Articles – Page 3

March 9, 2015 by Eric Rowen Leave a Comment

Does My WordPress Website Really Need To Be Maintained?

You need to re-design your website – it’s about 5 or 6 years old now and it doesn’t really meet your needs anymore. So you are out there speaking to a Web Designer or a Web design firm and the subject of maintenance comes up. You ask yourself “do I really need that?, my old website has been running for 5 or 6 years without any maintenance and it ran just fine – why would I need it now?”.

This is a very good question and one that I get often. I can almost use a bicycle vs car scenario to make my point. You had a bicycle and now you are getting a car. When you had your bicycle you didn’t have to (or very rarely) maintain it and it ran just fine. If you decided to upgrade to a car do you think you could get away with the same level of maintenance?

Your static website was likely written in such a way 5 or 6 years ago that someone with technical skills wrote/designed it and if there was a change needed you went back to that person or business to get it updated – because they had the technical skills to do so. Most small websites operated this way for a long time.

Now people don’t want to call someone every time they want to add something to their website. They want the ability to do it themselves. With something called a Content Management System (CMS) this was now possible. People now had the ability to login and add some content at their leisure. A CMS is what makes that possible. A CMS uses a database to accomplish these tasks.

There are many different CMS’s out there in the marketplace – but I am just going to speak about WordPress. WordPress is a free open source CMS that gives people the flexibility to do various things – some complex things you may still need a Web designer/Developer but by and large there are lots of things a non-technical person can do. WordPress uses a database and code to operate your website and it also uses various other programs called ‘plugins’ as well.

A WordPress website is essentially software programs that run in the background and just like other software – there are periodic software updates/released. Similar to how your operating system and smart phone regularly release updates to keep it running smooth.

Things like:

Theme updates
WordPress core program updates
Security updates
Plugin updates

So, similar to our car maintenance scenario our websites need regular maintenance as well.

Can I do them myself?

Its hard to give a certain yes or no on this one. Can everyone do the maintenance on their cars? Maybe some technical minded folks can do everything by themselves, others at the other end of the spectrum and perhaps have little to no knowledge may opt to have someone else trained to do these. Sometimes an update of one thing ‘breaks’ another thing and thats when an experienced pro can save you hours upon hours of troubleshooting.

What happens if I don’t install these updates/maintain my website?

Its difficult to predict what exactly would happen to a WordPress website if left untouched for a period of time. Things such as one day your website would start not looking right or be offline completely or possibly get hacked and who knows what some hacker would do with your website. I have had a client in the past that had their website hacked and their IP address and domain name ended up on blacklists. One of the major consequences was that the organization could not send out emails to people as the recipients servers had blacklisted theirs and would block ANY emails from their domain. It took them months to fully recover.

So, when you are asking yourself “Does my website really need to be maintained?”, I hope the above gives you food for thought to help you make your decision.

Looking for someone to do website maintenance on your WordPress website? We have maintenance plans available.

March 2, 2015 by Eric Rowen 4 Comments

Help Your Website – 4 Quick SEO tips.

I recently went to a seminar on Search Engine Optimization. (SEO)
(For those a little less tech savy – Search Engine Optimization basically means things you can do to your website to help it rank higher on search engine results – like Google.)

This seminar was a good refresher on basic tactics that most people can implement on a regular basis on their own websites.
I thought I would share 4 of them with you to help you get a little boost in your search engine rankings. I won’t get into the full explanation as to the “why to do” but rather just give you the quick and dirty “what to dos”.

Before you start tactics to increase your rankings on Google you have to know what words or phrases you want to rank well for.

1) Choosing Your Keywords/Phrases

A good tool that can help you is the Google Adwords Planner. (yes, its free to use – you just need a gmail account)
You can enter in some keywords and see how many searches people have done on it/them and theres another tab that will give you alternate suggestions of words/phrases you could use as well.

2) H1 – “With great power comes great responsibility”

H1 (which is a HTML tag and stands for Heading 1) should be used wisely. There should be only 1 H1 on a page AND your heading tags should be
in order. So you should use them in order as in h1, h2, h3 and not skip in the order. So don’t go from H1 to h3 then h4 etc.
Surprisingly other than the h1 tags the rest of the h tags is less important – you could use 3 h2 tags on a page if you wanted.

3) Meta Description

If you use the plug in – SEO by Yoast then you have the ability to type in your own Meta description on posts. Now here’s the tip – The order matters. So use your most important keywords first and less important ones as you type.

4) Alt tags

If you upload images don’t forget to include alt tags. Alt tags are text descriptions of the image – because search engine algorithms can’t read an image file. They can only read the text that is included with it. Now don’t get crazy here – just stuffing keywords on every image – your alt tags should still be descriptive of what the actual image is.

Short and sweet for this weeks post. Be consistent in using the above four tactics on your website and help the search engines along a little when it comes time
to show the search results to your next potential customer.

Do you have a favourite SEO technique – please comment below.

February 23, 2015 by Eric Rowen 2 Comments

Website Design – Why did you put that there?

When building a website there are lots of issues to consider. So many in fact it almost boggles the mind – if done right. Things like: goals, functionality, placement of things, copy, images, size, design, color, speed, security, accessibility, formats etc.

Some items are subjective, like should that button be blue or dark blue or perhaps that image would look better if it were a little bigger. But have you ever noticed that a lot (not all) websites have a similar look and feel? To give you an example, have you ever noticed that Navigation Menus generally either go horizontally along the top or vertically down the left side of the page?

Just look at some big companies websites.

Apple.com, CNN.com, Microsoft, – Navigation along the top (sometimes more submenus)

Google Venture, Time Magazine, MacDonalds – Navigation along the left hand side.

So why did someone put the navigation menus there? Why not on the right hand side? or in the middle? The answer is likely that someone used their sense of design combined with fact based science.

What do you mean “fact based science?” Various eye tracking studies have shown than when people look at a website there is a natural flow of where people look first, then next, then next etc.

It forms whats called a natural F-pattern. (as seen in the diagram below)

eye tracking F pattern — photo credit: http://www.nngroup.com/

This is just one example of using science to help make decisions on things like design. There are tonnes of other studies on lots of different topics that can be used to help make decisions about your website – to make it as effective as possible.

An interesting and fun website tests one small change to see its effect on clicks WhichTestWon

From time to time a client will give guidance or advice on elements about their website and it is up to the webdesigner to help the client understand why a certain element is located where it is. Maybe it’s based on research – or maybe it was a subjective decision.

The most successful websites are ones in which the client and web designer work together to create a great website. A knowledgable web professional can bring expertise on design and functionality and the client brings with them a huge bank of knowledge about their business and their customers.

February 16, 2015 by Eric Rowen Leave a Comment

What To Do BEFORE You Call A Web Designer

As a web designer I have been lucky enough to work on several website projects with lots of different people
from various business sectors. With each new website project I learn what works well and what doesn’t work so well.
Armed with this knowledge I thought I would share some tips with you on “What to do before you call a web designer” to help your website project go as smoothly and efficiently as possible.
Before I get into the list of tips, just one caveat. Some people want a total hands off approach – meaning they will hire a web designer to do completely everything (and I mean everything) to people that might be more hands on. (i.e. they will give the web designer the copy, images even the headings of pages). Most people fall somewhere in the middle – those are the people that will probably find this article most useful.

OK back to the tips – something has triggered you to say to yourself “I need a website”. Your next thought might be “ok, I need to pick up the phone, jump on the internet, or start asking around for a great web designer”

I URGE YOU TO STOP RIGHT THERE.

That is the path many business owners take, but I am going to share with you a better way. A way that dramatically increases the chances that your website will be a smooth and successful (even fun) project.

Step 1 – Fire up a word document – or write these questions on a piece of paper then write your answers down below each question.

QUESTIONS:

1) Why do I want a website? (be as specific as possible)
“I want to promote my business” is too generic of an answer. You need to dig deeper. Why do you want to promote your business?
“So more people will see my products and/or services” – almost there.. keep going. Why?
“I want people to call us to get an estimate for xxx” – BINGO !!
There is a specific objective of the website. One that should be the basis of your decision making.

Sometimes this is one of the hardest things to nail down. Often people will say I want x and y and z and … you get the idea.

2) What is the primary message I want to convey to potential customers?
This is another way of asking what makes you unique? Why should people do business with you.- Write it down

3) Look at other websites.
This doesn’t have to be just your competitors (although it can be) but take notes on two things: What websites do you like and what specifically do you like about them – color, design, layout, font, etc.
What websites do you hate and what specifically do you hate about them – same as above.
Design is subjective. Maybe I love blue – you hate blue. I like the website navigations to the left – you like it to the right.
Being able to give preferences helps both you and the designer.

4) What pages do you think the website should have?
You might have a ‘Home’ page, a ‘Services’ page, a ‘Contact’ page etc.

5) What content would go on those pages?
Think about what potential customers want to know about. You need to be a little critical here because of one harsh fact.

People don’t read websites – they scan them. <-Tweet This

So you don’t need to have every possible thing about your business on a page – just things essential to a customer trying to make a decision. In our sample case-enough information for someone to decide to buy from you – right? Bzzzt, Wrong. Remember our sample objective was to get someone to contact you for an estimate.
If they happen to decide to buy from you on the spot then great that’s a bonus. But in our sample case the business owner felt that (generally) his customers needed more input (via estimate) to make a final buy decision.

6) Jot down – even in bullet form the information you think should go on each page.
This will give the web designer a rough idea on how to design a page – will the page have only two sentences and they will need to
fill some space with images to make it aesthetically more pleasing – or is the page full of text in which case there are very few images or none at all.

7) Gather up potential images to use in your website.
Digital images are always preferred and easier to work with. This will give a web designer guidance when it comes to design considerations. Will you need to hire a photographer to take some photos or will the ones you already have be ok. Typically web designers have hundreds if not thousands of images you may be able to use.

8) Think about what types of functionality you want your website to have.
Do you want to have videos on your website? Some type of online calculator? Will you be selling items? Will you be shipping?
Do you want social media integrations – if so what social media channels? If you said ‘we want facebook on our website’ – what does that mean? Does that mean you want a ‘like’ button [fblike style=”standard” showfaces=”false” width=”450″ verb=”like” font=”arial”] or does that mean you want a ‘share on your timeline’ button, [fbshare type=”button” width=”100″]

or does that mean you want a facebook feed embedded into your website so people can see posts? The more specific the better.

9) Establish a rough completion date & budget range.
This will help in creating a timeline of who does what when. Most projects tend to take a little longer than the average person thinks.
That’s because they didn’t follow any of these tips – but now you have the advantage and have saved all kinds of time. Regarding budget notice I didn’t say establish a specific budget number? I said ‘range’- Why? Many times while working on a website there typically comes a time when someone will want an additional ‘thing’ – not talked about at the beginning of the project. It could be the customer or the web designer that has suggested a new item/feature. IF there is a strong case that the new item/feature will be a big benefit then I suggest that it be incorporated into the website. BUT expect to pay an additional amount for the extra feature/function. Would you go to the grocery store to buy an apple then at the checkout say to the cashier “oh I also want that magazine too, you should just throw that in for free”?

10) Be open to change.
I always tell my clients that no one can know their business better than themselves. However if you have hired an experienced web designer they will have lots of valuable advice to give. I strongly suggest keeping an open mind to their input. Weigh the pros and cons of a potential change in the project and if a slight change will make it a better website – then go for it.

Step 2 – Now go ahead and call your friendly neighbourhood web designer.

If you followed the above then you should have a good sense of what you are looking for in a website. You are already way ahead of the average person that just quickly picked up the phone. You will get a more accurate estimate, (in terms of both time to complete and how much it will cost) there will be less back and forth emails/phone calls and the resulting website that you get will perform better. And isn’t that what everyone wants at the end of the day?

If you found this article helpful please share it.

Need help with your website? We love helping small business’ with their websites. Feel free to contact us.

AUTHOR: About Eric Rowen

Eric Rowen is the founder of Silver 6 Media, a small web design firm that specializes in clear and effective websites for start-ups, small business and not-for-profit organizations. He is usually spotted with a coffee close at hand and a keyboard at his fingertips.

February 4, 2015 by Silke Jager 3 Comments

3 Ways To Grow Your Small Business With LinkedIn

If you have been searching for a new job in the past ten years, then you are probably familiar with LinkedIn. What you might not know is that LinkedIn, the world’s largest network for professionals, is more than just a place for job seekers or for finding new employees. It is also a place for small business owners to share stories and helpful tips, and to gain new customers.

LinkedIn has around 332 million members with 2 new members joining every second. That’s a huge number of professionals that might be looking to connect with you or are looking for what you have to offer. Bill Belew, a social media consultant stated the law of the Search Engine Universe in a recent LinkedIn post “If you want people to find you online …. give them more ‘stuff’ to find.”

Three ways you can grow your small business with LinkedIn:

Create an attention grabbing Profile
Join Groups to interact
Publish Posts to spread the word

Create Profile:

Your profile is usually the first thing people will see, so make it the best it can be. Don’t just focus on your own achievements, but include your company’s information. Describe what your business can do for others and what your customers and clients can expect from you, now and in the future.

Use a professional-looking head shot that will allow people to recognize you
Craft a headline that is catchy and describes what you do and who you serve, don’t just name your job title
Add the industry you work in to your profile
Write a summary that includes your keywords and is filled with the information your target audience is looking for
Include relevant images, YouTube videos, blog articles or any other media that gives credibility about who you are and what you do

Join Groups:

It’s a good idea to find and join several groups to contribute your content and to make further connections. Two to three relevant groups are enough in most cases. Look for groups with members who are prospective clients in your industry or create your own one group, then interact with them by leaving comments. You can also share content such as articles, how-to’s, guides, info-graphics and blog posts that feature subjects relevant to the group. Here are a few general guidelines to keep in mind:

Read the group rules, if applicable, and post appropriately
Self promotional posts should always go under the “promotions” tab
Some groups will allow you to promote a free event
If you have started a discussion, stay involved in the thread and answer any questions/comments promptly
Avoid making overly negative comments or criticisms
This is a business platform so it’s a good idea not to mention politics or religion
Don’t promote your own group in someone’s else group – it’s bad form

Publish Posts:

Publishing posts is another great way to get noticed and helps to spread the word about your company. Creating blog posts on LinkedIn has become very easy. To get started simply go to your profile and click on the little pencil in your ‘Share an update…’ box, add an image and start writing.

Posting regular blog updates a couple of times a month is a great way to build a following and to get your message in front of potential clients or customers. You could write about interesting developments within your company, share customer feedback or answer frequently asked questions.

You don’t have to be a professional writer or even need to visit this networking platform more than once a week.

Darren Rowse from ProBlogger says, “Aim to inform, inspire and interact!” If you can do that on a regular basis you will be able to grow your small business on LinkedIn in no time.

This guest article was brought to you by Silke Jager.
Silke builds websites for her clients with content management systems like WordPress. She has several blogs she updates on a regular basis, among them is the Jager Web Design Blog, where she shares small business marketing ideas, SEO, web design & craft marketing solutions!

Connect with Silke on LinkedIn here.