Small Business Design Resources

Website Critique: Relieve stress with Lavender products

Lavender Dreams 4ever offers Aromatherapy products that help relieve stress and tension. The video website critique of their website www.lavenderdreams4ever.com offers improvements to their homepage and suggestions for the navigation menu among other things that will make a user experience more welcoming.

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5 Tips on How to Stand Out Among the Competition

Every business small or large has competitors and yours no doubt has them. Read my 5 tips on How to Stand Out Among the Competition in my post on The Entrepreneur Connection.
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Quick Tip: Create a 301 Redirect for Your Website

A 301 redirect is basically telling the search engines that the page that you’re looking for does not exist and seamlessly directs the user to the page they should look at instead. The most common use of a 301 redirect is for directing the search engines from a domain name that starts without the WWW to one that starts with WWW or vise versa. For search engines a website that starts with WWW and the same one that starts with out the WWW are essentially two different websites. So for example if your website is www.websiteaddress.com but a user types in websiteaddress.com , the search engines will rank the two addresses separately even though they’re the same website. To eliminate this issue make sure you create a 301 redirect (ask your hosting provider to do it for you). So when the 301 redirect is set, anyone who types in websiteaddress.com they will automatically be redirected to www.websiteaddress.com and that’s what search engines like to see.

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Understanding and Improving Google PageRank

There’s no question that having your small business website on the first page of Google results is good for traffic. Google has been used for more than 70% of U.S. Internet searches so far in 2010, making it by far the Internet’s most used search engine. One reason Google is so popular is that Internet searchers trust the results it returns. Google’s method for putting together a list of great search results relies heavily on PageRank (PR), a number from 0-10 that reflects a web page’s importance. Average PageRank is 3-5; a PageRank of 6-7 is considered extremely good. Only a few elite websites have PageRanks of 8 or above, and only Google and a handful of others have PageRanks of 10. PageRank is a logarithmic calculation, meaning that each level is harder to reach than the last. For example, moving from PR 2 to PR 3 is easier than moving from PR 3 to PR 4. It also means that a PageRank of 4 is more than twice as good as a PageRank of 2.

The formula for calculating PageRank is patented and a closely guarded secret; according to Google, PageRank is determined by looking at more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. But even though you can’t know all the details of Google’s formula, there are some things you can do to increase your PageRank. Read more »

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Quick Tip: Add Customer Reviews to Boost SEO Rank

Customer reviews or testimonials when written directly on your website can increase your SEO rank. This is because reviews are generally considered as content and usually will include keywords that are associated with your company/products/services. Content with targeted keywords are always a plus with the search engines.

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How To Effectively Use Twitter For Business

Many small businesses have been resisting Twitter for a long time now, but the reality is that more and more of your customers are using Twitter – and so should you. A basic rule of marketing says that you need to be where your customers and prospects are. If your prospects are using Twitter, and your competitors are using Twitter, then NOT using Twitter could turn out to be a costly business mistake.

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Quick Tip: Avoid Flash Intros

Flash intros or some times referred to as splash pages can be pretty, but have more negative impact rather than positive. Flash intros take a long time to load, are not search engine friendly and mostly they don’t really add any value to your users experience. Most people will either skip the intro or leave your website because they don’t have time to sit through it. Learn more about What is Flash and is it suitable for your business?

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Targeting Local Traffic

The Internet is truly a global phenomenon, allowing you to connect with customers all over the world. With a business website, you aren’t limited to local traffic the way you are with only a brick-and-mortar location. That is a huge business advantage, but it can leave you wondering how to build your local presence on such a global platform. Luckily, there are several excellent resources available to help you target local traffic.

Yelp.com is a website where customers can search for local businesses and leave reviews of their experiences, and it also offers a number of free tools for small business owners. If you haven’t already, check Yelp to see if your business is listed; if it isn’t, you can list it for free. If it is listed, claim your page to take advantage of all that Yelp.com offers small business owners: communicate with your customers by responding to their reviews, promote discounts and special events, check the amount of traffic your Yelp business page receives, recommend other businesses, and provide detailed information about your business–including your website address. With more than 26 million visitors in December 2009, Yelp.com is a great way to connect with local traffic.

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Quick Tip: How to Make a Banner Clickable

To make any image such as a banner clickable you will need to add HTML code to that image.

Here’s an example code that you can use:
<a href=”http://www.designleap.net”><img src=”image_name.jpg”></a>
replace www.designleap.net with any website where you want the image to link to
replace image_name.jpg with your image name (if your image is in a subfolder make sure you include the correct location)

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Keeping An Eye on the Competition

In order to keep your small business practices up-to-date, it’s important to keep an eye on the competition. You’ll learn what the latest trends are, find out what’s working and what’s not, and remain responsive to what your customers want and expect from businesses like yours. Fortunately, there are several easy ways to learn about your competitors.

It may sound counterintuitive, but it’s important to learn as much as you can about how your visitors browse your website. If most of your visitors leave before making a purchase, you can bet that there are competing sites that they find easier to use. ClickTale is a great tool that lets you see exactly how visitors use your site, so you can pinpoint what is working and what is not. Looking at visitor browsing patterns will show you what visitors want and expect to see on your site–not only will this help you make changes to retain your visitors, it will also provide important clues about what competitors’ websites offer.

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