Small Business Design Resources

Create a ‘Sticky’ Website: Make Visitors Stay Longer & Return Often

After putting time, energy, and money into your small business website, you’re eager to welcome visitors and show them around the place. You know some tips for attracting traffic, but how do you convince visitors to stick around and return often?

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Q & A on “Designing Your Business Website” via Twitter Chat

Thank you everyone who joined me on Tuesday December 2, 2009 via Twitter #SmallBizChat discussing Designing Your Business Website.

If you’ve missed the discussion, you can download the transcript Designing Your Business Website Transcript

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Balsamiq Mockups – Software Review

Balsamiq, a mock up/wire frame software that makes the job easier for developers, designers, product managers; well pretty much anyone who’s involved in creating software or websites. Balsamiq is a small company with currently just four people, but their software and customer service is outstanding. After seeing the following review, you’ll want to buy your own copy of Balsamiq Mockups at www.balsamiq.com.

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What is your Business Image Worth?

I participate in few forums here and there and provide website critiques on numerous of them. There was one website critique request that came from a website designer that wanted some feedback on a recently completed flower shop website. I was very disappointed and a bit angry with the web designer, because the designer took advantage of a small business owner by promising to deliver a site that sells flowers, but the look and functionality of this flower site didn’t even come close. I of course dug a little deeper and found background information on the web designer, which led me to writing an article What to look for in a Web Designer.

What was wrong with that website?

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Quick Tip: Removing Checkered Background in Photoshop

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How to Start a Website

I get many questions from small business owners asking about website basics. So much of what is written seems to be written by those, and for those, who already know what they are doing when it comes to having a business website. So let’s take a step back and review a few basics, because I know from talking to small business owners that there are many of you who will appreciate this information.

The two must have things to having a website live on the Internet for everyone to see are a domain name and a hosting account. Let me explain what those are and pointers on few other things that are needed to get your website online: Read more »

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Brand Recognition: Creating a Custom Twitter Background

When you have a business, you want your brand to be recognized in everything that you do. Having your business on Twitter is no different. By creating a custom Twitter background you will instantly stand out, bring credibility to your brand and leave a lasting impression to your visitors.

There are no set rules on how your background needs to look or what size it needs to be, but here are some pointers on what to do to keep that professional image. Read more »

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Ins and Outs of Website Policies

In this post Jor Law, Esq. from www.homeierlaw.com examines the legal requirements when designing a website.

Exciting news…your brand-new website design looks great and it’s ready to go live. You’ve even got that fancy copyright statement on the bottom like all the other websites do. But wait. Many other sites have disclaimers, terms of use, and/or privacy policies. Do you need to have them? Should you have them? Why or why not?

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Let a Professional Design your Business Logo

It’s a fact that as a small business owner you wear many hats, especially when you’re first starting out. So on top of everything else that you do for your small business, you’ve decided to create your own logo. It’s clear that you understand that your small business needs an identity so people everywhere begin to recognize your name and want to do business with you. But do you really want to jeopardize your business reputation and begin the logo design process on your own? Unless you’re a professional graphic designer you have no expertise in the logo design, nor have any clue where to start, so why would you bother.

Trying to do logo design on your own
I understand you might be thinking that to hire a graphic designer is expensive and your small business budge can’t afford that. It really isn’t expensive if you think the value that a professional can bring to your business image in the long run. Let’s say for example you’re an excellent hair stylist, you have your own salon but you don’t have a logo that separates your salon from all the other salons in your area. You decide to sit down one night and take a stab in creating your own logo. You have an idea in mind so you open up your Microsoft Word and you start trying all the available fonts and clip art that come with that program. The result, a generic look with outdated clip art. The problem here is that you’re good at what you do but you clearly can’t specialize in everything. You don’t even have professional programs that a graphic designer would use to create your logo design. Imagine if I tried to cut my own hair, I would look like a mess.

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Quick Tip: Removing white background from logo

To remove white background from logo successfully, you need to make sure you save it correctly. Save only as .png or .gif file. To get a better quality save as .png. Saving as a .jpg or .jpeg file will automatically add a white background even if you have removed it.

See how to remove the background of an image in Photoshop using the Magic Wand tool

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