Getting Your Website Responsive

In the last article, I revealed that I think the best option for most small businesses is to use a good Responsive Theme.  If you have an older HTML website, you could convert your HTML site to a responsive HTML design, but I will warn you that from my own personal testing, I was not happy with how they behaved.  More specifically, the way the ones that I used worked is that the mobile screen was not horizontally “fixed” the way it should have been and would slide left or right – at times you would think that it ought to be locked in place.  So, at present, HTML responsive layouts get a big thumbs down from me.  If I happen to find some I like that work the way they ought to, I’ll let you know.  In the meantime, if you are stuck on HTML for some reason, I would lean toward dynamic serving with a completely separate set of pages.  Done right, such pages can have a very "app-like" feel to them.

If you’re using WordPress, which most small businesses really ought to be doing these days, then you have tons of options.  As a bit of an aside, one of the main reasons for using WordPress is that you can add and remove things from your, including new posts, blog content, plugins, additional capabilities, etc. without a big development cost.  And since Google very strongly favors websites that show growth and development, you can see how maintaining a competitive advantage over time will be easier if your website has the right stuff under the hood to help you do that.

So, if you’re on WordPress, your best choice is to move to a Responsive theme.  There are about a million of them, though.  I’ll share some places where they can be found, and then I’ll tell you my own preferences.

Here are some top theme providers that are currently mobile responsive:

1. Thrive Themes - http://thrivethemes.com/
2. Studio Press Themes – http://my.studiopress.com/responsive-wordpress-themes/
3. Theme Forest - http://themeforest.net/collections/3226617-responsive-wordpress-themes Theme Forest also has designs for HTML and Joomla based sites.
4. Elegant Themes are a very popular choice, with over 20 Wordpress responsive themes available including their most amazing work, Divi.  http://www.elegantthemes.com/gallery/category/responsive/
5. If you are looking for free themes, here’s a list of 30 designs. http://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/30-free-responsive-and-stunning-wordpress-themes/
6. Then there are the themes from Wordpress here: https://theme.wordpress.com/themes/features/responsive-layout/

Now, if you read any of my other posts, you’ll know that I very, very strongly recommend that you do not simply pick a theme because you think it looks pretty, you like the colors, etc.  That’s a great way not to get many calls.  The reason I say that, and take a bit of a tough stance on the subject of website design, is that you have a website for your business because you want to convert visitors into customers so you can make money for your business.  It’s not a hobby or an art project.  I’m going to be as serious as I can here.  You need to decide which is more important:  making money for your business, or having a website like one you may have seen.  The reason I am prompting you to consider this question is that there is a tremendous amount of research into neuroscience and website design factors that convert people from visitors to callers.  So, as a developer, I want to help your business succeed, which means putting those things into play on your website, while trying to incorporate as much of your personal tastes and preferences as possible.  Some developers will quite happily just install any theme you want and take your money, but my point here is that they aren’t doing you any favors.

The second thing to consider is that, in many of those places, the developers come and go, and the support for their themes may go with them, leaving your website with buggy code that nobody is ever going to fix.

I am personally quite picky about the themes I use, because I want to be sure that both myself, and especially my customers, can count on having active support for a long time to come.  For most sites, I either use Divi by Elegant Themes, which can do practically anything you might dream up, or one of a couple of proprietary themes along with Visual Composer, the go-to industry standard for custom layouts.

Keeping Your Current Theme

With WordPress, you can use one of several plugins to create a separate mobile version of your website right from within WordPress itself.  I don’t recommend this approach for anybody that I typically work with, but there are certainly instances where it might make sense as a short-term measure just to get you back into compliance with Google while you then work on fixing the bigger problem with your website design.

HandHeld Mobile Plugin by Elegant Themes lets you create a separate mobile-friendly version of your existing site.  This plugin comes straight from the manufacturer, so it does not have a rating on WordPress.org.
Jetpack helps site owners by giving you the mobile-friendly features of hosted wordpress.com with your self-hosted site.
WPTouch is a plugin solution that will allow you to create a separate, mobile-friendly version of your website. Your desktop site will stay unchanged.  When visitors view your site from any mobile device, your website will display a different theme that you configure. You can select from various themes that the plugin offers. Currently rate 3.5 out of 5 stars.
WP Mobile Detector, works similarly, allowing you to select from different themes and create your mobile friendly website. This plugin only has 3.4 out of 5 stars.
Device Theme Switcher is a more complex plugin that allows you to even give a different version to not only phones, but tablets.  This gives you quite a bit of flexibility and more granular control, which may sound nice, but with complexity comes cost.  Although the plugin is highly rated with a full 5-stars, most small businesses that I work with are cost-conscious, so I would not tend to go this route.  Although the plugin seems quite nice, I have concerns about the longevity of support since there is only a single developer who has no other plugins.  We can only hope that since he seems to be doing good work that he'll survive the test of time.

The thing to be cautious about with plugins is the same issue as with themes themselves.  Developers come and go, so you want to use mainstream, major brand plugins so you can be reasonably assured that they’re going to be likely to continue providing support.  The other main issue is that you may not be able to brand your website for a consistent viewing experience.  In general, I do not recommend the route of plugins to accomplish a mobile website due to both reliability and support concerns I have.  Is it easy to install it, charge a client money, and then walk away?  Sure.  But I can’t begin to tell you how many websites I’ve run into where a website developer installed a cool plugin that seemed a good idea at the time, but when I’m in there fixing things, the plugins are badly out of date with bugs but the person who wrote them is nowhere to be found, leaving the client to have to pay for me to move them onto something more reliable.  If you are going to use a plugin, I would lean toward Elegant Theme’s HandHeld Mobile since you will likely get more consistent support over time.

We’ll continue talking about responsive website design next time; until then feel free to contact me if you have any questions at DunnTek web design.

Types of Mobile Website Design

You really have three choices when it comes to an approach for your website’s mobile version. From a Google perspective, neither is necessarily any better than the others just from the standpoint of gaining their favor. However, each does have both its advantages and disadvantages. I’m going to walk through these three choices, and then tell you which approach I generally recommend and explain why.

Responsive Website Design

Perhaps the most common approach, a responsive website design is one which automatically adjusts the size and position of different components of your website based on the visitor’s device. Some of the things that a responsive website may do include changing the font size, displaying smaller pictures and videos, spacing links further apart so they are easier to tap, and re-ordering the content so it fits well onto the screen and flows well as you can then scroll down to see the same content as if you were on a regular desktop PC, but it’s been re-formatted so you can now see it easily on your smartphone or table.
One advantage of a responsive design is that you have a built-in consistent look and feel to your website, regardless of how your visitor choose to visit it. This feeling of familiarity and comfort is a factor in website conversion. Additionally, since you only have to maintain one website, your overall cost will probably be lower than other options.
The downside to a responsive design is that you may be showing visitors more than they needed. For example, if you consider the scenarios in which a person is likely to visit your website and think through what they really want to know about you if they are using their phone to look you up, do they really want to read all of your articles and detailed explanations? Maybe, maybe not. Plus, all of that content has to load on their device.

Dynamic Page Serving

This approach to a mobile website will redirect mobile users to a different URL if they are on a mobile device. The methods for making this determination vary, but the most common result that you may recognize is visitors being sent to a “m.” version of the website. In this scenario, you essentially built a duplicate version of your website, including some pages while leaving others out, and tailoring the content of those pages to better suit mobile viewers.
The two main advantages of this approach are that you don’t have to make much modification to your existing website, and achieving a highly-optimized mobile viewing experience with streamlined or summarized content and less options for the viewer, so they are more strongly directed to a particular outcome, ex. calling you, as opposed to other things they might do on the desktop version of your website such as read PDF's or special reports you may have.
The disadvantages include having to now main two different websites, and the attempt to tailor content for mobile viewers may leave your existing customers in a flux since they are used to looking for certain things in certain places, but now you’ve gone and moved things around on them which can be frustrating for your existing customers. Additionally, since you have two websites, you need some technology to decide which version you’re going to serve up to your user, and that technology may or may not work the way that you really want it to – a situation which is becoming more problematic as newer smartphones emerge on the market with extremely high-resolution displays. You also carry additional cost associated with maintaining more web pages.

Different Mobile URL

In this scenario, mobile visitors are sent to a completely different URL where your mobile website is housed.
The advantages are essential the same as dynamic page serving, in that you can deliver a highly mobile-optimized experience for your user with summarized content and simple navigation. Sometimes the term “web app” is used to describe this type of website, in that it functions almost more like an app on your smart phone rather than looking like a web page. In some cases it is cheaper to launch a new “web app” than to convert your website to a mobile responsive design, so some business owners may see it as a short-term cost avoidance so they don’t have to redesign their whole website.
The reality is that any cost-savings is very short-lived, because you’re going to be paying additional hosting and maintenance costs, plus you have all the same disadvantages as dynamic page serving.

Summary

You have three primary choices for how to approach the mobile website for your business, and I’ve done all three. First you have the responsive design, which maintains a common look and feel regardless of how someone access your website. This is what I do the most of. Second, you have dynamic page serving. I’ve hand-coded custom HTML websites in this format for some clients. Finally, you have what I call the “web app” which is essentially a completely separate website. I’ve done these as well. Overall, I steer most small businesses toward a responsive design because:
1. It maintains a consistent look and feel for your website;
2. Lowest overall cost;
3. Most future-proof as device resolutions change;
4. Less headaches with having to deal with multiple websites.
So there you have it – my general recommendation for most small business owners is a responsive website design. That said, there may be cases where one of the other options is a better choice for your particular situation, so feel free to contact me on my website at http://dunntek.com/webdesign/ and we can talk through which option might be best for you.
We’ll continue the discussion about mobile websites in the next article.

Why Your Small Business Needs a Mobile Website

If you want to get more customers online, then you probably know that it’s important to comply with search engine requirements about the things they want to see on your website.  If you don’t follow their rules, you’ll find yourself gone from their listings.  That means people aren’t going to be calling you as much.  What this means for a small business owner is that you can’t just create a website and forget about it; you have to keep up with these changing requirements by Google.  Just like a house requires maintenance and upkeep over time, fixing and replacing things, painting, and regular yard maintenance, so does your website.

Over the years, the volume of online searches conducted from mobile devices has exceeded 50%, meaning that now well over half of all searches are being made primarily from smart phones.  This is particularly true with online shopping specifically; if your shopping cart isn’t mobile friendly it’s estimated that you can be losing 30% of your potential sales on that item alone.  But the main point here is that when people search on their phones for a local service provider, much of the time they aren’t idly cruising the web.  Rather, when people use their phones to conduct a search for a local service provider, they’re usually doing so with an intent to buy.  Think about that.  Most of the time when people are using their phone to search for a plumber, they’re going to call one for service.  If you’re a plumber and you don’t have a mobile website, you’re now letting all that traffic just pass right by you.

Back in April, Google instituted changes in their search algorithm.  Whether or not you have a mobile-friendly website design is now part of what people see when they search from a mobile phone.  If you think about it, it makes sense.  People on mobile phones would rather see a mobile-friendly site that’s easy to navigate, than one with tiny text or where they have to pinch and zoom to find their way around.  This means that if your website isn’t mobile friendly, you’re going to get less calls.

If you don’t know whether or not your website design complies with the latest requirements, go to Google’s online testing tool, type in your website address, and it will tell you:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly

How Online Searching Has Changed

One of the factors to consider about your local marketing is the manner in which searching has changed.  For example, once upon a time, you might make a search like one of these:

Pizza + Chicago
Plumbers in Seattle

However with the rise of location-detection technology, that isn’t really needed most of the time anymore.  Search engines can detect where you are, and deliver results that are determined to be nearby based on your location.  That assumes, of course, that your device supports location detection and that you have enabled it for your web browser.

Understanding Mobile Users

The first thing you need to do is think like a mobile user and put yourself in their shoes.  One common scenario is a person doing some quick shopping, in which case they want a simple, streamlined buying process without a bunch of steps, so it’s fast and easy to buy.  But for a small local business, the more important scenario is when they just had a major plumbing disaster and need someone NOW.  They want to do a quick search, see top-rated professionals, and be able to do a quick tap to call.  People want things to be quick and easy.  If your website isn’t set up so it’s just a matter of a click or two for them to either call or contact you, they’re going to call someone else.  If you’re a restaurant, your exact location with a map link and your menu should be easy to use.  (Tip for restaurants: Include pricing on your online menu, and allow online ordering for pickup customers.)

With over a billion people now browsing the Internet from a mobile device, the simple fact of having a mobile website means you should see an increase in traffic.  Conversely, not having one means your traffic will go down.

This is the first article in a series.  Next time, we’ll discuss some of the different types of mobile websites that are available.  As always, if you have any questions feel free to contact me at Web Design Raleigh NC

Creating Content for Your Website or Blog

It happens to all of us. You're either trying to write the text for a page on your website, or write a blog article. Maybe you've allocated a special time and sit down with a cup of tea or a hot cup of coffee. Then you log onto your computer, put your fingers to the keyboard, and… nothing. The fountain of words that normally flows forth seems to have dried up into nothingness. You've got writer's block.

Here are a few tips that can help when you find yourself in this situation.

1. Take something complicated, and simplify it. Just think about how many times you may have wanted to learn something, but didn't have the hours needed to read a complicated manual. Think about who your readers are, and, knowing that, identify something that they are likely to want to be able to do, but may have never been properly instructed about. You can also draw inspiration for this type of article from a recent customer interaction (but be careful not to get into any details about that. You don’t want your customer getting mad at you.) When you begin, getting people’s initial interest with an eye-catching fact is always good.

Example: If you wanted to talk about proper shoveling technique, you could start with a statistic about how many injuries occur each year while using a shovel. Now turn this into a problem statement: You need to know how to shovel correctly in order to avoid hurting yourself or someone else.

Next, map out the series of high level steps involved in performing whatever the task is. For example, first picking the right shovel for the task. Calling for utility locates. Ensuring a safe work area. You get the idea.

A general sort of high level format that works well in many situations is:

• Explain the problem and why it’s important to learn to do the task correctly
• Defining the actual task and reason for doing it
• Advantages and disadvantages of doing it yourself (it’s always a mix!)
• Preparing for the job
• Choosing the right tool for the job
• Getting the tool – buying, renting, borrowing – explain any special economics
• Ensuring safety
• Performing the task (Stage 1)
• Performing the task (Stage 2)
• Performing the task (Stage 3 etc.)
• Assessing & refining
• Cleaning up
• Storing your tools properly

Then, once you have the overall structure right, go back and fill in the details.

2. Compare the pro’s and con’s of two different choices. For example, you might compare granite and marble countertops, or two different types of grass for a North Carolina lawn and how each does in the different regions with differing soil types. You know a lot about these things; this is just taking something that you already know and putting a different spin on it that people will actually benefit from reading. Just be careful not to name any actual products or brands, since that might get you into legal trouble.

3. If you favor a particular brand that you sell, and you have the legal rights to do so, perform a case study in which you talk about how and why that brand was the perfect fit for a particular situation that you encountered. In doing a case study, tell the story of the person that you did work for and demonstrate how the product made a difference in their life.

4. Read the news. Get ideas from local and national news, as well as any industry trade publications.

5. Follow other bloggers just to get an idea about what’s interesting enough not just to write about, but to see what sort of topics get people engaged.

6. Review a product or service, but again, you need to research and understand any legal implications.

7. Look through the table of contents of related books online just to get ideas for the structure of an article or post. Don’t plagiarize, but looking at what other people are writing about will very often cause an idea to pop into your head out of nowhere. It works extremely well!

I hope that gives you some ideas on different ways of coming up with things to write about for your website or blog. If you need help with managed website content solutions, contact me on my website at http://dunntek.com.

Preparing for Your Website

As you prepare to launch a new website, there is some prep work you should do. I’m going to walk you through some hands-on things you need to actually do, and some things for you to think about, to help you make the most of your time and end up with a great website.

COMPETITION ANALYSIS

One of the first things you should do is some online research of your own. Go to Google and search for your business-related keywords. An example might be “tree service Charlotte”.

Now, go study the top 5-10 websites. Find out what services they provide, the type of information they have online, how their website is organized, etc. Keep in mind, just because a lot of them are doing something doesn’t mean they are really doing it right, but the first page of Google is always a great place to use a reference, since they’re obviously doing something better than most.

QUESTIONS

Next, try to work through some of these questions. Takes notes, since this will help your website developer later.

• What things are they missing from their websites?
• What can I do better than they did on their websites?
• What services do I offer that they don’t?
• Why should someone choose me?
• What are my advantages over other companies?
• Are those advantage related to a specific market segment?
• What is my brand message?
• Is my quality higher? If so, what, specifically, make it that way?
• Am I cheaper? If so, how do I still deliver a great result for my customers?
• Who is my ideal customer? Think in terms of age, demographics, location, etc.
• What matters most to that person?
• Time? Money? Or Quality?
• What kind of language does my ideal customer use?

That’s just a short primer on how to differentiate yourself, but should give you more than a little to think about. It all plays into what sort of message you convey on your website. Once you identify your ideal customer, it’s a lot easier to put together content that resonates with them. If your message is that you’re the economy provider, everything should reflect that. If you cater to high-end clients, again, your language, pictures and video should be something that’s going to make them feel right at home with you.

INVENTORY YOUR SERVICES

Make an inventory of all your products and services, and then break each one down on a separate piece of paper and write down as many details as you can think of. Then, go back and see if there are any logical groupings to your services.

Your website designer should be able to help you group them in a way that’s going to use good language that search engines will like. My recommendation is to follow their lead on how to structure things for best search engine results. You may have to make a trade-off between using language that you just personally like, and what’s going to get your website rated higher, so you need to decide which is more important to you.

CONTENT PAGES

Now that you’ve both answered some of your branding questions about who you are as a company, and taken an inventory of your services, you can now put these together to write your content pages. This is where you take the nitty gritty details about different aspects of your service, and explain how your business delivers those things with your unique value proposition, using language that’s going to resonate with your ideal customer.

PICTURES

Old pictures may not be sufficient in this day and age, but I run into people with tiny little pictures they want to look good online – and sometimes there’s just no magic I can do with a tiny little pic. Get all your digital pictures together. You are going to want pictures that are at least 1600x900, and that’s a bare minimum. The reason for this is that your designer needs to be able to chop them down to size for different purposes throughout your site, so they need a good sized picture to start with. If they happen to be much bigger, don’t worry about trying to downsize them yourself.

Now, organize your pictures into folders that relate to your services. This will help you figure out which of your services that you do not have any pictures for. Often, stock photographs can be found and used, but it’s always better to showcase your own work if you can.

If you don’t have suitable photographs, see if you can take pictures of some of your recent work with a digital camera. Pick a time of day with good, bright sunny lighting in that location, and be mindful about how you frame the pic – i.e. how close you are, what’s in the picture, things getting cut off, etc. Remember you cannot use other company’s trademarks in your business website, so try to eliminate any such things from the picture before you take it.

MARKETING TIP

Your website may be the very first time someone forms an opinion about your company. The most important thing about a website is for people to see it and immediately get a sense that you're the right company to help them.

Remember, though, that if you are a small local business, you are most likely not selling to anyone and everyone. That is not to say that you wouldn’t do so, but rather that there’s probably a certain demographic that is most likely to do business with you. The better you can identify who your customers are, and the typical “life story” for them at the time they are going to be visiting you online, the better you can do at tailoring the language on your pages so that your story about your business just naturally meshes right into their own life story, and they see you as someone who understands what they need.

If you need help figuring out how to tailor your website to better suit your target audience, drop by my website and connect with me there.

Why's It's Important to Customize Error Pages

How many changes have you made to the structure of your website? 10? 100? Maybe a lot more? Over time as your site grows, this number will increase, especially if it's a dynamic site like WordPress or other CMS.

Now, how often have you typed the wrong thing by accident when entering code? It happens all the time, no matter how careful you are – and we’ve come to the point that a lot of people rely on spell-checking. But those programs just make sure it’s a real word, not necessarily whether it’s the right word for the context. And if you’re creating an entire website, is it realistic to think you are going to catch ever single such possible error yourself? You certainly hope to, by going through the website, but there’s always a chance you’re going to miss something that leads to a link not working correctly.

When that happens, and someone clicks on that broken link, they are sent instead to an error page – most commonly with a 404 error. We’ve all seen this page before; it lets you know that the server can’t find what you wanted. This will make the user think that you aren’t keeping your website up to date, but even worse, there’s no way for them to tell you about it. So you have no idea about this problem.

Hosting providers now very often take advantage of this and actually make money off it. I know this might surprise you, but it’s true. If you have not created your own error page, then they have the server set up to send *your* website visitor to an error page that advertises *their* services. Now why would you want to give them free advertising on your real estate like that? You may be surprised to hear that’s a 7-figure industry.

How can you not only stop them from stealing way your website visitors and recapture that potentially lost traffic? It turns out to be quite simple, but you need to be a bit technical to do it.

With most web hosting providers, you can at least partially customize some aspects of the server configuration. I’m going to show you how to do this for Apache, which is the most common web server software in the world. You can also do this with IIS or other web server software; you’ll just have to look up the exact details.

First, you need to develop an HTML template page your error pages. To maintain consistency with the user so they still feel like they are on the same website, you want it to look similar to your main pages. You may not be able to make it exactly the same; the important thing is that it clearly belongs to you.

Next, you will need to decide what content to display on the page. You should let your visitors know that they have stumbled across a dead link, but you also want to provide a streamlined method for them to find their way back to your site. I recommend using the appropriate error message in the page title and at the beginning of the page using h1 tags. You should append a description of the error message to your page title and display this description using h2 tags in your page.

Example:

<html>
<head>
<title>Error 404: The page you are looking for was not found</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Error 404</h1>
</h2>The page you are looking for was not found. Please check the URL and try again.</h2>
</body>
</html>

Now you need to provide a easy "one-click" path to your website. This can be accomplished using a simple text link in the page footer.

Example:

<html>
<head>
<title>Error 404: The page you are looking for was not found</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Error 404</h1>
</h2>The page you are looking for was not found. Please check the URL and try again.</h2>
To return to the [Company Name] homepage, click <a
href="http://yourdomain.com">here</a>. </body>
</html>

Now, upload your template as error404.html to your website's root directory (usually public_html).

To get this new template to be displayed whenever a website visitor tries to access a non-existing page by clicking on a bad link, you just need to create or modify your a .htaccess file, using your favorite plain text editor, put this line into it, and then put the file in the root directory (usually public_html) of your website. Most of the time, you will probably already have an .htaccess file.

ErrorDocument 404 http://yourdomain.com/error404.html

(WARNING: Only experts should ever try to change their .htaccess! You can end up taking your site down completely.)

Now you just repeat this process for each type of error that you want to provide a custom page for. Adjust the filename and ErrorDocument statements appropriately for each error page. To gather a complete list of server response codes, search Google™ for "Apache error codes". (Adjust as needed for your server software.)

If you are using WordPress specifically, one of the best ways to accomplish a good 404 error page is to first make a backup copy of your old 404.php, make a copy of your index.php file, name it 404.php, edit the guts of the file to get rid of any normal content and instead supply special text for your user. This will give you 100% consistent branding for the page, so your user is less alarmed when they see it, while asking them to let you know about it. Now, you might be thinking, why don’t I just have the system notify me when someone hits that page? The reason you would not want to have this page notify you ever time somebody hits is that, although you may not know it, web robots are crawling through website all day long, and you’d be getting tons of pointless emails.

As you can see, this process is extremely simple and only takes about five minutes. If you are good with HTML and you have a Google AdSense™ account and other affiliate accounts, you can easily customize your template to include your AdSense™ search box and your affiliate links.

If you need something special on your error pages, let me know.

For the Love of CSS!

CSS, an acronym for Cascading Style Sheets, is a way of separating the programming code of a website from some of the design components. There are tremendous reasons for doing this, but I still see professional designers deviating from these principles and it causes nothing but problems. For a long time, web programmers relied on tables heavily to do some of their layouts because it was just the best tool available in many situations. However as HTML and CSS have evolved, there are now often better ways of doing things but it requires people using to classic methods to put aside old techniques and adopt the new way of doing things. One of the best resources for information about CSS3, the latest version, is w3schools.com, a site which I use quite regularly myself in the course of working on projects.

The primary audience for this document is small business owners concerned about their overall total cost of ownership with their website.

1. EASE OF EDITING
By separating HTML and CSS into separate files and using classes correctly, you can change multiple instances of something by making one simple change in the CSS file, instead of having to try and do large numbers of search-and-replace inside your HTML. This translates directly into less time.

2. FLEXIBILITY
CSS3 provides tremendous flexibility and the ability to do things natively that once required using external scripts, plug-ins, and graphic design. This lowers the total project cost, enables faster delivery, and makes future edits faster and easier. It also increases compatibility across multiple types of devices and reduces the number of places for something to go wrong.

3. WEBSITE SPEED
With less plug-ins, your website will also load faster. Additionally, by using classes and a separate CSS stylesheet, there is less code overall, i.e. smaller file sizes, so your website will load even faster. Page load time is a critical factor in whether someone sticks around to browse your site, so this should not be underestimated in its importance.

4. TASK FOCUS
By separating code and design, when you are working on the website you can keep a greater focus on the actual task at hand, which will improve your overall speed of execution on website design.

5. CONTROL
You have more control with CSS3 than you have ever had before.

DISCUSSION

In using CSS, regardless of whether you have a straight HTML website, WordPress, or anything else, to the maximum extent possible you want to completely separate your HTML code from the CSS. Your CSS should be referenced with classes, and all of the actual CSS code contained in a separate CSS file which is simply referenced in the HTML. There are times and cases when you need to perform "in-line" styling, where specific CSS code is used inside the HTML. It is sometimes unavoidable. What I have seen time and time again, though, are cases where badly designed themes did it completely unnecessarily, and the result was that I couldn't make the website do what the client needed with that theme without rewriting part of the theme itself. At that point, what you need is a new theme that doesn't have those sorts of problems. It's possible to make these sort of changes, but the problem is that you will have a problem with future updates and your custom code, causing the website to continue costing you even more over time. Choosing a theme that doesn't do this will lower your overall total cost of ownership.

So, having said all of this, for the love of CSS, please don't do any in-line styling unless it's 100% absolutely necessary - and it's almost never necessary unless the website theme you are using is badly written. In fact, I would say that 95% of the time that I have to do manually-inserted in-line CSS inside the HTML, instead of using classes like you should, is that the theme was poorly designed. When you use a poorly designed theme, it creates a situation where things might look good to start with, but the when you want to change something about the way it looks, you might not be able to do what you want because a programmer took a short-cut in the code and now you can't easily fix it by just changing the CSS file. Instead, you have to spend time digging around inside the website to find out where all the different instances of inline CSS are, and then change (and test!) every single one of them. That adds up to a bigger bill for the client.

If you are going to do your own website, pick and set up your own theme, etc., please - do some research, check with the developer, and try to confirm that any inline CSS is kept to a bare minimum. In the end, it's cheaper to pay a web developer to do something for you right the first time than to come back and fix something that's a bad setup.

PRO-TIP: Minify your CSS for a better Google website rating!

If you're struggling with getting your website to look 'just right' or not sure which way to go with something, by all means please reach out to me.

Important Design Considerations for Your Business Website

Most people understand the importance of having a website for their business, but high quality professional websites weren't always as obtainable as they are today. Thanks to innovation, website designers are now able to spend more time working with business owners on the content and message, and less time having to tinker with technical details, so they can now deliver even higher quality sites for a lower cost than ever before. Still, many business owners may have had websites they created themselves or by a friend and just want to make some basic improvements. This article is non-technical in nature, since it purpose is just to convey a few key ideas that will help keep you on the right track of not only improving your website, but the role that it plays in your business.

PURPOSE

For a business, the primary purpose of your website is to help produce income by connecting you with the people who need your products or services. Your website fulfills a number of functions; it's the hub of your online presence because it won't come and go. All of those other things, though, all boil down to growing your online brand, and your website is where it all needs to come together so you can achieve your dreams. So, as you decide what things to include on your website or where to put them, ask yourself how if it will affect people's decision to do business with you. To do that well, you have to start by realizing they may not think about your field of expertise the same way you do, so everything that you do needs to be tailored to suit your typical buyer.

In designing your website, you also may want to drill down into your purpose a little further so that you don't fall prey to some common temptations. For example, if what you really want is for your website to generate phone calls, that end result should drive the design, either other forms of contact being not as obvious. It's very common to advertise every form of contact all over the place, but this is not always the best idea. It is better to guide your visitor to whatever it is you want them to do, whether it's call you, fill out a contact form, schedule an appointment, or buy something. Keep this end-result in mind as you think about what to include, and where to include it.

PRESENTATION

Your website should have a neat appearance. This is your store front - their very first experience with your company. A visitor should be immediately impressed with a sense of order, balance and professionalism. Subconsciously, they will infer from that what kind of experience they are likely to have with you if they contact you for service. To illustrate this, suppose you are walking down the street and there are two hardware stores next to each other. One is well lit, orderly, things are organized with signs to guide you, and inventory is in its proper place with related items logically grouped together. Next to it is another store, dimly lit, not so clean, and with stuff all over the place. Personally, if I'm working on a project, I'm going to choose the first store that I described because I will expect to be able to get in and out quickly with what I need. The same idea applies to your website. First appearance matters.

A few key considerations with presentation include:

1. Positioning should be based on research as to what converts well, not what you think is pretty. If you're making an art site for your hobby, design it however you want. But if it's for the business that feeds your family, focus on the results. If your website is there to make money, stick with high-converting designs until you are sure you have the knowledge to deviate and still have a well-converting site.

2. Spacing should be "just right." I realize that's quite subjective, but you don't want too much unused space, nor do you want things to be jammed together. This takes both an artistic eye and the technical skill to get things sized correctly.

3. Colors need careful use. You want to reflect your own brand, but you have to be careful in how you use color because too much bright color or glaring contrasts can turn people away. While it's your website, your customers will take your website as a representation of your ability to deliver a quality product. If you do painting or remodeling and the colors and spacing of your website are wild, they'll translate that to what kind of job you're likely to do inside their house.

It's important that where you have a Call to Action, such as a call now button or similar special purpose button, that the visitor's eye naturally gravitates toward it. This is part art, and part science, since this has received quite a good bit of actual research. The important thing with color is not to overdo it, and be sure the visitor can easily identify what it is that you want them to do.

4. Stick with simple, basic non-serif fonts for your main page text, for most applications, and keep special formatting such as bold and italics to a minimum.

NAVIGATION

Visitors should be able to easily find their way around your site without having to dig too hard for what they want. Think like someone who does not know your industry. Most people don't think like you or speak the language of your industry. In deciding on how to structure the navigation of your site, design it for the typical consumer. Make it fast and easy for them to find things.

ECOMMERCE

If you are building an eCommerce website with a shopping cart, your product categories need to be organized from a regular consumer point of view, which may not be the same as how you might categorize things in your inventory system. Make it easy to edit the shopping cart, and reduce the number of steps involved in making a purchase. Consumers want to be able to buy things fast & easy, not click through a complicated multi-step ordering process.

People very often want and/or need things they may not have initially had in mind. Your eCommerce site should present related products, upsells, and product reviews, to both reassure visitors and offer more opportunities to buy. You aren't trying to trick anyone here; you are simply making an effort to connect them with products related to things they are likely to be interested in based on other products they've already looked at. As an example, if a person ordered a printer, they will likely need paper, and might be incented to buy an additional ink cartridge or specialty photo paper with a special one-time offer, that they might otherwise not have bought.

PURCHASING SUPPORT

You may conduct your primary business activities during typical business hours, but when do most of your customers do their shopping and purchasing? If they have a problem during an attempt to make a purchase, you may completely lose the opportunity as they go shop somewhere else. After-hours support for purchasing is important for an eCommerce website, so you should offer multiple methods by which they can attempt to contact you for help based on the urgency of their need. This may have a cost to provide such support, but if you look at your website statistics and your abandoned cart rate, these may be clues that you are losing sales.

There are also completely outsourced solutions that offer purchasing assistance. This may not, at first, strike you as something you need, but you need to consider the type of services that you provide and when people are most likely to be trying to buy them. The trick to this is to first identify who your typical customer is, why they would be visiting your website, and what they would hope to accomplish in their visit to your site. Do they want to buy something with overnight delivery? Book an emergency appointment with you tomorrow? Or do they need someone at their house right now because of an emergency? Think through the scenarios in which people are going to be contacting you, and you will be able to tailor your purchasing support to support that.

CUSTOMER CONTACT

Your website is always there, working for you 24/7/365. Customers may shop at any time. Be sure to monitor any email boxes or other contact methods at least daily, and preferably more often. Even if you don't have the answer, write people right away to let them know that you got their message, are investigating the issue, and give them a time frame in which they can expect to get back to you. By the time someone attempts to purchase, they are already invested in the decision and will be willing to wait, provided that they know how long it's going to be and the period of time is not unreasonable. Keep your customers well-informed and handle any issues promptly.

I've only just barely scratched the surface on website design considerations, but I hope if you're a small business owner that this gave you a few things to think about. If you need affordable website design Raleigh NC has you covered.  

Raleigh Web Design Company - DunnTek Talks about Effectively Incorporating Science and Art

Introductory HOA that touches on addressing neuroscience marketing principles in the design of your company blog or website:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed5B48JGyFY

To find out more drop by online.

Avoid an SEO Penalty: Don't Game Google

This is not so much a technical or how-to type post, as much as a quick statement about philosophy because I want to state where I stand on something.  I've been doing a series on SEO backlink building.  This is a legitimate practice when approached with the right mindset, because all you're doing is making a point of interacting in appropriate places, while making sure good credit goes back to your own website.  There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.  When done wrongly, though, you can think everything is just going beautifully, only to come in one morning, look at Page 1, and realize you're not in there.  In a panic, you begin looking at Page 2 - nope, you aren't there either.  And so on you go, page after page, and you aren't on any of them.  What happened?  You may have been hit with a big SEO penalty from doing things you shouldn't have.
Don't Game Google
Where you run into trouble is when you start trying to game the system.  Yes, there are ways to go about automating various things, and that is not necessarily bad.  For example, if you look at the practice of news article syndication, you don't think everything is transferred manually between all those news websites running the same stories everywhere, do you?  Of course not.  Automation can be your friend, when your intent is correct.  So when you approach things from the point of view of trying to deliver legitimate value with content creation and distribution, that's generally a fine practice as long as you respect boundaries.  Authors and experts in their field are going to make statements that are going to be repeated across the Internet.  That's completely normal, as long as it's 'normal' - and in the nuances of that word lie the secret of staying above-board and getting good SEO value from your online activities, or crossing a line that gets you into trouble at some point.
Listen.  Google is smarter.  You can search the Internet and find all sorts of methods that promise to put you on Page 1 overnight.  Sometimes those things will work - for a year or so - until Google updates their algoritms, and then you go from Page 1 to Page 76.  Just do some reading about the Google Panda and Penguin updates, and you'll read all sorts of stories about companies losing their ratings.  I am absolutely saying this 100% to scare you.  Unless eating, and living under a roof, are just things you do for amusement, rather than because you need them, don't treat your business' online presence like a game of roll-the-dice-and-see-what-happens.  Be careful - everything you do is going to have consequences of some form.  Deliver legitimate value in legitimate ways, and you should tend to receive positive results.
The Case Study
The reason to take a straight-up approach is that while there are places you can buy thousands of backlinks for a few bucks, most of the time they are not websites you would really want to be associated with.  I have done tests - trust me on this - don't do it unless you really know what you are doing.  One of these supposed cheap miracles promised to create backlinks on high-authority sites like Facebook and others.  Instead, they created a bunch of spammy articles in robotic, artificial English that were unreadable by a human, on Russian websites.  And this particular seller/gig was very highly rated, i.e. 5 stars.  If you happen to be in Russia, that might be just fine.  I work almost exclusively with North Carolina small businesses, though.  Is it normal for 90% of a NC-based business backlinks to be coming from Russian websites?  This seller promised one thing and delivered another.  Maybe he gives you a refund for the $5 you spent with him/her - and leaves you with 25,000 Russian backlinks.  This person doesn't even live in the US.  How are you going to get rid of those links?  (HINT: It won't be cheap.)
What To Do Instead
1. Create and distribute real content that somebody might find helpful.
2. Give yourself credit (backlinks) in the process.
3. Focus on being in a handful of quality, relevant places, where others like yourself are found, rather than hundreds or thousands of places that really don't have anything to do with your business or industry.
4. Leverage automation responsibly.
5. Use video.
6. Have a legitimate social presence.
7. Give something away for free.
8. When in doubt, get professional advice from someone vested in your success.
Thanks for reading!