The Advantages of Using Engines Such as WordPress is all about Your Control

Published August 10, 2013August 10, 2013 by TheWebDesigner

One of the biggest questions that I am always hit with is one that’s on the topic of the differences and advantages of having a websites that requires coding (such as WordPress) over WYSIWYG drop & drag type of websites (such as Wix).

My answer to them is that it simply boils down to how much control you want.

With systems such as Wix, you have very little control to the overall of how the website is coded. The code is secret, and you can only alter the very few things that they decide to allow you. If the SEO is bad, you have to live with it.

With self hosted platformed sites such as the WordPress acts as the engine for your website. You have your own copy of the code. The look and feel of the site can be 100% customized precisely that way you want it, so that your brand can shine through on your site and provide a unique experience to your visitors. What this means is that you can do a lot more with it. You basically have the option to get up under the hood and make it look and run exactly the way you want it to.

Want to add an event calendar, video gallery, Twitter Feed, Facebook Fan Box, and more to your site? WordPress makes this possible with plugins, most of which are free or very reasonably priced. There are over 10,000 plugins available that help you add all kinds of functionality to your site, like social media sharing, SEO, photo slideshows, and much more.

No more waiting for your web designer to make simple updates to your site. With WordPress, you have control of nearly every aspect of your site and can easily make those simple updates yourself. This is no doubt a very important feature, because another big question that I am always asked when designing a website for a client is, “Will I be able to make basic updates myself?” And of course to this my answer is always “yes”. In fact, one of things I do in completion of the designing of the site is create a specialized pdf file, to include screenshots, giving step-by-step instructions on making those basic and simple updates.

It’s also about the ability of being able to separate the content from the style by using a separate file called .CSS (cascading style sheet). WordPress and most CMS’s do this. This file requires a lot more know how, to get what you want, it’s also the bit most drag and drop builders are trying to sidestep, visual styling without touching a stylesheet.

In essence, WordPress sites are very scalable. You can have hundreds of thousands of pages or blog posts on your site and the performance of the site will not be compromised in the least.

So, what is the difference? Maybe the best way is to think of it like renting and owning. If you rent a house you can’t decorate, add extensions or even put nails into the wall. If you own you could knock the house down if you want. Now, that’s what I call control!

Your Wesite Content Still Rules

Published July 27, 2013July 27, 2013 by TheWebDesigner

So, you’ve developed a website for your small business. It has a clean design and uncluttered layout, accented by aesthetically pleasing graphics. Your web designer has ensured that it is accessible to all Internet users, no matter which browser or screen resolution they’re employing. As you browse the final product, you realize how easy it will be for your potential clients and customers to navigate to all of your website’s pages. You may think that you website is complete – but it’s not. In fact, a website should never really be complete. It’s a fact that search engines such as Google give sites that are frequently updated higher rankings in the search results. What is the best way to update your website on a regular basis? The answer is content!

Visitors don’t come to your website to admire it. They come seeking information. It’s content that gets them there, it’s content that persuades visitors to bookmark your website, and it’s content that entices them to return. Not only do human users like good content, but search engines do as well. In fact, they just can’t index enough of your text – they love that stuff! So, why not give your visitors and search engines exactly what they want? The easiest way to accomplish this is by adding articles that are relevant to your website’s theme on a regular basis.

Turn Prospects into Sales

If your website contains enough informative content, your potential clients / customers will deem you as an expert in your field, see your website as an excellent resource, and most likely choose your firm to conduct business with. Good content converts prospects into sales – it’s that easy.

Attain Top Search Engine Placement

If you include lots of relevant content on your website, the search engines will also deem your website as an important resource, and in turn, give you a higher placement for all the keywords you are trying to target. If you were to add an article every week or month, the search engines will see that your website is updated frequently and index more of your content. After a few months, you should start to notice a steady increase in search engine traffic to all of your website’s pages.

Receive Natural Links

If you really want the search engines to know that your website is important, you must get other websites to link to your business. If you offer high quality informative articles, other websites are naturally going to link to you because your content is of value to the other website’s visitors. The best types of links to receive are one-way, not reciprocal. Without paying other websites, adding good content is about the only way to entice them to link to you.

Getting Good Content

Nobody knows more your industry than you. After all, you’re the expert, right? So, it’s probably best if you were to write a few articles yourself. Don’t worry if you don’t have the greatest writing skills because you can always get someone to revise your article for you. There are a ton of freelance writers available for hire over the Internet. You could also ask your office manager to review your article, or even hire a student from the local university on a contract basis.

If you don’t have time, or don’t feel comfortable writing your own content, there are hundreds of article syndication websites on the Internet that allow you to use their articles on your website. The articles are free for you to use, but there’s a catch – you must provide a link back to the author’s website. This link is usually included at the bottom of the article in the author’s bio. To find some good sites, just do a search for “article directory” in Google.

There is a drawback to using another author’s content, though. Google and the search engines generally give more weight to original written works. So, writing an original article is best, but adding someone else’s article to your site will still add value in the eyes of both humans and search engines. If you want original articles, but don’t want to write them, there are a ton of freelance writers available for hire across the Internet. Employing their service to write a decent sized article should run you about $50. Just do a Google search.

Conclusion

The key is to put yourself in the shoes of your website’s visitors. If you were looking to do business with your company, what kind of information would interest and entice you? You have to consider your target audience and their demographic, and then determine what their needs are. Most people assume that a cool, flashy, attractive website will generate business. That is not totally correct – you need to give people what they want – information! Therefore, it’s safe to assume that content is still king when it comes to web design.

Navigating Through The Social Mall

Published July 26, 2013July 27, 2013 by TheWebDesigner

Okay, you now have a website. And on your site you are offering some type of product or service. The content, products, details, payment arrangments, and even search engine optimization are all in place and ready for action. Now what?

Now is where your interactions with networking through the social media platforms come into play. Assuming that your website is also set up and coded with Facebook’s Open Graph Meta Tags (which it very well should be), let’s use them for example. I consider Facebook’s Open Graph Meta Tags important for one main reason. It allows you to effectively maneuver through what I refer to as the Social Mall.

What is the Social Mall? I’m glad you asked.

First of all, let me explain to you what Open Graph Meta Tags are. Facebook’s Open Graph is a protocol that allows you to turn your website into Facebook “graph” objects, hence allowing a certain level of customization over how information is carried over from a non-Facebook website to Facebook when a page is “recommended”, “liked”, or just generally shared. The information is set via custom META tags on the source page. In short, this is a method strategy allowing you to tell Facebook what images and content snippets to use when sharing information from your webpage. (see example image below) Using these META tags could be the difference in attracting just a few visitors from Facebook or attracting loads of visitors because your shared links provide useful keywords and imagery!

Facebook Open Graph Sample

Now that we have an understanding how it works, let’s talk about applying it in regards to the Social Mall.

When I use the term “social mall”, and am referring to the very large amount of constant activity that takes place on social networking platforms such as Facebook.

Okay, picture a mall. What do you see? Hundreds of stores inside of one large building. You see clothing stores. Stores that carry all sorts of electronics. Shoes. Linen. Stores that specialize in games. Others in jewelry, accessories, health products, or books. You name it. And they all place their most inviting objects and products in their show window. All fighting for the same thing… to get your attention to come into their store. And you know why? Because once they have you inside of their store, they now have your undivided attention. They’re not fighting the other stores any longer for it. Once you are in that store, they can now present you with everything they have to offer.

Well, this is exactly the how I view social platforms such as Facebook. When a person logs into Facebook, they are immediately bombarded with everything. There are sponsored ads rotating to the right of them. Directly in front of them is a newsfeed full of flyers, articles, status updates, invites, birthday reminders, event reminders,and just about any other type of ad than you can think of. They may even be experiencing the unwanted pleasure of not only being tagged and added to specialized group or fan pages, but also inboxed. Everybody is fighting each other for that person’s attention.

So the object is to use the Open Graph Meta Tags that’s applied on your website, and operate it in the same fashion as the stores in the malls. Your Open Graph is your show window. It’s just content a snippet of what’s inside of your website (your store). And if it is interesting enough, and the person clicks on it, the Open Graph is coded to open another tab (or window). This in turn pulls them away from Facebook… if even for a moment. And what you have done there is obtained their undivided attention. You are no longer fighting with hundreds of others for it.

Now, what you do with that undivided attention once you have it… is solely based on the content and products on your site. Which no doubt matters as to Whether they stay there for 30 seconds or 5 minutes.

Your Website Equals Your Personality

Published July 25, 2013July 27, 2013 by TheWebDesigner

There are countless avenues to marketing a business on the internet today. Believe me, I’ve been doing this internet and website thing for almost near 20 years now. However, one of the biggest things that I noticed, even today, is that when starting at the beginning stages of designing a client’s website, I ask them the very same question that I ask all my graphic design and website development clients, “So… what do you want your customers to see you as?”

This is a very important question. because websites are mainly faceless vehicles that people use to market themselves or their businesses. And when you’re faceless, it is crucial to your visitors (and yourself) what they see you as the first time they pop into your website. And that’s one of the hardest questions a new business owner has to answer. Once you get over this hurdle, you’re pretty much clear on the website branding front.

Let’s assume that you’re selling antique stuff on your website. What kind of antique store owner do you want the visitors to see? Or rather, what kind of first impression do you want to give your potential customers? Do you want them to come into your website and see you as an exuberant website with loads of new affordable products? Do you want them to hop in and see you as an old-school, yet reliable website and business owner – that you make no bones about the fancy stuff, but rather, you focus on quality (which equals high prices, I am assuming)? Do you want your customers to think of you a new-age antique store owner selling affordable, charming and stuff that appeal to young home owners as well? The lists can go on and on.

As you can see, there are many ways to appeal to the right customers through your website. But it will not work if you are being too general about it. And many website owners struggle with this even as they are developing their websites, logos, content and products/services. It pays for you, as a new website and business owner to pay a little bit more attention to the initial branding of your website.

Another thing that I always do when beginning the relationship with a client, is to give them a to-do list. I instruct them to do searches throughout the internet and literally take notes of websites that really caught their attention. The object of this is not to duplicate what they see. But instead, to have them take close notice as a visitor to the things that attraction them most about those sites. This is the same type of reactions that potential visitors to their own sites would have. And from there, use those point elements towards the developing process of their own sites. After all, it is your personality that attracted to those things in the first place.

What I find extremely useful is to use my imagination, or rather, prompt my client to use his or her imagination. This goes beyond just trying to imagine what the website will look like when it’s done. But it’s more like… imagine if your website is a new friend. What kind of person would this person be wearing? What kind of personality traits would you imagine your website albeit new friend would have? How do you think this website will try to sell you stuff – persistent, grunge, gentle, new-age, funky, chic, crazy, sexy, cool, smooth, bold, patient, endearing, classy?

If my client is able to give me an image like that, it would make life easier (and his or hers, as well) when it comes to developing his/her website. Time is not wasted and we hit the hammer double-whammy to deliver the right message right from the start.