awebsitedesigner.com.au - make your business website efficient with strategies
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AWebsiteDesigner.com.au is a company specialising in small business websites. We have been established for 5 years. A Website Designer website which was previously the main website for another web design company. Since then the website has been a leading blog and resource for Australian small business owners.TRANSCRIPT
A Website Designer
Dan Norris
http://AWebsiteDesigner.com.au
About Us
A Website Designer is run by me, Dan Norris and was set up to provide
support and resources to small business owners around Australia.
Here is the story of how it came to be.
I started my web design business, Web Circle in 2006. I had never built a website
before and I didn’t have any clients but I was very keen and perhaps a bit naive….how
hard could it be?
It was a slow and steady process building up our list of clients to what it is today of
around two hundred or so.
In 2009 I purchased the A Website Designer website which was previously the main
website for another web design company. Since then I have set about transforming it
into a leading blog and resource for Australian small business owners. It is our outlet
for writing articles, ebooks, training videos etc that aim to empower small business
owners to take charge of their web presence.
Most web design companies operate under a sales model where the boss man (or lady)
relies on boozy lunches and networks to drum up work. This was never how I wanted
to run my business – plus I don’t have enough mates. I decided early on to operate
under a service model where the only way we can get new clients is by word of mouth
and via Google.
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At present we don’t advertise or do any business development type of work so we are
driven to provide great service and constantly keep our site packed with useful content
to encourage people to spread the word about what we do.
I have always made sure we don’t have any ways of operating that lock our clients into
using us. So I know that the only way we can build the business is to keep our clients
happy. The number and quality of the client comments on this site are a reflection of
how well we continue to do this.
This is how I like to do business and I know there are others who appreciate it.
The rest of this page outlines some of the ways in which we try to set ourselves apart
from other operators in the industry.
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Why A Web Developer Must Not Be Engaged
When I initially began my web designing business five years back, I didn’t have any
experience, customers, money or any clue about building websites. For my first attempt
at a dynamic website I purchased a book on ASP programming and by making use of
the book I designed my very own simple content management system. It was very hard.
It took me almost two months and cost about $10,000.
Last week we launched a dynamic CMS based website for a client and it took us one day
and cost $299.
Back in 2006, it was very hard to create a website
and you pretty much had to be a web developer
to do it. Open source programs had not yet
kicked off. Majority of the of the websites were
custom programmed by the web developers. If at
all they made use of a CMS, it would be the ones
created by them. Either way, you had to be a
programming geek if you wanted to build your
own website.
Thus several businesses did not have dynamic websites at all.
Fortunately the times have changed..
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These days it is not really necessary to be a programmer to build a website. After my
initial venture into ASP, I tried to figure out an open source system which I could make
use of; which is when I discovered great systems such as Joomla! and WordPress that
could be utilized for back end client websites. I never looked back once I began using
these open source systems.
I do have programmers on my staff, however there’s no programming required for an
average small business website. At least for people like me who're using open source
systems such as Joomla! and WordPress it isn’t required. All the programming work is
already been done for you.
This is the reason why you don’t have to be paying a web developer to build your
website. If you’re paying for developing small business websites:
1) They either have not been utilizing the free systems obtainable and are still
trapped in the dark ages coding the site by hand or
2) They’re making use of their own CMS that makes it difficult for you to move on if
you wish to.
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Standing Out While it is rather easy to build a website these days, it isn’t easy to build a
good one. As a matter of fact you can argue that since it is pretty easy to build one, the
task of developing websites in lots of cases is put back in the hands of the business
proprietor.
Therefore there are great deals of self-built websites of average quality in the sea of
small business websites. When you merge this with the number of legacy websites
online from back in the day, it paints are really grim picture of the quality of websites
online. Here lies the opportunity.
The opportunity
In the good old days, you just needed to have an online presence, but now the
probability is in possessing websites which stands out from the various average
websites with a website that works correctly.
So who should you engage?
Now the question is if you don’t want to hire a web developer, who should be liable for
creating your website. Building a website needs a whole lot of different skills, some
that can be provided by yourself and a few by your provider. Below is a list of
ingredients which are essential for developing an incredible website.
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YOU
You’re the most important ingredient for creating your own website because:
1. An individual can devise an amazing website only around a goal and you’re the
only one who would be able to express the strategies for your business.
2. Finest websites will give the viewers exactly what they are searching for. You’re
the only one who will be in a position to know what your customer wants and
how to pull their strings.
3. You’ll have to exhibit something unique. You’ll be the person who knows what’s
unique about your business.
4. You’ll have to work out a plan with your provider to generate traffic and lots of
traffic will come through your own attempts.
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Your Provider
1. You’ve to make sure that your provider is a fine designer because great websites
will appear good.
2. Your provider has got to be flexible and open because you will require CMS
which is easy for you to maintain.
3. Your provider requires to find out about web promotion and aid you to generate
traffic to your website.
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Professional Web Design And Its Two Main Components
The key reason why customers who currently own a small business approach us to
build up a website is because they want a professional image and can also do a good job
in embodying their business. Of course this is
a generalization nevertheless we have built
hundreds of sites over the years and this is
often the main thing people search for.
But there is one more very significant factor
to consider with design as well and that is
how well the website succeeds in driving
customers and design has a great part to play in this.
Make it attractive
Here is a list of the important things that should be concentrated on in order to make a
website attractive:-
1. A professional logo -It has to be contemporary, neat and have a sense of
professionalism while not being too flashy.
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2. Professional images should be used.
2. It is essential that a good website designer who does professional work has to be
employed (The total procedure with which the web designers make things look
great will not be dealt in this post).
So when our clients come to us, the initial thing we do is assess their logo. If it sucks,
then tell them to get a new one. We also start choosing few good images.
Majority of the times, it is not realistic to revise each and every single image of the
products in the website, thus it is extremely significant to build in a great first
impression, It is significant that we at least use professional images on the website's
home page and then look towards what best can be done with regard to product
images (and emphasize on the importance of replacing them with professional images).
Once we have an incredible logo and enough nice professional images it's practical that
we can create a nice looking website.
Making it work
A great looking website is good but of equal importance is the capacity of the website
to change traffic into customers (either straight away or at some point of time down
the track). For this we utilize a simple model of Consume, Connect, Convert.
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Consume - We prefer to create a website that users are encouraged to 'consume' the
content. We want amazing content and we have to make it simple for them to access
the content and share the content.
Connect - For individuals who like what they see, we want to provide the ability for
them to connect with us in some way. Register for a newsletter, or subscribe to our
feed, or follow us on Twitter. This way we have an opportunity to build trust and be
there when they are ready to buy.
Make Your Business Website Efficient With These Strategies
There are 3 things I believe are a great thing to
do for most small business websites. Some
research on these things will be released by us in
the coming months but for now here are 3 great
strategies for making every small business
website an effective one.
1. The Title - Stop Them Skimming And Start Them Reading If it is possible for you, try
to avoid generic boring headings.
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You will never see a newspaper article with a monotonous heading. Journalists take it
pretty seriously; they know how important the headline is. Never think of having a
heading that is boring.
Website owners usually seem to think a heading of 'Welcome to [business name goes
here]' is sufficient. We tend to really encourage small business owners to have a title
that engages people right from the beginning. Ask a question or state what makes you
unique, or say something surprising or interesting.
You will need to be a little ingenious while also thinking about the time period for
which this title could last and be beneficial. See our primary site for an example
http://www.webcircle.com.au/. Our heading (at the time of writing) is “Web Circle is a
progressive agency with a relentless drive to discover and implement what works on
the web. But what does work?” It notifies individuals what we do, it gives a hint to our
point of difference and it asks a question to engage the viewer and draw them towards
the main content in the website - all in just 2 sentences - stop them skimming and start
them reading and that way people may stay in your website for a long time to actually
learn what you do and find out that you might be an apt choice for whatever they are
looking out for.
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20) The greeting message
There are many ways for doing this. You might not have a lengthy welcome message -
for instance in our case we have a heading that includes the basics of the welcome
message and then we have the about us section further down. You might believe it’s
appropriate to have a more in depth welcome message. If you do, don't forget to tell
people the basics of what you do, perhaps where you are based but don’t stop there.
There are 2 other things you have to include:
1) What makes you different
2) A call to action
Primarily, what is it that makes you different from others - your Unique Selling
Proposition (USP), competitive advantage or several other consultant buzzwords. It is
significant to say exactly what you do - i.e. you sell widgets but it’s as vital perhaps a lot
more important to talk about how you are different in ways that will engage potential
visitors. Most people who look around for widget selling companies will land on your
site as a result. The people will know completely well that you sell Widgets.
But what is it regarding your business that will keep them on your website and believe
‘yeah these guys sound really good’. This can be done in many ways, you will possibly
know from your customers or from the factors you started your business in the first
place exactly what you do really well and why your business achieved success.
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This is just what you need in here. Just stating how you are different, ideally, in a way
that will draw in the people you are trying to target is the key. Some ways could be to
discuss your the past, your family, personal stories, everything that you think can add
credibility in the eyes of your customers, any achievements, testimonials and anything
that adds to your point of difference and builds the dependability of your business.
We (http://www.webcircle.com.au) make use of the words ‘what actually works on the
web’. We tend to talk about "building websites that work" simply because we are
specialists in knowing what actually works. We don’t just build websites.
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Secondly, a call to action is crucial. What fo you want individuals to do? You should
make sure to be clear as to where you want to send the visitor. It may be be to call you,
to download some free stuff, to buy something. It can be anything Make It Clear. The
last thing you want is an attracted visitor bouncing to a different site because they have
given up trying to work out how they can take the next step. I’ve done it plenty of times,
there is only so much patience a person can have so make it easy.
3. Personalisation
Personalisation is exceptionally essential for small business. When you are thinking on
the lines of what makes your business different a lot of small businesses will find that it
is them that make the business one of a kind. It’s the personal relationship they have
with their clients. It is their story, their history, their unique blend of skills. That’s why
we emphasize on personalising as much as possible for most small business sites.
This is very efficient mainly for the types of businesses that have a lot of in-person
contact with their clients. People tend to give positive responce to personal messages
with real photo. People love stories - they love success stories and small businesses
love working with other small businesses.
We have recently updated our homepage with a few changes, I put my photo on the
homepage and changed the ‘about us’ section to ‘The web circle story’. I also wrote half
of the story on the homepage, despite that I looked at the stats after a few weeks and
found that lot of people had visited the page and people were spending almost 3 times
as long as the page - implying they were actually reading it not just clicking on it and
skimming it and passing it off as another ‘about us’ page.
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And that’s for my boring web design business! Imagine if my story was in fact exciting!
This is an effortless way for separating yourself from other competitors since the
majority people don’t make it - indeed a set of small businesses cautiously try to make
themselves look better than they truly are no matter what the purpose might be.
Bringing it all as one We recently built a site for Act2 Solutions who sell Actuarial
Certificates. See this post for various news on the site. It contains a catchy heading that
states just what they do (and how they are unique - they are inexpensive), a welcome
message that focuses on how they are special, personalisation by using images of Andy
along with a call to action stating people to download the forms.
http://AWebsiteDesigner.com.au
AWebsiteDesigner.com.au is a web design company specialising in
small business websites. We have been established for 5 years.
A Website Designer website which was previously the main website
for another web design company. Since then the website has been a
leading blog and resource for Australian small business owners.
For more information logon to our website
http://AwebsiteDesigner.com.au
Or
Call: 1300 760 363