Archive for November, 2011

Have a business website for the holidays.

Tuesday, November 8th, 2011 | Permalink

A couple more weeks and the holiday season will be here.  Is your website holiday ready?   Being holiday ready can involve the front-end and/or the back-end of your website.  For example, the front-end would involve what your customers see when they visit your site: images, content, etc.  The back-end of your website would involve increased support for the extra workload, more bandwidth, etc.

Similar to how stores prepare for the holidays, a website that wants to have the holiday look and feel can incorporate holiday images and colors on the website.  You can use a holiday image on your homepage with a note – “Happy Holidays”.  Another way to incorporate the holiday look and feel is to create a “holiday page” that may have (if applicable) sales for the holidays, shipping instructions, and so forth.  Moreover, if you have a blog, you can blog about your holiday party and include pictures.

Furthermore, if you do not want to change the front-end of your website, you can prepare the back-end of your website.  If you anticipate an increase in traffic and sales, you can increase your staff before the holiday rush.  Also, if traffic increases, you may want to increase bandwidth to avoid any downtime or extra bandwidth charges.

Another option some businesses use is to create a separate website just for the holiday season so that it does not affect their current website.  This separate website could be used for marketing purposes, sales/coupons, tracking customer traffic, etc.  Usually this website is temporary.  As a result, to get a temporary site up quickly without costing a fortune and still look professional – why not try a website builder.  With a website builder, you can quickly and easily build a professional website for the holidays.

Do you need a Business Website?

Tuesday, November 1st, 2011 | Permalink

Why should a small business have a website?
There are a number of reasons to have a website.  A website can provide information about your business such as products/services, contact information, etc.  A website can make your company look more professional with the right content and images.  Also, a website is usually the first place a person visits before doing business or shopping.

Depending on the type of business you have you can design your own website or you hire a web designer to create the site for you.  Its a question we are often asked …which is better?  If you have a need to have a “online presence” a place to showcase your services, reviews from customers, offer coupons and a  page so interested people can contact you…then you can easily and effectively do this with a business website builder.  Not all website builders are alike and its imperative to find one that offers the technology you need.

What to look for in a website builder product:

Support: Does the product offer support or are you left on your own for troubleshooting?

Program updates: Does the product implement updates to the software to better improve usability?

SEO: Are you able to effectively implement Search Engine Optimization on your website?

Now on the other hand if you have a “e-commerce” type of website – where you offer hundreds of products wtih many details – it may be best to contact a web specialist so they can streamline this for you and make it easier for you to update your inventory (which includes using a database and can be quite cumbersome to manage this yourself. )  Its all about how quickly you can update your pages – and sometimes it is best to contact a professional.

So the first step is outlining what it is you need your website to do for you – from there you can begin to make a informed decision.

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