Published: April 12, 2010
Updated: April 12, 2010
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How do you know if your business’s website design is good? It all depends on your website visitor. How they view your site and the purpose that it serves. You have less than twelve seconds to grab your site visitors’ attention and hold them on your site. So creative design is VERY IMPORTANT. Also you must make sure that your website can reach as far and as wide as possible. This means realizing that there are a lot of site visitors that use high-tech devices to access your website. These days, people can browse the internet using their mobile phones. Making sure that you follow the correct guidelines that we recommend will ensure that 95% or more of site visitors will be able to access your website.
Let’s start with answering a few questions. Such as: What would you like to feature? What’s your target audience? Is it kids, teens, yuppies or seniors? Married? Single? Will it be in plain text? Full color? Or would you display flashy images or videos from the internet? Perhaps a little bit of everything? So, when you’re planning the design of your website, you must take all of these things into consideration. This is essential in effective lead generation for your business.
Now to the design. You want to start with a clear design and layout. Don’t exaggerate the use of Javascripts or Flash that can affect the major functions of your website menus and sub menus. Make sure that important information is easily accessible on your site. Also, avoid using any colors that may be irritating to your visitors eyes. If you want people to visit your website on a regular basis and do business with you, you want to make sure that every time they visit, they feel soothed and relaxed. This is because loud colors and schemes may disturb site visitors and discourage them from returning to your website. You can always follow the basic primary colors when you feel at a loss. Yet most people use the color wheel.
The overall look of your website should follow the basic types of color schemes. There are 3 types: Analogous, Complementary and Monochromatic. Analogous color schemes make use of colors that are next to each other on the color wheel. Complementary color schemes are those colors that you combine that are directly across from each other on the color wheel. Monochromatic color schemes are those same colors with different hues. The colors used in any color scheme needs to be balanced with the overall design of your website. Professional advice from a good website design company will benefit you greatly in determining the effect of those color schemes on your website. This ensures that you’re able to effectively connect with your site visitors.
Next, use a uniform theme that is clear and concise throughout your web site. Themes are the overall design of your website. Every page of your website should have a connecting factor to other pages by making use of a consistent layout and color scheme. Also, each page should stand on its own, making use of images and information that would be appropriate to the product or service that you offer to your customers.
In addition, pay careful attention to your use of fonts. Fonts are the styles of lettering. The two basic types are serif and sans serif. Of the two, the san serif is being used by most websites because their content is easier to read than the serif fonts. When choosing a particular font to be used in your website, it’s vital that you know how much lettering your site will have and ensure that you use the same font throughout. Using too many fonts of different shapes and sizes can become unpleasant and overwhelming to your site visitors. As before, seek the advice of a good website design company on the best fonts to use for your site.
Another good tip is to use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) when designing your website. In this way, the content and navigation bar will have a consistent look and feel. Since the outline is arranged to take place through CSS, no matter what, it will appear as an “eye pleasing” design. The CSS design techniques also allow you to play with sophisticated layouts without making your website “out of touch”. Keep in mind, simplicity is beauty.
Remember the goal of your website design is to connect with yours site visitors, make them feel comfortable and not scare them away.
Your web site must also be USER-FRIENDLY. It should be easy to navigate, highly memorable and very useful to your site visitors. A site map is also good to use. This is essentially the “table of contents” for your site. It enables your site visitors to more easily determine what your web site has to offer. Also, you want to leverage eye catching graphics, engaging photos and flash to give your site an exciting look and feel.
Lastly, your contact information should be strategically placed above the fold (the portion of a web page that is viewable without scrolling) of each page. Make sure that your contact information is able to viewed on EVERY PAGE of your site. This way, your site visitors won’t have to go back to the “Home Page” or “Contact Us” page of your site just to find your contact information.
In closing, the elements of good web site design are simple if you follow this advice. You can be confident that your visitors will enjoy your site and return to it time and time again.
From The Minds Of Wharton
Wharton Business Foundation
www.WhartonBusinessFoundation.com
(888)4-WHARTON (494-2786) ext.17
info@whartonbusinessfoundation.com
By "From The Minds Of Wharton"
Published: March 1, 2010
Updated: March 1, 2010
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The terms “on page” and “off page” are two important words to familiarize yourself with if you’re new to the art and science of search engine optimization. They are an integral part of the SEO process used to increase website traffic. Although there’s a big difference between the two, you must understand these optimization techniques if you’ll be leveraging SEO as one of your tools for online promotion of your growing business to drive more traffic for your website.
On Page optimization is the foundation for your SEO process by which elements of your web site are designed in a way that it qualifies for a high ranking when specific keywords are typed. Off Page optimization, on the other hand, as the name indicates, is the work that needs to be done off the pages of your website. This is done to improve your web site’s search engine page rank and increase your web site traffic. On Page optimization by itself will not guarantee that your website gets good ranking unless performed in concert with off page optimization strategies. This means, both on page and off page optimization techniques need to work hand in hand for you to get the results that you want.
On Page site optimization - Deals with Internal linking (linking pages of your site to one another), your web site coding, creation of a sitemap and good quality content. Optimizing also includes identifying the target keywords or keyword phrases that your target customers are searching for. These keywords should be included in your web site’s URL, title tags, Meta tags, headlines, subheadlines and body text. Next, internal linking is done between the pages of your web site whenever required to make it more attractive to Google. All of the major pages of your site should be linked to your homepage. The creation of a sitemap is needed so that all your web pages get listed by the search engines. In addition, good quality content is absolutely vital to get the most out of the search engines. Your site content should have compelling information that is written to appeal to your customers first and the search engines second. Lastly, ensure that your html code is error and warning free.
While the above mentioned On Page factors are needed for on site optimization, the following factors should be avoided: Don’t use “black hat SEO techniques” to increase your serp (search engine result page) rankings> For example, hiding links or text by making them the same color as the background of your web pages. This is cheating as you’re trying to hide or conceal something from your viewers solely for the purpose of increasing your search engine rankings. Also, make sure that you don’t create mirror sites, or two different sites, one for the search engines and the other for your site visitors. You should have only one site. These tactics very well may cause your web site to be “banned” by the search engines. Also, avoid posting duplicate content as much as possible. This means both NO Plagiarism, unless you give a credit to the original source, as well as not posting identical information on your web site as you do on your blogs and other sites. Simply change the wording around of the content when posting it on your web site if you’re also posting it on other sites.
Off Page optimization, on the other hand, are the techniques which are done off of your web pages to improve your search engine page rank as well as your web site traffic. These include: building quality links, link popularity, relevancy, directories and social bookmarking. Building quality links for link building purposes which include industry relevance, page rank and authority sites. Link popularity can be completed by using social networking sites, blog commenting, forum postings, articles, press release promotions, directory submissions, link baiting, classified ads, and back links from social bookmarking sites. The last factor of off page optimization is to have high quality, informative and organized content for visitors to which they will have easy access such as blogs and article directories.
In simplest terms, on page optimization includes all the activities done on your web site while off page optimization are all the activities that take place off of your web site. Having an effective strategy that leverages both will improve your search engine rankings and drive highly targeted relevant traffic to your web site.
From The Minds Of Wharton
Wharton Business Foundation
www.WhartonBusinessFoundation.com
(888)4-WHARTON (494-2786) ext.17
info@whartonbusinessfoundation.com
By "From The Minds Of Wharton"
Published: February 16, 2010
Updated: February 16, 2010
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Not only big companies or corporate names need to think about branding , this can also be applied to small businesses as well. Branding says a lot about you and your business, and this certainly true for a home-based, one person operation to a multinational company. This only means one thing, that having a good brand name or branding strategy can add a couple of figures to you sales. It doesn’t promise you to become large company overnight (no strategy will!), yet it will give you steady and visible results before you know it.
Your business, service or product’s most valuable asset can be it’s brand. It’s your corporate identity. An effective brand tells the world who you are, what you do and how you do it. It’s how your business is perceived by your customers. With a powerful branding strategy your company’s market position can actually be elevated. For example, you can go from “the low price leader” to “the top choice for professionals”. Once your brand has a high perceived value, you can charge a premium for your products and services well beyond what your competitors are charging. It’s even possible for your brand to dominate your niche.
Also, the value and recognition of your business, service, product and yourself determines marketing potential. Therefore, branding is a basic part of building your business. Clients, consumers and customers should always remember your name, products and services so they can easily refer it to others and this can also build loyalty for repeat transactions.
Here are a few tips that can get you started on how you can use branding to grow your business:
Develop Your Business’s logo – A good logo will give the first impression and fast recall of your company. One of the most important factors is to ensure that it doesn’t imitate any existing brand designs for copyright issues. It’s suggested to get a simple and catchy brand name that comes with a simple logo.
Develop Your Company’s Core Values – Review your company’s mission statement. If you don’t have one…write one. Your brand reinforces and supports your mission. Take a look at Pizza Huts mission statement and core values.
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Pizza Hut’s Mission Statement
We take pride in making a perfect pizza and providing courteous and helpful service on time all the time. Every customer says, “I’ll be back!”
We are the employer of choice offering team members opportunities for growth, advancement, and rewarding careers in a fun, safe working environment.
We are accountable for profitability in everything we do, providing our shareholders with value growth.
Pizza Hut’s Core Values: P.E.A.R.L.S
Have a PASSION for excellence in everything we do.
EXECUTE with positive energy and urgency.
Be individually and collectively ACCOUNTABLE for growth in people, customer satisfaction and profitability.
Find reasons to RECOGNIZE the achievement of others and have fun doing it.
LISTEN and more importantly, respond to the voice of the customer.
Think SAFETY first.
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Think about how their mission and core values are demonstrated in their brand. Think about their logo, advertisements, commercials, employees and management, fulfillment (when you place your order) and customer service. Get the idea? An additional word on fulfillment and customer service. Develop high standards of customer service so that clients feel that you’re always willing to go the extra mile to solve their problems. Remember that customers who get good customer service, come back and bring more customers with them.
Develop A Strong Public Image – Be consistent, it’s important that your business keeps a single character or appearance. This means having a consistent message, trademark, publicity and company values. You do this by integrating your brand strategies through your company at every point of public contact. This will help build company loyalty that will reflect to your customers. The internal workings of the company must always be in place and shouldn’t be changed. This will help build the company’s dependability and will connect powerfully with your clients. Developing a company image and strictly adhering to it will result in your customers appreciating your service as well as your employees. By letting the business stand for something that you believe in, more and more customers will start appreciating your brand building your reputation. And reputation is something that every business would like to have, yet only a few get.
A strong brand will also project an image of a large and established business to your potential customers. People usually associate branding with larger businesses that have the money to spend on advertising and promotion. Once you create an effective branding strategy, then it can make your business appear to be much bigger than it really is. An image of size and establishment can be especially important when a customer wants reassurance that you will still be around in a few years time.
A strong brand projects an image of experience, reliability and quality in your business. Many people see the brand as a part of a product or service that helps to show its quality and value. It’s commonly said that if you show a person two identical products, only one of which is branded; they’ll almost always believe the branded item is higher quality. Most people believe that a business won’t put their brand name on something of poor quality. Also branded businesses are more likely to be seen as experienced in their industry, products and services, and will generally be seen as more reliable and trustworthy than an unbranded business.
Develop Strong Marketing – Another good reason for developing a strong branding strategy is to make your sales force more effective and efficient. When your market recognizes your brand, you don’t have to spend a lot of time with new prospects explaining who you are, what you do and how you do it. Your brand already has already educated and built credibility with them. So now you can invest almost 100% of your time on sales rather than educating your prospects about your business.
Develop New Products And Services – Another way that branding benefits your business is that the efforts you make increasing your brand awareness, through promoting and marketing your brand to your target market, automatically transfers to ALL OF YOUR PRODUCTS AND SERVICES. This includes any new products and services that you roll out in the future. So, even when you’re promoting your brand, you’re also indirectly marketing all of your products and services. And this means that customers for one of your products and service will be more likely to buy other products and services from you as well.
Separate Yourself From Your Competition – The main reason for creating strong brand for your business is to differentiate yourself from your competition. A strong brand will deliver your message clearly, confirm your credibility, connect with your target market emotionally, motivates your prospective customers to buy and concretes their loyalty. So it only makes sense to understand that branding isn’t about getting your target market to choose you over the competition, yet it’s about getting your prospects to see you as the only one that provides a solution to their problem. Consider Jerry Garcia’s insightful statement:
“It’s not enough to be the best at what you do; you must be perceived as the only one who does what you do.” – Jerry Garcia
To be effective your branding must be strong, you must have a well defined strategy, your expertise and message has to be clear. Or you’ll get no results. For example, many years ago, there was only one local market. If you wanted to buy soup you simply went to the market and bought soup. Then came supermarkets with 6 different types of soup. If you didn’t recognize the other soups you’d most likely buy Campbell’s. Remember people buy brands not products and services. A brand promises the same positive consistent experience every time. Empowering you to buy with confidence and making your decision easy. So it was easy to make a buying decision. Yet now there are literally millions of companies on the internet locally, nationally and internationally. All competing for local markets in the US! So now powerful branding is even more important than ever before!
In closing, to succeed in branding you must understand the needs and wants of your customers and prospects. To effectively use branding to grow your business, you must invest the time in researching, defining, building and promoting your brand. When done correctly, your prospective customers will draw this simple conclusion, “I’d have to be an absolute fool to do business with anyone else except you…regardless of price”.
From The Minds Of Wharton
Wharton Business Foundation
www.WhartonBusinessFoundation.com
(888)4-WHARTON (494-2786) ext.17
info@whartonbusinessfoundation.com
By "From The Minds Of Wharton"
Published: February 16, 2010
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What does a person remember whenever they think of their favorite book, restaurant or even a celebrity? The brand! Yet what is a brand? A brand is a name or symbol that’s commonly known to identify a company or its products and services and separate them from their competition. A well-known brand is the one that people will recognize, even if they don’t know about the company or its products and services. These are usually the businesses’ name or the name of a product, although it can also include the name of a feature or style of a product. Yet still, few only know its marketing function or the meaning of branding itself. Well, there’s a huge connection between the two and this might help you improve your business.
“Branding” is a basis for marketing and can not be separated from your business’s action plan. It’s more than just a fancy label that you give to a product. A business, law firm, school, museum, celebrity, perfume, a country (yes even a country!), or even YOU can be regarded as a brand. When marketing to customers, you must win both the logical and EMOTIONAL argument. Winning the emotional argument is what branding is uniquely designed to do.
Branding is both an art and a science. One of your goals is to link your brand with the emotions, feelings and memories of the positive experience that your customer has when then buying your product or service. You can also link the overall ‘branding’ of your company or product to a logo, symbol, or even design features that identify your company and/or its products/services. Remember, people buy brands not products and services. A brand promises the same positive, consistent experience every time.
So how do you determine your brand? Here’s a simple branding exercise. Ask yourself, “what do my customers experience when they use my product or service?” Write everything down that comes to mind. As you do so, you’ll see your brand take shape. Answer questions such as: Do they feel more comfortable, do they believe that they’ll be more popular, do they believe that they can run faster, work more efficiently, will they experience more reliability, will they feel happy, satisfied, sad, more sensual, etc.. This exercise is useful because, you may also detect some areas in your brand that may need improvement.
In closing, your brand resides within your customer’s hearts and minds. It is the sum total of their experiences, perceptions and expectations. Some of which you can directly influence and some you cannot. By clearly defining your brand, you’ll clearly define what you REALLY offer to your market. And having done so, you’ll now stand out heads and shoulders from your competition.
From The Minds Of Wharton
Wharton Business Foundation
www.WhartonBusinessFoundation.com
(888)4-WHARTON (494-2786) ext.17
info@whartonbusinessfoundation.com
By "From The Minds Of Wharton"
Published: February 16, 2010
Updated: February 16, 2010
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Many business owners simply set up shop and instantly start running ads. They never invest any time in designing their marketing or sales strategy. The result is that they lose thousands of dollars and usually don’t get the sales results that they’re after. We’re going to share with you a simple marketing strategy that’s time tested and business proven. It will empower you to get the maximum leverage from your marketing efforts.
Think of the overall market in your city. Your ‘potential market’ is comprised of all the potential buyers of your product or service in your city. To simplify the process, we overlay a ‘Spectrum’, called ‘The Buyer’s Spectrum’, over top of the potential market. Realize that on one end of the spectrum, 3-5% of the market have a preferred vendor (a family member, a business that they’ve been with for years, etc.) and will never buy from you.
On the other end of the spectrum, 3-5% of the market are NOW buyers and respond quickly to virtually any type of marketing. This leaves roughly 90% of the market that doesn’t want to buy what you’re selling right now yet WILL BUY at some future date.
Amazingly enough, the majority of companies focus their marketing efforts exclusively on the 3-5% of the market that are NOW buyers. They leave the remaining 90% of potential customers on the table. Their philosophy is that if a prospect doesn’t buy from them right now, then they discard them and focus on the ones that do want to buy from them. If you share this philosophy, you’re making A BIG MISTAKE!
‘Why’ do you ask? Well, think about a grove of orange trees. If you wanted to pick the ripe oranges, do you think that all of the oranges ripen at the same time? Of course not. The oranges ripen all at different times (we call this ‘The Customer Buying Cycle’). So what do you do, simply pick the few oranges that are ripe and then burn the rest of the field? Once again the answer is no. Yet this is what many companies do.
If you want to get more of the ripe oranges, then what you must do is water, fertilize and nurture the orange tree grove consistently. Bit by bit, the other oranges WILL RIPEN. And when they do, you’re there pick them. Now you may not get them all yet you’ll certainly get the lion’s share.
In the same way, you ‘water, fertilize and nurture’ the 90% of your potential market that doesn’t buy right away. And like the grove of orange trees, bit by bit, they too will ‘ripen’ or buy what you’re offering. If your marketing strategy addresses this, then you will get the lion’s share of the customers.
For you to get most out of your marketing and sales, your marketing strategy must address the phenomenon of both ‘The Buyer’s Spectrum’ and “The Customer Buying Cycle’ to be effective. Make sure to read our article “How To Increase Your Sales By 300% Or More By Effectively Leveraging Follow Up Systems”.
From The Minds Of Wharton
Wharton Business Foundation
www.WhartonBusinessFoundation.com
(888)4-WHARTON (494-2786) ext.17
info@whartonbusinessfoundation.com
By "From The Minds Of Wharton"
Published: February 15, 2010
Updated: February 16, 2010
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EmailIt’s surprising that a lot of business owners have never had proper branding done for their businesses. Starting with their company name. Many simply name their companies after themselves (ex. John’s Accounting Service, THM Enterprises, etc.) or just a name that they pull out of the air. What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet. Right?…Wrong! Not if we called it a stinkweed!
Your company name is everything. It’s a crucial part of your marketing and your brand. At the mere mention of your business’s name, clients and prospective clients should experience an emotional reaction. Your business name serves as an emotional anchor for your brand. So it should not be taken lightly. It’s ideal if your company name tells people what you do. Unlike the home improvement company that we came across named XRM Technologies. They actually install gutters, windows and vinyl siding believe it or not.
So how do you come up with the right name for your company? For our clients, we use an exercise that we call the ‘name game’. Here’s how you “play it”. On a piece of paper, draw a line down the middle of the page, dividing the page into two columns. On the left side of the page, write down all of the problems or “pain points” that your prospect feels. I mean everything (ex. They have bad credit, can’t get credit cards, can’t get loans, have to pay higher interest rates, can’t get a mortgage or car loan, have to pay cash for everything, are embarrassed by their bad credit, etc.). Be very thorough and leave nothing out.
Next, on the right side of the page, write all of the solutions to the problems and “pain points”. For example: problem – they have bad credit; solution– raise their credit score to a good score; problem – they are embarrassed by their bad credit; solution – instill in them a sense of pride from having an improved credit score. After you finish listing all of the solutions to the problems, look at all of your solution words and phrases and then piece them together to come up different names for your business.
So, a real estate management company could be ‘Worry Free Property Management”. A florist could be ‘Last Minute Florists’. A dentist could be ‘Your Beautiful Smile Dental’. An insurance agency could be ‘Peace Of Mind Financial Services’. A fitness center could be “New You Fitness’. A green janitorial company could be ‘Clean, Quick & Green Janitorial’. A home improvement company could be ‘24 Hour Windows & Doors’. You get the idea. From your list, choose 6 – 10 of your best choices. Write them down on a piece of paper in column formation.
Lastly, you want to do some surveys. Go to the local mall, bookstore or whatever place your industry prospects gather (the business district at lunchtime, supermarkets, seminars, hardware stores, hospitals, etc.) and get their input on your name selections. Perform at least 10 – 20 surveys. Tell them what you want your prospective customers to feel and think when they hear your company name (ex. trust your company, be relaxed, be excited, laugh, want to make money, become hungry, want to eat healthily, etc.). Ask them to listen to your choices and rank them each from 1 to 10 (1 being the worst and 10 being the best). Lastly, ask them if they didn’t like your name selections, are there any names that they’d recommend. This is powerful because your actual market tells you the name that appeals to them the most.
The outcome of the ‘name game’ is a business name that appeals directly to your market. You effectively eliminate the possibility of having a non-compelling name that simply sounds catchy or flashy. Instead, you get a name that when your prospective and existing clients speak it, it instantly solves their problems.
From The Minds Of Wharton
Wharton Business Foundation
www.WhartonBusinessFoundation.com
(888)4-WHARTON (494-2786) ext.17
info@whartonbusinessfoundation.com
