Rags To Stitches Productions: WEB DESIGN ~ Web Design and Development

Showing posts with label WEB DESIGN. Show all posts

Your Customers Tell The Story: Online Testimonials

5:31 PM Author: RAGS

Printwear Magazine, July 2011.

Of the many elements that can be effective without distracting from your goal of generating contacts or sales, customer testimonials can be a great asset for your site visitors to discover. You can devote an entire sub page to testimonials, or simply sprinkle them throughout your product pages as an added incentive for new visitors to establish trust in you. Have a look at the July Internet Strategies column and consider collecting testimonials for your web pages.

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Choose a Distinctive Domain

3:36 PM Author: RAGS

Printwear Magazine, May 2011.

What's your dot com? One of the most common questions I get from those just entering the online world is "What are your suggestions for a domain name?", followed by the added follow up questions regarding .com, .net and more. This months Internet Strategies column addresses many of those questions as well as addressing issues that existing domain name owners should be aware of.

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Turn Leads into Sales Through an Organized Website

2:56 PM Author: RAGS

Printwear Magazine, November 2010.

It's a no-brainer that a well designed web site will produce more leads and sales than a plain vanilla Internet presence, but what exactly are the key elements of the design that generate the most leads and sales? In this months Internet Strategies column we take a look at those elements and how you can utilize them to increase the number of contacts coming from your web site.

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Capturing Leads: A Questionable Approach

2:13 PM Author: RAGS

I recently submitted my column to Printwear on the subject of optimizing your web site for capturing leads. That will be in an upcoming issue before the end of the year. I have been reflecting on my comments and suggestions in that column this week, as I ran into what I consider to be a negative approach to capturing leads.

The long and short of it is this: Your web site a virtual door that leads visitors into your business. Therefore your home page and/or landing pages should be as friendly and welcoming as you are when a customer walks into your place of business. Naturally you'd greet them with kindness, introduce yourself and begin the process of giving them the best service possible. Hopefully you'll close the sale, if not you're sure to get a business card and/or information from them to follow up at a later date. Thus capturing a lead.

This week I saw an ad for sublimation equipment that caught my attention. I have been searching for another printing solution for my busy dart shirts web site. Having an hour or so free to research their products I was off to their web site to spend some time browsing the equipment, warranties, financing options, getting an idea of pricing etc...

My hour of research - as well as my interest in doing business with that company - ended within a minute and a half. Why?

Landing on their home page I was greeted with a few options to click on for their equipment, and a login box accompanied by a "register now" link. When I clicked on the equipment links I was redirected to a page telling me I must register before I can enter their web site. And that was the end of my interest as well as the time I spent at their web site.

That approach may make sense to some hardcore sales reps as the site immediately asks for the users contact information and details, but in my opinion it is forceful and disruptive if not damaging to that companies online sales efforts. Consider entering a physical location to shop for something and being greeted at the door by a sales rep who hands you a clipboard with a form to fill out providing all of your contact information before you're even greeted with a handshake. Imagine having to provide them that form before you could even take a glance at what they had to offer.

In my opinion capturing leads is a method blended in with courtesy and consideration for the customer, making them comfortable with providing their contact information and doing business with you. Forcing users to provide their personal information in order to capture leads is a bold, car salesman type of approach that in the end could be detrimental to business.

That's my two cents anyway...

New Web Site: Wesley Christian Preschool

5:14 PM Author: RAGS

I recently finished up a quick web site for Wesley Christian Preschool which is a perfect example of how a small business can use WordPress as a do it yourself tool for managing your online presence. Although WordPress was designed for blogging, when utilized correctly it can be a great platform for creating a fully functional and effective website.

I've been recommending WordPress to clients who have the need for maintaining their own web site for several reasons. The benefit of maintaining the site themselves clearly eliminates the need for calling me - and paying me - to make any changes when necessary. It also provides them with the tools to post current news about their business, keep their customers informed, blog and connect through their social networks.

In this particular case, Karen and her administrative assistant were having issues with editing and maintaining their web site through their previous setup. As you can see below, their WordPress dashboard is as easy to use as a word processor. Now Karen and Nikki can spend their time doing what they do best at Wesley Christian Preschool and easily keep their web site up to date through this new method.

Feel free to contact me if you're business is ready to go online in a affordable and reliable way, creating a web presence that you can take over after development and drive from the seat of your own home or office.

Just the FAQ's Maam'

3:50 PM Author: RAGS

Printwear Magazine, April 2010.

In the April 2010 Internet Strategies column we discover the benefits of having an FAQ page for your web site (Frequently Asked Questions). FAQ's not only educate your web site visitors and existing clients, you'd be surprised how they can boost your exposure online through the simple addition of keywords and good copy. Have any questions? Go check out this months column and find the answers! If they're not there the comments section is open for further discussion.

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Considering a Mobile Friendly Website

12:42 AM Author: RAGS

I was just looking over some Internet statistics and once again had to raise an eyebrow at the increase in users of mobile Internet. Not only has the number of users exceeded those with desktop Internet access, there are now more people surfing the web on a mobile device than the number of people driving automobiles.

If you haven't put any thought into adding a mobile friendly web site to your online presence, now would be a great time to consider it. After studying the development end and testing hundreds of websites from my Blackberry I've come up with a few recommendations.

1) Be clear about how you can benefit your audience

As I've mentioned in a previous blog post a restaurant having a mobile web site is a no brainer, and a great example of a business that needs a mobile web site these days. People on the go use their mobile devices to find everything from movie theaters to hot spots on the town. But what about other businesses?

Understanding your customers and target audience will guide you to creative ways of utilizing a mobile friendly web site. If your business sells products you could offer real time order status and package tracking from the moment an order is placed, through any production process and its availability for delivery or pick up. A business that operates by appointments could allow users to make and cancel appointments online. Any business could offer their current specials, sales promotions or incentives.

In short, consider how your customer base - and potential buyers - would enjoy the ease of use, communication and extra service that can make their life a little easier.

2) Be clear and simple

Considering the load time and the nature of small screens on mobile devices, your mobile web site should be simple and effective. The information you decide to offer should be first priority over excessive use of images and/or highly detailed graphic layouts. This is a win win situation for you and your audience, as they're enjoying a speedy visit and getting what they are looking for in a timely manner and on your end there is very little to be concerned with in terms of maintenance and development.

3) Consider purchasing a mobile domain

The .mobi domain is now standing with top level domains like .com and .net with the increase in mobile Internet users. The major difference is that the .mobi extension is exclusive to delivering web pages to mobile devices, although other popular extensions can still be viewed over a mobile device. You will find it beneficial as search engines listing mobile friendly web sites to devices will recognize the extension, and mobile users will recognize it in your marketing efforts.

4) Provide a call to action, but keep it simple

Your existing customers might enjoy the ability to send you a quick message online, while users just discovering your site may want to contact you for more information. Having said that, it would be advisable to include a contact form but a very bare-bones version. A form asking for their contact name, email address and comments is more than likely about all a mobile user will have the patience to fill in from their device.

5) Return on investment

On the development side of things I have discovered that creating a mobile web site is not a very tall mountain to climb at all. In fact, with some clever developing an existing site could easily handle traffic from desktop users as well as mobile devices by using a little browser recognition code in creative ways. Therefore, I expect the cost of having creating a mobile web site to be more than worth the effort.

Font Readability Study

6:31 PM Author: RAGS

As an artist and designer, achieving a level of satisfaction with any client comes with the expectation that quite often we will disagree when it comes to our design ideas. That comes with the territory and applies to logo design, branding, advertising and all other forms of artistic expression.

However when it comes to creating a web site and designing for the Internet, there are certain boundaries and guidelines that a designer should conform to in order to please the most important element of the project - your web site visitors.

Believe it or not the most specific disagreements I have experienced have come in the selection of fonts. As you know there are thousands - maybe millions of typestyles to choose from. But when applying that design choice to the Internet, the truth is you should select from only a handful.

Short story is, you can apply any font to your web pages that you like but if the user visiting your web site doesn't have that same font installed on their system they won't see it. It will default to whatever font their system has been set to use in the event that a font is missing.

There is also the given fact that not everyone uses the same size monitor, uses the same monitor resolution settings, or even has the same strength of vision. Having said that, the readability of your font selection comes into play as well.

Reflecting on these technical tidbits of typestyle trivia, I managed to dig up a great article and survey from my bookmarks that explains things in detail and presents a great visual example of what can happen if an unwise font selection is made.