How long does a website design last?

August 18, 2010 – 9:11 am | Posted in Web Strategy

This is a question we get asked quite often… “After I have a site designed, how long does that design last?”.

Unfortunately there is not an exact answer to this question that would apply to every website. The length of time that a design can last before becoming outdated varies slightly between different industries. The biggest factors that determine what makes a site look fresh versus outdated, is what is going on in the design industry.

When web 2.0 first became the buzz word, we started noticing a shift in design. Sites started having rounded edges, gradient or shiny graphics, and seemed to take more of an artistic approach than sites before this movement.  Another big change we have seen started in 2007ish, when computer monitors started getting larger. The design community no longer created for a small screen (800×600 resolution), but we started seeing sites designed for larger monitors – and so websites began getting wider to take up more screen space (now most sites are designed for 1024×768).

As designers continue to push the envelope and create unique and interesting sites, coding standards change to make better use of social media, mobile devices and new browsers. And as more and more companies finally get online, the design world continues to shift its way of thinking regarding what can be done with website design.

Because of these changes, most websites do have an expiration date – or a point in which the site starts to look old or outdated. For most professional service companies, the average life span of a design is 3-5 years. Over the last 5 years, that life span has been shortened due to social media, larger monitors, etc. – which have all caused a major change in the way we design. But for most clients, we tell them to expect their site to last 3-5 years before they will need an updated design.

If your site is older than 3-5 years, now might be the time to discuss a site revamp or a brand new design with your web designer. If your audience has the perception that you have an “old” site, then that leaves them doubting the success of your company and they are likely to move on to someone who looks current and “with the program”.

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Posted by Angela Nielsen | Print This Post | Email This Post | 158 views | Comments (0)

Statistics Tools for Your WordPress Blog

August 11, 2010 – 1:17 pm | Posted in Blogging Basics, Web Strategy

In Part 7 of our blog series “7 Mistakes Website Owners Make and How to Avoid Them”, we discussed the importance of reviewing your website statistics:

“It is important that you review these statistics every month, and compare month to month whether or not your site is improving, remaining the same, or falling behind. You should be paying special attention to the number of unique visitors to your website, how many total visits those visitors made, where they came from to find you, and where they went after they left. By knowing how many people came to your website on a monthly basis, you are more easily able to engage whether new marketing strategies are bringing more traffic to your website or not.”

This is equally important to have in mind when it comes to your blog. If your blog is a part of your website, you might think that reviewing your general website statistics is enough. However, a blog works differently than a website, so having a separate analytics tool for the blog could turn out to be really valuable when it comes to gathering information about your blog readers and their behavior. The dynamic quality of a blog should invite visitors to return, if not on a daily basis, then at least on a weekly.

Below are a couple of plugins that will help you keep track of the readers of your WordPress blog.

Ultimate Google Analytics
Ultimate Google Analytics automatically adds Google Analytics to your blog. To use this plugin, you need a Google Analytics account, which can be created for free here.

Stat Counter WordPress Plugin
The Stat Counter plugin adds an extensive statistics tool to your blog. To use it, you will need a Stat Counter account, which can be created for free here.

WordPress.com Stats
WordPress.com Stats uses the built-in statistics function that comes with a WordPress.com blog, and adds it to your self-hosted WordPress blog. To use it, you will need a WordPress.com API key, which you can get for free here.

One Lily offers installation and setup of these plugins. If you’re interested in these or any of our other blog services, just ask!

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Posted by Sanna B. Coates | Print This Post | Email This Post | 124 views | Comments (0)

Blogging Basics – Keeping Your Blog Active

July 28, 2010 – 10:54 am | Posted in Blogging Basics, Web Strategy

One of the biggest challenges your blog faces is staying active. When creating a blog is so easy to do that everyone and their grandma has one, what leaves many blogs abandoned by their owners is the pressure of constant updating.

Let’s face it – blogging takes some work. It’s sort of like having a pet – it needs to be fed and loved, or chances are you won’t have a pet for very long.

So what can you do to keep your blog from becoming yet another black hole in cyberspace? Here are some suggestions.

1. Make blogging a habit.
If you find it hard making time for blogging, write it into your schedule. Let’s say Tuesday mornings are usually slow at work – take this time every week to write a blog post. This way, you have the rest of the week to come up with a subject, and your readers know when they have something new to look forward to.

2. Update regularly.
You don’t have to write every day, but if you blog less often than once a week, chances are your readers will go elsewhere.

3. Read other blogs.
Are you having a hard time coming up with subjects for blog posts? Read other blogs in your field and join in on the discussion. Whether you agree or disagree with other blog writers’ posts – write responses in your own blog.

4. Have a couple of posts ready before your blog goes live.
If you are one of those people that don’t perform well under pressure, this takes away some of the initial stress about blogging. Writing a few posts that don’t get immediately published is a good way to find your writing style and pace. It also gives you something to show your readers right away, once you decide to announce the blog to the world.

5. Invest in your blog.
If you use one of the many free blogging platforms out there, chances are no one will get hurt if you suddenly get lazy and stop blogging. But with a self-hosted blog where you pay for hosting, you actually have something to lose by not blogging. Paying a small fee for having your blog up and running – usually no more than $10/month – is more likely to keep you on top of your blogging.

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Posted by Sanna B. Coates | Print This Post | Email This Post | 175 views | Comments (0)

Get your own .CO domain!

July 26, 2010 – 9:06 am | Posted in Web Strategy

A New Domain Extension “.CO” Launched Last Week

How difficult was it for you to find a good domain name when you started your company? With the explosion of the web, landing a solid .com address is now more difficult than ever before. What do you do when you can’t find the domain equivalent of your company name?

Until now, many have had to purchase what is considered by many a “sub-par” domain, like .net, .org, or even .biz. While there is a place for these extensions, they don’t seem to have taken off as well with the consumers, and are often forgotten. Worse yet, companies have had to add additional words to their company name in order to get a .com address, turning XYZ Media into TheXYZMediaWebsite.com for example. This makes the domain even more difficult for a potential customer to remember.

Last week a new domain extension was unveiled to the public – the .CO domain. This new extension is already generating a ton of media buzz! The idea is that we see a .co domain meaning “company”, “corporation”, or “commerce”. Making it more memorable than some of the other domain extensions. Twitter has already purchased T.CO and Overstock reportedly purchased O.CO for over $350,000.

The .CO domain bring a whole new opportunity for company owners and entrepreneurs to be able to purchase great domains. It may take a bit for the .CO phenomenon to catch everywhere, but it will catch. So don’t let your .CO get purchased by someone else, make sure you reserve yours today. There are already over 320,000 .CO domains registered!

The .CO domain is more pricey than a traditional domain, so be prepared to pay bigger bucks on registration. Networks Solutions and Register.com are selling their .CO domains for $40/year as of this post. You can purchase your .CO here for only $30/year.

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Posted by Angela Nielsen | Print This Post | Email This Post | 211 views | Comments (0)

You want more website traffic?

July 22, 2010 – 11:12 am | Posted in Blogging Basics, Web Strategy

The most common complaint I hear from website owners is that they aren’t getting enough traffic to their website. More traffic = more business… but how can you increase your traffic?

1. Pay Per Click Campaigns
While setting up a pay per click campaign may not be right for everyone, most website owners usually see an immediate increase in the number of unique visitors that come to their website. Pay per click campaigns can be a quick way to spike your numbers if you are launching a new product, offering a special, or just simply need more site traffic.

The premise of a pay per click campaign is that you buy one or more key phrases that your target audience would likely type in to the search engines to find your product or service. Your listing would then show up in the sponsored listings, usually at the top of the search engine results page. Each time your link is clicked on, you are charged the “cost per click” that you bid for that particular key phrase.

Now some think you have to have large budgets for this to be successful. We have clients that set a daily budget of $50, and some that set a daily budget of $500. You set a budget, so that after your max daily spend has been reached, your campaign stops for the rest of the day. You can also pause your campaign on weekends, or any other days you desire.

Pay per click is a quick way to increase the amount of site traffic you are receiving, and does not have to be expensive.

2. Social Media Marketing

Another way to increase your site traffic is to get involved in social media marketing. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are 3 excellent places to spend some time participating in discussions, providing your comments and expertise to others’ questions, and discussing the current happenings at your company.

Developing a following on social media can take some time, but with patience, you can develop a group of loyal people that will participate in discussions, share their opinions, and forward your information along to their own social networks. The rule of thumb in social media however – NEVER SELL. Don’t push your product or service, educate others about it. If someone smells a “sell”, they will likely move on.

While there is little monetary expense involved with marketing in the social media world, there is the trade off of time. So before diving in and spending all day trying to keep up with all the networks, set a time limit for yourself. Many of our clients spent 30-60 minutes per day in their social media networks. Some at one time, some spend 5 minutes several times a day. Decide what works best for you, and then get involved.

3. Start Blogging!

One of the best ways to get increased traffic to your website is to start blogging. Blogging is much easier than you may think, and doesn’t require a huge investment of time. If you’re scratching your head because you aren’t sure what a blog is – you’re in luck – you’re reading our blog right now! In it’s simplest form, a blog is like an online journal. Each entry has a title and a date, and in most cases gets assigned to a category with similar content of other posts you’ve written.

Search engines LOVE blogs, and will send search engine traffic to your blog faster than the pages of your website. The clients that we have built blogs for have seen a 10-30% increase in traffic in as little as 60 days. Some have doubled their site traffic in 6-9 months!

You can go one of two directions when building a blog. You can use a free service to create a blog from a theme or template provided by the blog company (like WordPress). This if the fastest way to get going with a blog. The main 2 downsides are a) your blog address is not within your own domain, it resides as a completely separate website – therefore it is not going to help increase your main sites’ rankings and b) these free blogs typically will not match your own brand, so you will have a disconnect with your site visitor on look and feel. The alternative is to have a blog installed within your domain and fully customized to match your existing website. This does cost more upfront, but has the best long-term benefit to you and your main website.

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Posted by Angela Nielsen | Print This Post | Email This Post | 154 views | Comments (0)

Vote For Angela in the 2010 StartupNation Leading Moms in Business Competition

July 1, 2010 – 4:55 pm | Posted in In The News

Vote for Angela Nielsen to be named one of the top 200 Moms in Business from StartupNation!

Contest Bio…

Angela is the wife of a United States Marine. Knowing that his career moves their family all over the country every few years, she wanted a business she could run from home, and in 2000 decided to begin her own little web shop. She is a natural designer and loves color, but 10 years ago could barely check email. She taught herself everything she knows about web and graphic design.

In 2003 she started her family, and now has 4 children. Her son Damian is 7, daughter Kadence 5, daughter Bianca 3 and her “baby” Addison is 2. She kept all her children home with her until they were 1 and walking, then sent them off to daycare to socialize with others.

Her business has taken off and she now has an office for her staff of 5, but still works from home 3-4 days per week so she can enjoy her children. Her company has grown to include over 200 existing clients, having built over 400 websites.

Her company produces corporate identity packages, website development, blog services and training, print collateral, product packaging and more. In addition to her main company Angela has also partnered with others and has created three additional divisions of One Lily; Zenith Creative Group, Silver Fern Web Design and Jarupa. Angela is a guest expert on teleclasses and has been interviewed for both radio and print on numerous occasions.

Angela is active in her local BNI Chapter (currently serving on the Membership Committee as well as being the Education Coordinator and Event Coordinator), she is also active in her local Chamber of Commerce. She also helped create the PTO (and served as President) at the Montessori school her children used to attend.

Angela has won over 30 awards for her design work, including Site of the Month in January 2004, Webmaster of the Year 2004-05, VIP Woman of the Year from the National Association of Professional Women 2009, Silver Davey Award in 2009, Hermes Award in 2010 and was a Finalist for an American Business Award from the Stevie Awards in 2010.

Competition ends in October – so vote often!


Posted by Angela Nielsen | Print This Post | Email This Post | 197 views | Comments (0)

7 Mistakes Website Owners Make, And How To Avoid Them (Part 7 of 7)

May 27, 2010 – 4:08 pm | Posted in 7 Mistakes Website Owners Make, Web Strategy

Mistake 7: Not reviewing your website statistics.

The most fatal mistake that a website owner can make is to not review, or even understand the performance of their website. Nearly every hosting company out there provides some sort of web analytics tool. And if they do not, Google Analytics can be added to any website and offers great information about the activity of your website.

It is important that you review these statistics every month, and compare month to month whether or not your site is improving, remaining the same, or falling behind. You should be paying special attention to the number of unique visitors to your website, how many total visits those visitors made, where they came from to find you, and where they went after they left. By knowing how many people came to your website on a monthly basis, you are more easily able to engage whether new marketing strategies are bringing more traffic to your website or not.

It is also equally important to know how many return visits each person is averaging. If you had 500 visits by 500 visitors, that tells you that nobody ever came back. If you had 500 visitors and they visited 1,500 times, then on average your visitors came back 3 times to your website. This is very important information and tells you that your visitors are making return visits on a regular basis. This takes us back to Mistake 3, and making sure you are touching your visitors multiple times. If they are coming back to your site multiple times, make sure you have fresh content to capture their interests.

Lastly, paying attention to where they came from, and where they go after visiting your website can provide a lot of valuable information. If you are paying to be listed in link directories, and that site doesn’t show up anywhere in your stats, then stop paying to be listed! If however you are thinking of cancelling a pay-for-placement arrangement but you find that the site is the number one referral source for traffic to your site, then you obviously wouldn’t want to stop that service. By knowing if they found you from a search engine, and what search engine they found you from, you can also tweak your site content and search engine strategies to take advantage of this new information.

In conclusion, no modern business today can afford to go without a website presence. With that effort, it’s vital to get the maximum return on your investment. By avoiding the top 7 mistakes listed above, you can count on your website performing far better than the majority of websites out there – the ones that caused us to compile this list in the first place!

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Posted by Angela Nielsen | Print This Post | Email This Post | 292 views | Comments (0)

Rework – 37 Signals

May 26, 2010 – 8:32 am | Posted in Recommended Reading

From Amazon…

This book will make you uncomfortable.

Depending on what you do all day, it might make you extremely uncomfortable.

That’s a very good thing, because you deserve it. We all do.

Jason and David have broken all the rules and won. Again and again they’ve demonstrated that the regular way isn’t necessarily the right way. They just don’t say it, they do it. And they do it better than just about anyone has any right to expect.

This book is short, fast, sharp and ready to make a difference. It takes no prisoners, spares no quarter, and gives you no place to hide, all at the same time.

There, my review is almost as long as the first chapter of the book. I can’t imagine what possible excuse you can dream up for not buying this book for every single person you work with, right now.

Stop reading the review. Buy the book. –Seth Godin

I don’t remember putting this book on pre-order with Amazon, in fact I’ve only ever pre-ordered about 3 books in my life. But, one day I got an email that my pre-ordered copy of Rework was being shipped to me. I was too busy to even go look it up, and forgot about it. A few days later, I got the book in the mail. The book then sat tucked away in my briefcase for a few weeks as I had no real interest in reading it because I didn’t even remember ordering it. Then I found myself at a conference late one evening with nothing to do, and I remembered the book in my briefcase. I picked it up, glanced it over and started reading. I COULD NOT PUT IT DOWN. I have read tons of business books, but none that take the approach that 37 Signals took when writing their book. It was funny, it was frightening… in some sections I sat shaking my head in agreement as they were discussing something I had always known or done their way… and in other cases I sat in disbelief that things could be done the way they say. This book really takes the “crap” out and gives you their story, their experience, and their recommendations to getting things done in business. I have recommended this book to more people than I can remember at this point, and will certainly read it more than once! Whether you agree with all their suggestions or not – there is no doubt you will take away some invaluable information that you can apply to your business immediately.

Buy this book at Amazon.

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Posted by Angela Nielsen | Print This Post | Email This Post | 248 views | Comments (0)

Ten Free SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Tips

May 23, 2010 – 12:01 pm | Posted in Web Strategy

Found a great top 10 list for search engine optimization today – very easy to understand and really gives you the ability to understand the basics of SEO.

1.   Build sites in html or another simple language the search engine spiders can read. If your webmaster or ad agency wants to build a cool Flash website with no attention to search engine optimization, I recommend you find a new webmaster or ad agency. Google and the search engines can’t always read Flash. (Note – this is slowly changing, Google announced in June 2008 that they are able to decipher some of the Flash code)

2.   “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” Matt Cutts, a Google Engineer and search expert, recommends adding a page of content to your website each day (or every week) to keep the website strong in the eyes of the search engines. You will definitely be rewarded for adding fresh relevant content.

3.   Make sure your site has a “site map,” a page with links to all of the most important pages on your site. The search engine spiders will look for the words ”site map” on any page they land on and follow the links to read and index all of the words on all of the pages on your site.

4.   Have a strong on-site link strategy. Try to name main pages of your site with important keyword phrases and use these phrases as navigational links and activated links from other pages on the site to these important pages.

5.   Add meta tags to each page on your site. The meta tag “title” is important to search engine results and it should include up to 12 words, the most important one to two keyword phrases and either the company name or website at the end of the title.

6.   The meta tag “description” should be 25 to 35 words giving a short, one to two sentence summary of what’s on the page. Include a call to action as this often shows in search results. The meta “keyword” tag can include 12 keyword phrases, including the company name/website. Do not repeat any single word more than four times.

7.   Header tags are also very valuable for search engine optimization The H1 tag forms a headline on the page and tells Google the words in the tag are important. It should be three to six words, and form the title of the page. Include main keyword phrase in this tag. H2 tags are the subheadings on a page and additional section headers. The H2 tags can be 6 to 12 words long and they should include secondary phrases in these tags.

8.   Every image and hyperlink on a page (and there are typically many) offer an opportunity to introduce keywords to the page. Add image names and alt-text. Naming images on your website and including the “alt tags” helps search engines because the engines can’t “read” pictures, but they can read the names of pictures, links and the alt-tags.

9.   Target a keyword density of approximately 5 percent. Keyword density is the ratio of the number of occurrences of a particular keyword or phrase to the total number of words in a page.

10.   You can break up a keyword phrase. Using best health insurance coverage as the example, separate keywords with a period. For example: It’s not always easy to find the best health insurance. Coverage can vary depending on the provider.

Taken from www.10freeseotips.com

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Posted by Angela Nielsen | Print This Post | Email This Post | 191 views | Comments (0)

7 Mistakes Website Owners Make, And How To Avoid Them (Part 6 of 7)

May 20, 2010 – 9:02 am | Posted in 7 Mistakes Website Owners Make, Web Strategy

Mistake 6: Taking too long to respond to inquiries, or not following up at all.

It’s happened to all of us. We visit a website, find something interesting, and email the company for some additional information. Then you get the dreaded thank you page, “Thank you for requesting more information from ABC Company. We will respond to your inquiry within 72 hours”. WHAT? In three days time we’ve moved on and already forgotten what it was that caught our interest to begin with. Website owners must understand that people want answers, and they want them now.

Make it your mission to respond to all inquiries from your website within 24 hours, and within 1-2 hours during the business day. If you are not able to do this, hire someone that can help you with this task. Getting an email from a site visitor is like having a bite on the end of your fishing line. They are interested, they want more information. But the longer you wait to respond to them, the more time you allow them to find their answer somewhere else.

Similarly, pay special attention to the voice mails you receive. The same rules apply to your phone messages as to your email messages. People want to know something, now – so give them what they want. Call them back the same day, or at a minimum, the next working day.

And make sure you do follow up. Worse than a slow response, is no response at all. It’s amazing the number of website owners that don’t even follow up on the emails and phone calls they have received. I’m not sure what the mentality is that it’s not important to follow up with any contact you receive, but you have to make sure you’re not following that same pattern. Even if all that a visitor said was a nice comment on the site design, thank them for taking the time to write you. The whole point of having a website is to create an impression, so it’s vital that you do everything to support that positive impression.

………………………………………………………..

Stay tuned next week for Mistake 7: Not reviewing your website statistics.
See Mistake Mistake 5: Too much web copy.

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Posted by Angela Nielsen | Print This Post | Email This Post | 188 views | Comments (0)