Web Design Built on WordPress
The basic of website design and development that any small business owner needs to know to build their own self contained website.
When editing content in the TinyMCE editor, it would be nice for the text to look like it will once you publish the content. In previous versions of WordPress, there was no easy way to do this. You had to do some hacks to get the visual editor to display your style sheet.
To style the editor so your content in the dashboard looks like the content your publishing, you simply add the following to you functions.php file of your theme:
There are so many advantage of using WordPress websites over static HTML ones. WordPress websites are cheaper and easier to build, can be easily updated and edited and allows users to add a number of social plug-ins. This makes WordPress websites the ideal solution for any small business looking to build a formidable online presence without breaking the bank. As WordPress is open source, small business owners can save a lot of money as they do not have to pay licensing fees for installing and using WordPress websites. Moreover, this open source nature allows anyone to create themes, widgets, applications for WordPress.
Businesses can get thousands of free and premium WordPress themes for their websites from various developers online. So what should one look for before choosing a WordPress theme – free or premium?
Responsive web design is all the rage nowadays. Why? Because a responsive website
adjusts itself depending on the platform it is viewed from – PC and mobile, without any loss of functionality. Small business owners should make sure the WordPress theme they have chosen or bought has a responsive layout. This means that the same website will work on all devices and browsers, eliminating the need to create separate websites for PC and mobile platforms.
The WordPress theme should be easily updatable without the help of the developers. Small businesses often do not have the resources to have a web development team so even an employee with not knowledge in web design languages should be able to update the WordPress theme with the click of a button when the developer of the theme releases a new version or update. Also, WordPress themes – especially premium ones, should have error handling code so that it can recover from errors on its own. This ensures that the website is robust and online round the clock.
With the release of WordPress 3.5, small businesses must select WordPress themes that have the Live Theme Customizer. This allows users to make small changes and see their effects in real time. Changes to the colors, text, font, etc. will take no time at all if this feature is present in the theme.
Most people look at the demo version of premium themes, get impressed and buy it immediately. Later on they realize that the actual set-up does not look like the demo version. Choose a WordPress theme that provides a demo version so that this demo version can be installed first and customizations can be made later on to get the final theme.
Online and social media marketing is a must for any small business to grow. WordPress websites must allow effective social media marketing by having all the necessary widgets, which not only go well with the overall theme but also allows users to connect with the business. These widgets should be provided with the theme so that the small business owner does not have to manually add hundreds of widgets later on.
One of the problems your website has to overcome is Bounce Rate. It is the metric of how quickly someone leaves your site. When the bounce rate is high, that indicates that people are leaving without spending any appreciable amount of time on your site.
A high bounce rate can be bad for business. Keep it LOW! [TWEET]
Recent studies have shown an ever-increasing trend in mobile users. The number of people accessing the internet with a mobile device is growing. According to a September 2012 study by PewInternet, nearly 50% of American adults have a smartphone.
With the increase in mobile devices, we have a function problem with our websites. The vast majority of websites are not ready for a mobile world.
When people share a link on Facebook or Twitter to your website, odds are someone with a mobile phone is going to see it in their feed. When they click the link, they are going to be taken to a page with a miniature version of your website that is unusable. Buttons are to small, images are tiny and text is unreadable.
A website that is not optimized for mobile is losing business. clicktotweet
Google collects hordes of data and has commented on the growth and power of mobile. As they looked at their data and measured user expectations, they found that web design for mobile devices had a significant effect on consumers. According to their study, when a person landed on a website that was mobile friendly, they were 67% more likely to buy from that site.
Having a mobile friendly website will have an immediate and significant impact on your consumers and business. Imagine what this would do for your conversion rates, your bounce rates and subscriptions.
When a person landed on a website that was mobile friendly, they were 67% more likely to buy from that site.
The same study found that when a they landed on a non-mobile friendly site with their mobile device, they were 61% more likely to LEAVE! They are out of there. They hit the back button.
A site that is not optimized for the mobile experience WILL cost you business, customers, and traffic.
The fact is this trend is growing. The number of mobile users is trending up, not down. The reality is that if your website is not mobile ready, you are missing business now and you will continue to miss out on business.
I would immediately begin looking at your website analytics to see what percent of your site traffic is coming from mobile devices. If you are getting 40% or more of your traffic from mobile devices,
you should seriously consider making a change to your website. If you are less than 40%, you need to begin making plans to develop a
mobile site. The growth of mobile is compelling. Don’t get left behind and lose sales and leads.
Are you seeing a lot of social media sites, like Facebook or Twitter? These sites tend to have a higher percentage of mobile referrals than desktop referrals.
If you are on WordPress, there are some options you can take immediately. There are several plugins that will convert your website into a mobile friendly site. Simply install the plugin and it will deliver a mobile friendly experience. The downside to these plugins is customization. Your mobile site will not match your site branding. It could be a good intermediate as you decide how to transition to mobile.
The best solution is to develop a mobile friendly responsive website for your business. A responsive site will maintain your site’s branding and marketing message on all devices. It will use the same information, therefore giving your mobile user and your desktop user the same experience.
The worst solution is to create a stripped down version of your website to deliver to mobile users. They are looking for and deserve to have access to all of your great content, even if they are on a phone.
I am a firm believer in the value of WordPress to a small business. It is a simple to use content management system that will allow you to update and modify your site content. It powers nearly 25% of all websites on the internet and is a powerful tool for small business.
The most secure, stable and robust WordPress themes you can use are built on the Genesis Framework. This provides you with an incredibly stable platform upon which to build your business. It is the framework that sits on top of WordPress to provide your site with the support and structure to meet your business needs.
There are numerous free and premium StudioPress themes that will provide your site with the mobile friendly experience and the professional design you deserve. The StudioPress themes are mobile ready by using responsive design code. This will make sure your site looks great on the desktop, tablet or phone.
Making sure your website is mobile friendly will help your site traffic, conversion and lead generation. It will lower your bounce rate and improve your consumer experience.
What has been your experience? Are you mobile ready? What impact did it have on your site when you made the switch? Share you experience in the comments below.
We have written a lot about different SEO tools that will help you get found online. They are all excellent. But what I am excited about is the tool that I have recently discovered. Raven Tools!
The last post talked about what you need to do get your your website found. We looked at the absolute minimum set of tools you need to be successful with online search.
The problem with all of these tools is that they are all over the place. You have so much data in so many places that it makes it difficult to understand. Unless you are a spreadsheet guru, you will always have difficulty using so much data scattered among so many sources.
It is into this space that RavenTools enters. They have developed a series of tools that brings all of your data under one roof. Your Google Analytics, Adwords, Keyword Research, Social Media, etc are all accessible from one dashboard. You can simply scroll through your data, run reports, compare metrics and really begin to see what is and what is not working for your website.
It really is the tool that I will use exclusively going forward. It makes the process of data mining and research so much more effective. And I don’t know about you, but time is one thing I NEED to manage better. And Raven Tools is helping me.
Watch and see what Raven does for you . . .
Are you interested? Would you like to have this kind of information at your disposal?
I’m going to be making it possible for you to use this amazing tool, but here’s what you have to do. In the comments below, answer this question. Everyone who answers it will have an opportunity to get access to RavenTools for their business.
Ready?
What are you currently using for search optimization? How effective is it for you? Are you getting traffic and qualified leads? Explain what your doing in the comments. . . Go!
You have a website. Now What?
A website without traffic is doing your business no good. Getting your website found is critical if you want to grow and build your online presence.
If you follow this blog, you should know that getting found online is a very important topic. We’ve talked about the basics and tools that will help you get found for a long time. We even put together a free email course to help small businesses get an understanding of the basics of SEO so they could get their website found.
As a small business owner, finding the time to grow your business can be difficulty. If your like the majority of small business owners, you probably wear a lot of hats and it takes a lot of time.
What I want to do is help you maximize your time and become more effective with your website. I want to help you find the tools and resources that will make getting found less difficult.
There are plenty of wonderful tools available to do quality SEO. Some are free, while others are not. What I want to do is identify the essential pieces of the puzzle and give you some tools or tips to help you do the basics of SEO so your website starts to show in search results.
The first and most important tool is basic web analytics. Analytics provide you with data about visitors to your site. It identifies the keywords used to get to your site, the pages visited, the number of visits per day, etc. It is a significant piece of the puzzle because it tells what is happening on your website.
When you review and track your analytics, you should be able to find trends that work. What are the keywords that bring visitors? What pages seem to be the most active? Do visitors stay on the site and read content or vanish after the first page?
Answers to these questions can be found while studying your analytic data. You have several tools at your disposal.
Google Analytics: A free tool that keeps track of traffic. It requires a google account and site ownership verification. By placing a small piece of code on your site, Google begins to track your visitors.
AWStats: Most web hosts provide Awstats for free. Access your sites cPanel and open the Awstates panel. This data is collected directly from server logs. It is an excellent source of data that will help you know what to do to improve your sites performance in search.
You need to be able to research keywords to find available terms that you can optimize for. I tell people that not doing keyword research is link trying to shoot at a target after being spun around three times with a blindfold on. You may hit something, but your probably going to miss your target.
Don’t write post, create pages and generate content blind. Get some information to know how you should phrase your post and what terms are getting searched. Think long-tail instead of short-tail. In other words, instead of trying to optimize for “Widgets,” optimize for “brown widgets that bounce.” The second is a long-tail term that would have less competition. The lower competition terms are easier to rank for.
If your not using Google’s Adword Keyword tool, your missing out on a free tool for research. If you want to get found online, research for terms that have potential.
Social Media is a powerful tool in online marketing. Regardless of the kind of business you run, you have a great resource of potential customers or clients on various Social Media networks. In order for your website to get found online, you must be engaged in Social Media. This is a fairly new trend in search. Google and Bing, the two major search engines, are tied into social media. Google has its social network Google Plus and Bing is the search engine for Facebook.
The reason this is important is because it provides search engines with a type of proof for a page. When people begin to share content online through social networks, search engines begin to identify pages that are important. The more it is shared the more important. These pages begin to get ranked and less engaged content get pushed to the bottom of the heap.
Regardless of the reason you use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Pinterest, you need to be actively involved sharing your content and engaging with others. This leads to links, comments, shares and increased engagement.
It is the engagement that all website owners want. The engaged audience is one who has bought into who you are and what you do. They listen, respond, share your content. They are the people who buy what you sell.
Social Media monitoring is critical as you build your online presence through search.
As a small business owner, you need SEO to be streamlined, manageable. It needs to be something that you can do in a shorter period of time and get good results.
The problem is that these necessary tasks are generally disconnected. You have to go from one to the other. Copy/Paste information so you can compare. Generate spreadsheets to keep track of all the information. It can become so overwhelming, that many small businesses stop working about SEO and hope for the best.
It’s hard.
But we need a way to streamline the process to make it easier for small businesses to get their websites found in search. . . you need a tool. You need Thor’s Hammer. A tool that is powerful and strong and something that only you can use.
So, here’s your homework. Anser the following question in the comments below: What have you been doing to get your website found online? Is it working? If yes, why? If no, why not?
A business without a mobile responsive website is missing opportunities. With more and more people finding online commerce more convenient and less expensive than traditional forms of commerce, any business owner worth his salt is trying to find a way online.
Having an established online presence is essential to engaging the new generation of consumers who actually prefer to be sold to online and through their mobile devices. These are the same people who will TiVo through commercials on a TV show or simply switch a radio station once it begins playing commercials. However, they will respond enthusiastically to coupons from a QR code or location-based sales pitches on their smart phones.
Having an established online presence is essential to engaging the new generation of consumers who actually prefer to be sold to online and through their mobile devices.
The crux of this online presence should be your mobile website. This will be the landing page that will provide information and commerce for your business. Below are just a few of the reasons that you should invest in a mobile website.
Customers who find your website online are much more likely to purchase from you.
According to many independent surveys, consumers to access a website online are up to 90% more likely to make a purchase or visit a store front than a consumer who accesses a website from a desktop PC.
This makes sense; when an individual accesses a website from a mobile device, that individual is most likely outdoors on the move searching for an answer to a particular problem.
In order to take advantage of these impulse buyers, you must have a mobile website that is ready to go.
Mobile websites give the best ROI of any marketing tool today. Contrary to popular belief, the creation and maintenance of a mobile website is very inexpensive. Because sales can be made directly from a mobile website, it pays for itself much more quickly than does advertising your products and services on television or radio.
Mobile websites have virtually no maintenance costs after the initial design and web hosting fees.
Mobile websites provide a forum for customers to feel personally attached to a business.
You will be viewed as a part of the life of a consumer rather than a business that is looking to sell a product to a consumer.
If you are able to entice your customers to opt in to a location based coupon service or an alert system that directs them to your mobile website, they will likely receive your updates happily rather than viewing them as spam or hard-sell advertising.
This phenomenon is based upon the fact that people perceive any information that comes to them through their personal devices as being more personal to them. You will be viewed as a part of the life of a consumer rather than a business that is looking to sell a product to a consumer.
The mobile website is the missing link between the online and off-line connectivity of your business and the customer.
In order to stay at top of mind of your customer base, you must have a ubiquitous presence in their lives. If you have a desktop website but no mobile website, it is very likely that your customer will completely forget your sales pitch on his way from the PC to the car.
However, if you have a mobile website, your customer is carrying you with him at all times. Your customers will literally not be able to get away from you, and contrary to what you might believe, they will actually thank you for this type of service with their continued, loyal business.
A business that is set to grow and expand their business needs to be where their customers are. The number of mobile devices, tablets and phones, in use by your customers is soon to surpass the number of desktop users.
If you put all your eggs in your “regular website” you will be missing out on the future. When your customer walks into your store, they will have phone in hand. They will be looking at your competitors and comparing prices. If they cannot also access your site while in your competitors store, you miss out on the opportunity to influence buying decisions.
A mobile website is the “next big thing” for small businesses. Shout off in the comments below. Do you agree? Do you have a mobile website?
Of all the content management systems available, WordPress has to be one of the best options. In fact, it’s incredibly popular for small business owners who want a nice looking website that’s SEO friendly. Here are some of the top reasons why should use WordPress and the benefits it offers.
First of all, this platform is extremely easy to use. Even if you have little to no programming experience, you can conveniently publish content. Getting set up is a breeze and you have access to a knowledgeable technical support staff in case you need help. If you need to go back and edit content, this can also be done without any hassle. Installing a theme can be done with a click of a button and can be changed just as easily if you want a different look later on. This makes it possible to consistently update a website without having to jump through a bunch of hoops in the process.
Another advantage of using WordPress is the huge list of plugins that are available for free. Since this is an open source platform, there are countless programmers and software developers that are continually adding new plugins. For example, there are social share button plugins, widgets, an XML sitemap etc. This means that you can quickly install new plugins or delete existing ones as needed. As a result, you can customize your website so that it suits your needs and the needs of visitors.
Besides this, WordPress is ideal for users who are concerned with search engine optimization and who want to climb search engine rankings. In fact, this platform comes with multiple SEO features that are already built in. There is also a fairly extensive list of SEO plugins that you can install that will give your website a boost in the search rankings. Since SEO has become increasingly important for driving traffic to a website, WordPress can be your ticket to reaching your intended audience.
In addition, this is one of the more cost effective options for building a website. Due to the fact that most hosting options can incorporate the WordPress platform for under $100 annually, you won’t have to spend a fortune.
There are many cost effective benefits to using WordPress for you small business. What are some of the reasons you use WordPress? Shout off in the comments below.
Are you ready to tackle your business’s next internet marketing campaign? With the constantly changing nature of the internet, and the tools used to market on it, any online marketing campaign can prove a daunting task for even experienced marketers. But don’t let that discourage you. There are plenty of tools available that will help you make your next campaign a successful one.
The following five tools will allow you to build, create, socialize, analyze, and report on all facets of internet marketing. Using them in tandem can give you a superior overview of any marketing campaign. Even better: all the software comes with a free trial, so you can get an idea of how they can work for you without laying out a dime.
An internet marketing campaign does your business no good if you can’t keep track of its effectiveness. If you’re running just one type of campaign, that might not be a problem. But as you start to combine social media, SEO, link building, and PPC into a cohesive strategy, you might find it difficult to determine how these facets interact with one another. Few tools allow for monitoring across these different types of campaigns.
Raven Tools is one such application. It provides easy management for link building and PPC campaigns, including custom reports based on the criteria that matters most to your specific business. In addition, it provides a number of research tools, such as keyword rankings and social media monitoring terms, which can point you in the right direction.
The ability to research, monitor, analyze, and report is the key to a free-flowing, adaptable marketing campaign. Raven provides those for all facets of online marketing.
Social media has become a backbone of many small business marketing campaigns. With natural audiences already using social networking tools, businesses can insert themselves into the conversation, winning new customers along the way. Social might be a more natural means of marketing than traditional ad campaigns, but it still needs to be managed and tracked. With all the social media outlets available, that can become a burden for any organization.
Hootsuite’s social media management tools brings all major social media outlets under a single umbrella. No more using multiple browser tabs to monitor Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Foursquare, and the myriad other sites. Hootsuite lets you manage the message you spread through these channels, review correspondence with customers and prospects, and analyzes the campaigns you run. It even lets you schedule messages, so you can let people hear it when they’ll be most receptive.
Since social media marketing is a relatively new aspect of internet marketing, it is volatile territory. What works now might not work tomorrow. HootSuite’s management tools allow companies to make quick adjustments to their social campaigns, so when the environment changes so can your company.
While large corporations can afford voluminous accounting departments, small businesses have no such luxury. Unfortunately, accounting for small businesses is just as important, and perhaps more important, than accounting for large corporations. How can small businesses keep up? With efficient web-based tools that provide all the essential elements of accounting, leaving the heavy features for the corporations that need it.
QuickBooks, the Intuit accounting software, has long been a business standard. Even small businesses have regularly purchased it and used it to manage invoices, payroll, and other accounting needs. Now Intuit is offering QuickBooks as a web-based, subscription program. It provides the nitty gritty that any small business needs.
No one wants to spend a lot of money to manage their money. The web-based QuickBooks option lets businesses control that cost. Instead of spending multiple hundreds of dollars, up front, on QuickBooks software, small businesses can pay a limited monthly fee to get all the features crucial to their accounting needs.
Regular readers of the Media317 blog knows Alan’s affinity for WordPress content management software. At the attractive price of free, and with a large community for support, WordPress has become the industry standard. As if the software itself wasn’t enough for any small business’s content publishing needs, WordPress is also host to hundreds of custom plug-ins, many of which prove helpful for small business websites and blogs.
Thankfully, Alan has a whole category of useful WordPress articles. Check them out to get an idea of how you can make WordPress work for your specific business.
Much as we might wish, merely installing a content management system does not make it any easier to actually create the content. Further to our dismay, quality content is not easy to come by. There are many variables to take into consideration, and missing even one element can jettison an otherwise well planned content marketing campaign. If only there were a tool that let businesses optimize the content they publish.
Apparently hearing that call from small businesses everywhere, Copyblogger Media has released software that allows small businesses to create content that works. Scribe is one of the most powerful content creation tools available today. It not only helps optimize for SEO purposes, but also has tools that optimize for social purposes. By incorporating research into what gets shared and liked in social media channels, Scribe lets businesses create well-rounded content that will appeal to all types of readers.
