Tag: web traffic

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Why does my business need a website anyway?

Believe it or not that's one of the most frequent questions I get from potential clients (and sometimes even existing clients). A lot of business owners, especially those of a more "mature" age and from a more old-fashioned way of doing business, tend to stay stuck in the "yellow pages" mentality of business promotion. And for good reason, after all, at one time the Yellow Pages were the premier forum for advertising a business. Particularly a small business. Those days are long gone my friend. When a young couple are trying to decide where they are going to eat dinner on "date night" they are no longer digging out the Yellow Pages and flipping through endless pages of Restaurants. They probably will not even consult their town's local "entertainment and nightlife" publication.. you know the ones that you find in racks outside restaurants and bars. Their first stop will be an online search. That search might begin with Google, Bing or Yahoo. Or maybe they'll start with one of the many popular apps like Yelp, Urban Spoon, etc. If you are a restaurant owner without a website they won't find you. That scenario applies to any type business. Online searches are now the norm when looking for a restaurant, plumber, electrician, babysitter, piano teacher, hotel or even a band to book for your nephew's 21st birthday party. Many business owners make the mistake of thinking they can't afford a quality website. A quality website does not have to have a dozen pages, endless graphics and E-Commerce. You simply want to get noticed. Your name and logo, location, services offered and contact information are the building blocks and from there the possibilities are endless. If you are the hands-on type you are in luck. You can take charge and purchase everything you need to design your own site and get online fast .. right here from our website! If that seems like an enormous headache we can take over and design a site for you!! Let's get started getting you noticed!!

To Tweet or not to Tweet, that is the question..

"Should I use Social Media for my business?" That's a question most web designers will hear from their clients. Especially if said client is a new business owner or never had any sort of web presence even if they are established. While many people may look at Social Media as simply "fluff" or "entertainment" when it comes to promoting a business the value is immeasurable and the sky is the limit! The simple fact is that these days many potential customers/clients use Social Media as their starting point, jumping off point or pipeline to the rest of the web. If you're already perusing Facebook and suddenly remember that you wanted to find a good garage organizer, why not start with the search bar in Facebook to begin with? That's exactly what most people do, especially young people. Make no mistake though, once they find the Facebook page of a company that looks promising they will usually click through to the actual website to get more information. Used in this way your website and Social Media pages can work together to bring you business. Think of Social Media as a funnel for your web traffic. A quick peek at the Google Analytics page for a successful company will show the amount of web traffic that originates from Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin or Instagram is astounding. Setting up a business Facebook page should be a natural compliment to your fantastic website. Need help? We can do that too! Contact us today!!  

Cross-Browser Compatibility

What exactly does “cross-browser compatibility” mean? Simply put, it means that your web site will look exactly the same in any browser. And while this may come as a surprise to many new designers, anyone who has ever pulled their hair out over the many bugs inherit in older versions of Internet Explorer knows how frustrating it can be to make sure everything parses the same in all browsers. Think about it, how many times have you designed your “best site ever” and previewed it til your blue in the face, then check it on someone else’s computer a few days later and it looks blown apart … elements out of order, colors wrong, fonts wrong … it’s happened to all new web designers at some point! And if the person who sees the bad version happens to be your client, you can run into big trouble down the road! So how do we accomplish this goal? Two main ways. First, by being absolutely sure that your web sites are standards compliant and secondly by using the tools available to you both in your software and online to check for compatibility issues. I use Adobe Dreamweaver almost exclusively in building my sites. That’s not to say I don’t sometimes tinker with other programs and/or do preliminary layouts in notepad or notepad++ …….. but when the final version is being built, I am going to always be in Dreamweaver. One of the nicest things about Dreamweaver, and all of the Adobe Creative Suite software, is the array of troubleshooting tools built in. Dreamweaver has a button in the main toolbar which will allow you to check the browser compatibility of your site as it’s being developed. If a problem is detected, clicking a link will take you to the Adobe web design forums/help pages where solutions can be found. Remember, when you are finishing your site’s build and previewing  … check it in as many browsers as you can. Download the latest versions of Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Opera and Safari and go through every page in each browser. Look for font problems, color problems, divs that aren’t in the right place and images that aren’t floating correctly. Most of the time, a review and tweak of your CSS file will correct any problems. Always use someone else’s computer if possible, to preview your site on a test server before…

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