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Make Your Website Useful to Online Visitors

With the abundance of online visitors finding your website through the search engines, it is important to give them some incentive to come back and use your website. It is important to have useful information that keeps the reader wanting to find out more about what you have to offer. This can be accomplished many ways on your website. Here are a few examples of ideas that we have seen over the years.

Online Newsletter

Offering an online newsletter is a fairly popular way to keep users informed about new happenings with your company and different products and services that you have to offer.

Online Calculators

This is popular with accountants and mortgage lenders. It makes sense to have a calculator in front of a user so they can calculate the expense of certain fees and interest rates.

Offer Email Updates

This differs from the online newsletter by just sending little bits of information rather than a full blown online newsletter. This can also be a more effective use of your time, than to come up with a monthly newsletter.

A Color Wheel

We have seen this used on a few powder coating websites or on websites that deal with picking colors. This can be a great tool to have the user pick their color online rather than explain it over the phone.

Online Coupons

This can prove to be a very popular way to bring users back to your website and make it useful to them. Offers can appear like a coupon and the user can print them out. There are many websites online dedicated to showing coupons for different products and services online.

Links to Other Related Services or Products

If you have a landscaping business, why not have links on your website where a user can get a siding job done on their house? Or a sprinkler system put in that you would recommend. May be a place to buy a fantastic looking concrete statue? These online links will position you as a knowledgeable professional that knows the in’s and out’s of the industry.

Articles and Tips about Your Services

Articles are a great way to showcase your knowledge about your business and make your website useful to online visitors. Writing articles also helps your business show up in the search engines for longer keyword phrases. Writing a quick article can sometimes be the difference between building that little extra piece of credibility for that online visitor to pick up the phone and give your business a call.



Does Your Business Need Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Search Engine Optimization

Now more than ever, business owners trying to find ways to make money to stay in business. A website that is built with the search engines in mind can definitely help in a business trying to build their bottom line. So, when we hear the question, “Does my business need search engine optimization?”, then we like to ask the question, “What is your website trying to accomplish for your business?”.

If the business owner says, “Our website is just to portray an image.”, then search engine optimization is usually not a big concern to them. However, if you are the business owner that says, “I would like to use our website to generate business.”, we would highly recommend search engine optimization for your website.

What are the benefits of search engine optimization?

There are many benefits to search engine optimization.

  • Higher rankings in the search engines
  • Website easier to navigate for users
  • Easy to scan and read text
  • Website images optimized for faster web page load times

Obviously higher rankings in the search engines is one benefit, but also websites built with search engine optimization in mind are usually easier to navigate because of a more structured website navigation hierarchy. Text on each page of a website with search engine optimization is structured in a way that is easier to read, with headlines and html “H” tags (H1, H2, H3 etc.). Images on the website are optimized for faster viewing and enhanced with html “alt tags” that help with ranking in some regards and image searches that online users may use.

Ultimately, search engines and your online visitors make a decision about your website and where to rank your website or whether or not to do business with you.

When should I start with search engine optimization?

As soon as possible. Of course we are going to say that, right? We are in the business! We all know that it will require a decision to spend some money. We recommend that you talk search engine optimization over with your business partners or decision makers and come up with some questions that you may have. As we all know, it is better to make an educated decision than to jump right on the bandwagon.

However, finding out information as soon as possible so you can make a decision is highly recommended. The faster a business makes a decision to implement search engine optimization the better. It can have a drastic effect on generating leads and ultimately more business.

So if your business has been hearing more and more about:

  • online advertising and being found out on the search engines
  • increasing conversions from online visitors to customers
  • having your website being more effective for your business

Get in touch with us today!



Small Business Websites | Great idea to help grow your business

Small Business Web Design

Create some affordable business buzz

Small Business Website
A website for small and medium sized businesses is a great, affordable way to enter the market and generate some buzz. There are many high profile companies that are taking another look at the web and shifting advertising dollars from other more traditional forms of advertising to the internet. The main reason is because internet marketing is easier to track and see if the web is producing results for their business.

Affordable small business website design

It is possible to have a professional web design company provide your business an affordable web design. There is no need for you to learn how to design a website and make sure all the pages are validated and the code is correct. It is better for you to focus on your business and leave the website to the professionals. There are many pricing options that are available from a professional web designer. You will find that some web design companies are relatively inexpensive when compared to other forms of advertising. Small businesses have a great chance to free up some time and have a professional web design company create and manage their company website.

Grow your website

Create articles that showcase your product or service so visitors can get educated about what you have to offer. It is a thing of the past to setup a website and let it run. Consumers today are looking for more in depth information in order to make a decision. Consumers search through articles, blogs, reviews and competitor websites before coming to a conclusion. Write some articles that build trust between you and the potential client. Why should they choose you? Do they know about the award you received last month? What do your customers say about working with you? All of these questions can be answered on your website and are part of growing your website overtime.

Don’t overlook the power of having a professionally designed website. Many potential customers are out on the internet looking for services or products that you are selling. Unleash your small business website on the web and have it find customers to help grow your business.



Provide Answers to Frequently Asked Questions for Your Website Visitors

Provide an FAQ web page

Albert Einstein once said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Having answers to common questions placed on your website can save you time, money and possibly insanity (according to Einstein) :-). One of the best values of having a website is the ability to present information to potential customers. Making your website informative for the user will establish you as an authoritative figure in the field and will encourage customers to return.

It would be to your benefit to have answers to commonly asked questions placed on your website. Having answers to questions also filters out potential customers that would not fit with your business. We have heard from clients who remark that having a FAQ (frequently asked questions) page on their website works great for them. When a customer starts asking them questions about their business, they forward that person to the website to find answers to their questions and it ends up saving them both time. The business person saves time by being able to forward that person to the website to find the answer and the customer saves time by being able to bookmark, favorite or print the information out for later review or further questions.

When answers to specific questions are on your website so that customers can find them, you present your business as an authoritative figure in your field. Think about all of the knowledge you have gained from being in business. Think about the perfect client and the qualifications they have. For example, in the web design business, the budget of a client is highly dependent upon the scale of the website. We refuse to do business with customers who expect that we will do a $10,000 job for $500. No doubt, your business runs the same way, or you wouldn’t be in business very long. Therefore, placing information about minimum budget requirements on your website can help you filter out those clients who don’t have the budget to do business with your company.

The more information you place on your website, the better. Don’t get too overwhelmed, remember that you can always add more information as time goes on. Look at it from your own perspective. When you go to a website and you don’t find the information you are looking for, do you look elsewhere? Before your customers get to that point, hopefully you have answered some of their questions and they can give you a call.



5 Ways to Make More Money With Your Web Site

5 Ways to Make More Money With Your Web Site

We all want to make more money with our web sites. There are ways you can invest to get quicker
results. These 5 tips are ways we have seen that are critical in order for your web site to draw
in more clients, which means more ka-ching, ka-ching for your business:

1) Get your web site built by a professional organization.

Some professional web design companies (like Midwest Web Design) have been studying the way
of the internet for years and have watched it grow into the useful tool it is today for
information and business. Getting your web site built by a professional web design company
takes advantage of this knowledge. A business can save huge amounts of time and energy
that they can spend on building other parts of their business, such as advertising,
infrastructure, future contacts, etc.

2) Invest in search engine optimization for your site.

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO as they call it in the business, can have a huge effect on the profitability of your web site. SEO helps a web site to be found easier in the search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN. With approximately 92% of people online using search engines to find information online, it is obvious why companies would like to rank higher up in the search engines. SEO deals with keywords, descriptions, densities, articles and other bits of information that are picked up by professional web design companies.

“Having a web site built by a professional organization does have its benefits”

Don’t be fooled by internet marketers that promise “Number 1 Spots on Google,” this is not the sign of a professional. Prorofessional web design companies that know Google won’t promise a “Number 1 Spot” and they also won’t run away with your money once you paid. We have seen clients who went with these internet marketers because of what they “offered” and have came back to us feeling taken advantage of and left with an empty wallet. Once again, having your web site built by a professional organization does have its benefits!

3) Make your site useful and easy to navigate and read for your visitors.

You should be making your site valuable to customers by showing:

  • Business Hours
  • Services/Products
  • Offers or Coupons
  • Company History
  • Email Address
  • Having the Site Easy to Navigate

Each of these are key ingredients for customers to find your web site useful. We highly recommend our clients to have all of the above.

A web site also needs to be easy to navigate. Less clutter and making your site easy to navigate can make a difference sometimes overnight. Don’t be fooled by thinking you have to have a graphically-heavy web site in order to have customers order from you. In our experience, the more simple the better, both from a user standpoint and from a search engine standpoint.

4) Add your web site to your other forms of advertising.

We are amazed at the number of businesses that do not have their web site listed on all their forms of advertising. It is one of the most valuable forms of advertising in business today. Period. The more information you have on your web site, the better. Customer make decisions while they are on a web site. Think about it, without a web site they are unable to make any decisions and you won’t get the sale.

5) Invest in internet marketing for the search engines.

Companies such as Google, Yahoo, MSN and others offer services that allow a business to be placed in certain positions that will drive targeted customers to your site. Don’t be fooled by internet marketing services that promise 800 clicks a month. You want targeted traffic to your site. Targeted traffic offers the best conversion rate from visitor to customer.

These are some of the easiest ways to make more money with your web site. Keep in mind that having a professional web design company build your web site will maximize your time and stretch your advertising dollars. They know all the little tricks and shortcuts that will help you use your web site as a tool to make more money the most effective way possible.