I install Analytics tracking code on all sites from Red Kite, yet I know that most clients never go past the dashboard to see what’s going on. Here’s a great set of references for beginning Google Analytics users (http://blog NULL.kissmetrics NULL.com/50-resources-for-getting-the-most-out-of-google-analytics/).
09
Jan
New Site Launch: Fort Collins Baseball Club
Fort Collins Baseball Club (http://www NULL.fortcollinsbaseballclub NULL.org/) approached Red Kite with a need for a complete overhaul of the design and code for this well-established ASP-based site. When we examined the code, we found an enormous old Javascript-powered image rollover menu that accounted for hundreds of lines on every page. Ack!
We created a new theme and built a base template containing cleaned-up versions of menu and structural code, reducing page size by up to 75% in some cases. The new simplified version of the site will make it much easier for their in-house editor to figure out what and where to make changes.
We also helped out by reworking the page layout so that elements like Important Announcements and sidebar boxes were modular, able to be used on any page.
28
Dec
Two Low-cost Ways to Accept Credit Cards On Your Website
If you’re not already accepting credit cards on your website, here’s a quick review of two reasonably-priced payment solutions.
Paypal Website Payments Standard
If you definitely want to take Paypal as well as credit cards and don’t mind customers going to the Paypal site to enter billing info, then go with Paypal Website Payments Standard. Your customers don’t need a Paypal account to pay, and there are no monthly fees or setup fees. Fees per transaction vary depending on the amount of purchasing traffic you have each month.
It’s very easy to create Paypal buttons to paste into your site (or blog) for individual products using Paypal’s button builder, plus many major website shopping carts support Paypal Website Payments Standard. Read more about this service here.
CDG Commerce + Quantum Gateway
Another option (which I’ve been using since 2007) is CDG Commerce. CDG is similar to Paypal in that it combines a payment gateway and merchant account in one – you don’t have to get a separate merchant account at your bank. CDG uses Quantum Gateway as its processing partner. It’s definitely not as common as Paypal or Authorize.net, so if you’re using or choosing a shopping cart, keep that in mind – you’ll need to look for one that supports Quantum Gateway.
You can also create an order form for your site, but will need a small amount of coding knowledge for that. However, CDG’s fees are very reasonable: $10/mo with no setup fee and rates are comparable to similar services. Learn more about CDG’s Internet payment option here.
Keep in mind that getting started with any payment gateway service generally takes several weeks of background checks and account setup.
27
Dec
Before Your Website Gets a Makeover…
Thinking about updating the look of your business website, but not sure what changes might be best?
Before you spend the money for the change, consider a comprehensive website evaluation. The results of our 46-point site review will be provided to you in an easy-to-read report – you’ll know for sure what elements really need work on your site (probably a few you weren’t even aware of). We’ll discuss the results with you over the phone or in person to make sure you have a good understanding of what we found and our recommendations.
05
Nov
New Site Launch: Endress Analytics
Gabrielle Endress, owner of consulting firm Endress Analytics (http://www NULL.endress-analytics NULL.com), hired Red Kite to design and build a custom WordPress theme for her blog after getting frustrated with some aspects of the commercial theme she’d been using. Mainly, the featured content slider on the home page – a tool that displays an image and content from each of the last few recent blog posts – was very hard to edit because it was built into the theme itself, rather than having some type of control panel in WordPress.
Gabrielle provided us with some references to sites where she liked the look and feel of the designs and navigation elements, and we created a design that incorporated the best features of those sites and her current site.
We also did our research and came up with a featured content slider – commercial, but inexpensive – that’s completely controllable from inside WordPress. In addition, we replaced a few plugins and added some security features to her site.
Here’s what Gabrielle had to say after we launched:
“I hired Debbie to do a custom redesign of my existing WordPress site. She did a fabulous job, and came up with a design I really liked, just based on my initial feedback about what I wanted. In addition, she made some much needed improvements to the backend of my site as well. I’ve gotten lots of compliments from my clients regarding the improved design.”
Thanks Gabi – we enjoyed working with you too!
29
Oct
Slow is bad.
If waiting for your own business website to open is mildly irritating to you, magnify that feeling by about 10x to understand how visitors and customers view any delays.
I recently worked on a site that was build on my production server (a dedicated server), with extremely fast load times. Once the project was complete and I moved the site to the client’s hosting account, everything seemed to go in slow motion. The account is hosted by one of if not the most popular low-cost hosting providers – who incidentally have a reputation among my colleagues as having some of the slowest hosting in the industry for database-driven websites, like WordPress sites. Cheap hosting = more crowded servers = slower speeds.
I clocked loading times on this site as slow as 68 seconds per page. Ideally, you’re looking for load times of just a couple of seconds.
Slow is also bad for SEO
It’s not just your human visitors who suffer when your site is slow – in 2010 Google began incorporating site speed as one of the many elements affecting search rankings. It’s a small element, but it’s still important. Faster websites are better for everyone!
29
Oct
New Site Launch: Envisagent
We built the Envisagent site with client Tom Stuve, a Colorado-based IT services provider and digital signage specialist. The WordPress site has a custom theme and a sign gallery to show off his work; for the most part the site serves as a services guide for the two parts of the company.
Before we even began work on the web design, we created the company logo based on a number of images provided by the client.
28
Sep
New Site Launch: Dog’s Best Life
Dog’s Best Life (http://www NULL.dogsbestlife NULL.com/) is an online magazine/blog for dog lovers. Dog’s Best Life’s owner, Sara Hansen, found herself with a commercial WordPress theme that had some serious problems.There was no obvious way to edit some basic elements of the theme, plus it was completely broken in Firefox.
After contacting the theme provider together and not getting much assistance, I met with Sara and we settled on a direction: start with the basic look of the commercial site, but make it better. And make it work properly in all major browsers.
We began with the original design and added enhancements of our own, and created a highly functional theme that makes it easy for Sara to manage that extra functionality from within WordPress, including the home page slideshow, featured dogs section, and ad widgets. We also integrated an Aweber newsletter registration form as a sidebar widget.
04
Aug
When your website underperforms
I read a terrific article in Entrepreneur magazine last night by Ann Handley (http://www NULL.annhandley NULL.com/), chief content officer at marketingprofs.com (http://www NULL.marketingprofs NULL.com/). This article was about how to transform your underperforming website from a static brochure (you know, the kind people look at once then put away in a drawer) to a fully-functioning ‘member’ of your sales staff.
So much of it was right on target with the things I tell my own clients when they’re considering a new site or a makeover. Unfortunately, many, many websites eventually end up as static brochures. Here’s an overview of how to reverse that trend with your business website, summarizing some of the main points of Ms. Handley’s story:
- Bigger sites get more traffic. A 2011 study by Hubspot (http://www NULL.hubspot NULL.com/lead-generation-lessons-from-4000-businesses-trt/) showed that sites with 401-1,000 pages actually get 6x more leads than sites with 501-100 pages. This is one reason why being consistent about blogging can really help – remember that every blog post counts as a new page on your website.
- Change your content. Sites that never change are no better than (expensive) static brochures and Google will eventually stop paying attention to them as it learns that nothing new continues to happen. Again, this is a great reason to have a blog, which can make it exceedingly simple to add fresh content fast.
- Get a content management system. A CMS makes it easy for you to edit and add to pages on your website, so you don’t need to call the web developer every time you turn around.
- Ask for your customers’ involvement. Give them a clear path to conversation with you by including calls-to-action in strategic places on your site. Have a contact form that enables you to track conversions. Get Google Voice so your customers can click a button and connect. Write a blog so they can interact with you through comments. Connect to social media pages and profiles.
- Optimize your site. This is a big one – if you opted to forego this important step when first building your site, you can still do it. If the search engines can’t find you or your pages aren’t indexed because Google doesn’t understand what your site is about, that can be improved.
- Measure. How will you know how well your site is working if you don’t measure? Use free Google Analytics a good starting point for understanding who’s visiting, how they got there, what they’re reading, and much more.
- Change your focus. Too often when I receive content for a new site from a client, it’s focused on them – not their customers. Talking about all the wonderful features of your product or service is not nearly as compelling to a customer as learning about how your wonderful product or service can save them time or headaches. Talk about how you can solve their problems.
- Interact. Blogs are great for this – they help you give customers a better sense of who you are as a real person and are good for building trust over time. Share your expertise and respond to questions and comments honestly.
Is your website not giving you the marketing boost you’d hoped for? Did it start off with a bang but has since become less compelling? Take some time to step back and look at it with these points in mind.
You can read the full article here (http://www NULL.entrepreneur NULL.com/article/220027) – and believe me, it’s worth five minutes of your time.
29
Jul
Content management systems – what are they?
Content management systems (CMS) can be a huge timesaver for your business. They can free you from a web designer that takes forever to edit your site, and give you the tools to make changes on your own time. They can also provide you with interesting functionality that’s more difficult and more expensive to add without a CMS. Some examples:
- You hire a new senior employee and want to add their picture and bio to your executive staff page right away. No problem with a CMS, but it may take awhile if you send this task out to your developer.
- You’re an active Twitter user and want to show your latest posts on your website. With a CMS, this is usually as simple as installing a free plugin (i.e., clicking a few buttons) and adding a new widget to your site. Without a CMS, not quite so simple.
- You want to add (insert software here: gallery, rotating quotes or testimonials, contact form, etc.) to your site. Easy as locating a plugin with a CMS, but more time-consuming without one and most often will require a developer’s help.
As with most things website-related there are also some downsides:
- Typically it will be more of an investment up front to build a CMS than a non-CMS site, especially if you want a custom look.
- Many CMS need you to perform regular software updates. Fortunately, this usually involves clicking a button.
- Finding the right plugin for any given task is often not that simple because (1) there are usually many plugins for any given need and (2) you have to make sure your plugin will work with your current version of the CMS. It often comes down to trial and error.
- Sometimes plugin developers quit working on a project and there are no more updates for your plugin. You have to be flexible enough to realize that eventually you’ll probably need to find another plugin when your current one is no longer working well with your up-to-date CMS.
How does a CMS work?
Basically, it’s a web application with two parts: (1) a database that stores your website’s content and (2) a server-side scripting language that retrieves and ‘serves’ the content to your web browser. It has an administration area where you can make changes to your site that might include:
- Changing or adding any type of content (text, images, video) to an existing page.
- Publishing a blog post.
- Adding a new page or new section to your site.
- Adding other functionality (like a list of recent tweets or a photo gallery)
My site is small, can I still get a CMS?
Sure – we can help with CMS for all sizes of sites, just ask. These can range from simple solutions for websites of just a few pages, to more complex ones for sites with hundreds or thousands of pages. When you chat with us, we’ll let you know the available options.
