Example Site Wednesday: The Bead Place + Tips to boost your e-commerce website

Posted by Ryan on March 28, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

It’s WEDNESDAY and that means…. (HMMMMM…) YES you guessed it!  Example Site Wednesday! Today we present to you http://www.beadplace.net/ , where you can always find the perfect accessory for every occasion.

 “More than seven out of 10 internet users are online buyers” –EMarketer.com

What makes The Bead Place such a wonderful website is the simplicity and usability of their online store. The homepage header includes the logo (placed in the left hand side) as well as a large and clear title. The main image shows a picture of the inside of their store, showing some of the most popular products they have to offer. The background contrasts smoothly with the main content of the site and creates a creative and serene mood for users. If you take a look at the navigational links you can see that “shop” is the first link under the homepage, inviting users to go there first. They use the video section of their website to upload videos of tutorials for customers to learn new innovative techniques. The calendar section shows all of the upcoming classes, which are available for users to comment and view. There is also a Guestbook section that allows customers to leave testimonials and reviews of the store and the products.

Tips on how to give your e-commerce website a little boost:

Simplify Product Description: Using simple to read product descriptions can help improve your conversion rates as opposed to providing only manufacturers description of the product. Additionally, including tips in your product description, like telling users if they would need any tools to better use your product, can help to set expectations of potential customers and decrease customer service inquiries.Improve Image Quality: Using high quality vibrant photos can help to make your products look enticing and attractive to potential customers.  Discover other ways graphics can help enhance your website.Create a Clear Site Flow: Providing potential customers with clear paths to helpful how-to videos/blog posts can help to elivitate common question and help to build your site credibility. The Bead Place, for example deals with customers who may not know how to sew or create jewelry. So they included many media resources that show potential customers how they could use their products. Learn 6 Essential Characteristics of a Business Website.Customer Service: Make sure that you give accurate and clear details about your business. The easier a customer can contact you, the easier it is for a customer to purchase from you. Create a relationship with your customers as well; try to form a system where you can follow-up with them 3-4 days after product arrives. Find out if the product matched the description that you gave them and if there were any stages of confusion as they moved around your website. This shows that you prioritize your customers and can help you learn more about the way you customers operate.

The world of ecommerce is growing at a fast rate, according to eMarketer “From 2010 to 2015, nearly 30 million consumers will join the ranks of online buyers”. With so many people buying products online, the importance of a simplified buying process that accurately showcases products is becoming more important. The Bead Place is an excellent example of how to use your website to relate with your customer and increase sales.

Do you have a great looking website? Post below for a chance to be chosen as our next week’s example website!

View the original article here

About Us page: checklist for a successful website

Posted by Irina on March 23, 2012 | 1 Comment »

The “About Us” section of your website should provide in-depth information about yourself, the website creator, and the purpose of your small business (if applicable). According to SmashingMagazine.com, “the about me page is one of the most overlooked pages in development, but highest ranked page on many websites”.

Since this page gets so much online visibility, it is important to utilize it to its full potential. Let’s start by first identifying why a site visitor might come to your about us page:

Curiosity about the website creator and/or the businessLooking for key contact information

Thus, a good About Us page should clearly satisfy both of these needs in a useful and effortless manner. To help you get started in writing/ reviewing your “About Us” page, here is a small checklist of items that should be covered by this page:

Your name and qualifications – Who are you? What qualifies you to run this website?Business Information – What does your website/small business offer?Unique selling proposition – How is your small business different from competition? Learn more about what is a unique selling proposition.Business history – How long have you been in the business? How did you get started? What drives your passion for the business?Contact information – Do you have a phone number customers can call? Store location? Do you have a map with easy directions to follow?Social media links – Link to your Facebook, Twitter, and other social pages

Think of the “About Us” page as your virtual business card. Your about information should be easy to find and should not be hidden. Providing key information elements will help website visitors to feel more confident about you and your business.  It might make the difference between a sale and “just browsing”.

View the original article here

Entrepreneurs in Today’s World [Infographic]

Posted by Irina on March 20, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

The landscape of business owners has changed drastically over the years. The following infographic provides a historic snapshot of this change from 1960s to present day.

Key Trends:

75% of America’s private sector workers is made up of small businessesBusiness ownership is no longer confined to a specific  age groupWhile degree is not necessary to start a business, over 72% of small business owners have a college degree or higher.Click on the image to view full-sized View full-sized

View the original article here

Example Site Wednesday: Rags to Riches Dog Spa + Product/Service Credibility Tips

Posted by Irina on March 14, 2012 | 2 Comments »

This Wednesday we present you with a well organized site that exemplifies how to effectively leverage the quality of your product/service. Rags to Riches Dog Spa is a professional mobile dog grooming service started by Kelly, an avid animal lover. Kelly felt that every dog client should have her UNDIVIDED attention, leaving clients feeling satisfied with the service she provides. Her passion for the business translates into the design and feel of the website.

Rags to Riches Dog Spa website clearly communicate its purpose. Furthermore, the color scheme of the website utilizes 2 primary colors that blend well creating a unique brand identity without distracting visitors from the main content. When it comes to the psychology of colors, purple means royalty and yellow tends to represent cheerfulness so what better color scheme to represent her slogan “Your Dog Is Treated Like Royalty”.

Another thing that the website owner does well is the ability to communicate her strong product knowledge and dedication to services offered.

Here are some tips that can help your small business website showcase your product/service superiority:

Theme Is Key – Make sure you take a look at the psychology of colors and find out what emotions and traits colors mean. Figure out which colors coordinate best with the subject of your website that run congruent with the personality of your business. Do not use more than three main colors as a color scheme; the key is to set the mood not to distract your visitors. Setting the mood is very important because it allows visitors to feel comfortable, which means they’ll stay on your website longer. Discover other design elements that impact the quality of your website.Quality photography - A simple way to increase visual appeal is to use high quality photography for your products/services. You can also use pictures to go along with your content to help you drive your point better, be mindful not to overload pages with too many photos that take away from the main content. Learn how to use graphics to enhance your website.Simplicity - Be clear and direct when you talk about your services, don’t try to impress visitors with overwhelming animations and huge words. When you think of your web content try to think of the EASIEST way you can word your services so that anyone can comprehend your site with ease. Simplicity can help you add additional value to your website.Personal “About Me” - A personal “About Me” page will help you to connect with visitors on an emotional level that gives insights into who you are, your interests and visions for your business. This emotional connection builds trust, loyalty and confidence in your skills as well as your product or service.Brand Strength - Make sure you are keeping current with your website and updating your site with reviews and awards that your business receives. Everyone can rave about themselves, but having others praise your product and service helps to establish the strength of your online brand. 5 tips to market your new website.

Take time to create an image of your ideal customer and keep them in mind when mapping out the flow for your website. Be sure to include information that is beneficial to your website visitors and potential customers and helps to relay information about products/services you provide.

Happy Site Building!

View the original article here

3 Tips on How to Use YouTube To Help Your Small Business Grow

Posted by Irina on March 13, 2012 | 3 Comments »

Small business owners often encounter difficulties when it comes to creating interactive ways to bring new customers to discover their websites. An often overlooked marketing channel that small business owners can take advantage of quickly and inexpensively is by creating a how-to video for their website.

Just think, how many times have you gone online for questions on how to create or repair something? Would you rather read instructions on how to solve your issue or WATCH a tutorial that had easy to follow steps?

Here are a few tips that will help you reach YouTube success!

Before your business becomes a viral sensation, there are a few YouTube channel options you should check out:

 Featured Video – Set-Up your channel to ensure featured video starts to auto-play as soon as a user lands on your channel. This can be achieved via the options available under the ‘Featured’ tab of your channel.

Latest statistics reveal that on average there are over 50,400 hours of content being uploaded on daily basis to YouTube. Thus you have to take extra steps to increase the likelihood your video stands out and comes up in searches.

Location Tagging – Don’t forget to tag your business location after uploading your video. This allows your video to be uploaded to Google Maps and Google Places, allowing it to be included in those search results.Captions and Subtitles – Just like adding SEO rich keywords into the description of your channel, the title of your video and captions impact the search engine ranking of each video. Thus, choose your words wisely.Thumbnail – Make sure the thumbnail you choose for your video is interesting and stands out, something that pulls a viewer in without being deceitful. Your thumbnail will be an excerpt from your video, so choose a thumbnail that shows action.Video Reply – Try submitting your video as a “video reply” to industry related videos, this allows for your video to be posted on to the same page of the video you are replying to.  Your video will be placed directly above the comment font box, so if you make a video reply to a high traffic video you are increasing your visibility.Related Video – Another great way to gain visibility, is to be featured in the ‘related videos’ section when a user is viewing a relevant video.  Related videos are chosen based on video categorizations. If you have a printing business, you do not want to be categorized as a restaurant, you want to come up as a ‘related video’ to videos dealing with printing or printing supplies. So make sure your Channel Tags, Video Tags and Video Titles are all relevant to each other, this gives you a better chance of being categorized correctly.

Once your video has been uploaded, don’t stop. Think of creative ways you can engage with your potential audience to drive community fellowship. Growing your follower list on YouTube will help you to gain social validation regarding the content value and gain potential new clients.  Here are a few suggestions on how to grow your new YouTube network:

Add users as friendsSubscribe to other video channels that relate to your businessSubscribe to channels you find entertainingPost regular bulletins to provide channel updates via the “Feed” section of your channelReply to posted feedbackAsk for advice or comments for future videos

Now it is your turn to give us some feedback. When was the last time you tested using videos to drive traffic to your website? What are the top lessons you learned from such videos.

View the original article here

How to Make a Website: Building a Small Business Website – A to Z

Posted by Irina on March 9, 2012 | 2 Comments »

You have a small business and want to expand your reach and exposure. You want to enter the land of the Internet, but you don’t know how to make a website. When deciding to make a website for your small business, there are a number of aspects to consider in order to ensure that it is as successful as possible.

Here is a list of factors that will help guiding you in learning how to build a website.

A – “About Us” page. This is the area of your website where you provide in-depth information about your small business, like history, employees and contact information.

B – Blogging. A blog is an excellent means of providing fresh information for your customers, giving them a reason to make regular, return visits to your small business website.

C – Content. When making a website, content that is pertinent to its mission and engaging for the audience is of vital importance.

D – Design. The design of a small business website should be visually appealing, and at the same time, not so “busy” that it is off-putting, making it difficult to located wanted information.

E – Email. Provide an email address for customers to easily contact you should they have questions or require more information.

F – Font. Employ a font style on your small business website that is easy to ready by all site visitors.

G – Google. It’s all about getting a good ranking in Google and other Search Engines.

H – Home page. This is the first part of your small business website that potential customers will see, so it is vital to make it informative and appealing.

I – Images. Images and graphics are great tools for making a website more visually appealing, as well as breaking up chunks of text so the content is easier to read and grasp.

J – Justify. Create a justified/aligned website that is easy to digest and navigate.

K – Keywords. Content rich with search keywords will help improve search engine rankings of your small business website.

L – Linking. Cross links throughout your small business website, as well as link sharing with other sites, is another SEO tool that should be utilized.

M – Main website title and address (URL). Make your main title (the name of your small business website) something simple and easy to remember. The URL for the site should match the title as closely as possible for recall purposes.

N – Navigation. Simple and functional navigation will help customers find the information they are seeking without an extensive effort. If they cannot quickly find what they want, they will go elsewhere.

O – Optimization (SEO). Utilize search engine optimization tactics and tools to increase the exposure your small business website will get in web searches.

P – Paragraph structure. Do not crowd your website content in large paragraphs. Keep it simple, employing line breaks to provide information in small bites that is easy to digest.

Q – Questions (FAQ). Provide your customers with a Frequently Asked Questions page. This is a one-stop shop for finding desired information about your small business website. Customers are likely to learn what they want, thus eliminating the need to contact you directly and clog the lines of communication.

R – Retail (Store). If your small business website involves the sales of merchandise, it will need a retail/store area where customers can add and manage items.

S – Social Media. Use social media entities like Facebook and Twitter to promote your small business website, announce special deals, and open a line of dialog with your customers.

T – Topic. The content of your small business website should stay on topic with your mission and not go off on tangents. Also, if you are writing a blog, make sure the topics are in line with the main function of your website.

U – Updates. Frequently update the content of your small business website to keep it fresh and give customers a reason to make repeat visits.

V – Vision. Create a vision and purpose when making a website for a small business… and stick to it!

W – Web competition analysis. Take a look-see at the competition to see what they are doing. There may be elements you want to use on your small business website, and you may discover a niche that has not been tapped into, which you can get in on first.

X – X Factor. No, not the TV singing competition. X factor as in giving your small business website that extra something that the competition is not offering.

Y – YouTube. Create videos and use YouTube as another media channel for promoting your small business website. These videos can also be shared on your website, making it more attractive to search engines.

Z – Zero to fear. Making a website for a small business may sound daunting, but there really is nothing to fear. It is better to have a rudimentary site than it is to have none at all. Improvements can be made at any time as you get a better feel for things.

View the original article here

Example Site Wednesday: Scarab Pictures + Website Personality 101

Posted by Ryan on March 6, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

When you are walking into a building for the first time, you automatically begin to think about your feelings about the establishment. Websites work in the same way, when visitors come to your site they are formulating an impression of you or your organization. In order to land a strong impression your website has to display a sense of pizzazz and style that can keep visitors interested in the main content of your website. This week’s Example Site Wednesday belongs to Scarab Pictures, a delightful website made by an artistically intuitive freelance photographer named Claire. Claire has created a website that not only showcases her talents, but does it in a way that is very innovational and original.

“I’ll make an image out of anything, everything can be beautiful if you look at it a little differently.”
- Claire

Claire has created a website that not only showcases her talents, but does it in a way that is very innovational and original.

The homepage message is clear and direct to the overall purpose of the website. The navigational links are personal and positioned neatly. The ‘About Me’ and ‘Contact Me’ links have been changed to ‘Who I Am’ and ‘Write To Me’ to not only stand out, but place a personal touch to the website. Doing so helps to invite users to explore. The ‘Links’ page extends external links to her colleagues within her profession; this is a great way to establish a back linking relationship that can help your site receive more hits. The color scheme for her website sets a calm and serene atmosphere that openly welcomes you into further navigating through her website.  If you take a look at her blog, you can see that Claire keeps her blog relevant and with each post Claire uproots a deeper beauty of life.

Personality is very important in not only making your website stand out, but in establishing a personal relationship with visitors.

Tips to help add/showcase personality to your website:

Passage- Try to improve the passage, in which a visitor navigates throughout your website, you do not want a homepage that pulls users into too many directions. Offer a clear message of your purpose and lead them to the next destination of your site.Supporting Cast- Backgrounds for your site are not meant to be the highlight of your website. Try to make sure your background does not distract visitors and take them away from the main content of your site. A good background sets the mood for your site and makes sure your visitors eyes are easily directed to the main content of your website.Revise Other Web Content- Looking at other competing websites is a good method of gauging your website’s creativity level. Give your competitors an honest creativity review; figure out ways you can customize your website to be different from your competitors.Storytelling- Try to compose your web content on your pages like a story, like all stories there is a beginning, middle and end. Make sure that the beginning draws your visitors in, the middle effectively covers your main objective and your end has a clear ‘Call to Action’ message.Atmosphere- Build a good atmosphere so first time website visitors can experience an amazing first impression when they enter your site. There are certain elements that can help you build a good atmosphere such as, text font, colors, organization and unique content. Think of a great atmosphere that runs parallel to you or your organization, a good atmosphere can increase the time a user stays on your site.

The blueprint to becoming creative is to be yourself, whether you own a business, group or own a website for personal reasons. There is no better determining factor of creativity than uniqueness, so do not be afraid to do what it takes to stand out.

Until Wednesday rolls around again,

HAPPY SITE BUILDING!

View the original article here

Example Site Wednesday: Bows for Hope + How to Improve Website Usability

Posted by Ryan on February 29, 2012 | 2 Comments »

This week’s Example Site Wednesday comes from a beautiful website dedicated to selling adorable duct tape bows to raise money for a cancer charity foundation, Bows for Hope. This website provides an excellent example of how a simplistic homepage can help you capitalize on your unique web traffic.

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler.”

-Albert Einstein

Bows For Hope is an organization started by Lauren Chelenza, a 13 year old, who was diagnosed with Osteosarcoma (bone cancer) in 2009. She sells bows made of duct tape that come in many creative designs for $1.50, and all proceeds are donated to the Mattie Miracle Cancer Foundation. Lauren first started out selling her bows in school, and to date she has raised thousands of dollars for her cause.

Within seconds of visiting Bows For Hope, you are greeted with an warm angelic design that directs you to the main content of the site. The content is straight forward and allows visitors to comprehend the objective of the site instantly. Right below the main paragraph is a ‘Call to Action’ message that is a personal statement directly from the founder of the site. The navigational links are placed on the left side of the site, and the links are precise and easy to read.

Whether you have an e-commerce or personal site, it is very important to improve the visitor experience of your site. Here are some reasons why a SIMPLER site will improve website usability:

Accessibility: Think about the visitors who come to your site who may be using a special tool or program to view your site. There will be users who may have trouble seeing, or maybe blind and they utilize a tool to read aloud your site. A simple design will make it easier for your site to be accessible by anyone.Speed: Having fewer things to load makes your site much faster, and we all know how important page loading is in the overall user experience.Improved Navigation: Make sure that your menu is easily accessible and well organized; users should be able to effectively find exactly which page they are looking for without opening unnecessary links. Try to place navigational links either as the top header or on the left side of your site, those are the first places where users look. Make sure the links are in order by most popular to least popular, and that they are easy to understand.Clear Message: Users come to your websites for a purpose, and if they cannot meet their objective in a reasonable amount of time they will leave. Your homepage needs to have a direct message that tells your users they will meet their objectives on your site. It may be beneficial to ask a question about your website or company and answer it with a clear short paragraph. If a user has to analyze a confusing homepage to find out the clear message, more than likely they will be gone within the first 10 seconds of coming to your site.Mobile Access: A simpler design means that Smartphones will be able to access your full site features.

Lauren has been given a second chance at life and takes great pride in knowing that she has generated thousands of dollars for the Mattie Miracle Cancer Foundation, an organization that is near and dear to her heart. We invite you to view her website and check out her beautiful bows and learn more about her story.

Until Next Wednesday,

HAPPY SITE BUILDING !

View the original article here