Customer Friendly Web Design Tips

posted by Anna Fleet on July 13th, 2010

I’m in the market for some decent landscaping advice. Why you ask? Because my yard is a jungle…of weeds that I can’t seem to get rid of. And, I know that whatever method I use, I must exile them in the environmentally friendly Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario way.

So I turned to the Internet (of course) and found myself on the websites of a collection of local landscaping companies. But something was missing! There wasn’t anything wrong with their website designs, copy or intentions on the whole, but there was still something lacking. Not one of these sites succeeded connected with me (the customer) in any significant way. So, I took my weed (killing) fighting search elsewhere.

So what can your small business or non-profit website take from this one woman’s tale of weed woe?

MarketingProfs.com’s article, Three Things You Need to Know About Web Design, recommends following these 3 simple tips when designing or redesigning your company website:

Start by asking yourself, “How will my customers will use this site?” Is your site easy to navigate so customers can find the products and information they need? Well it should be or potential clients will go looking somewhere else.

Envision your site as a crossroads that visitors pass by as they make their way to other social-networking destinations. Your content should relates to Facebook and Twitter, in the way that it features small, bite sized informative bits that can be spread and shared by social networks across the Internet. When customers find valuable information for free, they’re more likely to feel loyal to and to come back and purchase products and services later from sites that offered free advice. The practice of freely giving valuable content (not pure selling) will encourage readers to post links back to your site and share them across social networks.

Your web design should suit your content. Think about it, would an author design their book cover before they wrote the book? No, it’s backwards foolishness! So why do so many companies do this with their website?

Tags: 3 web design tips, marketingprofs.com, user friendly web design, web 2.0 for small business, web design for charities, web design tips for non-profits, web marketing, web marketing for B2C
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Small Businesses: What’s in a company name?

posted by Anna Fleet on May 26th, 2010

The MOO Blog, one of my favorite online reads, is treating small businesses to an entire week of helpful posts on brand promotion.

And yesterday’s post, Small Businesses – What’s in a (brand) name?, was particularly jammed full of helpful wisdom. Business names were the focus of this particular post, and if your biz name happens to be a one-woman or one-man operation that you named after yourself then you should put that phone down while you’re typing that email and listen up Sparky!

If you’re a lone person running a small business you’re probably used to acting as employee, owner, marketing department, salesperson, receptionist etc. But did you know that bigwig companies like Chanel, Jack Daniels, and JC Penny were also started by one person and named after that one person?

Yes, many small owner-named businesses do succeed swimmingly. But take heed before ordering that corporate jet. When it comes to differentiating between brand and owner there is often a lot of gray area. For instance, if many of us rely on social media as a marketing tool,  but where do your personal status updates end and your business ones start—especially if they all come from the same name?

While you ponder, check out the MOO blog’s small biz series. I would if I owned my own small business. Plus, the nice folks at MOO are giving away prizes to users who share their real biz stories.

Tags: brand marketing, brand strategy for small business, marketing 2.0, web 2.0 for small business
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