7 Questions to Ask Before You Hire a Web Designer

February 20, 2012 By 4 Comments

Let’s face it. No matter what you plan to do with your online marketing, once you’ve decided your business needs to be on the web you’re going to have to get a website.

Figuring out exactly what you want, or rather need, is not easy. Especially if you’re a newbie and have never really done much on the web except visit Facebook and send a few emails.

Approaching web designers can be a bit daunting – especially if you’re not as geeky as you’d like to be. Fear not: here are a few things to ask, and why you need to ask them.

1) Can you show me some sites you’ve already made?
Why?: Because you want to see what they can do in the first place.

2) How many preliminary designs do I get to choose from?
Why?: Designers will often ask you some fairly detailed questions about what you want and then go away and offer you a few designs to choose from. Make sure you understand that you can’t endlessly keep asking for more and more designs, unless you have a big budget. From the outset you want to know how many preliminary designs you can look out and how much tweaking and changing you can make. Once the design is agreed, be prepared to pay if you want any further changes.

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Filed Under: design Tagged With: , , ,

Convert Visitors into Customers

January 20, 2012 By 63 Comments

The majority of visitors to your website will never show their face. They won’t comment, send you a tweet, follow you on Facebook, Google+, download your free ebook or sign up for your newsletter. But if you check your Google Analytics you’ll see that they are there.

The silent majority are the visitors who account for the majority of your page views; they arrive at your site via Google search or Twitter and (often) quickly disappear but many stick around to check out your About page or your Services page.

Whether you’re getting regular lurkers who don’t make themselves known or fly-by-nights who don’t stop to linger, you need to work hard to get these visitors involved in your site; they are invaluable to the success of your online marketing and ultimately your business.
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Filed Under: copywriting, design, marketing, Uncategorized

When Blog Design Doesn’t Work

November 7, 2011 By 15 Comments

If you obsess about having a perfectly integrated blog design with lots of matching colors and graphical spleendour I have a cautionary tale for you.

Over the last month I’ve been running a split test on this site for newsletter sign-ups. Sometime Aweber serves up a blue sign-up form, other times it’s red.

Jontus Media Online Marketing Communications for Small Business Stockholm 1

Jontus Media Online Marketing Communications for Small Business Stockholm

I hesitated about using the red form because it so totally broke the design of the site. But do you know what? It converts over 90 percent better than the blue.

The Moral of the Story

It’s vital you collect data, split test, then review your data. Only this way will you be able to make informed decisions about your site.

You also have to be brave enough to dare. My design pals are horrified by the red, but the data speaks for itself.

Then again, how many people did the red sign-up form send running! Hmm. Something else to track.

In the meantime, I’m sticking with the split-testing because I just want to see the blue! The red is a bit harsh on my eye.

Filed Under: design Tagged With: , ,

What Should a Business Blog Look Like?

October 16, 2011 By 12 Comments

Blog design has really stalled. I’m not seeing that much innovation. At least, not on the surface of things.

Now, let’s get one thing straight: I’m not a designer. The sites Jontus Media sells are always designed by Juanjo Montilla, who is awesome; however, I do find myself looking at site after site wondering where’s the difference? Where can we go from here?

If I take three of my favorite sites on the basis of quality content, Mark Schaefer’s Grow, Gini Dietrich’s SpinSucks and Jay Baer’s Convince and Convert, apart from the great content, there’s very little to differentiate them visually.

Here’s what they have in common:

  • a sidebar on the right.
  • a video embedded in the sidebar.
  • a collection of social media icons.
  • a sign-up to get updates by email.

A few differences

Jay and Mark include brief bios in their sidebar, but that’s understandable because they’re independent consultants.
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Filed Under: blogging, design Tagged With: , , , ,

3 Reasons Why Your Site Didn’t Generate a Single Lead Last Month

April 14, 2011 By 7 Comments

Business failure

Small businesses starting out on the road of online marketing rarely generate leads immediately. Experience has taught me, both personally and working with customers, that there are stacks of reasons why things aren’t working out in the early stages of your first online campaign.

The Good

You’ve not posted a single thing on your blog, engaged in social media channels because you’re hiding away working on an ebook and that’s taking precedence because once it’s finished you’ll be able to market it.

It’s a really cogent piece of work, offering lots of valuable insight and well-designed. Also, it should be finished the week after next and you’re concentrating all your efforts on this.

Once it’s finished you know you’ll really have something special to drive people to your website and generate leads.

You realise there’s no point in having traffic to your site without anything that will convince people to get in touch about your services.

The Bad

You’ve spent way to much time on Twitter and Facebook trying to build a following without investing anytime in content creation on your business blog.

Although social media is great for banter, networking and idle chit-chat – oh yeah, and customer service – it doesn’t build trust like the way a well-developed website / ebook / white paper, etc, does.

Once you’ve got the pillar content on your site (i.e. kick-ass resources) that benefit potential customers, it will be time to focus more on using social media to get people to your site. Wait a while before going hell for leather on social media. A trickle of participation will do whilst your developing other stuff in your valuable time. [Read more...]

Filed Under: communication strategy, design, marketing Tagged With: , ,