There are many choices when it comes to choosing your ideal web designer. And, unfortunately, there are many horror stories that nice and hard-working people like you have experienced.
How can you avoid falling prey into the hands of non-caring web designers who only see the dollar sign in your forehead?
Here are a few tips for you to consider when looking for a web designer who has your interest at heart.
1. Be Aware of Nice Talk
Some people are masters in sales. They have a great ability to sell you something that’s worth nothing. They are very good at getting you emotionally high, get you to sign a contract in that state, and worse yet, exclude information you should know (such as obtaining refunds within a certain amount of time).
2. Get Everything In Writing
I repeat, get everything in writing. Your proposals and contracts should details what pages will be built, how many graphics will be included, and if data entry is required, how many records will be entered. Responsible web designers who are interested in long-term relationships are very detailed. They are not afraid to outline exactly what they will do. This helps to protect you and them. In addition, these details help to see if there’s anything else that you might be forgetting.
3. Don’t Pay the Entire Fee Up-front
Never pay the entire fee upfront! A web designer who asks for the entire fee is a huge red flag that tells you this is not the right person to work with. Professional web designers should request 50% down and 50% at project completion. At GrandiosoDesign.com we split the fee into 3 easy and manageable payments.
4. Get “Overall” Recommendations
I believe it is important to get an overall view of what other people say about you in various areas including business and personal. This helps to paint a more complete picture of a person’s overall personality, integrity, work ethics, and team work. A great place to look for this is a person’s or company’s profile on LinkedIn.
5. Look at Previous Work or Work in Progress
Seeing the work of previous projects should provide you a glimpse into the web designer’s style and cleanliness of work.
6. Look for Sincerity and Integrity
The practical side of these two words are almost extinct in this world. Everyone will tell you that they work with honesty and integrity. But, how can you separate the sheep from the goats? One way to do this is to get your questions answered and obtain all of the information you should know up front, and you want this information in writing. As you study whatever information you are given, your gut feelings will send you the signals if this is a good deal for you or not, which leads me to the next point…
7. Go with Your Gut Feeling
I have personally learned to practice this in my business transactions. Unfortunately, we all learn to listen to our gut after we’ve had some bitter experiences, and then you say to yourself “I shouldn’t have…” or “I knew this wasn’t going to work…” or “I knew I shouldn’t have hired this person/contractor…” Having run my own green home building company, I had some tastes like that as well, and learned that I should have gone with my gut feelings. I have read about many of the most successful entrepreneurs that have also learned to practice this. And in many cases everyone else in the office thought it was the wrong thing to do, but their “gut” told them it was the right choice, and it turns out it was. Sometimes in business that’s we way we have to do things.
Top 5 Benefits of Using WordPress as a CMS
By · Comments
WordPress is a free, state-of-the art popular tool for blogging. Here are some benefits of using WordPress.
1. It’s Free
WordPress platform is free. You can buy themes (the look of your website) for under $100. There are many sites that also offer loads of themes for free saving loads of money.
2. It’s Easy
WordPress is very easy to use, especially if you feel you’re not that computer savvy. If you can send an e-mail from Outlook or your free Google account, type a word document using Microsoft Word or set up a Facebook or Twitter account, then you can use WordPress. WordPress is a great tool to website creation tool for non-techies.
3. You Can Do It Yourself
WordPress lends itself for the Do-It-Yourself world. You no longer need to wait or pay a programmer to fix small errors or typos. This saves you lots of time and loads of money.
4. It’s Available 24/7/365
WordPress is an online tool available 24/7/365 and offers multiple users, which means you’re not the only one who can fix something quickly. It is accessible from anywhere. Most importantly, your site is backed up on a secure server, giving you peace of mind.
5. It’s SEO Optimized
WordPress is inherently SEO-optimized. This makes it easier to optimize your search engine results, make Google happy and in crease your page ranks. That said, this means your site has increased chances to land on the first page of Google results. This makes it easy for your target market to quickly find you.
Top 10 Tips for Successful Websites
By · Comments
At GrandiosoDesign.com, we believe that websites are the best and most affordable tools for small business, yet it is a technology that is misunderstood and vastly underused.
There are three things that you should look for when designing your website:
Affordability
Custom web designs could cost anywhere from $5,000 and up for a small business. We believe web design should be affordable.
Attractiveness
A low-cost website should be attractive. We understand that your website is your store-front image on the web and your best cost-effective marketing tool if used appropriately. We believe that low-cost websites should be attractive, yet simple for users to navigate and enjoy a positive and memorable experience.
Effectiveness
You can have a very pretty website, but it’s not worth anything if it is not effective. It is fundamental for your website to do something for your business: be the point of contact for visitors to either contact you or place a sale online. You need a website that delivers, is useful to visitors, and most importantly, accomplishes something for your business, rather than just being a static online brochure.
With this foundation in mind, let’s dig into the top 10 secrets of successful websites.
1. Get a Clean Website
It’s not about you, it’s about making your visitors’ experience a little easier! More graphics means your site will take longer to load the pages, but sometimes could make it confusing for your visitors. Consider having a separate gallery to showcase your product.
A clean website is one where its colors are not irritating to the human eye. Dark backgrounds make it very difficult for someone to linger longer on your site. Take a look at these major successful websites from a variety of industries, such as Microsoft, Walmart, Mashable, and Apple.
These successful websites all have this one thing in common: a clean look.
A clean look makes it easier for your audience to want to stay longer on your site without any hindrances such as dark colors, too many colors, too many graphics, etc. Of course, this all depends on the kind of business that you do.
You will never go wrong with a website that has been designed with the visitors’ needs in mind.
2. Skip Intro’s
People want information fast and they will almost always skip the intro’s. Allocate the moneys that would go into a grand intro, into several videos where you connect with your audience or even showcases your clients’ providing you endorsements on your products or services.
3. Make the Focal Point the Focal Point
Websites that have been designed with the visitors in mind, have a focal point. You can easily tell when websites that miss this critical step: their home pages are crowded with every piece of graphic clamoring for the visitor’s attention!
The lack of a focal point could throw people off instantly from your site. Think simple, easy, and classy attractiveness, where the less is actually better.
4. Get an Owner-Controlled Website
A lot of business owners who have had beautiful websites built have one main complaint: they cannot change them! And when they’ve gone back to the programmers for then to make changes as simple as correcting a typo, it is very costly.
You need a website you can control 24/7/365 from anywhere around the globe; one that allows you full administrative access to make changes, edits, deletions, and upload fresh new content for your target audience.
A website built using a content management system (CMS) as its backbone will give you this kind of control of your website. A CMS is a platform with an administrative interface (backend tool)that allows you to easily edit, add fresh content and do lots of other cool things to your site. Don’t be intimidated by the fancy name, “CMS”. If you can write and save a letter using Microsoft Word, you can use a CMS-based website. By the way, once you hit “publish” or “update” button in the backend tool (think of “Save” as in Microsoft Word), the changes are instantly posted on your website. Now this is pretty cool!
By having control of your site, there is no need for you to wait on a programmer, or even spend additional moneys out of pocket to make changes.
If you are too busy to mess with this because you are doing what you do best, which is to run your business to make it profitable, then you can most certainly hire the pros to do this for you. But here’s the good news, you can hire people to help you at a fraction of the cost of what you would normally pay for non-CMS sites. CMS sites are less costly to build than traditional sites because they do not require extensive coding.
At GrandiosoDesign.com we understand that you might get very busy in your business and sometimes just need the pros to get the things done…yesterday!
5. Get a Search Engine Optimized (SEO) Website
Google is the search engine most people use to perform online searches around the globe. Google has its own proprietary mathematical algorithm that ranks web pages based on over 200 factors. Some of these factors include the use of keywords legitimately utilized in your site’s content, fresh content via your blog, your website’s site map, having links from other websites, having links to your website from outside high-traffic websites, having presence in social networking sites, and many other factors.
One major aspect of Google’s results is their indexing system. Google has a robot, a program, known as “Googlebot” that “crawls” (inspects) websites and indexes them. Think of it as the index section in the back of a book. This information is stored in their index servers that is key to fetch the data from their doc (document) servers and show the results of the users’ searches on the screen. Google will display first the websites that have the best relevance to the query or search being made. This is why using the proper keywords in your content is vital. Optimizing your website for search engines is good business practice and for visitors to easily find you.
6. Incorporate a Blog Component on Your Website
Although micro-blogging in Facebook and Twitter are on the rise daily, posting blogs on your website is good business practice to keep fresh information on your site to help you stay connected with your current and future customers. See your blog as your e-newsletter to your clients.
Following are a few positives about having a blog:
A blog makes Google happy: it shows activity. Search engines love fresh information, that is why they like websites that have blogs. Using a CMS-based tool gives you the functionality to have a blog.
A blog enables you to attract followers. People who are interested in what you do or what product you sell, will be interested in the tips and advice you offer through your blogs.
A blog allows you to share your experiences with your audience, thereby building rapport and trust so that when they need to purchase or recommend a particular product or service for which you have a solution, they will remember you.
A blog lends itself for interaction and for personalizing your business. People like to do business with people, with those who understand their pain and have a solution for it. A blog allows you to build and nurture a personal connection with your current and future customers, with the hope that this special bond could lead to more sales.
7. Be Accessible to Your Current and Future Customers
Your website needs to have a way for customers to get answers to their questions quickly and easily. One way to do this is by having a FAQ’s page. Another way is to have a contact form on your site where they can submit questions or simply contact you online. This serves as a great tool to gather information from your site’s visitors
8. Be Active on Facebook and Twitter
Both Facebook and Twitters are excellent social networking sites where you can build rapport and relationship with business associates and current and future customers. These micro-blogging platforms are absolutely free. Go a step further to have your own Facebook Fan Page for people to become fans of your business.
As you build relationship with people, don’t miss the opportunity to share a link back to your site’s latest blog post, especially if you know it would benefit your network in their business or personal lives.
9. Lead Customers to Take Action
Business websites that do not have a blog and are not interactive are similar to the life of a brochure, that once it’s printed, it does not get updated often. Your website is a powerful tool and you should use it to maximize your time and productivity.
You need to decide what it is that you want your visitors to do, and make this the focal point on your home page. Many websites are so crowded with information on the home page (this does not apply to news websites) that when you stare at the home page you see “nothing” because all the graphics and videos and different boxes are placed in such a way that scream for attention. This can confuse visitors as to what to do. Because of so many choices, visitors do not know what to do first.
The secret to a good website is for it to be clean (not crowded) and clear (provide direction) on what you want visitors to do first when they land on your page.
When a visitor enters your site, they should be guided in and through the site to the ultimate goal: for them to make a purchase or to contact you.
Make your “Contact Us” page easy to find. Make your “take action” or “next step” clear.
10. Refine, Test, Refine, Test, Refine, Test… you get it!
No website is ever perfect from the beginning. It is a work in progress. When you first build your site, this is just the beginning. The building of a site with rich content, historical data and creating regular readership, takes time, effort and dedication.
In the process of learning more about the online world and how other businesses are using their sites, you will get ideas that could work your type of business. Don’t be afraid to incorporate those ideas and test them out on your site. If that particular idea did not work for you, don’t feel like you can’t try the next one until you get to something that works for your business and the audience you serve.
Concluding Thoughts
Websites are the best cost-effective and marketing tools that any small business should take advantage of.
Contact us today for a free 15-minute assessment of your current site or the needs you have. There is no obligation and there are no hidden costs. All we want to do is provide our advice that can help you make the right choices for your website.
Our goal with all our clients is one: to help you look good on the web so that you can focus on what you do best.
If you are ready to get started, we are ready to rock n’ roll. We have great packages available that we would love to share with you.
Ready to start on your project?
Contact us today and weʼll get your site launched asap! Call Dina Lima today at 817-601-5655 or at contact@GrandiosoDesign.com.
Website Do’s and Don’ts
By · Comments
Do
1. Make your website user-friendly
Think about the end user, not yourself. Keep it simple, clean and easy to navigate. Make it easy for your visitors to get to the information fast!
2. Use a content management system
This gives you the keys to manage your websites content yourself without having to pay and wait for a programmer to do it. This can get very costly.
3. Update it consistently
Again, consistently, not constantly. There are people who “live” full-time on the internet surfing and chatting on Facebook and Twitter. If you have a business you don’t have this luxury. Therefore, set a monthly schedule of when you will add new blog posts to your site. This could be once per month. But if you do it on a consistent basis, this is far better then posting a bunch of entries one month and then have no activity for the next three months!
4. Optimize it for search engines
Use the right keywords in your content, use tags, enter new blog posts, update your accounts in Facebook and Twitter to help your page ranks, create/update your Google Profile, create a blog in blogger.com – this is owned by Google and you’ll make them happy if you use it!
5. Include the links to your social networking accounts
Links to your Facebook profile, fan page, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr.
6. Include videos
Research shows that if you have videos on your site, people linger more!
7. Include a FAQ’s page
If it makes sense for your business.
8. Include a Terms of Use page
This is a CYA (cover your assets) practice! In this lawsuit-hungry society you have to take all measurements necessary to protect yourself.
9. Include a Disclaimer page
Just another CYA!
Don’t
1. Design your website to your liking
It’s about your visitors and customers, not you. It’s about what will make their experience pleasant and positive, not complex and confusing. Think of functionality, cleanliness and ease of use, over pretty pictures and graphics.
2. Crowd up the home page
When your home page does not have a focal point, and everything on the page screams for attention, the visitor is confused. In addition, it makes your website look unclean and crowded.
3. Confuse the visitor
Direct the user what to do first. This should be on the focal point area of your site.
4. Use dark colors that are irritating on the eyes of the users
Dark backgrounds are irritating on the eyes for most users. A white and clean background is much easier to linger around longer on a website.