Timely promotions as part of your small business design is essential growing your clientele. Want an easy way to endorse your business? Consider the simple art of newsletter design to let those on your email list know what specials your company will have for Mother’s Day shoppers, or any holiday. They are not difficult to create and it’s really efficient at getting your information across to interested parties. What’s the difference between constructing a newsletter as opposed to just creating a newspaper ad or a social networking ad? It’s not that those are bad ideas either, but when you present a newsletter, you can share a lot more information than you can cram into a small, pricey ad space.

Electronic newsletters are great because if you make them yourself, it’s free! You can include everything you want your customers to know about: your promotional deals, your contact information, website link and even coupon codes. There’s no postage needed and no paper wasted. It’s a very smart way to promote small business success.

It cannot be stressed enough that when holidays or events roll around that can bring in revenue, you need to be well-prepared, ahead of time. This doesn’t mean a week before Mother’s Day; if your small business newsletter hits inboxes promoting free shipping, you would probably be too late. Try shooting for the 3-4 week mark. Finding that sweet spot that isn’t too early or late to contact customers can be discouraging, but the payoff is worth it.

Now, just because your newsletter or ad is out there for potential customers to see doesn’t mean you’re in the clear. You need to make sure your website is ready as well. Do this by making sure the promotional material or deals are listed on your homepage. Why else is this important? It not only reassures your newsletter readers that the promotion is valid, if they pass your website information on to other potential clients who didn’t get the newsletter, they’ll want to make sure they’re at the right place.

Every holiday is a reason to celebrate your small business and promote your products or services. Stay on top of upcoming promotions and let your clients know about your specials in a timely manner. If you’re interesting in learning more about newsletter writing, check out a helpful article on how to properly write newsletters for your business without having them sent to SPAM folders.

The most important webpage a small business needs to tend to is the homepage. This is the first thing potential customers see. It needs to be fresh, fast-loading and it needs to be relevant. Slow graphic downloads will send people back to the search engines. If content on the home page is dated and is a few years old, it’s time to add some something new. Make a webpage for archiving if you want to keep old news on your website, but don’t have it showcased on the homepage. Out with the old and in with the new. How often should you be putting fresh content on your website? There really isn’t one right answer. If the year on the article doesn’t match the current year, pitch it.

Blinking, flashy graphics all over your homepage as part of your small business website design is also a bad idea. You would see this type of design a decade ago, but like white eye-liner and slap bracelets, it was a fad. It’s distracting to have little blinking gadgets all over your website, enticing visitors to “click here.” Now, more than ever, clean should be the theme of your website. Clean-looking websites are not only going to be well-organized, they also appear safer than the glitzy, disheveled websites of the past. Website bling (if overused) can give a sort of feel to the website that makes it seem unsafe, juvenile or selling a poor product. If the product or service is good, there is no need to bombard your website with flash, jazz and glitter. Less is more.

When your small business website design is complete, it should easily take your customers to what is important: the product. It should do it quickly, effortlessly and cleanly. It can sometimes be difficult when you’re selling a product that might not be very unique and you want that niche that makes your small business website stand out from the rest. You won’t get first place for adding banners, tickets and animations all over your website; find another way to stomp out your competition. Make sure your website is organized and ready for the 2011 business year.

There is an unusual acronym to remember some great ways to keep your customers in mind while constructing/updating your small business website: CRAP

Consistency: Common flow/feel as visitors browse your website

Repetition: Use appropriate repetition of imagery and text throughout

Alignment: A place for everything, and everything in its place. Don’t stick anything on the website for the reason of just “having it on there.”

Proximity: Make sure you group appropriate parts of your website together. Can your clients find what they need, easily?

Color is an important aspect of your small business design. Although consistency is important, choosing the right colors are a must to help you get the sale. Customers shop with their eyes; use colors that complement each other. You want them to be agreeable with the nature of the website, but not overwhelmingly bright or annoying to look at. You also don’t want a bland color palate. Try to pick one bold color, keeping the contrasting colors more neutral.

Advertising

Many small business websites have advertising space they can control. You really want to make sure that any advertising you have on your website is relevant to your small business. If you sell handbags, your best advertising would also be in accessories, clothing, cosmetics and so on. If you have a family member who has a tree stump removal business, they have no purpose on your website, family or not.

Finally, your patrons want to know what’s in it for them. Save a webpage to talk about you and your business; leave the rest to cater to the shopper. Talk about what they’re going to get when they do business with you. Make sure to mention everything from a detailed description of the product or service, right down to your mission statement, guarantees and return policies.

As much as we may pride ourselves on the time and love we spend on our small businesses, we have to remember that the consumer tends to be a bit more “selfish.” Their concern is a getting a great deal on a product or service on a website that’s easy to use and good-looking. Remember: If you don’t take care of your customers…someone else will.

Be Real
YouTube lets you share your videos with the world. Why not upload helpful video footage of you doing your job? Take a video of you or your employees in action, offering the services your website talks about. Always ask permission if a customer or customer’s property (house, car..etc) will be featured in the film.

Free Commercials
Maybe your company doesn’t have the funding to buy some television time to broadcast your commercials, but YouTube can do it for free. Ask a few satisfied customers to talk about their experiences with your company. Not only can you upload this video to your YouTube account, but you can also put the video directly on your small business website to show off your happy clients.

Create Video Blogs
Do you have a lot to talk about? Make video podcasts and post them routinely to your YouTube account. Perhaps your company offers carpet cleaning services; why not upload a video once a month showing potential customers how to take care of their rugs between cleanings? Stain removal tips would be a great idea for a video blog. Heath food supplier? Showcase your products with 10 minute recipe ideas. Make sure to post your video links on websites outside of just your business website to increase Search Engine Optimization. This is where Twitter and Facebook pages for your small business come in handy. Cross-posting links are a sure way to drive internet search traffic towards what you’ve got to sell.

A Deeper Look at SEO vs. YouTube
Just as you would apply basic SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques to your website written content, you want to do the same on your YouTube account. You have the ability to name the title of the video and to write a small description of the content. Make it count by using a relevant headline for your video title that is sure to show up in Google. Keep it simple. If you want help on learning how to write attention grabbing SEOed headlines, check out a previous post that discusses it in depth. Basically, give it a title that someone would search for. If you’re a cosmetologist publishing a video on YouTube about makeup techniques, name the title exactly what you’re showing your audience: Tips for Smokey Eye Shadow or At-Home Waxing Techniques. Those terms are realisticly what someone wanting to know more about makeup or waxing will plug into their search engine.

As far as your description goes, make sure to use a keyword/phrase here and there. It’s the same principal as picking a good SEO title, but now you’ve got to weave the search term into your written content. Always make it look natural and do not overstuff your paragraph with key phrases. One paragraph of written content should have no more than 3 keywords/phrases.

YouTube is free and free is good! Take advantage of YouTube to enhance your searchability and profitability for your small business.

Speedy Results
People want to read information on topics they’re interested in quickly. If you’ve created a document that fits the description of a quick read, title it as such. Giving your blog post a headline like Learn How to _____ Fast or Quick Way to Fix ______ temps your time-crunched audience to read on.

Personalize
Use phrases in your headline that your target audience can relate to. Incorporate names of famous people or places, or even add a personal touch they can recognize and appreciate. Some examples would be:

• Learn to Knit Like Your Grandmother
• How to Make Authentic Parisian Coffee
• Easy-to-do Red Carpet Hairstyles

Whatever formula you use to develop attention grabbing headlines to use as part of your small business design, you should never assume that a generic title is simply good enough. You need to add a creative twist to make sure your article stands out in a website search engine against pages of other content. Keep your headlines short, clever and true to the article in question. You may think “If I don’t name my article or blog “XYZ” then it won’t show up in search results as well. You can implement plenty of keywords and phrases in the content without making your title suffer a dull name. The Search Engine Optimization of the article has very little to do with just the wording in the headline. If you continue to have difficulties developing attention grabbing headlines for your website, you can always consider the help of a copywriter.

Make sure your website is equipped with the best keywords for the job. Without key-wording your website properly, customers will not have very much luck when searching for the products or services you have to sell this holiday season. It’s perfectly acceptable to change keywords on your website around for the holidays to target those online shoppers. In fact, changing and experimenting with keywords in general is a smart part of small business website design.

What Do You Mean By Holiday Keywords?
You may already have valuable keywords present within the pages of your website. When you freshen your content for the holiday season, you want to put in popular words or phrases in that will help the general public locate your website easily in search engine results. Below are some popular holiday targeted keywords and phrasing that you may find will work for what your company’s website has to offer:

• Great Gifts Under $25
• Perfect Gifts for Dad
• Holiday Gift Ideas for 2010
• Affordable Christmas Gifts

As you can see, these are some very popular, yet generic search terms people will be using to locate gifts for their loved ones this year. You may ask “well should I use the word Christmas in my keywords?” That is completely up to you. Using Holiday in place of Christmas will get the same meaning across, but there are quite a few people who will use the term Christmas in search engines when looking to do online shopping. Studies show that businesses that use Christmas as a part of their marketing strategy are not really losing out on sales. Consider not only adding Christmas, but other terms like Hanukah or Kwanza to make your key phrases as well as your website looking well-rounded.

A Copywriter is someone you contact during the early stages of your writing project. Their goals are to help you create. If you were writing an eBook or even a novel, they would help you make it publishable. A copywriter would offer creative advice to help you make the best finished product. Think of them as a mentor to lead you towards your goal of a great piece of writing. If you want to incorporate pictures or other visuals into your writing, a copywriter would be able to tell you the best places to put them, as well as help you choose which pictures would look best. They can also be helpful in telling you what content is best left out of a blog, book, newsletter and so on.  You can work with a copywriter, together creating the finished product you’re looking for or you can opt to let them work their magic and create the entire piece for you.

A Proofreader provides the finishing touches to your writing. Their only intentions are to make the product free of spelling and grammatical errors. They have no interest in the style or the flow. So if you need help in the actual creation process, a proofer is not going to be choice for you. They are very important in the world of words, but the skills needed are less than a copywriter, so it is usually considerably cheaper to hire a proofreader.

Does your website’s blog need the creative touch of a copywriter? Does your eNewsletter require a second set of eyes to proof it before sending it to your clients? Outsourcing to experts is a great way to improve your small business design and achieve positive results with your website writings. It’s okay to be too busy with your business to worry about the finishing touches of your blog, let someone else handle the dirty work for you!

Better make a good first impression! But how? Here are a few small business website design tips.

1. Avoid clutter. A cluttered website is confusing to users, who don’t know where to click or what to do and so they tend to click away. This could be good if your goal is to make money from ads on your site, because the path out of a site is often through clicking on an ad, but if your goal is to encourage your visitors to stay and browse, aim for a clean, simple design and make it easy for your visitors to navigate your site.

2. What is your website about? What do you offer? If a visitor can’t answer this question immediately, they will click away. Ask friends and family members to take an objective look at your website and to tell you if they can tell right away what it’s about.

3. Make it fast. A slow-loading website is painful for users. It’s one of the main reasons users give up on a site. Make sure your website doesn’t contain heavy elements that would slow it down, and use a third-party tool to test load time for your site. The fact that it loads fast for you doesn’t necessarily reflect other users’ experience.

4. Content IS king. Yes, this old cliché is true. Your website content needs to offer value to readers. It needs to be well written, free of typos and engaging. Even if your site loads fast and is clean and professional looking, users WILL bounce off if they discover that your content does not offer them any value.

5. Avoid anything that could be annoying or distracting to users, including flash, auto-loading sound or blinking text. Even if you’re trying to make people click on ads, remember that being assaulted by blinking, moving, loud ads will most likely cause people to close the page rather than click on those annoying ads. Ads actually work best if they blend into your content and offer value to your readers, just like your main content does.

6. Minimize clicking. Make navigating your site and getting to the important pages easy. If people have to click through 6 pages to get to what they were looking for, they will likely just abandon your site.

7. Make it readable. Even if your text is great, people won’t read it unless it’s easy to read. Make sure your font is large enough, web-friendly, and space your lines. It’s also important to keep your lines short and to avoid using dark text on a dark background, or light text on a light background.

8. Link correctly: include internal links whenever they’re relevant, so visitors can discover more parts of your site. Make sure internal links, unlike external links, open in the same browser window – users will resent having several browser windows open, all of them from your site. When you link to other sites, do make sure they open in a new window.

If you’re not sure how user friendly your site is, it’s always a good idea to ask friends and family members to take a look and give you an honest feedback. If you’re planning, or hoping to earn money from your site, using the services of a professional web designer is one of the most important investments you will ever make in your business.

Get Apps
Everybody who owns these iDevices crave apps! Applications are what make iPod users continue using these gadgets for more than just simple music, photo and media enjoyment. You can actually create an application yourself, or you could outsource if you feel you’re incapable. Either way, you can include an app in your small business design that allows visitors to download the application to access your website easily, with just the click of a button. You can also get very creative with apps. They don’t need to lead users to your website alone; they can also include some form of game to engage them. Free apps for your visitors are definitely a great choice for your website. You can search for tutorials to make your own applications or check out a variety of helpful videos on YouTube.

Podcasts
If you have something to say, say it with a podcast. It could be a great attribute to your small business. You could make one weekly, monthly or anytime you’d like. The great thing about a podcast is that it’s incredibly easy to create and requires very little equipment. If you have a computer, a microphone and a website, you’re set. Consider publishing your podcast to your website’s blog. When you’re done creating it, list it in the iTunes Directory and search engines like Yahoo! Audio Search. You may be surprised just how many listeners you have. You can also do video podcasts. These would be great if you want to create a “Vodcast” for new products you may be showcasing on your site.
According to Apple, 220 million iPods have been sold worldwide. That’s a lot of potential clients. By applying the techniques to your small business, your business will become more accommodating to those who wish to use their iPods to access information that you have to share.

Slideshows

Give your small business home page a little pizzazz by adding a customized slideshow. It will add a “wow-factor” to your website. Slideshows are aesthetically appealing and it offers a little something special for your viewers. Basically, you’re just creating a PowerPoint presentation and putting it online. It can be a great way to summarize what people will find throughout your website, or perhaps just in a specific section of a webpage. You’re making your readers more interested in your website when you offer something that makes visitors get involved as they go through the content. Just remember, let the viewer choose when to access each slide; don’t have it on auto-run.

Video

When you have videos on your website, you’re encouraging visitors to stay longer. By engaging them with a multimedia experience, they’re likely to visit again. The videos do not necessarily need to be ones you created. You could put related content videos on a webpage or clips of relevant current events. As long as you’re not taking copyrighted material and making it seem like your own, you’ll be fine. You can also incorporate live chats on your website, if it seems fitting.

Footers

Linking your website’s pages together by text links with the keywords as the anchor text may give your website the lift it needs. Just make sure the wording in the links is the target SEO keyword/key phrase. Also, add your footer links to all of the web pages included in your website for the best results.

What You Shouldn’t Do

Search engines are getting smarter. A lot of time is wasted on trying to figure out which SEO techniques are worth their salt. There are a few things that people are still doing beyond written content for their small business website that isn’t really helping. These are things like:

• Link Exchanging. There is no longer a need to do this, as reciprocal linking between websites does not improve content anymore.
• Pay for Website Submission. You can do it yourself if you feel you need to, but websites like Google and Bing are so powerful, they’ll know your website is there in very little time. You can increase your chances of being found by simply posting the link to your website on someone’s Facebook page.
• Drop Links. Don’t drop your link in blog comments, whether it be on your blog, or someone else’s. It’s an out-of-date practice that will not get you better rankings for your website. Do it enough and web crawlers will start to notice. This can be considered a form of link spamming and is also known as “Black Hat SEO.” You can get your website removed from search engines if you keep these practices up.

SEO is evolving, and your visitors expect to see a professional-looking small business design when they arrive at your website. It can be a chore to keep up with all of the new and improved SEO techniques to make your small business website stand out against competition.

Websites do take some time to create, and you should always make it a priority to keep yours up to date and running well. However, you might be really busy with other aspects of your business. Thankfully there are great web designers out there to help take some of the weight off your shoulders. Read this article to find out What to look for in a Web Designer.