Are you a small business owner or marketing manager seeking to hire a website designer or graphic designer? Before you do, you must read this great article by Andy Rutledge entitled Don’t Walk; Run.

He discusses how to save yourself time and money, and to get what you want out of your company’s creative projects. Too many designers simply don’t ask questions or ask the wrong questions, and are more concerned with where a pixel should go rather than meeting your business needs. Rutledge’s article is frank and to the point, and will help you identify a designer who is just as passionate about achieving your business goals as you are.

Website Grader claims to measure the marketing effectiveness of your website based on search engine optimization, social popularity, inbound links, Google page rank, page source code, and other factors. Simply enter your website URL, wait a few seconds, and get your website score along with a full report emailed to you.

Why should I use this tool?

Website Grader is a good tool to let you know how you rank compared to your competition in selected online marketing efforts. It also alerts you to areas in which you could increase the scope and effectiveness of your marketing efforts.

But don’t sweat the small stuff…

This tool doesn’t score you on everything you are doing with social or viral marketing, or show every directory you are listed in. In addition, it didn’t pick up all my inbound links, although other search engines picked them up.  Some alerts that it reports are not to be overly concerned about. I’m not sure I agree with the readability level scoring either. It seems that more technical sites might come up with a “Graduate” level readability score simply because they include some technical terms.

Overall, I believe this is a useful tool. Grade your website and use the report card to lay out specific steps to improve your online marketing strategies.

So you’ve spent lots of time and money designing your small business website, and you’ve just launched it for the public to see. But wait! Do you know you could be ignoring a large percentage of the population and thus reducing the market audience you are targeting?

You might take for granted that some users cannot use a mouse.

When designing your website, you should design web content in an accessible format (not as an afterthought), keeping in mind people who have:

• Visual impairments (Blind, Color blind, Senior citizens)
• Hearing impairments
• Physically disabilities
• Learning disabilities
• English as a second language
• Slower internet connections
• Access to Internet content on multiple platforms (mobile phones, etc)

You will reap several business benefits by following web site accessibility standards:

• Improve the searchability of your website.
• Increase usability and help to improve web conversions.
• Increase information access to more people using assistive technologies and adaptive technologies.
• Accessibile web design is required by law in some places, so your business brand will benefit by complying with accessibility standards.

9 Accessibility Mistakes to Avoid When Designing a Website:

1. All your links read: “Click Here.” This could be confusing to visitors using screen readers and other assistive technologies. Instead, use a descriptive link that gives useful clues about where you’ll take them once they click.
2. You use tables to layout your web pages. Instead, use tables for organizing ‘tabular data’ (for charts and such) to eliminate confusing and repetitive table tags. Opt for CSS to layout and style your web content.
3. Your pages use extremely small type (because “it looks cool”) that can’t be resized in the browser. People with sight disabilities may need larger text in their browser. If your design breaks or doesn’t allow that, they will have to leave your website.
4. Color is used as an integral design or navigation element. That would confuse those who are color blind (take the color blind test). And remember some monitors don’t display colors accurately.
5. You’ve got light grey text on a white background or dark grey type on a black background (because it’s “so Web 2.0″). This makes reading a difficult and painstaking process. You need to use a bit more contrast for users with challenged vision. You don’t have to completely sacrifice design for functionality, but do keep this in mind. And do allow users to make their own decisions about how they browse your page.
6. All description, title and alt tags have been left blank so people must guess what your page and images are all about. Make sure your web designer goes that extra step, labeling and describing the contents of your page. This may mean that you, the business owner, must provide content for the designer to input.
7. There are no captions on any video or audio recordings, and no transcripts are provided for the deaf. Physically challenged users might miss out on this quality web content. So don’t leave anyone out, and make sure to offer alternative versions of your audio/visual content.
8. There are no descriptive tags in web forms explaining how to fill them out. Close your eyes and imagine filling out an online form. Where do you start, what should you type, in what format? To ensure that you recieve high quality form submissions (or recieve submissions at all), try including descriptive form tags. You web designer should also insert any instructions (like “enter year with four digits: 2010″) before the form fields, not after.
9. You used an online validator, but didn’t do any web content accessibility testing on actual users with disabilities. An online validator is a good place to start. But it is not a good substitute for a person. Testing your page on a group of people who have disabilities will give you most invaluable feedback about your site.

Recommended Reading:

• Website Accessibility Under Title II of the ADA
• Understanding Disabilities When Designing a Website
• Beyond ALT Text: Making the Web Easy to Use for Users With Disabilities: 75 Best Practices for Design of Websites and Intranets, Based on Usability Studies with People Who Use Assistive Technology
• Web Usability Accessibility and Usability Resources

Resources:

• Web Site Accessibility Tools, Checklist & Guidelines
• Test URL in Online Checker
• List of Screen Readers

Planned Video Tutorial -- Check Back!

Do you have a quick website or graphics question that needs answering? In less than 2 or 3 minutes? Mindspring Design will be producing bite-sized, video tutorials for the busy, small-business professional.

Some examples of topics planned are:

• How to Use Layers and Masking in Photoshop
• Web Usability Testing — Why Every Small Business Needs to Do It
• Testing for Accessibility — Don’t Leave Out Any of Your Customers
• Award Winning Web Designs — What’s So Great About Them?
• HTML and CSS Stylesheets — Stop Pulling Out Your Hair
• Setup and Connect to a MySQL Database
• PDF creation, manipulation, editing, optimizing, preflighting, and more…

Let me know what questions you’d like to see addressed on this blog!

What is it?

Genbook is a web appointment scheduling service that offers several features. I installed the free version on my site for testing purposes, and decided to keep it since it fits my needs.

Who needs it?

I recommend online appointment scheduling to anyone who meets with customers. It’s great for hair stylists, dentists, trainers, etc. This is an easy, non-in-your-face way to invite people to talk to you, meet with you, purchase your services.

Everything’s done online and takes about five minutes for you to set up and two minutes for customers to book. A customer chooses a service you offer, books a time, and confirms. You both receive notification via email.

Features

• FREE
• invite customers to make appointment
• view calendar
• book up to 4 weeks in advance
• email notification
• your logo
• sends customer email reminders
• send up to three customer messages when they confirm their appointment
• free book now button on your website
• additional features are available at cost.

Pros

This saves time and can boost sales and visibility. Upgrading to a paid plan allows you to save contact information for business marketing and to capture credit card info to make sure clients show up.

Cons

You can’t have multiple user sign-ons on the account. But you can offer several staff members’ services on the same calendar. There is a small Genbook byline and logo on the booking pages, and you can’t weave the booking software into your own site’s layout and design.

If you’re on a limited budget, or just need a quick photo, try some of these sites.  I tried to post sites that allow commercial as well as personal use, but make sure you read their terms of use and give photo credit where it’s due.

• Stock.Xchng
  
• MorgueFile
• FreeDigitalPhotos.net
• BigFoto.com
• FreeImages.com
• Wikipedia Public Domain Image Resources (scroll down)
• 123rf.com
• TurboPhoto.com
• ImageAfter.com
• Dreamstime.com

Be sure to choose quality images with good contrast, color balance, sharp focus, etc. At full size, web images should be 72 dpi, and printed images should be at least 300 dpi. (Learn how to check this here.)

Of course, nothing beats an original, commisioned photo for your website or printed material. But if you need quick, free visuals, I hope this list is helpful.

Remember, if it looks free, that’s because it is! So use good judgment and make sure the photo reflects well on you!

When developing or re-designing a website, many small business owners wonder if they should install a content management system (CMS). A CMS is a tool designed to help non-web designers create, edit and manage website content (like articles, videos, images, etc) more easily.

To give you an example, ever heard of WordPress? WordPress allows you to select the look of your blog, write blog posts for the world to see, accept or reject comments, categorize your posts, and more. All without any knowledge of web development or design. Get the “techy” definition of a CMS here.

Wordpress is an example of a Content Management System for blogs.

Reasons why you might need a Content Management System:

• You plan to update your site very often (like every week or every day)
• A non-web designer will be doing the updates to your site
• You need to make updates from a place other that your office
• You sell many items
• You have a blog
• You need to make changes or publish things sitewide quickly

Before Choosing a CMS, You May Want to Look For:

• Seach engine friendly URLs (not reallly long strings of gobbledy-gook text)
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
  • are there specific tags describing each page, product, heading, image, etc
  • is the page code minimal and not a jumbled mess (check with your web developer)
• Ease of use (for your staff and your customers)
• Speed (some load more slowly than others)
• Marketing/advertising options (if needed)
• Multiple payment options (if needed)
• Accessibility (can people with physical disabilities retrieve your information easily, for example using a screen reader)

You should research and try out several Content Management Systems online before you install.

How much will it cost? Prices vary, and some are available for free. You will probably need to enlist the help of a web developer or designer to decide which CMS is right for you. He or she will be able  to install and configure your CMS for you, and can train you to use the software to manage your website on your own.

Does your company use a content management system? Leave a comment and tell us which one you use and why. Does it meet all your needs and function well?

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If you’ve ever taken a long road trip, you’ve noticed that highway signs remain consistent across the country. Signs are the same color choices, typically the same typeface, same large readable text, with similar abbreviations. This helps you as a driver to quickly recognize and assimilate where you are and make split second decisions on where you are going.

Consistent navigation helps guide your visitors, avoiding frustration and abandonment.

As people use the internet, they are “travelling” at lightning speed, scanning images and information very
quickly. So your website must have clear and consistent navigation in order to facilitate seamless web experiences.

Experts on web usability say that a good, consistent navigation system should answer these three questions:

1. Where am I?
2. Where have I been?
3. Where can I go?

Just as highway signs let you know: (1) you are on Route 95, (2) you are passing Philadelphia, and (3) you are headed South and can go to Delaware or Baltimore, web navigation gives you visual cues to keep you informed, guided, and not lost. Quickly. Go to another country, and a road trip should not seem all that foreign to you. Similarly, jumping from website to website, you should know what page you’re on, in what section, and what other sections you can navigate to from any page to get to your destination.

Links should stand out and be consistent and legible. Your web designer should use server side includes to form navigation so that it’s consistent on every page. That also makes it easy to make site-wide changes in minutes.  And make sure your navigation is readable and searchable by search engines.

Is this scenario familiar? It’s the bottom of the sixth, and bases are loaded. But once again the team just can’t seem to get any runs. The crowd lets out a collective sigh. Tracking your web analytics software can be just as disappointing. Your SEO, link building, and Pay Per Click Advertising efforts have increased the number of visits to your site. But these visitors are disappearing like sand in a sieve.

Experienced designers know they should be focusing on web site conversions — not just counting the visits, but making the visits count. We will discuss just three of the many ways you can improve your web site conversions and increase the success of your site.

First of all, your web site should have definite objectives. There are informational sites, e-commerce sites, blogs, etc. Your goals should be specific and quantifiable, for instance: to receive e-mails, online inquiries, phone calls, etc. Meeting your objectives means the you have attracted your ideal web site visitor and they have answered your call to action, completing the sale or becoming a lead. How do we do that?

1. Offer clear, consistent navigation.

Your navigation should be descriptive, and lead people to where they think they should end up. This is about THEM, not you. Web visitors scan a page very quickly looking for keywords they’ve thought up in their own brains. So your menu items should include words and phrases your visitors would be expecting, not cute, kitschy titles or what you want to force feed them. Then each click of the mouse needs to take people from a more general to a more specific place — getting them closer to their objective. If someone isn’t finding what they are searching for, they will become bored or frustrated and give up. And you’ve lost a web conversion.

2. Focus on benefits & problem solving.

I can’t stress the importance of this enough. Web copy is just as important as the content of any marketing piece. Your web content must focus on the visitor’s needs, interests, problems. Talk about specific ways in which your business will meet these needs and solve these problems. Now, you’ve got a listening ear, and now you’re on your way to getting a web conversion. Writing on the web must take into account many factors such as audience, purpose, search engines, etc. So small business owners need to spend time, effort and money on quality web copy. And please spell check!!!

3. Tell people what to do.

This is where your call to actions comes in. Think back to your site objectives. Each page should have clear directions about where visitors should go. And it’s gotta be big and bold and extremely clear to web site visitors. Do some informal web site testing: ask a couple of friends or colleagues to sit down and use your site. Look for signs of confusion or hesitation, and frantic clicking of the browser’s Back Button. These are all signs that you may need to call-out your call to action.

These were just three of the dozens of ways you can improve web site conversions. Contact an experienced web designer or a usability expert to increase your web conversions. And start turning those hits to home-runs.

Designing your own website from scratch can be daunting. It’s almost like someone handing you a blank canvas and challenging you to create a masterpiece. Well, if you’re feeling overwhelmed and don’t know where to begin, just follow a these nine steps. Do your planning and implementation in phases, taking your time. A good website will not be built overnight. With good planning and a communicative, experienced web designer, you will be able to create an effective website.

1. Lay out clear, measurable objectives. This is the step that many skip, and then run into problems later. If you don’t have a goal in mind, and have no way to measure it, you never know why your website isn’t performing well. And expansion of the website can be disjointed and frustrating. Decide if you are planning to inform, sell things, get new leads, entertain, educate, facilitate communication, be a portal, etc. Will you receive emails, collect email addresses, field phone calls, make money? Once you make that choice (it could be a combination), you have a direction for your project. Surf the net and bookmark websites you like. Envision your ideal, successful website, with no limits. You can reign in your ideas later.

2. Who is your audience? Do your homework to find out your current and target audiences. You want to attract people who are already looking for you, and don’t want to alienate those who may have never heard of you. Your fresh and interesting, high quality content should speak directly to your audience. The style of writing will be determined in part by your audience. At this time you will bring up accessibility for those with physical disabilities, the level of technical skill needed to move about the website, type of computer and internet browser, connection speed, etc. It’s better to talk to some of your customers beforehand, or do a survey rather than guess or assume.

3. Decide how to present the information. There are many ways to present the same type of information. Take into account your brand, company personality, and type of content before deciding whether to present your information as a blog, an online magazine, news articles, store pages, a gallery, a timeline, etc. Your presentation may be a combination or something completely new. The most important thing is that your format is context appropriate and helps, not hinders users from using the website.

4. Structure your information. Before you start talking about what your favorite color is, or if you want drop shadows on the buttons, you need to talk about information architecture. Draw informational flow charts, sitemaps, screenshots, navigation bars (learn about wireframing here). Get something down on paper explaining how the user will move about the site from section to section without getting confused or lost. This stage will help resolve any underlying structural problems before actual website design begins. It will also help to clarify which areas are most important and need to be highlighted at which level. Sometimes it helps to imagine a specific user given a task and to walk through the various levels of the site. Can they get where they need to go? What would make it easier? Incorporate new ideas generated here into your architecture.

5. Choose a style. Your style should be based off of your brand identity, the type of web experience and feeling you want to create, and your website goals you set in Step #1. (The style has nothing to do with that shade of green in your favorite sweater.) It’s best to have a unique design which addresses these factors and presents you exactly the way you wish to be portrayed in the online community. However, you don’t have to begin with a blank canvas. There are many well designed templates out there for you to choose.

6. Enlist help. Now, you should have conversations with a web designer, graphic designer, and web hosting provider. You will need your own domain name and space. Your web designer will be able to tell you what features you need to pay for in your hosting plan. Some choose to begin designing a small section of the website first, then launch and move to the next. Others complete the main sections, launch, and add on later. The website doesn’t have to be complete before you launch, but it should be presentable, functioning properly, and not have pages “Under Construction.”

7. Test, test, and re-test. Your website designer should be able to conduct informal tests of the site. He or she will watch people using the site and make any changes necessary. This step is crucial and will help you reduce unforeseen frustration. You will also get priceless feedback from users.

8. Watch it grow. Once you launch your website, you will need to track and analyze the web stats. Do this on a regular basis to see how well the site is performing. Remember, you determine how well the site is performing by if and how you reach your original objectives from Step #1. How many phone calls are you receiving? How many items have you sold? Use that information to…

9. Tweak it. The person analyzing the web stats should come back with solid advice and suggestions on how to make the website perform even better. This could include adding more content, using online advertising, search engine optimization, etc.

Building a website from scratch is by no means an easy task, but it can be fun and rewarding. Follow these steps, remember to enlist help, and continue testing and tweaking your website.