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A Website Designer Dan Norris

AWebsiteDesigner.com.au - Make Your Business Website Efficient With Strategies

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AWebsiteDesigner.com.au is a company specialising in small business websites. We have been established for 5 years. A Website Designer website which was previously the main website for another web design company. Since then the website has been a leading blog and resource for Australian small business owners.

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Page 1: AWebsiteDesigner.com.au - Make Your Business Website Efficient With Strategies

A Website Designer

Dan Norris

Page 2: AWebsiteDesigner.com.au - Make Your Business Website Efficient With Strategies

http://AWebsiteDesigner.com.au

About Us

A Website Designer is run by me, Dan Norris and was set up to provide

support and resources to small business owners around Australia.

Here is the story of how it came to be.

I started my web design business, Web Circle in 2006. I had never built a website

before and I didn’t have any clients but I was very keen and perhaps a bit naive….how

hard could it be?

It was a slow and steady process building up our list of clients to what it is today of

around two hundred or so.

In 2009 I purchased the A Website Designer website which was previously the main

website for another web design company. Since then I have set about transforming it

into a leading blog and resource for Australian small business owners. It is our outlet

for writing articles, ebooks, training videos etc that aim to empower small business

owners to take charge of their web presence.

Most web design companies operate under a sales model where the boss man (or lady)

relies on boozy lunches and networks to drum up work. This was never how I wanted

to run my business – plus I don’t have enough mates. I decided early on to operate

under a service model where the only way we can get new clients is by word of mouth

and via Google.

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At present we don’t advertise or do any business development type of work so we are

driven to provide great service and constantly keep our site packed with useful content

to encourage people to spread the word about what we do.

I have always made sure we don’t have any ways of operating that lock our clients into

using us. So I know that the only way we can build the business is to keep our clients

happy. The number and quality of the client comments on this site are a reflection of

how well we continue to do this.

This is how I like to do business and I know there are others who appreciate it.

The rest of this page outlines some of the ways in which we try to set ourselves apart

from other operators in the industry.

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Why A Web Developer Must Not Be Engaged

When I initially began my web designing business five years back, I didn’t have any

experience, customers, money or any clue about building websites. For my first attempt

at a dynamic website I purchased a book on ASP programming and by making use of

the book I designed my very own simple content management system. It was very hard.

It took me almost two months and cost about $10,000.

Last week we launched a dynamic CMS based website for a client and it took us one day

and cost $299.

Back in 2006, it was very hard to create a website

and you pretty much had to be a web developer

to do it. Open source programs had not yet

kicked off. Majority of the of the websites were

custom programmed by the web developers. If at

all they made use of a CMS, it would be the ones

created by them. Either way, you had to be a

programming geek if you wanted to build your

own website.

Thus several businesses did not have dynamic websites at all.

Fortunately the times have changed..

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These days it is not really necessary to be a programmer to build a website. After my

initial venture into ASP, I tried to figure out an open source system which I could make

use of; which is when I discovered great systems such as Joomla! and WordPress that

could be utilized for back end client websites. I never looked back once I began using

these open source systems.

I do have programmers on my staff, however there’s no programming required for an

average small business website. At least for people like me who're using open source

systems such as Joomla! and WordPress it isn’t required. All the programming work is

already been done for you.

This is the reason why you don’t have to be paying a web developer to build your

website. If you’re paying for developing small business websites:

1) They either have not been utilizing the free systems obtainable and are still

trapped in the dark ages coding the site by hand or

2) They’re making use of their own CMS that makes it difficult for you to move on if

you wish to.

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Standing Out While it is rather easy to build a website these days, it isn’t easy to build a

good one. As a matter of fact you can argue that since it is pretty easy to build one, the

task of developing websites in lots of cases is put back in the hands of the business

proprietor.

Therefore there are great deals of self-built websites of average quality in the sea of

small business websites. When you merge this with the number of legacy websites

online from back in the day, it paints are really grim picture of the quality of websites

online. Here lies the opportunity.

The opportunity

In the good old days, you just needed to have an online presence, but now the

probability is in possessing websites which stands out from the various average

websites with a website that works correctly.

So who should you engage?

Now the question is if you don’t want to hire a web developer, who should be liable for

creating your website. Building a website needs a whole lot of different skills, some

that can be provided by yourself and a few by your provider. Below is a list of

ingredients which are essential for developing an incredible website.

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YOU

You’re the most important ingredient for creating your own website because:

1. An individual can devise an amazing website only around a goal and you’re the

only one who would be able to express the strategies for your business.

2. Finest websites will give the viewers exactly what they are searching for. You’re

the only one who will be in a position to know what your customer wants and

how to pull their strings.

3. You’ll have to exhibit something unique. You’ll be the person who knows what’s

unique about your business.

4. You’ll have to work out a plan with your provider to generate traffic and lots of

traffic will come through your own attempts.

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Your Provider

1. You’ve to make sure that your provider is a fine designer because great websites

will appear good.

2. Your provider has got to be flexible and open because you will require CMS

which is easy for you to maintain.

3. Your provider requires to find out about web promotion and aid you to generate

traffic to your website.

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Professional Web Design And Its Two Main Components

The key reason why customers who currently own a small business approach us to

build up a website is because they want a professional image and can also do a good job

in embodying their business. Of course this is

a generalization nevertheless we have built

hundreds of sites over the years and this is

often the main thing people search for.

But there is one more very significant factor

to consider with design as well and that is

how well the website succeeds in driving

customers and design has a great part to play in this.

Make it attractive

Here is a list of the important things that should be concentrated on in order to make a

website attractive:-

1. A professional logo -It has to be contemporary, neat and have a sense of

professionalism while not being too flashy.

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2. Professional images should be used.

2. It is essential that a good website designer who does professional work has to be

employed (The total procedure with which the web designers make things look

great will not be dealt in this post).

So when our clients come to us, the initial thing we do is assess their logo. If it sucks,

then tell them to get a new one. We also start choosing few good images.

Majority of the times, it is not realistic to revise each and every single image of the

products in the website, thus it is extremely significant to build in a great first

impression, It is significant that we at least use professional images on the website's

home page and then look towards what best can be done with regard to product

images (and emphasize on the importance of replacing them with professional images).

Once we have an incredible logo and enough nice professional images it's practical that

we can create a nice looking website.

Making it work

A great looking website is good but of equal importance is the capacity of the website

to change traffic into customers (either straight away or at some point of time down

the track). For this we utilize a simple model of Consume, Connect, Convert.

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Consume - We prefer to create a website that users are encouraged to 'consume' the

content. We want amazing content and we have to make it simple for them to access

the content and share the content.

Connect - For individuals who like what they see, we want to provide the ability for

them to connect with us in some way. Register for a newsletter, or subscribe to our

feed, or follow us on Twitter. This way we have an opportunity to build trust and be

there when they are ready to buy.

Make Your Business Website Efficient With These Strategies

There are 3 things I believe are a great thing to

do for most small business websites. Some

research on these things will be released by us in

the coming months but for now here are 3 great

strategies for making every small business

website an effective one.

1. The Title - Stop Them Skimming And Start Them Reading If it is possible for you, try

to avoid generic boring headings.

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You will never see a newspaper article with a monotonous heading. Journalists take it

pretty seriously; they know how important the headline is. Never think of having a

heading that is boring.

Website owners usually seem to think a heading of 'Welcome to [business name goes

here]' is sufficient. We tend to really encourage small business owners to have a title

that engages people right from the beginning. Ask a question or state what makes you

unique, or say something surprising or interesting.

You will need to be a little ingenious while also thinking about the time period for

which this title could last and be beneficial. See our primary site for an example

http://www.webcircle.com.au/. Our heading (at the time of writing) is “Web Circle is a

progressive agency with a relentless drive to discover and implement what works on

the web. But what does work?” It notifies individuals what we do, it gives a hint to our

point of difference and it asks a question to engage the viewer and draw them towards

the main content in the website - all in just 2 sentences - stop them skimming and start

them reading and that way people may stay in your website for a long time to actually

learn what you do and find out that you might be an apt choice for whatever they are

looking out for.

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20) The greeting message

There are many ways for doing this. You might not have a lengthy welcome message -

for instance in our case we have a heading that includes the basics of the welcome

message and then we have the about us section further down. You might believe it’s

appropriate to have a more in depth welcome message. If you do, don't forget to tell

people the basics of what you do, perhaps where you are based but don’t stop there.

There are 2 other things you have to include:

1) What makes you different

2) A call to action

Primarily, what is it that makes you different from others - your Unique Selling

Proposition (USP), competitive advantage or several other consultant buzzwords. It is

significant to say exactly what you do - i.e. you sell widgets but it’s as vital perhaps a lot

more important to talk about how you are different in ways that will engage potential

visitors. Most people who look around for widget selling companies will land on your

site as a result. The people will know completely well that you sell Widgets.

But what is it regarding your business that will keep them on your website and believe

‘yeah these guys sound really good’. This can be done in many ways, you will possibly

know from your customers or from the factors you started your business in the first

place exactly what you do really well and why your business achieved success.

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This is just what you need in here. Just stating how you are different, ideally, in a way

that will draw in the people you are trying to target is the key. Some ways could be to

discuss your the past, your family, personal stories, everything that you think can add

credibility in the eyes of your customers, any achievements, testimonials and anything

that adds to your point of difference and builds the dependability of your business.

We (http://www.webcircle.com.au) make use of the words ‘what actually works on the

web’. We tend to talk about "building websites that work" simply because we are

specialists in knowing what actually works. We don’t just build websites.

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Secondly, a call to action is crucial. What fo you want individuals to do? You should

make sure to be clear as to where you want to send the visitor. It may be be to call you,

to download some free stuff, to buy something. It can be anything Make It Clear. The

last thing you want is an attracted visitor bouncing to a different site because they have

given up trying to work out how they can take the next step. I’ve done it plenty of times,

there is only so much patience a person can have so make it easy.

3. Personalisation

Personalisation is exceptionally essential for small business. When you are thinking on

the lines of what makes your business different a lot of small businesses will find that it

is them that make the business one of a kind. It’s the personal relationship they have

with their clients. It is their story, their history, their unique blend of skills. That’s why

we emphasize on personalising as much as possible for most small business sites.

This is very efficient mainly for the types of businesses that have a lot of in-person

contact with their clients. People tend to give positive responce to personal messages

with real photo. People love stories - they love success stories and small businesses

love working with other small businesses.

We have recently updated our homepage with a few changes, I put my photo on the

homepage and changed the ‘about us’ section to ‘The web circle story’. I also wrote half

of the story on the homepage, despite that I looked at the stats after a few weeks and

found that lot of people had visited the page and people were spending almost 3 times

as long as the page - implying they were actually reading it not just clicking on it and

skimming it and passing it off as another ‘about us’ page.

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And that’s for my boring web design business! Imagine if my story was in fact exciting!

This is an effortless way for separating yourself from other competitors since the

majority people don’t make it - indeed a set of small businesses cautiously try to make

themselves look better than they truly are no matter what the purpose might be.

Bringing it all as one We recently built a site for Act2 Solutions who sell Actuarial

Certificates. See this post for various news on the site. It contains a catchy heading that

states just what they do (and how they are unique - they are inexpensive), a welcome

message that focuses on how they are special, personalisation by using images of Andy

along with a call to action stating people to download the forms.

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AWebsiteDesigner.com.au is a web design company specialising in

small business websites. We have been established for 5 years.

A Website Designer website which was previously the main website

for another web design company. Since then the website has been a

leading blog and resource for Australian small business owners.

For more information logon to our website

http://AwebsiteDesigner.com.au

Or

Call: 1300 760 363