Today I received an announcement of a new website and blog. When I went to check them out, I was surprised that the website and blog were actually 2 separate websites and were not integrated into one. This really is a missed opportunity as an integrated blog can do wonders for your website’s traffic and popularity.

Not surprisingly, this wasn’t the only thing that was wrong with the website.

What could have been better:

• The website was written with outdated code using lots of tables
• The website was newly designed but is using frames
• No attention had been paid to search engine optimisation, making it very unlikely that this site will be found in search engines
• Conversion seemed to be a low priority as there were no sign-up boxes for email newsletters and hardly any links that went directly to the contact page
• There is not even a mention (or it is very hidden) of the blog
• The blog was wordpress.com hosted blog which means that it doesn’t have its own domain name
• The blog looked completely different from the main website and it was difficult to find any connection between the 2

Why is it so important to include your blog into your main site?

Including your blog into your website can dramatically increase the number of visitors to your website but it also helps with search engine optimisation, which is the process of improving the likelihood that your website gets a prominent position in search engines for your chosen keywords.

Benefits of integrating your blog into your main website:

• It tells Google (and other search engines) that your site is active and frequently updated. This will cause Google to come back to your website more often to rank your pages
• Your blog posts will get picked up by online alerts and spiders and will direct traffic directly to your main website
• If someone links to your blog posts this will increase the link popularity of your main website which will improve your search engine ranking and your page rank
• An integrated blog will look a lot more professional
• You will only need to maintain one website rather than 2

So how can you you get an integrated blog?

Both systems that I now mainly use to create my websites come with automatic integration of the blog.

Wordpress.org

Wordpress.org is wordpress.com’s big sister, which allows you to run Wordpress on your own server. Wordpress was setup as a blogging application but it is increasingly growing into a full fledged business CMS. You can create a website that seamlessly integrates the blog into your main pages. Check it out at Wordpress.org. If you need our help setting this up for you then contact us.

ProntaCMS

ProntaCMS is content management system that includes a blog into your main website. You can seamless integrate the feeds into your design. You can try this easy CMS for free.

I wish you good luck with your new website and if you need any help then please let me know. If you find these posts interesting then don’t forget to subscribe to the article updates by email or RSS.

Related posts:

1. What is the difference between ProntaCMS and Wordpress?
2. How to get traffic and generate new leads with your website?
3. 10 tips for a successful website

There are many ways to create a website these days. I have done extensive research and I currently use only 2 software applications for all my websites: ProntaCMS and Wordpress. Both have their pros and cons. I thought it would be helpful to highlight the similarities, pros and cons of the 2 options and who should be using what.

What is the main difference?

ProntaCMS is easier to use and comes with more inbuilt features and functionality. ProntaCMS is specifically built for business websites and a blog can be integrated into the website. It also gives a bit more flexibility when it comes to sidebars; on a prontaCMS website these can be different on each page. As it is a business owned solution it comes with a higher security level and dedicated support.

Wordpress started as a bloggers application. Although it is increasingly used for business websites as a CMS it still focussed on the blogger. Wordpress is therefore the best choice for a blogger or topic based website. If you don’t like the idea of hosted solution and would like to be in control of your own hosting, then Wordpress is also the way to go. Wordpress is an open source solution that can be easily extended and is supported by the larger number of online users. System security is the responsibility of the site owner.

Pronta CMS

ProntaCMS is an easy to use content management system that lets you easily create and edit websites. ProntaCMS can work with any design and has lots of incorporated features. Features like forms, image galleries, evites, and calendars are easy to use and integrate into the site.

Recommend for

I recommend ProntaCMS for small businesses that want to have an effective web presence and like to maintain their website themselves. ProntaCMS allows small businesses to have a high quality website at a low budget. When the business grows then your ProntaCMS website can grow with you. ProntaCMS is easy to use and you can edit your website directly in your page.

Pros

• Easy and quick setup (if you choose one of our templates as the base)
• Low setup cost
• Many features included like: slideshows, online forms, evites, calendars and others
• Integrated image editor where you can edit and manage images
• Flexibility with individual pages (side bar can be different on each page)
• In house hosting which makes your website very secure
• Full dedicated support

Cons

• ProntaCMS is a hosted solution so you can’t move the website to another host
• Although it has a lot of functionality built in it is harder to extend beyond that
• Higher ongoing hosting costs for a large site (although hourly maintenance costs will be lower as there will automatic updates and no security maintenance)

Wordpress

Wordpress is a publishing platform that is focussed on blogging. However, it is increasingly used as a content management system for businesses and organisations. Wordpress comes in 2 flavours: .com and .org. The .com version allows you to setup a blog quickly online. You cannot use it with your own domain and customisation is limited. .org is the self-hosted Wordpress version which allows you to customise your website as you please and install plugins that add extra functionality to Wordpress.

Recommended for

I recommend Wordpress for businesses that want to make their blog an important feature in their site and who don’t mind a bit of a learning curve. Wordpress is also good for large sites that have lots of pages and categories and want to continuously extend their site.

Pros

• Free software that can be downloaded from the Internet
• Very popular so lots of help available on the Internet
• Nice interface that allow for easy website management
• Highly customisable
• Many free and premium themes available
• No extra costs when more pages are added

Cons

• Higher learning curve than Pronta
• Many features will have to be installed separately
• Higher maintenance costs as you will need to make sure that your Wordpress installation is secure and runs on the latest software version
• Still more focussed on blogging

If you thinking about setting up a new website I will be happy to consult you on what is best for your business. Contact us to setup a web consultation.

Related posts:

1. Joomla or Wordpress
2. Why a wordpress site is good for your business
3. Why you should not separate your blog and your website

Here is a quick summary of the most important points in both articles

• Pick images that convey the message that you want to give your visitors
• Don’t give too many choice options
• Show images of your product or service and let customers know how it would work
• Give a trial option
• Attention >> interest >> desire >> action
• Lead your visitors with visual elements to the action
• Make it easy for visitors to act (buy) by providing easy options for signing up whenever they are ready
• Position calls to action on the lower bottom part of the page (Gutenberg rule)
• Use A/B testing to test which page configuration works better
• Use footnotes effectively
• Use effective testimonials
• Make your website easy to scan quickly
• Make it very easy for visitors to sign up
• Keep your pages clean and use enough white space so that your visitors can concentrate on the important areas
• Use fonts effectively and let important messages stand out

If you want to implement any of these techniques for your website then contact us.

7 more useful tips to help your website convert visitors into customers

Google Website optimiser

Yesterday we presented 8 Useful Tips To Help Your Website Convert – we discussed various rules and guidelines from marketing, such as subliminal suggestion, prevention of choice paralysis, AIDA-principle, attention guide and the Gutenberg rule. The main idea was to help designers and developers create a design that would help the site to grow and become a success the financial point of view.

Related posts:

1. How to turn your website visitors into customers
2. how to get your business online
3. 10 tips for a successful website

Design to sell: 8 useful tips to help your website convert

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2. 10 tips for a successful website
3. How to achieve your online goals in 2009

Why this new product?

You may wonder why I now offer this new web creation tool after I have so enthousiastically blogged about Wordpress. I will try to explain that here.

Wordpress is great for people that have a little understanding of how to create websites or are willing to invest some time and money of learning the program and having it set up. It  requires a bit of training if you want to achieve special things like forms, slide shows, calenders and changes in layout. It would also take some investment up front in order to install wordpress and achieve the look you like. You’re also more stuck with a certain kind of layout and it may be harder to get certain elements on certain places in the website.

Benefits

Escala pronta CMS is different in that it is even easier to use than Wordpress and has a lot of functionality built in. So no need to install plugins or any handling with code. It also comes with a number of free templates and setup is done absolutely FREE (for a limited time). Even more, you can have a fully functioning website with all kinds of add ons like a blog, form, interactive gallery etc free of charge. You will only start to pay if your website exceeds 3 pages. You can put images, galleries, forms, text and videos anywhere you like on the page.

In short Escala Pronota CMS is great for those who:

• Do not want to spend a lot (or any!) money upfront
• Want an easy to learn website editor
• Want lots of easy functionaility
• Already have a web design and want to have their own content management system
• Want to try out their skills first or want a website for free
• Want their website to grow as their business grows
• Want an easy to use content management system that is coded to the latest web standards with a custom made design

Not just another website builder

This is not just another website builder that creates a website with crappy code and very little functionality. All code generated by the CMS is standard compliant code that works across browsers. It was also built with Search engine optimisation in mind, giving you and me the necessary tools to optimise your website for search engines which will ensure that your website gets picked up by Google and others and gets noticed.

Escala Pronta CMS is not only good for those who are just getting started with the internet and / or are on a low budget, but also for those who want a high quality website built to the latest standards with the design that they want. With this system you are fully in control and you choose how much you want to spend.

Use it in combination with our design and consultancy services

A few words of caution though. Even though you can do most of the work yourself with this new product, for best results I would advise you to take some of my advice in terms of layout, consistency of styles, images to use, how to write content for the web and perhaps some pointers on how best to use the system and  to optimise your website for search engines. Using this product in combination with good web consultancy will generate a professional website that can generate results for your business. For absolute best results you can have us create a custom website design that can be used with the system.

Check out all the information, features and pricing structure of this new website creation tool or request more information.

In the end it’s up to you but there are no limits to what you can do with Escala Pronta CMS!

Related posts:

1. 5 new free templates for Pronta CMS
2. Joomla or Wordpress
3. 20 things to check before buying a wordpress theme

Good reasons to create a template based website

You know what you are geting as you can pick the design

Designing a website can be a lengthy process. I would first create a design based on your specifications. You would then have a look a this and possibly make adjustments. I would then turn this design into a website using the technology which is most suitable for your particular website.

However, if you find a website template that you already like you can cut the whole design phase from the project. You will already have a design that you like that may need some tweaking but is fundamentally correct. Have a look at some great clean and functional wordpress templates that I selected for an earlier article.

Functionality is already there minimizing programming costs

A lot of functionality is often already incorporated in the template. This is especially the case for Wordpress themes. It really doesn’t make any sense to start from scratch building functionality that is already readily available in some templates. It can save you a lot of time in development cost. Of course it is important to select a good quality template otherwise it can have the reverse effect. To know what you have to look for, please check the article 20 things you need to know before selecting a Wordpress theme.

Full customization can still give you a unique look

Many of the good quality templates can be customized to suit your needs. So creating a website with a template as the basis does not mean that your website will look the same as many others. All colours and images can usually be adjusted.

Quick

Sometimes you just want to have a website really quickly. For a special promotion or just because you can’t wait to get your idea online. Nothing speeds up website creation more than a template.

Things to take into account before buying a template

These are all good reasons to consider buying a template. However, also be aware of the following:

Changes and tweaking are almost always needed

Be aware that in order to get a good quality business website you will need to have changes made to the website. Almost every template and theme needs tweaking to suit your particular business needs. So allow for changes in your budget.

You will need to do some search engine optimization

Your templates also need to be optimized for search engines. With millions of websites already on the web your website will only be found when the right search engine optimization techniques have been employed.

Templates are often not so easy to install or customize as the vendor claims; know your skill level

Most people will not be able to customize and install the website themselves. It still requires a lot of skill to tweak the templates in such a way that they will look professional and original. It is always best to hire a a qualified web professional to do this for you.

Choose wisely

It is important to know what you want and need before buying a template so read my article: 20 things to check before buying a wordpress theme.

Finally

So what about those customers that come to my website, buy a template and disappear? Well. in many cases these customers were not yet ready  or prepared to set a good budget aside for a website. Many do not see their website as a valuable component of their marketing strategy. I have come accross many businesses that got themselves a ‘cheap’ website only to realize later that this website is not generating any business for them. Although I believe that you can make a good quality website with a website based on a template it is still advisable to get some advice on tweaking and search engine optimization to make your website successful.

There are also individuals and small businesses that would have otherwise not been able to afford a website. A website template allows them to have a professional website on the internet. This is a lot better than the home-made very poorly designed websites that we saw so much in the early days of the Internet. I would much rather see a well designed template based website than a poorly designed “original” website.

Related posts:

1. 20 things to check before buying a wordpress theme
2. Website templates
3. Joomla or Wordpress

A premium wordpress theme can be an enormous timesaver when you want to have a high quality website  up and running quickly. But make sure that you know what you want to achieve with your site before you buy. Otherwise you may end up having to do a lot more modifcations than you expected (or start all over again if you are not happy with the result) and your template may prove not to be such a time saver after all. 

So what are the most important things you need to pay attention to before buying a premium wordpress theme?

1. Compatibility

Is it compatible with the latest version of Wordpress?

2. Widgets

How much of the theme is widgetized. The more widgetized it is, the more you can determine the look and layout of your pages.

3. Has it been optimised for SEO?

SEO is very important as your main traffic will come from search engines. Make sure that the theme is properly coded and uses SEO optimisation techniques.

4. Is it easy to customise?

Does it have multiple css style sheets? (so you can easily change the colour). Is it easy to change the header image? Does the theme have any special theme options?

5. Structure

Is the structure of the theme similar to what you had in mind for your site? although you can play around with the code to change the structure, it is much more efficient if the correct structure is already in place. Pay attention to where the pages are located and the categories. In a business website your pages need to be more prominent (and sub menus functionality should be included) whereas on a blog or content site categories are usually more important).

6. Article structure

Have a look at how the articles are displayed. Does the theme display whole posts on the frontpage or only excerpts? What about the archive pages? Does it match how you want to display your posts?

7. Features

Does the theme have any special features. Some of the features you may want in a site are:

• featured sections
• automatic image resizer
• google analytics
• special theme options
• strolling or moving images
• flickr gallery
• advertising integration
• contact form integration
• tabbed sidebars
• image / banner rotation
• video integration

8. Support

Check if there is support for the theme that you buy. Any theme will need some tweeking and it saves a lot of time if there is a good support team that can help you with your questions.

9. Multple page layouts (templates)

Check if there are multiple page layouts or if every page looks the same. For a business site it is often desirable to have a different homepage from your content pages and a different blog section. Also check how other pages like the archives are formatted.

10. Determine how much customisation is needed

Most themes will need some tweaking. A theme that has special theme options allows you to make certain changes without needing to go into the code. Know how much you can customise yourself. Are you comfortable with adding plugins, tweaking code or do you want do everything with the theme options?

11. Validate the code

You can check if the code of the theme validates by going to http://validator.w3.org. It’s always better to buy a theme with no errors.

12. Browser compatibility

Check if the theme is compatible with the main browsers: IE6, IE7, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Chrome. Try to test the theme in as many browsers as possible.

13. Styling

Examine how the theme is styled and what typography is used. Is it easy to read? How are the comments styled? Although a lot of the styling can be changed with css this will take extra time so the closer the styling is to your desired style the better.

14. drop down menus

Is the drop down manu functionality already built in?

15. Instructions

Does the theme come with clear instructions on how to install and customize it? Any theme is constructed slightly differently so good instructions are always helpful.

16. Is the source code well commented

If you do need to make changes it is very helpful if the source code is clear and well commented. You may need a sample of the original files to check this.

17. Photoshop files

Are the original photoshop or fireworks png files included? This is always a benefit as it will make customizing the theme even easier.

18. Theme upgrades

Will you get a free upgrade of the theme if Wordpress has a new upgrade or will you need to pay again?

19. Error pages

Type in a wrong address for the site and have a look at what the error page looks like. Has this been constructed to your liking?

20. Price

Shop around. You can get really good value in some places with yearly membership that lets you use all themes.

Good luck with choosing your theme. And if you want help with choosing a nice one then stay tuned for a list of the best clean and functional themes coming up soon.

Related posts:

1. Creating a new site
2. Why a wordpress site is good for your business
3. The process of creating a website

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I remembered the 4 Ps: Product, Price, Promotion and Placement (or distrubution). 

Product: this represents the physical aspect of a product. What is the quality? How does it feel? What is the actual service like? On the web you will want to present your product or service in such a way that the customer will know what to expect. You will need to be able to communicate things like: how will it work? what is the warranty? what is the quality? how will it serve my needs?

Price: This is the actual price of the product. However, this can be an important marketing tool. If you price your product or service lower than average your product may be perceived as low quality but if you price it higher it may be beyond a customer means. For your website it is important that the design of your website matches your pricing policy. If you target audience is the high income group you will want to have a very classy website that looks expensive. If your product or service is targeting the budget part of the market, a simpler more down to earth website would be more appropriate.

Promotion: this includes all the advertising, PR, social networking, newsletter, blog or any other kind of promotion that you do for your product or service. Your website will be an important part of your promotion strategy. It will be essential that your website is created with your target audience in mind. So before starting with your website have a good idea who your target customers are, find out their characteristics. This will ensure that your website will be able to connect with your audience and therefore generate a response.

Placement: You may have the greatest product or service but if noone can find it then you will not make any money from it. I can still remember the lectures on shelve space in the supermarket. The only way you can sell your food consumer product to a mass market is by getting a spot on the shelves in the local supermarket as that’s where everyone goes to to buy stuff. It’s the same when it comes to your product on the web. Consider Google as the ’shop’. The task will be to get your product or service’s website on the top 2 pages of the search listings for your target keywords. This will maximize your potential of sales. Of course there are more distribution channels on the web. Consider ads, the social networks like Facebook and twitter and forums that operate in your niche.

These four Ps are still helpful today as the basis for your business and online strategy. They will force you to really think about your product or service and focus on your target audience.  Go through these four Ps before creating your website.

Related posts:

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2. Free video conferening and / or online training tool
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The corelink website is a good example of a website that is easy to navigate, quick to load and clear in its purpose. On various points in the site it also encourages the client to take action.

Most businesses these days have a website. But how many of these are actually producing the results that they wanted? All too often a pretty looking website is created that noone can find or when it does get found, it is left within seconds. So why is this? In many cases it’s because not enough thought went into the usability of the website.

An important advocate of usability was Jacob Nielsen. Some of his basic rules are:

• Ensure a quick download: that should be clear. If you website is too slow your potential customers will leave before they even saw a page
• Put the needs of the user first and beware of cutting-edge technology that does not enhance the usability of a site: you may want to show off your technical skills with scrolling text or constantly moving images but is this really helping the customer? Always ask: how is this going to benefit the user of the site?
• Always let the user know where they are in the site: this way you put the user in control and he will understand the site structure
• Make it easy to navigate: keep pages short and structure your content
• Keep standard operations intact: for example make sure that visitors are able to use the back button to go to the previous page and make sure that links have a different colour
• Keep it calm: focus on the content and don’t let the design distract too much from that
• Choose a simple address: something that people can easily remember
• Be consistent: don’t change the navigation around on other pages or change the design too much

purpose. On various points in the site it also encourages the client to take action.

These rules seem simple enough but all too often many designers can get carried away with the latest ‘gadgets’ or technology to show off their skills or because they like the way it looks. In many cases however these bells and whistles cannot only distract the visitor but will also make it harder or sometimes impossible for a search engine to find your site. A good example is the flash intro. It annoys more than it entertains and search engines can’t ‘read’ the flash content. So seldom will you see a top ranking site in Google that is built entirely with flash or have a flash intro.

However, if you want your site to be quick, consistent and calm does this mean that you need to have a ‘boring’ site. Not necessarily. In order to understand how many visuals you will need for your site it can be good to look at your intended audience. What kind of people are they and what would they respond to?

We will look into this in our next post: creating a website for your audience.

Related posts:

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2. Creating a website for your audience
3. Creating a new site