One of the biggest mistakes that small business owners make is not investing in their websites. In many cases, your website is the first contact that customers have with your business, so you want to make that initial impression a good one!
We all know that money is tight for everyone these days, and every business owner is looking to save money whenever possible. With ads for free websites all over TV and social media, it may be tempting to try one out. Before you do, here are some things to consider:
- With domain names like MyCompany@FreeWebsite.com, you may lose credibility with your target audience. Perception is everything, and you want your customers to view your business as professional and credible.
- Search engines may not send traffic your way due to lack of trust. Search engines give more credibility to paid domain names.
- With most free sites, you don’t own the site, you’re only renting it. If the hosting company goes out of business, you’ll lose your website.
- If you decide later to move your site to a new hosting company, you may not be able to and you’ll need to rebuild the site from scratch.
- Much like those free business cards, free websites are mainly template based. Your website could end up looking exactly like your competitor’s.
- Unless you know about creating different types of graphics and pixel dimensions, the images and colors on your site may not match your branding and even worse, be distorted and blurry.
- You could end up with banner or pop-up ads for other businesses on your pages. Not only are these ads taking away from your message, but you have no control over the look and subject matter of these ads. The cost of having the ads removed could very well be higher than the cost of traditional web hosting.
- Help and customer support is usually poor or nonexistent.
- There may be a limited number of pages or storage space for your site.
- Many have limited options for additional features, like shopping carts and custom contact forms.
- The site may not be free forever – check the fine print!
The Best Way to Build Your Website
Work with an experienced, local web designer like Central Studio Design & Communications to register your own domain name and build your website from scratch. You may pay a little more up front, but the rewards will be worth it:
- Your site will be search engine optimized using the latest techniques.
- Your site can have as many pages as needed to get your message across.
- We can add on features like shopping carts, mailing lists, custom contact forms and much more.
- We’ll never put any ads or pop-ups on your site unless you ask us to!
- Our designers will take care to work with your current branding including existing logos, colors and fonts.
- When you call for help, you’ll speak directly with someone who knows about your site and can answer your questions and resolve any issues quickly.
- You’ll receive pricing before we begin work on your site, so there are no surprises when your bill comes.
Contact us today at (860) 301-5384 to learn how we can help you build a website that you … and your customers… will love!
It’s a fact that over 90% of smartphone users keep their device within arm’s reach 24/7. Besides using them for communication, one of the main activities we use smartphones for is browsing the Internet. Whether we’re looking for a recipe for gluten-free brownies, shopping for a new pair of shoes or trying to figure out if that weird lump is serious, we spend a lot of time online with our phones.
My website shows up on my phone, so what’s the problem?
The good news is that if you have a website, you have a website that can be accessed by a smartphone. The bad news is that it might not look as good as it does on a desktop computer. That beautiful Flash animation might not work on some phones, and all those columns of text and graphics might require a lot of swiping and pinching to navigate. And worst of all, your site might take a long time to load ... so long that users might take their business – and their money – somewhere else.
What can I do?
Create a “responsive” website that will adjust itself depending on where it’s being viewed. It should be a streamlined version of your current website with “thumb-friendly” buttons, intuitive navigation and a clean, single column layout.
I’m still not sold, tell me more.
As technology advances, the Google search engine gets more and more particular about recognizing websites as legitimate. If a website isn’t mobile-friendly, Google might not display it in search results. Since your website is nothing if it can’t be found, it’s very important for your site to be recognized by Google and other search engines. (For more information see my previous post on Search Engine Optimization.)
Ready to get started?
We can help you create a responsive website experience for your customers. Contact us today at (860) 301-5384 or visit www.CentralStudioDesign.com
By now we all know the importance of keeping your business visible and
current on Social Media. Americans spend over 100 billion minutes per
month on Social Media sites, and 98% of 18-24 year olds are active on
Social Media. There’s huge potential to keep in touch with your
customers and keep your brand fresh in their mind. How many times have
you seen the cupcake photo from the shop up the street and thought to
yourself, “Hmmm, I could go for that Chocolate Sparkle Cookie Explosion today!” and grabbed one (or three) on your way home from work? We can all agree that Social Media works for business.
Sounds like a no-brainer … right?
With this incredible potential to reach hundreds – maybe thousands – of
customers each day, why aren’t we all posting, tweeting, blogging and
sharing on a regular basis? The simple answer is simple: There are just not enough hours in the day!
That’s where we can help … let us work with you to create a Social
Media Plan that keeps your product or service in front of your customers
on a regular basis.
Whether it’s a series of Facebook posts, Tweets or E-mail Blasts
promoting a new product or event, a blog post that tells a story about
your business, or sharing your daily menu specials, we’ll create
interesting text and eye-catching imagery, then share with your audience
on a regular basis – so you can keep up!
Ready to get started?
Contact Central Studio at (860) 301-5384 today to discuss how we can design your unique Social Media Plan.
As a website designer, one of the most common questions I’m asked is, “Why don’t I show up on Google??!!”
There’s no easy answer, but there are lots of things we can do to bring
your site up to the top of the list. Below, I’ll share everything I
know about how to optimize your website for search engines.
What it a Search Engine?
A search engine is simply defined as "a program that searches documents
(your website is a series of documents) for specified keywords and
returns a list of the documents where the keywords were found." A few
common search engines are Google, Bing and Yahoo.
What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
SEO is defined as “the process of editing and organizing the content on a
web page or throughout a website to increase its potential relevance to
specific keywords on specific search engines and importantly ensuring
that external links to the site are correctly titled and in abundance.
This is done with the aim of achieving a higher organic, unpaid search
listing and thus increasing the volume of targeted traffic from search
engines.”
What Does Central Studio Design & Communications do to ensure that our clients’ websites are Search Engine Optimized?
We do a variety of things to try to get the search engines to “find”
your website. When I say “try,” it’s because with search engines, there
are no guarantees that your site will come up high on the list unless
you pay the search engine company (usually the first three items that
pop up are paid advertisers).
- We title all of the pages in your site with relevant keywords, including the name and location of your business.
- We add
alternate text (text that comes up if the image can’t display) to each
image on your site, and we add keywords to each image as well.
"Keywords" are words or phrases that a customer might type into a search
engine to find your business. Back in the day, web designers would hide
irrelevant keywords all over websites to try to trick search engines –
for example, a popular phrase like “Pamela Anderson” in black letters
over a black background, hundreds of times. Search engines have grown
more sophisticated, and tend to pass on sites that use this type of
tactic.
- We put relevant
keywords in the background of every page. We not only put the name and
location of your business, but we research other terms that your
customers might use to locate you on the Internet.
- We make sure that your content contains as many keywords as possible, without making it sound like a crazy person wrote it.
- Whenever
possible, we use live text instead of pictures containing text. Live
text is visible to search engines, but text embedded into images isn’t.
- We submit your
site to the major search engines in hopes they will come visit (or
“crawl”) it, see all they keywords and rich content, and add it to their
listings.
- We share your
site on across social media. Search engines love it when a website has
lots of external links leading back to it, so we try to create as many
as we can. Currently we’re using our own website, Facebook, Twitter and
Instagram ... and coming soon we’ll be featuring clients on our blog.
What Can You do to help?
There are a few things that you can do to help your site get moved up in the search engine rankings.
- Post a link to
your site anywhere you can. Create pages on all of the major social
media sites and post a link to your website on each one.
- Have other
websites link your site to theirs. For example, if you own a clothing
store, see if the designers you carry have a “Where to Buy” feature on
their own websites.
- List your
website on all of your printed materials (ads, brochures, business
cards, mailers, banners, signs, etc.) This will help drive traffic to
your site, and search engines love a site that gets lots of traffic.
- Keep your website content fresh – update photos and text frequently. Stale content makes search engines (and customers) bored.
- Start a blog,
and keep up with it! A blog is a great way to tell your customers about
sales, new products or services, or just to share little personal
stories. Blog posts can be tagged with keywords, and linked back to your
website.
- Submit your
site to a free service like EntireWeb.com. Because these services
collect your email address and may use it for marketing purposes, we
don’t submit your site to them, but we do encourage you to look into
them.
- You can pay.
Although no one wants to hear this, they best way to ensure that you
come up at the top of a search is to pay the search engine to put you
there.
Site Still Not Showing Up?
Even with all these techniques, it can still take several months for
your site to show up in the search engine rankings. We’ve found that
after about 6 months of going live, most of our sites come up on top or
on the first page of a search engine listing when the company name and
state or city is searched.
To sum it up, there is no guaranteed, quick (free) way to get your site
to be listed first, but with a little effort, your site can be made
search engine friendly and easy for your customers to find.
Recently I had the honor of photographing a newborn just 14 hours after her birth. The parents texted me when they got to the hospital, so I'd be ready when the baby arrived. After a few hours of rest, Baby was ready for her close-up. Here are a few of my favorite shots...
The tiniest feet I've ever seen!
Teddy bear was a gift from Grandma & Grandpa
Holding tightly to Mommy's hand
Is that Baby's first smile?
Being a supermodel is hard work!!!!
