Don’t get me wrong, I do give honest praises for the design and the creativity especially if the person creating the site doesn’t know that much about web design.

The person usually hears the hesitation in my voice and asks, “Well what’s wrong with it?” To which I reply “I look at your web site and I have no idea what you do, who you are or how to contact you.”

Your web site is the new resume. The World Wide Web is the new digital newspaper. Here is an interesting fact: 83% of all recruiters Google their applicants and 43% discard applicants based on what they see.  Most prospective clients will Google you and check out your website before doing business with you. If your web site is lacking, you suffer.

Here are some of my personal 10 Design Tips for a Business Web Site to avoid your visitors guessing what you do and who you are:

1. Before the designing begins you should have a good outline of content that will be on the site for its launch. How many pages, what those pages will be, navigation order, color scheme, etc.

2. Content should include:

- A full complete description of your services or product. Your content should answer those basic questions mentioned above – who are you, what do you do, how to contact you.

- A way for people to contact you – email address, contact information page, or a contact form.

- Post comments or feedback from customers who have bought your product or used your service.

- Images of related to the content. It could be as simple as stock photo or more preferably a photo of your product or services. In other words, your images should reflect who you are and your services that you represent and should have appropriate ALT tags.

- Post a page of other businesses you have worked with. Link to their site. Ask to get a link back to your web site.

- If your site is large with lots of content, add a search function.

3. Avoid overloading your pages. Web pages that a visitor must scroll down more than 2 times should be broken up into separate sections. Visitors just won’t read that much.

4. All pages should contain meta keywords and descriptions, and descriptive page titles. Meta tags are contained in the HTML code.

5. Avoid over doing the design. Keep it Simple. Don’t mix and match colors. Use a design wheel to organize your color scheme.

6. Avoid gizmos, widgets and gadgets. Just because you know how to make text blink or scroll on your home page doesn’t mean it is a good gizmo to have.

7. Avoid using Flash intro pages. I might be going against the grain here, but in my opinion Flash intros are a distraction and a detractor from your web site.

Visitors want to see and read about what you do and not a flashy advertisement.

8. Write and post articles relevant to your products or services. This will fill out your web site, keep visitors interested, and keep visitors coming back.

9. Don’t let your site get stale. Keep adding to it in an organized way. Introduce new articles, press releases, new training, etc. A web site needs to be continually updated.

10. Use spell check and grammar tools in Word or other editors before you post your content.

No Shortcuts for Unique Content

The short answer is “no.” Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can’t produce gold from straw. SEO performance is based on valuable content that attracts valuable links. Copying and pasting another site’s quality content into a new template with no additional unique commentary or content will not achieve lasting results. Neither will mashing the quality content from several sources into a template with no additional unique commentary or content. If an ecommerce site (or any site) aspires to lasting SEO performance, it has to give value to get value.

If the audience doesn’t get value from the content, they will not feel compelled to give value to the site in the form of links, comments, reviews, “Likes” and other forms of participation that add uniqueness or popularity to a site.

Let’s start with a definition of “content.” It’s more than long, gray fields of text. Yes, textual content it critical to setting a keyword theme to anchor rankings for the long term. But to be valuable, content also needs to be appealing to the site’s human audience.  Typically, what the audience does not want is some piece of content pulled from another site and available on many other sites. Remember, give value to get value.

When creating content for your website, ask yourself this question:  “How can I help my visitors solve their problems?”

Juan Loyola obtained his MBA the McCombs School of Business (University of Texas at Austin) and studied at the prestigious Hotel Institute Montreux (Switzerland).  He has over eighteen years of professional experience. 

Juan’s expertise covers the full spectrum of sectors from infrastructure projects (energy) to retail operations (hospitality), and functions from business development, telemarketing, sales, private and public sector.  He has managed market growth for major multinationals as well as small and medium businesses.  He brings his expertise to the marketing and content needs of businesses of every size in Texas and nearby markets.  Email him today at jloyola@sapienenterprises.com or call him at 281-507-7883 for a free consultation.

Each project is different and will be quoted on a case-by-case basis.  Juan has provided the following as a general idea of his service fees:

Website copy: $100-$300 per webpage depending on specific needs and business type.  Basic websites tend to cost $600-$1,500.  Larger more content-rich sites can range from $1,750-$3,000 and up.

• Web content (fresh content every month): $600-$800 per month, for at least three months.
• Copy Editing: $80/hr.  Most jobs take 1 to 3 hours.
• Other services

Advertising,   Brochure Copy, Direct Mail, Email Marketing, Sales letters, Newsletter Articles, Press Releases, and more.

Designing a successful website is no easy task, especially for someone who is new to the world of web development. With the help of web development applications many people can and do create decent websites. But decent in most cases is not good enough to make a site successful from a traffic or financial standpoint.

There are five crucial components of web design that you must focus on in order to make a site valuable to its visitors and successful for you.

 - SEO -

Getting free traffic to your site.

 - Usability -

Ease of navigating around the site and finding desired information quickly.

 - Aesthetics -

Visual appeal.

 - Content -

Valid, up to date, relevant information.

 - Graphics -

Eye candy that relays relevant visual information to the visitor.

SEO

Before you ever lay down a byte of HTML code for a site you have to know and understand at least the basics of SEO and how it fits into the design. SEO is the art of designing a site in a fashion that gives the site an advantage for obtaining free and abundant traffic.

The number one aspect of SEO is selecting keywords relevant to your site. The keywords you select should be based on high usage, low competition and relevancy to your topic. Once you select keywords you can then begin the development of your site. Keep in mind keywords are a critical aspect of the design. The keywords you choose will be applied within the design in strategic fashion to benefit the flow of traffic to your site. To understand more on how to implement SEO you should read and learn more about this important subject. If you don’t, your website success will be difficult to achieve.

Usability

Your website must be easy to navigate and designed in a way that makes it easy to find information. Visitors will not stay long if it takes more than one or two clicks to get the information they want or if it takes brain power to figure out how to get the information they want. One of the goals of your site design is to keep usability easy, and simple. To do this, apply the following three fundamentals of usability.

• Provide a site search tool – A visitor in a hurry can quickly find the info they desire then move on to the action they desire.
•  Provide simple, intuitive and consistent site navigation – This provides visitors the tool they need to leisurely explore their way through your site.
• Provide logical and simple to follow content – The message of a site should start off in a simple and basic fashion with well defined links pointing the way to more detailed information or explanation as needed.

In the cases above the goal is to make it easy for your visitor to find the information they want without frustration or difficulty. Doing this well will have a positive effect on increasing the return of your visitors.

Aesthetics

A website has to look clean, uncomplicated and strike a balance in layout that is pleasant to the visitor. Pleasing aesthetics come about when the colors of a site complement each other, the graphics blend and lend continuation of the theme and the layout brings unity and openness to the page.

Often overlooked by novice designers is the color palette of the site. While you can select color in a willy-nilly fashion and still provide a visually appealing site, a better idea for color selection should be based on an understanding of the color wheel and proven color strategies.

Many web designers often view a web page as an opportunity to blast a visitor with lots of information in hopes this will convince the visitor to take action. Usually this results in a quick exit due to the overwhelming visual effect and complicated look. A better approach is to provide less content and open space (referred to as white space) to allow visitors eyes to scan and explore with ease.

Content

An important feature of any website is the quality of the text content. Visitors come to a site expecting to find answers to their questions, solutions to their problems or for entertainment value. The content offered at your site must be well-written, without grammatical or spelling errors. It also has to be relevant to the theme of your site, with valid, up to date information for your visitors. Content is King!

Graphics

You can have a functional and usable website without graphic elements. However, if there are similar sites to yours that employ graphics, guess which site will get the most traffic. The necessary companions to any well-designed site are the images and illustrations that grace its pages. The images can’t be any graphic that you might think is cool. Graphic imagery has to support your branding, and communicate the message you are trying to convey. Before you incorporate graphic elements into your site, take some time to look around the web. Notice what looks good and how elements are laid out. These same layouts techniques can be used as models for your site.

The Internet is a highly competitive business arena. To be successful with a commercial website, you have to keep these five crucial web design elements in mind. Contrary to what many will tell you, it is rarely possible to have commercial success without the benefit of a professional website.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the first order of business in ecommerce marketing. While there are a lot of things that site owners can to do create interesting content, they have less control over technology’s effect on search-engine indexing. So choosing an SEO-friendly ecommerce content management system (CMS) becomes essential. A telltale sign of a good SEO-friendly CMS is how it rewrites URLs (web page addresses).

No. 2: Coupon Code Support

Nothing attracts customers like saving money, and coupon codes are a great way to promote your store.  A good shopping cart platform should support coupon codes or other adjustable rate models right out of the proverbial box. Don’t use a cart that doesn’t offer coupons.

No. 3: RSS Capability

RSS, which is most often defined as really simple syndication, is simply a set of data formats that make it easy to syndicate page content.

This technology is a powerful tool for marketing. You can offer discount feeds that customers and potential customers will use in a reader or news aggregator. You can submit RSS feeds toTwitterfeed and have all of your new products, coupon codes, inventory alerts, or other specials effortlessly posted on Twitter, Facebook, iGoogle, MySpace, Identi.ca, or just about any other social networking site you can imagine. And you can even use RSS to generate alert emails using services like MailChimp.

Choose an ecommerce platform that generates RSS feeds for new products, special or discounted products, coupons, sale items, and product categories. Don’t consider a cart without RSS capability.

No. 4: Cross-selling Functionality

Cross selling is simply the idea of selling a customer more and related products to increase total per-checkout revenue. We’ve all seen cross selling done well. As an example, when a toy store recommends batteries to go with a battery-operated Elmo doll, we appreciate the reminder. Or, when an online fashion shop recommends shoes to accompany a suite or dress purchase, we appreciate that, too.

Your shopping cart should offer cross selling as an automated or semi-automated process. The best ecommerce platforms will have a system to associate products and then dynamically place related items on the proper product and checkout pages. If a cart doesn’t cross sell, don’t bother.

No. 5: Customer Reviews

Customer reviews encourage more sales. Psychologically, customer reviews are akin to having a peer recommend the product and the store. Think of it as a way to let your customers market for you — plain and simple.

Your shopping cart should integrate customer reviews, either supporting a review system itself or easily connecting to a third-party customer review tool like PowerReviews or similar.

No. 6: Product Sharing and Recommendations

A customer visiting your site should be able to email or otherwise share product details. Imagine that a teen is searching for clothes at some hip online shop. The teen finds the perfect pair of pants and wants to let, say, Uncle Bob know that this is what she really wants for her upcoming birthday. No smart ecommerce marketer is going to get in the way of that sort of communication. Rather, a good store should give the teen an easy way to send her important message to Uncle Bob without any messy cutting and pasting.

The best of carts include this sharing feature, usually as part of a wish list function that requires some form of registration.

No. 7: Multiple Images, Image Zooming

Sometime the very best ecommerce marketing you can do is to have great pictures of the product. Nearly every product detail page should offer several images of the product from different angles, and when it makes sense, include image panning or zoom to show specific details.

Your shopping cart should support multiple image and image manipulation; or at the very least, it should easily integrate with a third party product image solution like Zoomify.

No. 8: Manage Campaign Landing Pages

Pay-per-click advertising dominates many ecommerce marketing budgets. Marketers want to refine their ad copy, scrutinize keyword selection, and squeeze every ounce of ROI from their campaigns.

So don’t consider a cart that cannot manage campaign landing pages. Your shopping cart or platform should support custom, non-catalog pages. Some carts refer to these as “CMS pages,” others call them “landing pages,” but, regardless of what you name them, make sure your cart offers them.

Picking the Right Cart

So I have pointed out eight cart features that I believe are deal breakers. Of course, there are a lot of other things to consider when you select the web platform for your business. But with hundreds of carts to choose from (and dozens that include all of these features and more), you can be very selective.

What Is An Ecommerce Shopping Cart?

An ecommerce “shopping cart” can be defined as just the portion of your website that manages transactions, or the term can describe an ecommerce-specific content management system that stores product catalogs, monitors sales, and serves up database-driven content for just about every page in your site.

If the tips are on SEO, they are bound to attract attention. So, we’ve compiled a list of TEN of the best SEO tips to be found on the Internet. Don’t believe us? Find out for yourself now!

No. 1 – Let your content drive your website. Content is the king, the absolute truth and nothing but. Well-researched, authoritative and unique content that uses the keywords strategically to obtain top rankings, and attract inbound links is a MUST! Never compromise with the quality of your site’s content.

No. 2 – Another royalty you can’t do without are Links! Focus on building a network of the best quality backlinks for your website using your top keyword phrase(s) and your website name. Only link with sites that can offer you something substantial to chew up on. If it’s not good, don’t bite the bait!

No. 3 – Are you suffering from Pagerank obsession? Don’t! Pageranking, despite what many SEO experts say, are just a small part of your SEO plan. The ranking algorithm is complicated; believe us when we tell you, a lower pageranked site can actually surpass a higher ranked site. So get a good night’s sleep and rethink your SEO strategy. Pagerank is a great determination of a websites popularity, however, it won’t be the major factor in gaining website traffic.

No. 4 – Stay fresh and update regularly. Yes, if you want to climb higher on search rankings ladder, make sure your site has fresh and useful content. Regularly updating your website’s content is the best way to catch the eye of the search engine robot.

No. 5 – Dig for top search phrases instead of single keywords. The search phrases used by people and incorporated in your content will make it easier for your website to show up as a relevant search result.

No. 6 – Getting localized is also a very important SEO tip that few may share with you. When developing the content for your site, make sure you keep ‘localization’ in mind. This helps you win brownie points with the local users and the cherry on the top is that you get local customers. We recommend creating state and city specific pages to attract website traffic that would have previously never visited your website.

No. 7 – Always use text links on your website pages if using Java script for image maps, image links, or drop down menu. Since spiders don’t follow Java script properly, text links are crucial from a SEO point of view. If your navigation links are images, place text links somewhere on your pages as well.

No. 8 – Always keep SEO in mind when designing your website. More importantly, your website designer must be an expert at Organic SEO. Try to design a simple website that doesn’t have heavy Flash. Less graphics will give you better crawl-ability and trust from the search engines. This is because search engine robots crawl the text rather than images or Flash. Also ensure that your pages load quickly, we believe this will make a positive impact for the search engines.

No. 9 – Use search friendly URL’s and meta tags, this will help to improve your rankings. If you change your URL’s for sub pages, consider using 301 redirects to fix the file names and transfer page value.

No. 10 – Finally, proof read your all your content including taglines, copy etc. and make sure all the links are working before you go live with it. Always provide quality information on your website, getting the visitors is a hard and time consuming process, so make sure your website visitors like what they find when they visit your website!

My opinion is this, a great website is an always evolving and improving website. So work hard, and reap the benefits over time!

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