Planning to redesign your web site? Always good to hear! Here are a few tips for improving your web site, even on a limited budget.

1. Keep your logo in the top left corner, linked to the main url.

It seems so simple. But there are still many sites that do not practice this. More and more usability and user-preference studies are showing that visitors expect your logo (or company title) to be in the top left hand corner. If your brand is the first thing the visitor sees, they understand where they are from the beginning. The brand then leads the visitor into your core content and coaxes them through the web site in a natural reading flow: top-to-bottom, left-to-right.

2. Develop a clear subheading for the top of your home page.

By subheading, I mean a short, summarized description about your business. Think about your specialty, your industry focus, and state it. I recommend including this in plain text (not a graphic) somewhere in your heading – preferably as the first line of text in your code following your logo. A good placement is in the top right corner or beneath your main navigation menu. What does this do? It tells a human visitor right away what the web site is about – so they know they found the right business for their needs and are interested in reading further; it gives the search engines some strong key phrase food.

Here is an example of a strong subheading:
Custom Window Dressing Services for Hotels and Universities

3. Include geographical words whenever applicable.

If you are focused on serving a specific city, state, country, or any region, you should mention it. This will help fine tune the content in your web site and better feed the right information to search engines. In turn, you will receive more targeted visitors.

Here is an example of a good subheading when location is brought into the picture:
Austin Texas Corporate Litigation Services
Austin Furniture Restoration Services

Location can also be nicely incorporated in contact information. Which brings us to #4…

4. Post your contact info in highly visible spots.

Customers tend to get very frustrated when they can’t find your phone number or email address. They have a question, but they have to dig around for several minutes to ask you? Don’t count on that level of patience. Most visitors leave a site within a few of seconds if they don’t see what they want. Great places to include your key contact info:

• in the top right corner of your web page heading
• in a horizontal divider bar beside your menu links
• repeated within the content of your home page and other pages
• in a colorful, eye-catching box in your content or in a left hand side bar
• repeated in the footer near your copyright statement
  

Be on the look out for that renewal invoice from your domain name registration provider (registrar). Sure, we all miss a bill sometimes, but forgetting about your domain name could end up being more costly than you might realize.
These days, there are a growing number of companies that specialize in buying up domain names. Sometimes they provide a “back ordering” service to consumers, and sometimes they just purchase the domains as a broker and attempt to resell them to their previous owners or other interested parties. The common practice is that an automated program will peruse the Internet’s WHOIS records for soon-to-expire domain names, and as soon as a name is available for registration again, it is snapped up like an unsuspecting fish in a bear-ridden stream.

Remember, only one party in the entire World Wide Web can own a certain domain name. If you lose yours, and someone else gets it, you might be forced to rethink your name and register something completely different. That means changing your web site address, changing your email addresses, and reprinting business cards.

The best way to prevent this is to stay on top of your registration bill and know exactly when your domain name is due for renewal. Pay it up in advance, maybe even for several years at a time.

Also, know your registrar (for example, SiteReserve.com). Some registration providers have some sneaky marketing tactics that confuse domain owners into transferring services to them or signing up for new domains with different extensions. For example, one company sends out “official” looking letters with an urgent message about “securing” a domain that is conveniently similar to one you already own – but with a .us or .biz extension.

If you did forget and suddenly realize that your web site is offline because the domain name recently expired, don’t panic just yet. There is typically a grace period – usually about 20 to 30 days – where the domain is “on hold” for the current owner, giving you a chance to renew it at your usual rate.

But, be quick about that renewal! You really don’t want your domain name to go into the next phase: “redemption period”. This is the stage when your domain name has already been deleted out of your registrar’s database, and now it is out their in limbo-land. While you can still acquire it at this point, it is going to be expensive, often around $100 or more with the included “redemption fees”. This phase is typically about 40 days.

If you find yourself in a real pickle – maybe you went on an African Safari and forgot to come back to work for a few months – and your domain name was indeed snatched by a back ordering robot, there might still be hope.

Did you trademark your name? Is your domain name an obvious representation of your trademarked or copyrighted business? Try contacting the registrar responsible for the latest domain record (do a WHOIS search to find out the sponsoring registrar and their email address), and explain that you need to acquire your trademarked domain name back. Sometimes they are able to release the domain name and you can then register it in your name again. But there are most likely more than one domain brokerage waiting in the wings, so you may need to make 2 or 3 of these requests to different registrars before you have a chance to place the order.

It’s hard to believe another year has passed. Time seems to slip away, leaving us standing at the edge of 2008, thinking about what could have been better, or what could have been worse. It’s a time where everybody makes resolutions to better themselves, and they often neglect their web sites. Your web site is a window to the entire world! Surely it could stand to lose a few pounds, quit smoking, eat healthier, or take up a new hobby?

1. “I will update my web site’s informational content.”

Stop procrastinating and get your web site current! (After you finish reading the post, though) If you have a music related site and your Top of The Radio section includes MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice, your visitor might be inclined to seek information elsewhere. Maybe a visitor reads an old mailing address on your website and decides to make an impromptu visit, only to find an empty lease space.

Updating the information on your website should take a couple of hours on average. Even if it takes a whole day, it’s like cleaning the attic, nobody likes to do it, but it needs to get done. That’s just one day in your 365. If you really don’t have the time or experience to do it yourself – hire a professional to get it done right.

2. “I will include fresh, interesting, and relevant news.”

Many web site owners seek ways to offer “fresh” information on their site. The easiest way to do this, is to include recent news items. This can come in various forms: a What’s New section that includes updates about the company; a Press area that offers press releases about the company’s projects, clients, and endeavors; a helpful Industry News area that provides informative articles about the latest trends and changes; a Blog; a third-party News Feed, which grabs articles related to certain subjects from another source and automatically updates them as links on your website; a copy of your E-mail Newsletter.

Think of your website like a bakery, if you regularly have hot, fresh, and tasty content, your visitors will keep running back for more. If you don’t, then your website will become, well, rather stale.

3. “I will create an email newsletter.”

Here are some ideas to consider:

Are you including content relevant to your industry? Do you give out worthwhile advice? Have you ever offered someone a coupon for your services or a free introduction? Do you ever host special events or workshops? These are all excellent things to include in a regular e-mail newsletter. Cater the timeframe to something you can manage. “Regular” can mean many different things – weekly, monthly, quarterly, or even bi-annually and seasonally.

Some businesses only send out a newsletter “about the company” once a year and then periodically send out a special newsletter for promotions or events. As long as you are communicating with your current customers about your services, you are offering them an easy opportunity to forward your information to a new contact, informing them about your industry, and building your credibility.

These things will help you become more than a store or a faceless company to your visitors. You will become an invaluable source of information, a friend in the industry, and people always have deeper pockets for friends.

There are several great ways to integrate a newsletter with your website, many of which are so hands-off you will be kicking yourself that you didn’t do it sooner. If you need help setting up a custom e-newsletter management program or integrating an email news service, give us a shout.

If you make these 3 New Year’s resolutions (and stick to ‘em!), your web site will be a hit in the new year, whether it’s loyal customers who keep coming back, or visitors who can’t get enough.