Ultimate Website Guide With Helpful Tips

· tips,website,business,marketing

Whether you are selling products or services, old-fashioned marketing methods are not as useful as they were in the past. Whether your business is large or small, there are reasons you need a website.

Visibility

Your business can only succeed if people know about it. As more people today look for information on the internet, your business needs to be visible in search engines.

When potential customers want specific goods and services, they click on links in the search engine. This should take the person to a well-designed website. However, if you want the full advantages of a website, people need to be able to find it. As customers generally click on the first links they see, your website must have a high rank in search engines. Most people are too busy and impatient to scroll through pages of results.

Visibility is one of the main reasons you should not design your own website. For a website to achieve a high ranking, SEO is the key. Only someone who is experienced in search engine optimization can create a website that reaches the top of the page. When your business is one of the first a customer sees, he or she will want to know what you have to offer. Customers will choose your business over other similar businesses.

Reputation

Your reputation has much to do with your success. In too many cases, all it takes is one disgruntled customer or a troll to damage the reputation of a good company. You may not know how to deal with reputation management, or may not even know when bad reviews about your company are on the web.

SEO experts are knowledgeable about reputation management. This information can provide the edge you need to develop and maintain a good reputation. When potential customers read positive reviews, they will have confidence and know they can trust you. You will be more likely to gain more customers.

Interest

E-commerce does not need to be complicated. However, you want people to be interested in your site. The best websites are visually attractive, contain plenty of useful information, and are easy to navigate. Interesting sites include tips so customers can choose the products they want, and graphics so they can see what items look like before they place an order.

If you think about it, there have been times you visited a website but did not stay for long. Perhaps there was too much text, the wrong colors, or you could not find what you wanted. You do not need to worry about your customers facing these issues. You can have a nice site that encourages people to read, browse, and order.

An Easy Step For Great Results

Whether your business is new and you want to attract customers as quickly as possible, or whether it has existed for awhile and is not as successful as you had hoped, there is a simple way to give yourself an edge and turn potential customers in your direction.

E-commerce websites are today's approach to advertising. When customers view your site, they will be encouraged to order from you. They will tell their friends and neighbors about your website, too. You can avoid all the frustration that comes with placing ads in print publications, and take the modern approach that is much more effective. You will be proud of your beautiful new website, and delighted when your business starts to grow.

Design and Build the Website Basics:

1. Select or create the theme which represents the look and feel of your entire website. It is important to make a theme because this will make your website cohesive and tie all of the web pages together. The benefit of using a Content Management System is that it has predetermined themes that you can choose from and customize.

2. Add pictures and graphics for visual appeal. Caution: Don’t go overboard because that can slow down the navigation on the website.

3. Use add‐ons (sometimes referred to as widgets) to add capabilities to your website like calendars, surveys, links to social media sites, a shopping cart, etc.

Keep These Tips In Mind

Easy-to-find contact information
You wouldn't want to lose a customer to a competitor just because you made it difficult for them to get in touch with you. Not every online visitor has the patience to click through every page on your website to find the contact information

Choose simple, sensible Web address and email to match
Don't make things complicated. Your domain name is like your brand. It should be easy for a user to type it into a Web browser or an e-mail address

A visible call to action
Tell the online visitors literally what you want them to do with clear tones of commend. For instance, you may want them to call you now for a free quote, or sign up to your exclusively online coupons, or add products to the online shopping cart, etc. Call attention to your suggestion using special buttons or highlighting the text, for example, helps to get the attention too.

We Use Strikingly Websites which is free and you will need to get an account with them.

Practice by setting up a personal website, often just your name (first-last) Do not make your business website, I will not have access to it! When in Zoom Only I would If You Do! I set up and transfer your business website from my system when completed.

Hint: Set it up with the same email and you wish to use for your website

HOMEPAGE

This is the page most people will see first, and as such, it should tell everyone who you are and what your company does. The content on your homepage should be intriguing enough to capture the attention of your visitors within seconds. Your homepage needs to be well-designed, load fast and look professional. There are studies that show that you have 0.05 seconds to convince people to stay on your website.

What to include:

A short description of who you are and what you do, a brief explanation of your services and products, and perhaps some bullet points on how you can help your potential customer or client.

ABOUT

People do business with other people, and visitors want to learn a bit more about who the people are behind the company. The about page is often one of the most visited pages on any website. This page should give a brief summary of who you are, your company history and what isolates you from the competition.

What to include:

A summary of your company, whom it employs (with biographies and pictures of the staff, or just yourself if you are a sole proprietor), any special achievements you received, and the ways you differ from others that provide the same product or service.

SERVICES (IF YOU OFFER SERVICES)

Here you can list details about the services you provide. Begin the page with a summary of your services prior to outlining them. If your services are vast and their descriptions are quite extensive, consider dividing them into sections, as well as adding a link to a landing page, where readers can learn more about a particular service.

What to include:

A synopsis of services presented, bullet points of services with short explanations, links to learn more about specialized services (if you desire), the advantages of using your services, and how they differ from the services your competition offers.

PRODUCTS (IF YOU OFFER PRODUCTS)

This is your chance to offer details about the products you sell. Begin the page with a short summary of your products before listing them. If you sell multiple products and have extensive information on each product, consider dividing them into categories and adding a link to their product pages.

What to include:

An outline of products available, short descriptions of each product, links to product pages that contain more information, what the customer can expect by purchasing those products, and why customers should buy those products from you, rather than your competition.

FAQ

The FAQ page is your space to answer the most frequent questions you are asked. The frequently asked questions (FAQ) page will tell everyone – on one page – what they need to know. This will save you time answering those same questions on an individual basis. Provide honest answers for each one. Your answers should be a call to action and persuade a potential customer to take the next step and buy whatever you’re selling.

What to include:

The most common questions you are most frequently asked should be on this page. Such questions should also remove any doubts a customer may have, in order to make them feel secure enough to make a purchase from you.

TESTIMONIALS / REVIEWS

This is your chance to show off positive reviews your company has received. Where possible, include photos and contact info of the author (a link to their social media account, not their personal phone number). This will add authenticity to each testimonial. Anyone can write a review, but those with photos of real people can be traced to actual source credibility and establishes trust.

What to include:

A brief paragraph of praise from customers, perhaps as long as a sentence or two. Include photos and contact info of the reviewer, preferably with a headline above each testimonial, to catch a customer’s eye.

CONTACT

Your contact page shows potential customers all the ways they can get in touch with you. It is also important to have your phone number, email address and physical mailing address on the footer throughout all of your website pages, where possible.

What to include:

All of your social media accounts, your mailing address, phone and fax number, email address, and even your business hours. Some companies prefer using a contact form instead of listing their email address for spam prevention purposes.

Keywebco Graphics Create brand recognition!

Your site is essentially your company’s home online.

That means it needs to be an accurate representation of your brand. And beyond that, it needs to be memorable enough that users will return after their first visit.

After all, many of your visitors won’t be ready to make a purchase or other major conversion during their first visit — and they need to remember your company in order to come back and take those actions.

Fortunately, color increases brand recognition by 80%.

So, if your company already has an established color scheme, it’s essential to include this in your site’s design. This will make it much easier for visitors to immediately connect it with other places they’ve seen your brand.

Motion graphics, when properly used, can draw people in with engaging, interesting and subtle actions, and help to make sure they stick around your site. Done improperly, they can distract, repel, or overwhelm a visitor.

The purpose of your animation is related to how your audience is interacting with your site. Generally, there are three common ways to use animation online:

1. State change: This animation reflects user interaction and shows that an object on the site has changed because someone has hovered over a section or clicked. It makes for softer transitions.

2. Emphasis: These animations draw attention to a specific piece or action in order to propel a user to engage further with your site. They’re useful for high consideration zones of your site, such as a call-to-action or to highlight a specific piece of information you want to communicate.

3. Reveal: Some animations work to hide information (like menus) at the side or bottom of a site, and can be called upon to appear as if by magic. This keeps information organized and clear.

BLOG

This isn’t a page per se, as a blog is the sum of all blog posts. A blog is a website, or a section of a website, made up of topically related blog posts (like journal entries). Blog posts are usually listed in reverse chronological order with the most recent blog post appearing first. If you have a small business website without a blog then you are seriously missing out! Think of your blog as your greatest and most affordable marketing tool. A blog drives traffic and leads/sales.

A survey by HubSpot found that 57% of businesses who blog have generated a lead from it.

A blog gives your company a voice, it creates a place where you can tell your company’s story, share your expertise and engage with your customers.

What to include:

First and foremost you need to do a bit of strategy work, you need to know why you are starting a blog and who you are blogging for, your target audience. Next, you need to map out what your blog should be about, i.e. what you should write about and the topics to cover. Think of how you write and the language you use, most of us don’t like to read academic journals so don’t be afraid to be conversational and casual in the way you write. Quality trumps quantity.

Studies suggest that long-form and in-depth blog posts outperform shorter shallow blog posts when it comes to search engine optimization and getting shared on social media.

PRIVACY POLICY Note - You will need to add your Information to your website after taking ownership from Keywebco

Don’t worry there is a free tool to get one below. We can do it in the Zoom if necessary.

A privacy policy is a must for every website, a privacy policy lets the visitor to your website know what you’ll do with the personal information they give you. On this page, let the site visitor know how any personal information and data (e.g. advertising, cookies, emails, etc) collected will be used, and whether or not it will be shared with third parties. You must strictly adhere to your privacy policy.

What to include:

What data you collect, how it is collected, how visitors can obtain a copy of the information you obtain, if such content will be shared, and if so, with whom.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS

Similar to the above-mentioned privacy policy, terms of conditions page is usually a must for most websites. This is a page the outlines the “rules” a visitor to your site must agree to abide by in order to use your website.

What to include:

You want to include the rules and guidelines and how your website functions. For example, which country’s laws that govern the agreement, an intellectual property disclosure that states that your website is your property and that it’s protected by copyright laws, and a link to other sites clause that you are not responsible for or have control over third party links on your website

Add Content to Your Website The content is what people visit your website for. It is the most important aspect of web design, so it is important that you spend a significant amount of time thinking about what information to include. Content management is an ongoing process and you should update your website frequently. You should gather a possible list of topics and make those into separate pages.

Using a Hosting Service

It is common to let an Internet Service Provider host your site for a monthly or yearly fee. You can have faster connection speeds because an Internet Service Provider will have more powerful hardware. Also, you website will be more secure and stable with an online hosting service. Typically, you will find domain name registration in a hosting site. Examples of hosting services are HostGator.com and GoDaddy.com, Strikingly offers it too as part of the package.

To Recap:

Your mission should be immediately apparent.

Focus on your home page. You can utilize different design elements such as borders, headings, and pictures to make your organization’s purpose clear to the general public and emphasize the main objectives of your website. Also, make sure your home page is simple. Use large pictures and large text to attract people and create interest in your organization’s website.

Make your website consistent with your other promotional materials.

This will increase the recognition of your organization and its mission. ‐ Include a “Donate Now!” button on every page.

If visitors visit different pages, they will be able to make a donation or purchase from each page.

Do not include too much text on one webpage.

Ideally, your visitors will not have to scroll down the page for important information. Your visitors will lose interest if they see an extremely text-heavy webpage. The pages should be scannable and concise.

Is your small business website effectively pulling in visitors, keeping them around and converting them to customers? If your website is a little more than an online placeholder, it's time to start putting it to work so you can grow your business and take advantage of the huge potential consumer base for the online market.

Today's consumers are accessing your website from their desktops and laptops, and also from their smartphones and tablets.

Even if you're using a WordPress.com, investing the few dollars a month in a web host and domain name tells visitors you're serious about your company-and makes you more trustworthy.

Make sure visitors can get in touch with you quickly and conveniently.

Through images, succinct descriptions or both, visitors to your site should be able to figure out right away what your company does.

Highlight Your USP. Your unique selling point lets visitors know why they should stick around and do business with you, instead of clicking back to the search results.

You can learn more about what's working and what isn't on your website and get more testimonials-by having a feedback form for visitors.

Your website content should focus on how you can benefit your customers, instead of how awesome you are.

Keeping your site updated makes both visitors and search engines happy.

Natural SEO strategies are essential in getting new visitors to your website.

You don't have to share your favorite colors or foods, but including the names and bios of business owners and staff on your website gives things a personal touch.

The more steps customers have to go through to buy something from your website, the more often they'll abandon their carts.

Place social sharing buttons prominently on your website for increased reach.

These things are unnecessary, annoying to most visitors and slow down your loading time.

Break things up naturally and use smart navigation to help visitors find what they need.

Things You Didn't Know You Can Do With A Website

When you're talking about designing a website for your business, it always pays to pay attention to what the Web can do these days - and there's a surprising amount of options out there that people just haven't heard about.

Communicate Events Quickly withWebSocketsHTML was built to create static webpages; most "Dynamic" websites are just constantly pinging their servers and refreshing the screen.

WebSockets create a full, two-way communication channel over TCP/IP, which allows your browser to communicate with massively reduced latency - so quickly that you can easily play RTS games that hold the same data server-side, for example, without needing to abuse Flash to do it.

Drag and Drop Files Into the Browser Window toUploadThere's no need to get all caught up in those infernal file choosers when uploading anymore - with modern web standards, you can choose areas of your site to function as "Drag-n-drop boxes." Just be certain that you clearly label them and tell the user why they might want to upload and what you're going to do with the file.

Render 3D In-browser with the advent of WebGL, the stepchild of OpenGL, many modern browsers -notably FireFox and Chrome - can allow webpages to render 3D graphics without needing a special plugin to do so.

Run Web Apps Even When There are No web browsers nowadays are trained to cache just about everything - including, among other things, web apps in their entirety.

You can have a website that, even if the computer isn't online, can be pulled out of the cache so completely that, for example, Gmail or the Kindle Cloud Reader can be used for everything that doesn't involve sending or retrieving new information.

Video Conferencing Yes, your webpage can be set up to access a user's webcam - with their permission, naturally - and with the new WebRTCAPI, can host a video conference between different web browsers without any plug-ins necessary.

Assign Web Apps as Default Applications Your end-user has to choose to do this, you can't make the decision for them - but if, for example, you have a web app that does word processing, you can offer the end user the choice to have their computer treat your web app as the default word processing functionality on that machine.

Run Code In-browser with Google's Native Client, a web page can run code written in languages like C++. It's run in a sandbox for obvious reasons, but it runs at near-native speeds, allowing for some extraordinary in-browser games and other applications.

Generate Pop-Up NotificationsRemember back in the day when you use to need a separate calendar program to remind you when things needed doing? No longer - nowadays, you can program a webpage to pop up a notification on a given schedule or in response to specific events.

Find Your End UserAgain, with their permission, it's now easy to have a website that can query a device's GPS - or ping local wireless networks or, in a pinch, your ISP location - to figure out roughly where in the world your end user is.

The functionality that web browsers are gaining as particular as mobile browsers and the app environment continue to co-evolve - are absolutely amazing.

Content Ideas For Your Website Or Blog

Success in content marketing depends on creating lots of content and not just any content.

That's why I've compiled this massive list of 101content marketing ideas you can use to keep your website and/or blog running.

Without further ado, here are content ideas for your website or blog:.

Buying guides have a handful of advantages as a content type, and they come in a variety of different forms.

Opinion pieces are some of the most open-endpieces of content you can produce.

With templates, your job is to provide a basic outline or representative set of content that users can then leverage for their own purposes.

It's hard to take sketches or illustrations and make them standalone pieces of content in their own right, but they serve as excellent ways to complement a piece that already exists.

Photography is another visual medium you can use to gain visibility for your content marketing campaign, and there are a few different ways to harness its potential.

Remember, your goal in content marketing is to give your users something valuable, so make sure the potential customers can walk away from your demo videos with some new information ora fun experience-even if they don't end up buying from you.

If your business hosts regular events, or if you plan on attending events in the future, hosting an updating calendar on your site is a great way to generate more content and keep your users informed.

Doing so will build your reputation, and provide you with easy material for ongoing content work.

You can ask them directly what types of content and topics they'd like to see in the future, and they'll probably tell you.

Done in an audio format, it's typical for brands and hosts to produce content on a weekly, or at least a predictably regular basis.

Case studies can sometimes border on that line between content marketing and advertising, so if you want to use them as strong features for your content campaign, make sure they're focused on practical takeaways for your users.

Storytelling has become a buzzword in the content marketing community, but that doesn't mean it's any less effective as a device to appeal to customers.

One of the most powerful forms of content you can make is the presentation of original research; you can guarantee nobody else has done it before, and you'll present valuable information that your audience wants to see.

No matter how good your content marketing strategy is, there are probably dozens of authors and influencers doing a better job than you are.

You could reveal that the majority of products are actually assembled from components manufactured off-site, or you could explain that most content marketers are flying by the seats of their pants, building a strategy as they go rather than knowing exactly what they're doing from the beginning.

Audiobooks are a straightforward concept, and in most cases are just a way to transform the medium of an existing book; for example, once you've created your eBook and started distributing it, you can record a member of your team reading the book aloud and use that audio file as an additional piece of content to offer your readers.

Even if your contests are primarily occurring on social media, it's a good idea to write up a content post about your contest, going over the full rules and what users can expect, as well as cleaning up any potential points of misunderstanding and explaining your motivation for hosting the contest in the first place.

Webinars are an entire content medium, so you can use them however you want, but most webinars are used as teaching tools.

Help content deviates a bit from the norm of"Traditional" content marketing, in that it helps users who have already become customers navigate your products and services.

If you sell time management software as a service, your traditional content strategy might focus on productivity tips and helping workers improve their efficiency, but your help content might help users understand how to better use your platform.

A frequently asked questions section of your website can also serve as an excellent opportunity for content development.

Your ability to make an awards content post depends on your current level of authority.

Original content is important, and you should be creating new content regularly, but occasionally, it's both permissible and beneficial to look back and recap some of the work you've already done.

It's easy to forget that there's a physical side to content marketing in addition to a digital one.

To some, newsletters are a basic component of a content marketing strategy, but they're also a critical opportunity to get new content to your subscribers and followers.

Generally, you'll use newsletters to distribute your top posts of the week or provide exclusive content to your subscribers to reward them for subscribing.

What pages should my website have? This is a very common question online entrepreneurs and small business owners ask when they are looking to develop a website.

How To Get More Traffic To Your Website - How To Promote Your Website And Increase Traffic!

Here we list the most important and must-have pages your small business company website should have.

When it comes to content creation for a newly created website, every business is unique and needs something different, However, visitors to your website have set expectations of your website, what information they expect to find on it and where on your website they expect to find it.

On the "About" page, should I talk about myself or the company?

When it comes to creating pages for your website there is a set of web pages that are standard or general which all small business websites should have.

Here below is a list of the most common pages that every website should have, and the type of information these pages should feature and include.

Keywebco makes websites. If you need to create a website, we guide you step-by-step through the process of creating a small business website.

This is the page most people will see first, and as such, it should tell everyone who you are and what your company does.

There are studies that show that you have 0.05seconds to convince people to stay on your website.

The about page is often one of the most visited pages on any website.

This page should give a brief summary of who you are, your company history and what isolates you from the competition.

Begin the page with a summary of your services prior to outlining them.

If your services are vast and their descriptions are quite extensive, consider dividing them into sections, as well as adding a link to a landing page, where readers can learn more about a particular service.

Begin the page with a short summary of your products before listing them.

If you sell multiple products and have extensive information on each product, consider dividing them into categories and adding a link to their product pages.

The FAQ page is your space to answer the most frequent questions you are asked.

The frequently asked questions page will tell everyone - on one page - what they need to know.

The most common questions you are most frequently asked should be on this page.

Your contact page shows potential customers all the ways they can get in touch with you.

It is also important to have your phone number, email address and physical mailing address on the footer throughout all of your website pages, where possible.

This isn't a page per se, as a blog is the sum of all blog posts.

A blog is a website, or a section of a website, made up of topically related blog posts.

If you have a small business website without a blog then you are seriously missing out! Think of your blog as your greatest and most affordable marketing tool.

First and foremost you need to do a bit of strategy work, you need to know why you are starting a blog and who you are blogging for, your target audience.

On this page, let the site visitor know how any personal information and data collected will be used, and whether or not it will be shared with third parties.

This is a page the outlines the "Rules" a visitor to your site must agree to abide by in order to use your website.

You want to include the rules and guidelines and how your website functions.

HTML sitemaps are made for your "Human" visitors A sitemap page is a non-fancy index page that lists all the web pages you have on your website.

Your sitemap page should include links to all of your web page, your pages, and blog posts.

Your sitemap page should be located in the footer throughout all of your website pages, where possible.

A page not found the page is a page your visitors get directed to when a webpage no longer exists, have moved or has expired.

Tell visitors clearly that the page they're looking for cannot be found.

Your page not found page should include a link back to your homepage, you could also include a search form.

What type of pages do you have on your small biz website, and what type of pages do you think everyone small business website owner should include on their website? Have we missed something? We would love to hear your opinion, let us know in the comments section here below.

Hopefully, these content ideas give you inspiration, direction, and even some practical tips to create a more diverse selection of content for your brand.

This is just a small taste of the things you can do with a website.

It's a great time to be a web designer, especially if your client happens to be creative and willing to take a risk or two