Make More Money on Your Website; Be the Most Usable

Original Article from IntelliSites, the smart choice for web design (and SEO!)
People like easy.

Whether we're talking about straightforward electronic gadgets, simple recipes, or usable websites, the less time and thought involved these days, the better.

But not everyone on the web is completely on board with “easy” just yet. Who hasn't ditched an online shopping experience at one point or another because the checkout process of a particular site was too time consuming? Who hasn't been annoyed by a poorly laid out website and tabbed over to another company's site out of frustration?

Rise Above The Rest...With Usability

Since there are clearly some sites out there that need an “easy” makeover, having a usable site can set you apart from the crowd. If online shoppers are happy with the usability of your website, they're likely to return for more business.

One example of this is my cell phone carrier's website. As far as ease of use, it's top notch. If I want to pay my cell phone bill in full with the same credit card I used last month, I can log in and get the job done in two clicks. That's Click. Click. Done until next month. Whenever I think about getting a new cell phone provider, one of the things that stops me is fear of the unknown with a new company's website. What if I have to click four times? Or, even worse, type something in? After having it so easy with my current company, I just don't know if I could live with that.

If you're not sure whether your company's website is user-friendly enough, why not get some friends to test it out against the websites of your competitors? If your site isn't the simplest to use in town, working out the hassles can be a great way to win clients by making their lives easier.

Social Media – How to Maximize Your Efforts

Original Article from IntelliSites, the smart choice for web design (and SEO!)


Social media is an incredibly valuable tool that should be integrated when crafting your website. Here are three easy ideas on incorporating social media:

1. Consider your website a branding hub for your company. This is where all your online activities should be found. Be sure your messages are clear and consistent, and don’t lose focus of what social media is supposed to do.
2. Use easy to read widgets that post your social media feeds right onto your website. Place them in an area that the reader’s eye naturally travels to. Generally speaking, the upper right hand margin is a good location. Check out websites with lots of advertising (such as online newspapers). Ads are typically placed in areas that will receive many glances while reading content. Follow a similar style for your site.
3. Allow people to share information from your site on various platforms. Include badges for tools like Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Del.icio.us, and StumbleUpon. This is especially true for any blog you might maintain on your website. You will increase your chances of reaching new customers that way, and will also drive visitors to your website and social networking feeds.

Make More Money on Your Website; Reduce Friction

Original Article from IntelliSites, the smart choice for web design (and SEO!)
Have you ever been to one of those direct sales parties?

There are a lot of different themes out there for these shindigs, many of which are geared toward women – makeup parties, jewelry parties, cookware parties, and the like. If you've never experienced one of these functions, it's a regular party with a very large elephant in the room – a sales person, peddling a line of products to the attendees.

For the hosts of these get-togethers, the goal (besides enjoying their friends' company, of course) is to get their guests to buy things. The more things the partygoers buy, the more freebies the host or hostess receives. So at a direct sales party, the deliciousness of the food and the excitement of the conversation may not be the host's primary concerns – she's often paying more attention to how much money her friends are dishing out.

Party Time on Your Site

Since you are most likely selling goods or services through your website, you're in a position similar to that of a typical sales party host. You want people to show up to your party, you want them to have a good time while they're there, but you don't want them to leave without buying something. Having a lot of people party down on your site is a good thing, but what you're really looking for are conversions.

So what can you do to point your party people in the right direction?

The Proper Balance of Business and Fun

There's enough fun at a typical direct sales party to attract a decent crowd. Some snacks, some drinks, maybe some tunes on the stereo. But it's not a rave. And keg stands, bouncy houses, and ice luges usually aren't in the picture. There's entertainment, but not so much craziness that people forget to check in with the salesperson.

Your website should be designed the same way. You want to attract visitors, but not distract them. By designing with selling in mind, you can have a website with enough going on to entice visitors to look around, but not so much clutter that they lose sight of the reason they came. Conversions will happen naturally if your site is well-designed with minimal distractions and plenty of positive suggestions that encourage your visitors to get shopping.

And like the host of a gourmet chocolate direct sales party, if you set everything up right, you can end up with plenty of sweet rewards.

5 Ways to Make Your Website Project More Productive

Original Article from IntelliSites, the smart choice for web design (and SEO!)
If you've recently chosen IntelliSites to put together your website, we're confident that you'll be thrilled with your website when we're done. But websites do take some time to put together, so a lot of our clients ask us if there is anything they can do to help speed up the process.

Here's what we tell them.

 1. Appoint an internal point person. It's up to you whether you refer to him or her as the point person, the IntelliSites Guru, the Website Ninja, or “Dr. Website,” but at the end of the day you just need a person who is in charge of interfacing with us regularly. This is the person who gathers up questions, comments, and feedback from your end and delivers it to us.

 2. Familiarize yourself with our milestones sheet. Our clients receive a handy little sheet that breaks down the time-line for their website projects. If you're wondering when something needs to be returned to us or when you can expect something on our end, our milestones sheet puts it all there in black and white for you. (Not to mention yellow, blue, and green. We tend to make them quite colorful.)

3. Understand what each deliverable is for. During the web design process, we're going to show you our progress a few times along the way. Two important things we'll show you are the wire-frame and templates. We'll show you the wire-frame when we've got a plan for how the website will be laid out. When you view it, remember that you're JUST looking for layout - don't worry about colors or fonts yet. When we show you the templates later on, that's the time to tell us if you're not feeling the colors or the graphics.

 4. Make a list of what you hope to get out of this website, and share it with us. Have your Website Ninja shoot us an e-mail about your major expectations and hopes for this website. These thoughts have certainly come up a number of times along the way in our discussions with you, but it doesn't hurt anyone to develop a succinct list of the most important big picture stuff.  We'll change the font to Monotype Corsiva, print it, frame it, and use it as our inspiration as we work. 

5. Remember that a website can be updated, changed, and optimized. In fact, it should be! So there's never a now-or-never decision when it comes to building your site. Don't sweat the small stuff too much as you try to make decisions about your site. We can put together an amazing site for you now, and then keep building on the awesomeness in the years to come.

What's a Website Conversion?

Original Article from IntelliSites, the smart choice for web design (and SEO!)
For a change of pace, let's talk about real estate open houses today.

When a home is for sale, realtors hold open houses to get it sold. There are tours and balloons and snacks and it makes for a super little Saturday.

While a seller's agent would certainly enjoy seeing a house full of open house visitors, the ultimate goal of the open house is to sell the house, not to throw a great party. So while a full house is great, the real estate agent is likely to gauge the effectiveness of the open house by figuring out how many attendees actually took a step toward buying the house as a result of their visit. How many took home brochures? How many scheduled another viewing? How many made offers?

As You Probably Guessed, I'm Really Talking About Websites

Think of your website as that real estate open house. If your SEO is going well, chances are, you've got an open house full of people visiting your site. But what you really want is for those people to take steps toward giving you business.

These steps are called “conversions.”

Let's say your website sells water guns. When someone clicks from your homepage to the page about your new model, that's a conversion. When that person adds the new gun to his shopping cart, that's another conversion. And when he completes the process and actually buys the water gun, that's also a conversion.

Real estate agents want lots of visitors to their open houses, and business owners want lots of visitors to their sites. But just as realtors need visitors to do more than just chat and chow down on the open house food, business owners need visitors to do more than take in the beauty of their sites. Real estate agents want to give out pamphlets and collect bids, and business owners want website conversions.

Businesses That Blog Get 55% More Traffic

Original Article from IntelliSites, the smart choice for web design (and SEO!)
I see you've made it back to the IntelliSites blog today. Welcome! At IntelliSites, we love visitors to our blog...a lot. After all, visitors to our blog are visitors to our site. And everyone loves company at their website.

If you're looking for more friendly folks to drop in at your site, then blogging could be a great option for you, too.

How Blogging Helps

I've said it before, and I'll say it again – blogging's awesome for your site. Do you want a better relationship with your clients? Blog. Want to showcase your expertise? Blog. Want to improve your search engine rankings? Blog.

It really is an easy way to make your site a lot better. To get a lot more visitors, a lot more links, and ultimately a lot more business.

How Much Is “A Lot”?

If you're interested in exactly how much blogging can help, check out this sweet article by Rick Burnes I came across the other day. This guy did some research and discovered that small business websites with blogs get 55% more visitors than websites that don't. I knew blogging was worthwhile, but even I was impressed to see just how much oomph it can bring to a website.

Aside from giving away free diamonds or bags of benjamins, there's really nothing else you can do on your website that can give it that much of an edge.

So blog. If you don't have one yet, start one. If you have one that you've been neglecting, show it some love. But there's no good reason to let your website get 55% less hits than it should.

What is Hosting?

Original Article from IntelliSites, the smart choice for web design (and SEO!)
If you have a website but no one is there to visit it, does it really exist?

This one's a lot easier than that “tree falling in the woods” question.

The answer is, definitely, “Yes.” Thanks to its host.

Hosts 101

A host is a computer that stays on 24/7 and holds all the files that make up your website. It waits patiently for a web surfer to type your website's URL into his browser and then sends him your page. Whether it's morning, noon, or night, the host is in charge of serving up your website to anyone who wants to see it.

Every website needs one of these babies. So if you have a website, it already has a host.

Of course, if you don't have a website yet, then you A) need to get one, ASAP and B) will need a host to make it work. Don't worry, though, you don't have to go out and buy a special computer to leave on day in and day out. If we design your website for you, we can make sure it gets hooked up with a host.

Always Working For Your Website

Yes, hosts are pretty neat. When you're relaxing on the beach, enjoying a round of golf, or catching some Zs, the host is making it possible for the world to visit your website. You may never get to see your website's host, but whether day or night...whether rain or shine...whether you think the tree falling in the woods makes a sound or doesn't make a sound...that host is working for you.