reliability, duration, company’s reputation? Find out what prospects are looking for and give it to them.

Having too much clutter
This one drives me nuts. It seems like some website designers try to put as much stuff as they can fit on a page. There are two main problems with that. It makes everything hard to read and it is difficult for the important elements to stand out.

When it comes to website design, less is more. Use blank spaces. It makes the text easier to read and the information easier to find. Don’t clutter your pages. Please don’t.

Not understanding the basic design principles
These are the four most important design principles.

Alignment: every element has to be aligned with other elements. Don’t just place elements randomly on your websites.

Repetition: use the same fonts, colors, and elements across your website. If you use red Times New Roman text for your headline on your About Us page, don’t use a different color or type on the Contact Us page. (And please never use Times New Roman for a headline!)

Contrast: I’ve seen so much black text on dark blue background that it has made me sick. Make the text contrast with the background and the most important element of the page stand out.

Proximity: put together similar elements. Let’s say you have 6 sections on your website: cars, trucks, RVs, Home, Contact Us, and About Us. You don’t want to put cars between About Us and Contact Us. You want to group cars, trucks, and RVs. Maybe even put them under a new menu item called Our Products.

Not making the website intuitive
How many times have you been browsing a website looking for something and couldn’t find it even though you knew it had to be there somewhere?

You have to make things easy to find. If most of the people who go to your website contact you by phone, put your phone number right in front of them, big and above the fold.

Not testing the website on different browsers
If you are not a web designer, you might not know this, but almost all the websites look different on different browsers. Maybe your website looks great on Firefox but not on Internet Explorer. Or maybe most PC browsers display it well but some Mac browsers show it all broken.

A professional website designer will run a cross-browser compatibility test to make sure that every visitor can see your website correctly.

Avoid these key mistakes and you’ll be on your way to marketing a more powerful website!

It’s my job to review and optimize websites, and I find that the mistakes are almost always the same. Here are the 5 most common usability flaws and how to avoid them.

1. Lack of Funnel Planning

It’s a fact: people won’t do anything unless you ask them to, which means that you need to use “calls to action” on your site. But you also need to plan the process your visitors will go through to complete the desired action.

Let’s say that you sell t-shirts and your desired action is for your visitors to place an order. Let’s assume that you sell red and blue t-shirts. You should use the home page to get people’s attention and tell them why your t-shirts are so great. Then, at the end of the home page, invite them to visit you red t-shirts page or your blue t-shirts page. They will click on either one and then tell them about your red t-shirts and their benefits. At the end of that page, invite them to add the item to the shopping cart. In the shopping cart page invite them to start the checkout process.

Always take your visitors to the next step, don’t just have the information on your site and hope that people will find it. Plan the process and have appropriate calls to action.

2. Less is More

The first thing I do when I review a website is looking for elements that I can remove. The more I get rid of, the better the website looks. If you have a feature that 0.01% of your visitors use, get rid of it; it’s likely confusing the other 99.99% of your visitors.

Start taking things away until you only have the essentials. Resist the temptation of having a lot of stuff in your pages.

3. Group Similar Sections Together

Organize the information on your site in a way that you only have a few sections and several sub-sections. This is called vertical architecture and it’s the opposite of horizontal architecture (which allows you to access pretty much every page on the site from the home page).

This relates back to the previous point on how less is more. If you have too many sections it may end up confusing your website visitors instead of helping them.

4. Make Text Easy to Read

Use every-day words for your website. Impress your visitors with your content, not with fancy words. Use short sentences and short paragraphs. Get your point across with as few words as you can.

Use bullet-points, bold text and subheads to make the text easier to read.

Easy-to-read text is the difference between a successful website and a failure.

5. Say What You Offer Right Away

Every day I see websites that fail at telling their visitors what they are about in less than 30 seconds. Why are these companies putting their visitors through this kind of torture? If you are McDonalds, you don’t really need to explain that you sell burgers. But if your brand isn’t that popular, use your Unique Selling Proposition to easily and quickly let your visitors know what they can find on your website and the benefit to them.

Follow these simple rules and you’ll avoid the pitfalls that affect most other websites on the internet, and you’ll be another step ahead of your competition!