Some simple web design fundamentals for a business website

Posted by Jennifer Farley | April 30, 2007

Let’s take a look at some of the things you need to consider when building a website for your business. The fundamentals of successful website building include; making your site load quickly, making it easy to navigate and of course making it look professional. There are many tools available to help you get there but is it necessary to use all every bell and whistle on your site?Firstly, you may feel that using a lot of animated web graphics, flash, banners and pictures on your home page will lead to extra interest from your visitor. It won’t. All it will do is slow down the loading time extensively. People surfing on the web are incredibly impatient and if your site does not load in less than 5 seconds, the will go elsewhere. All graphics should be optimized for quality and file size before uploading to your website.

Next, you need to think about navigation. People need to know “where am I”, “where will this button take me?” and “how do I get back?” The visitor should only need to look at their screen to see where they are at all times. Navigation bars should be clear and easy to read and in the same place on every page. The visitor on your page is not interested in working out a puzzle to find out where they are. Keeping pages clean, tidy and clutter free will result in an easier and more pleasant user-experience for your visitor.

Finally, the “professional” looking website does not include distracting backgrounds, loud and annoying background music or font sizes that shout at your visitor in two inch tall capital letters.

Backgrounds should not clash with the text on the page. Choose a single colour for the background and a complementary font colour that is clear and easy to read on the background. Avoid red and yellow text for the main body of the text. They are too hard on the eyes and will leave your visitor drained rather than excited about your products. The actually copy itself should be well written and brief – again web surfers are an impatient lot and don’t want to read several paragraphs where one paragraph will suffice.

To sum up, if your web pages are easy to read, clutter free, easy to navigate and don’t take long to download or make your eyes water, then you’re probably doing okay. Check out other websites to get some ideas and look at other business and product web sites (in your own field AND outside this fields) to see what they have done.

A well designed and thought-out website is the first step to producing a very good income.

Posted by Jennifer Farley | Filed Under Small Business, Website Design 

11 Reasons Why You Should Have a Web Site

Posted by Jennifer Farley | March 30, 2007

1. To Establish A Presence
Approximately 750 million people worldwide have access to the World Wide Web (WWW). No matter what your business is, you can’t ignore 750 million people.

2. To Make Business Information Available
What is basic business information? Think of a Yellow Pages ad. What are your hours? What do you do? How can someone contact you? What methods of payment do you take? Where are you located? Now think of a Yellow Pages ad where you have instant communication. What is today’s special offer? Today’s interest rate? Next week’s sale information? If you could keep your customer informed of every reason why they should do business with you, don’t you think you could do more business? You can on the WWW.
3. To Heighten Public Interest
With Web page information, anybody anywhere who can access the Web and hears about you is a potential visitor to your Web site and a potential customer for your information there. People from other towns, counties and even other countries can find out information about who you are and what you do.

4. To Network
A lot of what passes for business is simply nothing more than making connections with other people. Every smart business person knows, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. Passing out your business card is part of every good meeting and every business person can tell more than one story how a chance meeting turned into the big deal. Well, what if you could pass out your business card to thousands, maybe millions of potential clients and partners, saying this is what I do and if you are ever in need of my services, this is how you can reach me. You can, 24 hours a day, inexpensively and simply, on the WWW.

5. To Sell Things
Before people decide to become customers, they want to know about you, what you do and what you can do for them. Which you can do easily and inexpensively on the WWW. Then you might be able to turn visitors to your site into customers.

6. To reach a highly desirable demographic market
The demographic of the WWW user is probably the highest mass-market demographic available. Usually college-educated or being college educated, making a high salary or soon to make a high salary, it’s no wonder that Wired magazine, the magazine of choice to the Internet community, has no problem getting Lexus and other high-end marketers advertising. Even with the addition of the commercial on-line community, the demographic will remain high for many years to come.

7. To Answer Frequently Asked questions
Whoever answers the phones in your company can tell you, their time is usually spent answering the same questions over and over again. These are the questions customers and potential customers want to know the answer to before they deal with you. Post them on a WWW page and you will have removed another barrier to doing business with you and freed up some time for that harried phone operator.

8. To Make Changing Information Available Quickly
Sometimes, information changes before it gets off the press. Now you have a pile of expensive, worthless paper. Electronic publishing changes with your needs. No paper, no ink, no printers bill. You can even attach your web page to a database which customizes the page’s output to a database you can change as many times in a day as you need. No printed piece can match that flexibility.

9. To Allow Feedback From Customers
With a Web page, you can ask for feedback and get it instantaneously with no extra cost. An instant e-mail response can be built into Web pages and can get the answer while its fresh in your customers mind, without the cost and lack of response of business reply mail.

10. To Reach The Specialized Market
Sell bee hives, art prints, rowing boats? You may think that the Internet is not a good place to be. Well, think again. The Internet isn’t just computer science students anymore. With the 700 million and growing users of the WWW, even the most narrowly defined interest group will be represented in large numbers. Since the Web has several very good search programs, your interest group will be able to find you, or your competitors.

11. To Serve Your Local Market
We’ve talked about the power to serve the world with a Web page. But what about your own town? If you are located in Westmeath, Cork, Sligo or Dublin, there is probably enough local customers with Web access to make it worth your while to consider Web marketing. A local Blackrock sandwich bar even takes lunch orders through the Internet!

Posted by Jennifer Farley | Filed Under Small Business, Website Building 

Stop Sitting Up Straight

Posted by Jennifer Farley | December 8, 2006

Stop Sitting Up Straight!

For many of us, today’s workplace involves sitting in front of a computer for long periods of time. Even when I’m “finished” work I often find myself sitting in front of a pc or laptop. Conventional wisdom has told us that sitting up straight and not slouching is important. Having read this article over on Science Daily it seems avoiding slouching is still very important but it seems that sitting up straight should be avoided too!

The patients assumed three different sitting positions: a slouching position, in which the body is hunched forward (e.g., hunched over a desk or slouched over in front of a video game console); an upright 90-degree sitting position; and a “relaxed” position where the patient reclines backward 135 degrees while the feet remain on the floor. Measurements were taken of spinal angles and spinal disk height and movement across the different positions.

The patients assumed three different sitting positions: a slouching position, in which the body is hunched forward (e.g., hunched over a desk or slouched over in front of a video game console); an upright 90-degree sitting position; and a “relaxed” position where the patient reclines backward 135 degrees while the feet remain on the floor. Measurements were taken of spinal angles and spinal disk height and movement across the different positions.

Spinal disk movement occurs when weight-bearing strain is placed on the spine, causing the internal disk material to misalign. Disk movement was most pronounced with a 90-degree upright sitting posture. It was least pronounced with the 135-degree posture, indicating that less strain is placed on the spinal disks and associated muscles and tendons in a more relaxed sitting position.

The “slouch” position revealed a reduction in spinal disk height, signifying a high rate of wear and tear on the lowest two spinal levels. Across all measurements, the researchers concluded that the 135-degree position fared the best.

So I think a new 135 degree chair may need to be added to my Christmas list.

Posted by Jennifer Farley | Filed Under Small Business 

Small Business Blogging : Pajama Market

Posted by Jennifer Farley | May 30, 2006

I’ve just come across pajama market - a blogging site all about small business blogs. Five days a week, they blog about a small business that is blogging. If you are thinking about starting blogging or have already started, this is a great resources to turn to get ideas for your own blog.

You might come across a design you like, a topic you like or perhaps a writing style that you enjoy. The blogs featured on the site cover the full spectrum of small businesses from wine growers to t-shirt companies.

One of the features I like best about this site, is that they interview the small business bloggers about things such as the tools they use and how the blog has helped their business. It’s all very down to earth and easy to relate to.

Posted by Jennifer Farley | Filed Under Small Business