How can you enhance the “experience” the visitor will have at your website?

1.       Appealing colors and images.

2.       Verbiage that lets them know they are in the “right” place.

3.       Audio, music, video, testimonials or quotes.

What is it that will make them call or email you today?

1.       Your phone number and email in a larger font and very visible on every page.

2.       Good copy – what you say and how you say it is imperative to visitors taking action. Note: Reverse type text (light text on a dark background) is the most difficult to read online.

3.       Easy navigation and simple calls to action. Too many places to click or too many graphics is a real turn-off to visitors. Less is more!

I invite you to “experience” a few sites we’ve designed using the WordPress platform:

Tilde Furniture – www.tildefurniture.com

Check out this brand new site we designed for Stephen Kohlbeck. It’s crisp, clean, easy to navigate and the site design reflects the simple elegance of the furniture. For green, eco-friendly, luxurious furniture – this is the plac

Better Health & Wellness -  www.bettterhealthwellness.com

The colors and images in this site are inviting and relaxing. You can already imagine how you are going to feel once you walk thru the doors. There’s a call to action to sign up for the newsletter. The phone number and email are very visible. Make an appointment today for massage, reflexology, acupuncture or an ion footbath.  Aaaaaahhh!

Fun Productions -  www.funproductions.com

The bright colors and images just scream FUN in this site redesign! The phone numbers are large and visible up top. Calls to action are: Request a quote, sign up for newsletter and over on the left nav – Tell Us What We’re Doing Right.  (I love that last one). Notice this site has 3 forms of navigation since it’s pretty large. The images are clickable to the different areas and the navigation on the left also gets you right where you want to go. Additionally, we’ve added bottom navigation to get you back from some of the longer inside pages. Their social media and YouTube icons are in the upper right. The experience here is fun, fun, fun! Call them for your next team-building event or corporate party.  Let the FUN begin!

When I was little my grandma and grandpa loved to take us kids to the Nebraska State Fair. Every year my grandma would say, “Now kids, don’t let grandpa buy any more slicer-dicers. We’ve got a basement full of ‘em!” We would watch the entertaining demonstrations of the latest gizmos and amazingly they all had guarantees. Sure enough my grandpa would buy the knife that never needs sharpening, the apple peeler, the chopper/slicer or the magic stain remover. One time at the end of a pots and pans demonstration the spokesman said, “Light the candles ladies – supper’s ready!” It was as if supper magically made itself with these miracle pans – guaranteed!

After we got home grandma would scold grandpa for buying yet another gadget and we’d all laugh. I don’t think my grandpa cared if the gizmo worked or not. He just did it for the fun of it. It became a running joke every year wondering what grandpa would buy next.

So back to the sizzlin’ deals with those SEO companies. It’s kinda like the slicer-dicers. If you want to do it for the fun of it – go for it! If you really truly believe in those SEO company promises well…would you also like a ginzu knife?

My second question is, “What have you been doing to market your website?” The answer is typically, “Well, nothing. I think I need SEO.” For some reason, there is this big misperception out there that if by paying someone for “SEO” you will be on the first page of Google and therefore have more clients than you can handle. Sorry to bust another myth, but being on the first page of Google for a particular phrase does not guarantee you will get more clients. If we built your site then your site is already search engine friendly because the titles, meta descriptions and meta tags are different on every page. These can be changed or modified at any time. In your statistics you’ll see what phrases people are typing in to find you. SEO and Statistics go hand-in-hand. If you hire someone to do SEO, how will you know if they are effective unless you check your stats?

Action Steps:

1. Install Google Analytics and check your statistics monthly or quarterly. Adjust your site or advertising methods accordingly.
2. Get more business today with FaceBook and Twitter. Social Media is here to stay! Learn from people who are successful to save yourself some time and money!
3. Is your website interactive and are you gathering emails? So many ways to do this. Give something away for people who enter your contest, sign up for your ezine, download an Ebook or Special Report. Note: New subscribers to the Muse News receive a free checklist “Five Web Mistakes to Avoid”. Email me if you’d like a copy.

Scroll down on this page http://www.thewebmuse.com/what-we-do.html to the Web Marketing Process and download the pdf for more ideas. Email me your tips for getting business from your website and I’ll publish those in the next Muse News. We can all learn from each other. Most importantly, have fun with whatever you are doing!

Why is it important to Validate Code?

It is our standard practice to validate code on sites we design. The reason we do this is to ensure your web pages are interpreted in the same way (the way you want) by various machines, search engines, as well as users and visitors to your webpage.

Conforming to standards and regulations is one of the many ways you can make your website universally understood. Make sure your codes and styles validate across the board. That means they have to meet the “strict” standards set by the W3C Organization and pass a variety of validations for CSS and XHTML.

In simple terms, validation ensures that your website complies with the standards accepted by most web designers. That also means that it will be accessible to more people, across more web browsers and operation systems.

Validation doesn’t just mean putting your pages through some web driven testers. It also means test-driving it with friends, relatives, co-workers, and strangers. Everyone has a different system and way of working, so ask for others to test-drive your site. Their feedback will be quite valuable and may surprise you!  Source: www.wordpress.org

It’s a good idea to have the colors of your logo be represented on the website. This creates a branding image in the mind of your customers. Whenever we see yellow & red & the golden arches we know what famous fast food chain that represents.

As with everything, there are positives and negatives to each color. Knowing your target audience will determine which colors you’ll choose to convey. When you’re appealing to a global audience, knowing the color meanings of different cultures will be beneficial. See a Cultural Color Chart.

Cash Colors – This 30-page ebook shows how to use color to create web pages that sell. For every color the author lists the feelings the visitor will experience. He also mentions industries that benefit by using certain colors and color combinations.

Meaning of colors according to the Small Business Association:

White – pure, clean, youthful, coolness, cleanliness, safety.

Black – power, elegant, secretive, classical, serious, stability.

Red – passion, excitement, danger, strength, bravery, energy.

Orange – vibrant, warm, healthy, exciting, fun.

Yellow – happiness, excitement, cheerful, alert, warm.

Green – natural, health, plentiful, wealth, freshness.

Purple – royalty, wise, celebration, romance, femininity.

Blue - intelligence, peaceful, trustworthy, authority, security.

A few websites to help you choose colors:

Degraeve Color Palette

Colour Lovers

Visibone Color Chart

I’ve seen speakers wear the colors of their logos and websites to leave a lasting impression on their audience. Are the colors on your website appealing to your target audience? Leave a comment and share some sites that have a good use of colors.

Google is preferred by males and Google users are 43 percent more likely to buy online over other Internet users.

MSN is preferred by females and those 55 and over prefer this search engine. MSN users are 48 percent more likely to purchase than other Internet users.

Yahoo! users make up the 18-34-year-old segment and are 31 percent more likely to make online purchases.

As a web marketer how will you use this useful information?

1. Look at your statistics and see which search engines are bringing you the most traffic. If you want to increase sales, then research the demographics of the search engines that match your target audience. Let’s say you have a product that appeals to 20-year-olds, then get listed with Yahoo! in Yahoo! Local, place ads in Yahoo, learn all about Yahoo! This is your market – capture it!
2. Check out sites like Forrester Research and Shop.org to learn everything you can about your target audience and their online habits. There is a wealth of information at your fingertips that will save you time in ‘guessing’ why you may not be getting the orders, leads or sales you envision.
3. According to a Harris poll awhile back – the top searches were for Travel, Health & Entertainment. If you research just a little further you’ll discover each of these categories has gender, age and geographic data that could be very useful to your online business. For example: The majority of people searching for travel live in Seattle, New York and Chicago. The most people looking for health information live in Denver. Knowing this type of data helps you in marketing to those specific geographic regions.

Aren’t these facts fascinating? Take some action today with this information and remember – keep having fun with all your web marketing activities! Click on the icon below to “Leave a Comment”.