Small Business Design Resources

What is Flash and is it suitable for your business?

Flash is software that uses animation to create multimedia elements for websites. Flash on a web page is usually used to establish interactivity with visitors. It could be a button, form, movie, cartoon, or even a game. Take a look at the following examples of different uses of Flash:

Flash focused sites (full Flash sites):
Moodstream (brainstorming tool)
Uniroyal Fun Cup (racing game)
Chipotle (restaurant)

Sites with Flash elements (not full Flash sites):
Atlantic Vegas (only the game selections are done in Flash)
American Academy Casablanca (home page has a Flash photo gallery)
Conference Torquay (home page has 3 small rotating Flash photo galleries)

To use Flash or not?
There are few things to consider when thinking about using Flash on your website: your budget, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and your industry type.

Consider your web design budget
A standard website can cost you anywhere from $500 to $3000 and that doesn’t include Flash. There are many factors that go into the price of a website, but Flash would be considered an added feature and therefore would cost you hundreds extra. So, when considering including Flash on your website, first take a look at your budget and see if you can afford it.

SEO and Flash
There are a couple of reasons why you would like to have a Flash site for your business, it grabs visitor’s attention and it’s interactive. On the other hand, you might not want to have a full Flash site for your business because they’re made up of graphics and graphics are not search engine optimized (SEO). It is very important to have your website be SEO friendly, but that’s a different topic. Your website can of course have Flash elements like those shown in the examples above.

Is your business in an industry that’s ready for Flash?
The type of industry that your business is in has also a factor of how much Flash on your website you should use (if you decide to use it). For example, if you’re in a Health Care industry your website doesn’t need any Flash, but you may still use Flash elements minimally. The main reason for this is because the visitors that would come to your website would not typically wait for the Flash to load, they just want to get in, find what they’re looking for and leave. But if you’re in the Arts and Entertainment industry, than it would be good for your website to have at least some Flash in it. I would at least suggest for your website to use a Flash photo gallery. When people come to an entertainment type of website, they are more interested to interact with your website and take their time to view things such as slide shows.

So before you consider to have your website designed in Flash, first thing about your budget, your search engine ranking and your industry type.

Website Critique: Jewelry inspired by nature

Arjeent is a unique jewelry making website. They make jewelry inspired by nature and also custom jewelry taken from a provided photo from a customer. The video website critique of their website www.arjeent.com gives suggestions on how to improve the navigation and make finding the right type of jewelry to purchase much easier for the average user.

Overall Improvements

• The current website is generic, make it pop more and showcase that unique feel that the products have.

Homepage

• Don’t just jump directly into showing the products, explain/show the user what the website is about. Because this is so unique, you need to find that “WOW” and bring it to the homepage.
• Use the homepage to show promotions, specials, and/or even advertise the custom jewelry from photo section.
• Create a call-to-action! Don’t make your users stop and wonder what to do or where to go on your website. A call-to-action prompts the user to choose to either do this or that and explore the website.

Swarovski product page example

Products

• Users are use to seeing a navigation where they can choose what product they want to shop by. Give them this option of choosing either to shop by the specific jewelry item or even by the animal type.
• Give more description to each product. This will not only help the user but will start improving your SEO.
• Under each animal that has multiple choice of jewelry items, you can say “also available in…”. This way you’re giving the user options of the jewelry type for a particular animal.
• Take a look at other well known jewelry websites and see how they showcase their products (see image of the Swarovski product page to the right).

Other recommendation

• Add a blog with articles about stress issues and relaxation methods. Having a blog is great to have new content on your website, which search engines love to see.

More website critiques

Of course there are more things to dive deeply into making this site better such as search engine optimization, but this is a whole different subject and will require it’s own review.

If you’re viewing this review and want to add more suggestions, please add your comments below.

Disclaimer

The video website critique and suggestions are for you to review and take what you feel will better your business website. There’s no guarantee that the suggestions mentioned will improve your business. Design Leap is not held responsible for any negative outcome.

Quick Tip: Do Keyword Research Before you Write your Website Content

Before you or your copywriter creates content for your website be sure to do your keyword search. Having the keywords ready before you write your website content will save you time and make it easier to optimize your content for search engines. Here are the best SEO keyword research tools to get you started.

Landing Pages: What They Are and Why You Need Them

If you’ve been considering an online advertising campaign for your small business, you’ve probably come across the term “landing page.” The concept of a landing page is new to many small business owners, so don’t worry if you aren’t sure what it is or how it’s different from the other pages on your website. It’s actually a very simple concept that can really increase the effectiveness of your advertising campaign.

What is a landing page?
A landing page is exactly what it sounds like—the page a potential customer lands on after clicking a link. Technically, any page on your website can be a landing page. However, the most effective landing page is one that was created to match the needs of the person who clicked on the link that leads to it. The goal of a landing page is to capture the visitor’s attention and get them take an action you desire—make a purchase, for instance, or fill out a sign-up form.

Why you need a landing page for your advertising campaign
When you create an advertisement, whether it’s a banner ad or an email to your client list, you craft it with a specific goal and audience in mind. You do this to connect with your customers and encourage them to click on the link to your website. But your interaction with your customers doesn’t end there—you want them to take a certain action once they reach your website. This is where the landing page comes in. Sending people to an ad-specific landing page on your website will provide them with exactly what they came to find, making it more likely that they will make a transaction.

Here are a couple examples to illustrate what a landing page can do for you:

Imagine that you own an online store that sells women’s clothing. To market your website, you create an advertisement that promotes your new swimwear collection for summer. To go along with this advertising campaign, you design a landing page that features the top-selling swimwear items. People who click on the swimwear ad are more likely to stick around if they land on this page and immediately see what they’re looking for than if they’re directed to the homepage of your site, which has just a small link to the swimwear section.

Or maybe your marketing goal is to get people to sign up for your email list. To do this, you offer them a free e-book in exchange for their name and email address. When people click on this offer, they’re sent directly to a landing page that contains the form they need to fill out in order to receive the e-book. This will be much more effective than sending them to your website’s homepage, where they will have to hunt on their own for the link to sign up for the e-book. You’ll get many more people to sign up for your email list if you create a landing page specifically for this purpose.

Essentially, a landing page increases the effectiveness of your advertising campaign by immediately engaging visitors who are attracted by your ad. How many times have you clicked on a link only to find yourself on a webpage that seems completely unrelated? That was an example of a bad landing page, and chances are you hit the back button on your browser within seconds. Keep that from happening with your ads with a well-crafted landing page.

Quick Tip: Install an Analytics Program to Check Website Progress

Having an analytics program on your website helps you see what pages bring in more traffic, what needs to be changed/improved, what keywords people are using to find your website and many more factors that can effect your website performance. The two of my favorite are Google Analytics and StatCounter, both are free and simple to use.

Social Media for Businesses: Empty Hype?

I’ve been observing my small business design clients for the past couple of years to see how they choose to use social media to promote their businesses.

My unscientific conclusion: small businesses seem to either love social media and use it as much as they can, or avoid it completely. There’s almost no middle ground, and it’s especially interesting to me that the clients who avoid social media are almost, it seems, afraid to use it.

Businesses worry about using social media for several reasons. The main reason is that they worry they will be wasting valuable time and resources on something that is no more than a hype – a passing trend that will disappear within a few years, leaving all those businesses who poured time and money into social media marketing with nothing.

Another common fear is that since social media is essentially about opening your business to your prospects and clients and having conversations with them, you would lose control of your brand and of your image if you engage in social media.

I would like to address the second issue first. I don’t think you should be afraid of social media. The conversations in social media about your brand are going to take place whether you are involved in them or not. It’s actually better to be involved, to initiate some of the conversations and certainly to follow mentions of your brand in social media (use Twitter Search) and respond to them.

As for the first question, most experts agree that while no one can say for certain that social media as it is now will be here in the same form a decade from today, the general concept of engaging customers and prospects in direct conversations is here to stay. I agree: consumers and businesses are quickly learning to expect two-way conversations with each other instead of solely relying on the traditional one-way promotional messages in print ads and in television commercials.

So, can you show clear return on your investment in social media marketing? This is where things get a bit trickier. Marketing is one area where it’s been traditionally difficult to show hard numbers, and social media marketing is no different. However, social media ROI can and should be measured.

A few ways you can measure the success of your social media marketing campaign:

1. Is your favorite social media channel (such as Twitter or Facebook) among the top ten referrers to your website?

2. When people get to your website through a social media channel, how engaged are they? Do they immediately bounce back, or do they spend a few minutes on your site?

3. What percent of your social media visitors become leads by downloading white papers or eBooks or by subscribing to your blog or to your newsletter?

4. What percentage of social media visitors become clients or customers?

Remember that whatever you do to track your social media ROI, you need to be patient. Establishing a social media account, growing it and cultivating connections with clients and prospects isn’t something you can do overnight. I would say that the typical social media account takes at least six months to start showing results, and the longer you keep at it, the better your results, provided you only follow relevant people and engage them daily.

Quick Tip: Use Stock Photos to Reduce Photography Cost

Stock photos can add a great value to your website when you have a need for generic images. Keep in mind to only use photos that are relevant to the topic that you’re covering. Take a look at this article that covers adding images to your website.

Someone Has My Domain Name – Now What?

As a small business owner, you surely put a lot of thought into choosing the perfect name for your business. Now that you’ve decided to take advantage of all the opportunities offered by a small business website, you will need to purchase a unique domain name to serve as your business’s online presence. The obvious choice is yourbusinessname.com—but what do you do if someone already owns “your” domain name?

You basically have two options for securing a domain name that has already been purchased by someone else:

1. Ask the owner if they’re willing to sell. Visit the URL you wish to have to see what the owner is using it for. In some cases, the domain will be “parked” or inactive, meaning that it’s currently undeveloped. You might be in luck if the domain name you want is parked or doesn’t direct to a website, because it means the owner doesn’t currently have a use for the domain and may consider selling it to you for the right price. Sometimes a parked domain will have a page stating it is for sale and providing a way to contact the owner. If not, you can look up the owner’s contact information with a WHOIS search. Most domain registrars offer their own WHOIS database search, or you can use a site like http://whois.domaintools.com. Even if there is a site already up on the domain name you want, you have nothing to lose by asking the owner if they’re willing to sell. If you feel uncomfortable contacting the owner yourself, you can pay to have a registrar do it for you. For example, two of the largest domain registration companies, GoDaddy and NetworkSolutions, will contact the owner and make an offer on your behalf for a fee. Keep in mind that there is still no guarantee that the owner will be willing to sell, and you’re out the fee regardless.
2. Wait for the domain registration to expire. The WHOIS data on your domain name will list the date the current owner’s registration expires. If the owner doesn’t renew their registration, you may be able to snag the name for yourself. There are a few things to consider if you decide to go with this method:
   • Domain registrars offer a grace period after expiration, usually around 35 days, before they put the name up for sale. This means that a domain won’t necessarily become available on the day it’s set to expire.
   • Many companies will let you “backorder” a domain name, where you pay a fee to be put on a waiting list in case the name expires. The fee is nonrefundable and you aren’t guaranteed a chance to buy the domain—the owner may renew, or you may have to compete in an auction against other people who have paid to backorder the domain.

Alternatively, you can always go with a similar name that is available or think outside the box to come up with a unique and memorable name that represents your business. Another option is to choose a different domain extension, such as yourbusinessname.net if yourbusinessname.com is already taken.

Quick Tip: Write Content for People NOT for Search Engines

We all heard the ever-popular phrase “content is king”. Yes, it’s still true that search engines like websites that have lots of content that’s updated often. But this doesn’t mean that what you write should be computer lingo. Your content should be directed directly to your target audience because they’re the ones who will be reading and engaging with your website.

Quick Tip: Use a Clean and Simple Navigation

Make browsing your website a pleasant experience, by creating a simple and user-friendly navigation. When the navigation is easy to use the users are comfortable using your website and can look through your website to find what they need.