Choosing a Website Generator for your new website

Firstly what is a website generator? I personally hadn’t heard this term until 2015 but website generators are software either on your desktop or in the cloud that helps you to create websites. Some as designed for business owners and some are designed for web designers.

Website generators can be great for people who are a bit tech savvy, enjoy creating things and have a bit of design flair. Does this describe you? Then you are ready to create your own website using a website generator. If this doesn’t sound like you, you can still use these platforms but you might want to get some help. So many clients call me after they have spent hours and hours trying to get their site looking good only to find that there are loads of elements of the site that are still not right.

Lets have a look at some of the main website generators. Some of these I am looking at for the first time.  There are always new platforms emerging and now is a good time, at the start of 2015 to have a look at these.

Squarespace

Of the generators we are showing in this article, Squarespace is by far the easiest for a business owner to use. You don't need to code and you don't need to see code. It is entirely intuitive. It is beautiful software, has stunning themes and is insanely easy to use. We use Squarespace for Boutique Business Consulting.

Macaw

Macaw provides the same flexibility as your favorite image editor but also writes semantic HTML and remarkably succinct CSS. It's time to expect more from a web design tool.

Webflow

Webflow generates valid markup and stylesheets, using clean code. All sites are responsive. They offer hosting packages for the websites you create.

Froont.

Work in the environment you're designing for – the browser. You have full control over desktop and mobile layouts, which are responsive from the start. You can create the websites and then export them for hosting.

We are going to sign up and have a play with Froont and Webflow. Stay tuned for our more detailed review on these two platforms. In the meantime we can't recommend Squarespace enough. If you are interested in a Squarespace website for your business please contact us.

New Themes in Shopify for 2015

I love it when I pop onto the Shopify theme store and discover new themes. All our Shopify clients know we use Shopify themes as the basis for your website development. Using a theme helps us to speed up development and reuse great coding by the theme developers. It is great to see that the theme developer are adopting some of the winning design trends from 2014. There is now parallax sliding, scroll vs click homepage layouts, the use of big fonts and full screen images. For more information on the web design trends for 2015, read our recent article.

Here is a showcase of the new themes launched this year.

Showtime

Key Features:

• Clear layout

• Subtle animation if you like movement on your site

• Lots of promotional spaces for communicating key messages

• Well designed drop down menu

• Product video support

Focal

Key Features

• Nice homepage layout to lots of opportunities to communicate key messages

• Good footer

• Allows for amazing photography to be showcased

• Fresh and clean product page layout

• Built in foreign currency

• Highly customisable homepage

Icon

Key Features

• Sticky top menu

• Interesting page movement as you scroll

• Great collection slider with featured image added

• Some parrallax sliding

• Instragram widget added

• Quick Filter and sort by already added

• Perfect for a fashion website

Parrallax

Key Features

• Sticky menu as you scroll

• Great full screen images in parallax scrolling added throughout the homepage

• Allows for great use of typography

• Great Product page layout - makes use of high quality product images

• Responds well in the mobile - keeping the design aesthetic

Pacific

Key Features

• Responsive

• Menu with images and multiple levels of navigation

• 4 presets

• Instagram widget built in

• FX already added

• Large main slider images

• Multiple promotional box configurations

Visit the Shopify Theme store now. If you need any help selection a theme don't hesitate to contact us. We have help you select the theme that will give you the best opportunity to stand out from your competitors and make a lasting impression on your customers.

Psychology of colour in web design and branding

Colour can convey so much meaning. The colours you choose for your branding and web design can impact how your customer feel about your brand and how they respond to it. The right colours for your business depends on the industry you are in.  I recently meet with a consultant from Yellow Pages and asked what is the best colour for our advertisment in Yellow Pages. Here is what she shared with me. Have a look below for your industry and remember to keep this in mind when you are developing your brand.

Fashion Boutiques and beauty salons are often aimed at a female clientele and so it is recommended to use softer feminine colours. The only caveat to this is high fashion where black and white have been proven to be very successful, think Net A Porter and The Iconic. For the male market consider using blue, most men like blue.

Artistic and creative businesses such as designers, gift shops, florists should use usual colour combinations to show off their creative style. The colours need to work together to create a pleasing aesthetic. Colours such as purple, magenta, pastels etc can work well.

Stores for Men, as we said most men like blue however remember that often times that it is women shopping on stores for men. Consider using blue and then add a pop colour like red or orange to add a dynamic feeling to the website.

Restaurants and Coffee shops, should use warm colours, ranging from red to orange. Did you know that red stimulates the appetite? I didn’t!  Orange is meant to encourage social interaction and communication. Orange also means affordable yet good quality. For stores selling mostly coffee - then green encourages thirst.

Toys Stores need to attract mums, dads, kids and grandparents. You need to use bright fun colours, like the primary colours red, yellow and blue. Kids love these colours. Grandparents on the other hand like softer colours so if possible incorporate some of these colours as well.

Fast Food should be red, yellow and white. Red to stimulate the appetite, yellow to keep people moving and white for hygiene.

High End Restaurants could use softer versions of orange such as coral, terracotta to encourage social enjoyment. Also deeper red for appetite and green or aubergine for a stylish elegant effect.

Hotels and Bars should consider using green to encourage people to drink more. Combine with orange with encourage interaction and communication.

Entertainment Businesses need colours that are fun and enticing. So think about a bit of yellow for happiness, red for stimulation and orange for social interaction.

What do you think? Do these colours convey the same meaning to you?

Another way you can look at it is to choose colour combinations that convey the message you wish to share with your customers.

Green is stimulating to thirst so businesses which rely on beverage sales should use green. Green also helps staff tolerate a noisy, stressful environment.

Yellow is a happy and playful colour, but it can cause anxiety or concern. So if you want your customer to move through your business quickly then use yellow. Otherwise use yellow in small amounts.

Blue will suggest that you are trustworthy and honest. Blue has a soothing effect on your customers. It will encourage them to stay in your store or site longer. Blue is favoured by many people.

Red should be used in small doses in retail businesses. If can cause aggression. It should be a pop colour to add a wow factor to your brand.

Have you ever used these rules for developing a brand. If so we would love to hear about it.

Happy New Year Resolutions

Happy New Year from Boutique Business Consulting. It is at this time that year that we always make resolutions. Have you made resolutions for your business this year? While resolutions can be easily broken, I think a better thing to do is to look at your business goals for 2015. So what are your business goals for this year?

Now is a good time to set down and plan out your goals for the year. Many of us are feeling fresh from the holidays, so its the perfect time to expand your mind and think through new possibilities for your business.

Remember when writing down goals its important to user the SMARTER framework: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time Bound, Ethical and Reachable. This framework helps you draft goals that you can achieve.

Here are some goals that we are setting at Boutique Business Consulting for 2015. Let see how we go achieving these goals this year!

Goal One: To expand our technical expertise by mastering one new technology platform for our clients in 2015 - proposed platform in SquareSpace developer platform.

Goal Two: To create a new digital entity in Q1 called UpDigital! that focuses specifically on web design and development - more on this one later!

Goal Three: To grow the coaching side of the business by 25% (number of clients) in 2015. To continue to grow our skillset in coaching by attending professional development programs.

Goal Four: To spend more time (at least 1-2 hours per week) on my business by consistently writing articles, social media and improving business processes (such are more instructional videos for clients).

I have selected only 4 goals for this year to keep it simple and manageable. The goals relate to new things we would like to start doing or things we would like to do better.

How did you go setting your goals? Good luck in 2015.

Web Design Trends for 2015

Welcome to 2015. At Boutique Business Consulting we are excited about the new year ahead. We thought we would kick of our first post for 2015 looking at the web design trends we can expect to see in 2015. Web design is always changing but as you will see below there are some tried and true trends that look like they are here to stay.

Clients, especially those with existing websites, often ask me how important is the design of the site really. My answer is always the same. It is important BUT its not important for it to be always the latest new fangle web design. Its important for it be clear to the customer what you are selling and why they should buy from you. So this means the design needs to clean, with great images, nice easily to read typography and it should look professional. All images should be clear and the same size, the site should be well aligned with no distractions to the eye. If you look at these trends below you will see that they follow these conventions. So now onto the trends...

1. Responsive or die

Yes, I know that that sounds a bit dramatic but it is so important that your website is responsive. What does responsive actually mean? It means that as you changes the size of your screen the website will change the layout to accommodate the screensize. A good way to check that a website is responsive is to get your browser window on your desktop and drag the corner to reduce the size. At each point where you drag it, the site should have changed to respond to the screensize. Your website needs to look amazing on a mobile phone and on an iPad. It still surprises me how many sites I go on that still show the desktop version on the mobile.

Last week Shopify announced that for the first time in history that more people used mobile phones and tablets to visit online stores than using desktop computers. They drew this conclusion from looking at data from over 100,000 ecommerce stores that use the Shopify platform, they saw 50.3% of traffic coming from mobile (40.3% from mobile phones, 10% from tablets) and just 49.7% from computers. This is pretty compelling data. So how does your site look on a mobile?

2. Large stunning photos and videos

Having amazing imagery on your website makes your website look amazing. Its plain and simple. Human beings love to look at beautiful photos so if you have beautiful photos on your website potential customers will be attracted to your website and will hang around long enough to have a look. Getting amazing, beautiful photos can be expensive but I always recommend to clients to spend as much as they can afford because these images can give your site the wow factor. Depending on your business, you can find amazing photos on stock websites like Shutterstock and iStock Photo.

3. Scrolling over Clicking

The rise in the use of tablets and mobile phones has seen us change the way we design. Once upon a time we wanted the site to be above the fold because people wouldn't scroll. Now we have no choice - we have to scroll on tablets and mobiles and so designers are creating longer website where people scroll to see the content instead of clicking to go off to another page.

This has seen the rise in 2014 of the one page website (all content is found on the homepage). These website are actually just one long page. When the user clicks on the item in the menu - that are taken down to the relevant part of the page. These sites accommodate both scrolling and clicking and can be very effective for content based businesses to tell their story on one page. Here is an example below:

4. Growth in Flat Design

We saw the growth of flat design in 2014 and it will continue into 2015. CreativeBloq.com defines flat design as a minimalistic design approach that emphasizes usability. It features clean, open space, crisp edges, bright colours and two-dimensional/flat illustrations. I.e. no flashy illustrations and animations and no real life realities like textures drop shadows etc. The Windows 8 desktop is an example of this:

5. Masonry (Cards and Tiles) are here to stay

This is one of my favourite trends in Web Design. Thanks to Pinterest we have seen the increase of Cards and Tiles within Web Design. When it comes to a layout of a blog roll we often use the masonry layout to achieve this effect. A number of Shopify themes now use this kind of layout in their designs. The Testament theme uses it in for the blog roll and the Altron for the collection page layout. Here is an example below:

6. One wow colour

This design aesthetic uses one dominant colour in the design. In the example below - yellow is the wow colour in this flat, simple yet very effective design.

7. Video Backgrounds

I think you either love or hate this one. Video backgrounds can be very cool but they can also be very irritating if not implemented correctly. Here is a groovy one by Uniqlo in Japan.

8. Unique Navigation

There has been a rise in unique navigation (main menus) on websites. It can add a differentiation to your website user experience. This is one design trend I am not sure about. I think its ok to have a unique way of navigating your site as long as its still VERY obvious to the user how they navigate. The last thing you want is for a user to have no idea how to find what they are looking for.

Here is an example of unique navigation implemented well. The user doesn't have to spend long thinking about where they should click to find out more information.

9. Outline Buttons

For a long time buttons in website design have been solid usually with a strong call to action colour like read or green. In more recent times we have seen an increase in buttons that are outlines only. I personally love the look of these buttons. See an example below.

10. Big, Awesome Typography

I love fonts, I love looking for fonts and seeing how they can make or break a design. There are so many awesome fonts available today and many of them can be added to your website for free or a small fee. Typography can set the tone and even mood of the website. Here is a great example of typography used well on a website - its big and bold and makes a statement. It seems so simple yet you can't argue that it is effective.

I personally love where web design is headed for the moment. If you are looking for more design inspiration, Shopify recently put together this list of 30 beautiful designs. Enjoy!

Importance of Google+ for SEO

What is the importance of Google Plus in SEO for your websites or blogs? In this article, we will show the important aspects to use Google+ that could improve SEO rankings for your websites. Instead of SEO, Google+ is also helpful for drive traffic to your blogs or websites, which we will discuss, in the following post. Google is promoting its new social platform Google plus. Google Plus is growing rapidly; gaining more followers than any other social network ever did in its early days. Adding Google plus to your website or marketing campaign helps to increase the traffic and ranking of your site in the search engines. Therefore, here is the importance of Google Plus in SEO rankings for blogs.

Maintaining multiple social platforms can be overwhelming and time consuming. But, adding Google plus to your site will soon result in higher SEO rankings on Google search engine. Google has introduced its new social platform to identify and track how the users rate the web content. Then based on the results and analysis Google will modify the search algorithm to better suit the user and to provide them the optimal search experience. Below are some main points to use the Google Plus for your websites.

• It is a smart idea to include Google plus into your social media marketing plans. You can create a page in Google plus and gain more and more followers to your website; Google is better at gaining artificial popularity.

• Google plus users can send emails to their co-workers and other users asking them to share their website with other people. This is one of the best marketing methods. So, start using Google plus and send emails which contain good content that can easily convince other users to share your website. You can also send the private messages on Google+.

• Ensure that you have added +1 button on your site. This will increase the visibility and earn you more clicks. It is better to share the button at the top or bottom of the web page content, as it’s at its most visible point there. "Readers believe me, +1 button is much more powerful than the like button provided by Facebook, i.e., if you are really enjoy the current post then you may hit the '+1' button which is placed below this post. Once you +1 this, It means you are voting me for your friends associated with your Google+ profile." Now, when your Google+ friend search with the queries related to the keywords of this post, Google will show our article to your friend by placing an arbitrary rank with a message that 'Your Name +1's this'. We think that is not a bad idea because, generally we trust on our friends.

• Google plus is also provided with the ‘circles’ option. With this you can keep different types of people and interests separate. You can create various circles like friends, marketing, clients etc. and add people to the circles; you can add one person to more than one group. You have an option to display the specific friends on the Google+ profile.

• The Google plus search feature works similar to that of the standard Google search. It includes three categories for searching, everywhere, from everyone and everything. With these searches SEO within Google plus is possible and helps you to improve traffic to your site. Recently, Google also started adding Google plus profiles to search results.

• The last but not least feature which is I really like, communities. Believe me, Google+ communities are much better than the Facebook groups. We are using both ways to drive traffic to our blogs, and monitored the traffic activities send via Google+ communities and Facebook groups. You can't believe, we found more than 400% good results for Google+ communities than Facebook groups.

• In short, gain your Google+ profile or page followers, join the communities related to your blog's niche, and share your content to all of them. Once the content getting +1's by other members, your content would be more personalized for their friends whose +1'd. It will also help to index newly created content to the search. However, you have an option in webmaster tools for fetching it.

Having quality products alone is not enough; you need to advertise your products and services to the maximum amount of people. So, every business, either small or large, should rely on advertising. You need to describe your products and tell your prospective customers why they should use your services. Social networks like Google+ are the best platforms to advertise and to connect with a vast number of people.

Source: www.google.com

Squarespace 7

Squarespace  announced its first major platform update in two years: Squarespace 7, adding new splash pages, templates and integrations with Getty Images and Google Apps.
The release advances the completely rebuilt codebase that arrived with the release of Squarespace 6 in 2012. Squarespace 7 will become available in waves to customers starting tonight. Customers can opt-in to the platform, or choose to hold off on upgrading during the early transition.

Today’s launch also includes the official release of Squarespace’s Blog and Note Android apps, which emerged in public beta last month. Squarespace has also graduated its developer platform from beta.
The Getty Images deal offers subscribers a subset – tens of millions – of editorial and creative images at the price of $10 per image. Google Apps for Work integration is available for $5 per month. With the exception of those two new partnerships, Squarespace’s pricing hasn’t changed.
Squarespace 7 also includes a new preview interface for editing your site. The right side of the page will include the preview of your content, while the menu will been compressed to the left. Adjusting the size of your browser window calls up varying device silhouettes to show you how your site will look on tablets and smartphones.

Cover Pages offers customers new splash templates that can either sit on top of an existing Squarespace site or serve as a minimalist landing page. Squarespace has also added 15 new templates centered around specific website categories

Squarespace founder and CEO Anthony Casalena launched the company from his dorm room at the University of Maryland 10 years ago. The company now has 380 employees with over 2 million websites created on its platform. In April, Squarespace raised a $40 million Series B funding round.

Find out more on : www.squarespace.com

A Website’s Main Image Slider

When making a custom website, there are various functional elements that help tell the story of your organization. One element the internet marketing experts says is the a main image slider.
The main image slider is a prominent serious of slides that display large, bold images coupled with effective call-to actions driving visitors to the most important portions of the website. The use of this slider is a fantastic way to effectively communicate your most important messages right from the start of the website visit.

Here are some websites we developed with amazing sliders.

Louise Hill Designs

QPEC

Little Box Of Home

To see more of our projects, simply click here.

Twitter for Your Small Business

With 255 million total users, more and more small businesses are utilizing Twitter to market their products and services. Why? Because Twitter makes marketing your business easy and ensures that you’re hitting a wider audience. The marketable audience on Twitter accounts for approximately 15% of all adults in Australia. This includes 26% of people between the ages of 18 and 29. Are you reaching the right people at the right time? Here’s how you can make the most of Twitter for your small business:

1. Have a Robust Profile: Your Twitter profile picture is something your followers should recognize, i.e. a logo. Enhance your background with a custom image. In your bio tell people what you do, how you help people, and exactly who you are.

2. Follow your customers: Let your customers know that you have a twitter account and when they follow you, follow them back.

3. Ask for shares: Ask others to retweet you and chances are they will. In fact, there’s a 23x higher chance of being retweeted if you spell out the word “retweet.” Try it!

4. Timing: Weekend engagement tends to be about 17% higher than weekdays. Users are also 181% more likely to be on twitter during their commute (at 9am and at 5pm), so schedule your tweets for those times.

5. Use images: Tweets with image links get 2x the engagement rate.

6. Keep your tweets short and sweet: Tweets with 120-130 characters often get a better response.

7. Hashtags: Stay on top of industry trends and pay attention to what your audience is hashtagging. Tweets with hashtags get 2x more engagement.

To learn more about business tips – visit our website. And, of course, follow us on Twitter!

Mobile first

Designing for mobile Vs desktop
Which should you tackle first: the design for large desktop screens, or the one for mobile devices?

Starting with smaller screens forces you to create a lean, focused design. All the necessary content is built into the mobile version from the outset.
Starting with mobile doesn’t mean you’ll scale back your desktop site. Instead, that you can make “progressive enhancements” to supplement the large-screen experience.
This type of site development goes hand-in-hand with responsive design too.

The 7 key principles of mobile web design:

1. Design for mobile based on most popular and/or important content
   What are the majority of visitors looking for on your site? That’s the content you should put front and center in your design. It must be easy to find or use, or your site visitors will move on to someone else.

2. Everything should be available…
   Even if not everything is visible. In other words, make sure mobile users have access to the majority of your site’s content. It’s frustrating to look for needed information that’s simply not available on the mobile optimized site.
   On the other hand, just because the content is there doesn’t mean it has to be linked to via the main navigation bar.

3. Limit navigation options
   As noted above, you need to be choosy about the information that you put front and center.
   Too many menu layers, too many clicks, too many choices, you have to simplify if you want your site to be mobile friendly.
   David Moth of E consultancy recommends no more than three layers of menus and a max of five or six menu items.

4. Buttons matter
   Thumbs aren’t the most accurate pointing device; putting buttons too close together will only lead to frustration.
   Who wants to keep hitting “reload” when the button you’re trying to click is “submit”? avoid tiny fonts and minuscule buttons.
   Instead, use elements that are sized for easy clicking.

5. Watch your media
   While the aesthetic design of your website is extremely important, media elements can cause mobile browsers to trip up.
   Keep an eye out for overly large image files, bloated fonts that load too many unecessary characters, and videos in formats — like Flash — that won’t play on certain mobile operating systems.

6. Pop-ups are problematic
   If you’re throwing too many pop-up surveys or sign-up boxes at your mobile visitors, they’re going to get annoyed. It’s frustrating to get rid of pop-ups on a small screen.
   Unless it’s absolutely necessary, avoid them.

7. Don’t require too much text
   Forms are a pain to fill out when you’re typing with your thumbs. Keep the text input needed to a minimum. No essays, please!

6 Ways to Market Your Business (and Make Money) with Pinterest

“I love Pinterest because it makes me money,” wrote Charles Huff, author of How to Sell on Etsy with Pinterest, and he’s right; Pinterest users spend between $140 and $180 per order on average. Facebook and Twitter shoppers only spend $60 to $80. It’s clear that the future of social media marketing lies in visual platforms, and therefore marketing with Pinterest is vital. But marketing effectively with Pinterest is another story. Here are 6 ways you can effectively make money with Pinterest, while effectively marketing your business all along:

1. Pin with a purpose, use “Call-to-Action” templates
   You’ve pinned an image with your brand. Viewers like the image and they re-pin it. Great, you’re getting your name out there. But what if you could actually increase the chances of turning those people who are merely just re-pinning into…customers? Adding a special “call-to-action button” on your pin will not only improve click through rates by 1,300% but will increase the chance of people taking a step closer to becoming a customer- whether its receiving a coupon, entering a contest, joining an email list, or showing them another one of your products. Here are 50 free customizable “Call-to-Action” templates.
2. Make it easy to re-pin
   You want people to be able to re-pin your content easily. By building in a “pin it” button or “follow” tab on your content, you make it so much easier for people to pin your content on their boards. This will help people interact and engage with your brand more easily.Pinterest teaches you how to build these buttons or widgets with very simple steps. You can also use the “hover pin,” which allows a “pin it” button to appear when your mouse hovers over the image.
3. Sometimes you should “Rich Pin,” instead of just Pin
   If you want to use your pin to try and sell a product or tell someone the location of your store, use “rich pins.” They’re just pins with extra information. For example, “product pins” include information on where to buy the product, availability, and real time pricing- if there’s a drop in price, your pinners will be notified. Pinterest pins that include prices get 36% more likes than those that don’t have them. “Place pins” are equally effective. After taking a picture of your newly designed display window, wouldn’t it be wonderful if people could get a map to your store to come see the window (and of course, potentially buy products) in person? “Place pins” give pinners a map, address, and phone number of the pin. Learn how to use “rich pins” here.
4. Don’t #Pindump
   You always hear “quality over quantity”- and that goes with Pinterest too. Pinning too often is not good for you or your brand. It risks annoying your followers, making your brand look weak and desperate for attention (you don’t want to be that brand). View the platform as a gallery where you upload significant products or cool pictures of your product. Keep the rest of your inventory images on your website.
5. Pin different content (or else it gets boring)
   True or False: Pins are for images only. False! You can pin videos, audio, podcasts, or slideshows as well. People consume a wide range of content these days- you can’t win with just pictures and text. Adding variety to the type of content you pin will allow a wider range of people to engage with your brand. As you know, online video is extremely popular these days- especially short videos with a lot of information in a short period of time. Podcasts are also a creative way to build relationships with your potential customers.
6. Use this secret formula for getting more repins
   70% of brand engagement on Pinterest is generated by users- not brands. Therefore: You. Must. Get. That. Repin. It really gets the conversation going, involves users, and creates a following. While there is no “secret” formula to getting a repin (oops, sorry about the title!), here are some helpful tips on getting repins:
7. Use this secret formula for getting more repins
   Images that include red or orange hues are twice as likely to get repins than images with blue hues. Images with several dominant colors get 3.25 times more pins than images with just one dominant color. Images with good lighting (medium lightness for users to see) are repinned 20 more times than images with bad lighting and that are too dark. Images without a face receive 23% more repins that those that do. Of course, don’t get too caught up on trying to follow a systematic approach to getting repinned. You need to give your brand some personality too. Join the conversation and repin things yourself; follow, like, and comment on pins that are related to your industry. You want to always be engaging with other users- after all, it’s all about social marketing right?

Source: Pinterest

Social Sharing and Driving Traffic to your Website

You have a great product, idea or service. You’ve devoted in putting together a solid website. Social media marketing is important, so you have Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts – maybe even a Tumblr account too. You know social sharing is a key element of success online, but you want the results of your efforts to improve.
Follow these ten guidelines to use those social media channels to engage with customers and draw traffic like never before.

1. When – and how often – to share
   Think about how you interact with different types of content on the web. Unless you run across your dream customer/employer, you’re probably not poring over their tweets from months ago or even last week. And what about how people interact with content that you post? After a couple days, that adorable picture of your kid/dog/car probably isn’t generating new ‘Likes’ on Facebook anymore – no matter how cute you know it is.
   Tweet often, as tweets have a short shelf-life. Facebook posts last somewhat longer, but similarly get lost in the shuffle after only 4-5 hours. Blog posts provided longer-lasting, searchable contents.
   Get to know the unique blend of needs, habits and personalities that typify your customers, and share content on a timetable that encourages them to interact. Best practices for a knitting needle company and a designer vodka will look quite different, regardless of where on the web you’re posting.
2. Maximize the size and visibility of your posts
   If eyeball attention and space are so precious on social media, than any way to claim additional real estate must be incredibly valuable. It is. Facebook continues to tinker with its News Feed formula and presentation. Recently, it has expanded the space given to a link preview post, from 154×154 pixels to now displaying previews x3.5 times larger. This has turned the previous best-practice of sharing photos with commented links on its head.

   Preliminary research shows that these new link-preview posts dominate photos on engagement metrics. Considering that clicking on the picture, link or caption all direct readers to your linked website, this is no surprise. Don’t send your customers clicking away to a jpeg – post links and send them to your site.

   Either way, the value of including images in posts in undeniable: posts with images receive almost 40% more interaction than those without. This holds true on Twitter as well: images make up 20% more of the links on Twitter than the next-closest content type, and they similarly dominate engagement stats.

3. Get to know your customer
   Social sharing gives you the chance to say whatever you want, to the entire world. Do you want the world to know you’re out of milk? Or do you really want the audience that cares that you’re out of milk?
   Everyone is a brand now. From massive corporations to a lonely pre-teen, everyone has a personality and presence to cultivate online. Consider your audience when identifying popular social content to re-post on your own social channels. It’s great that you’re interested in something you’ve seen online, but take a second to make sure it fits the tone and focus of your brand.

   Think backwards from your customer: is the person who will click on what you’re sharing a person you want visiting your site? Is that person going to be pleased to end up on your site? If you can answer ‘Yes’ to those 2 questions, share freely and prepare to welcome additional traffic to your site.

   Even if you’re not online to make money, it’s reasonable to call your audience ‘customers’. They’re spending their time, clicks, and advertising eyeballs on your content, so reward them with value in return. Use analytics tools to learn about your followers on each of your networks and track the performance of various styles of posts and types of content.

4. Benefits of (regular) blogging
   The Internet is giving you an opportunity to post lasting content – content that you control, on a site you control. Exploit that opportunity.

   Your tweets will disappear, buried under a mountain of billions of fresher, sub-140 character messages. Any message on another medium is just that: not fully your own. Your blog benefits you in search, gives you a platform to become a reputable source, garners links to your work, and drives traffic directly where you want it: your website. Choose compelling images to accompany your posts. As with posts directly on social media platforms, this increases engagement and makes your content virally shareable on various networks.
   So, do it. Blog regularly. Current research indicates that blogging 15 or more times per month can increase traffic by 5X. Even if you’re a small organization, make this a part of someone’s job description. If you’re part of an even smaller enterprise, then find a way to make blogging work for you – the same research shows your business stands to benefit the most in terms of traffic increase.
   f you’re not already posting frequently, these numbers may seem daunting. Don’t worry, there are ample resources for blog post ideas. Post a weekly round-up of the most important news in your industry. Compose a How-To article related to the work you do, and shop it around to other content sites. Write a profile/review on a company you admire (maybe one you’re interested in working with/for), and link to their site. Share this on your social channels, also tagging their appropriate profiles. You get to associate with an established player in your industry. And maybe they’ll return the favor by sharing your work with their followers.

   Finally, remind your readers of the excellent content you’ve already created. Do a post highlighting your most engaging content of the month or build posts that reference some of your most successful previous pieces. Blog content is longer-lasting, but this is still the internet – it takes concerted effort to get your desired content onto your customers’ screens. Focus that effort on promoting your best work.

   
    

10 Things to Boost Your Website Conversion Rate

No matter how streamlined your marketing campaigns are, boosting conversions should be top of your daily to-do list. Once an advertising campaign works, companies tend to neglect testing different variables to improve their conversion rates. Here is a list of the 10 tests you cannot afford to miss.

1. Identify the unique selling propositions (USPs) that convert the most. 
   All of your products or services have strong selling points but not of equal importance to your customers. Test all USPs in your ads, prominent placements of the site and social media to figure out which of these improve your conversion rate the most. Once you find the best unique selling propositions, you will be able to plan your communication strategy in a way that maximizes customer acquisition.
   Related: The 3 Most Important Online Marketing Metrics to Monitor
2. Landing page design
   You can test the landing page design in two separate phases. Phase one consists of testing several page designs in order to find the one that appeals most to your target customer. Try comparing image versus content based pages.
   Phase two consists of applying changes to the top performing design in order to test how different versions of the same page affect the success of your website. You should focus the majority of your time on the top section of the page.
3. Landing page calls to action
   The majority of marketers decide what call to action to use based on the answer to the question: what do I want customers to do on my page? However, clever marketers would rather answer another question: what is the action customers can take on my page that will maximize profits? Testing calls to action will have a significant impact on your bottom line.
4. Landing page text
   Make sure to test the positioning of text: where do you place the testimonials? Where are you going to analyze your benefits and features? What headlines will you use at the top of the page to maximize visitor interest? Use metrics such as sales and average time on site to evaluate the performance of your pages.
   Related: How to 'Split Test' Your Website to Engage Online Customers Better
5. Mobile vs desktop traffic return-on-investment
   Mobile and desktop traffic are likely to convert at a different rate. Compare how much marketing budget you are spending on each device with what you are getting in return and then decrease the budget of the least profitable.
6. Pause traffic sources based on bounce rate and average time on site
   Analyze the quality of incoming traffic from each of your marketing channels and decide which are not worth targeting due to low average time on site and high bounce rate. You can then reallocate the budget to those channels with a higher conversion rate.
7. Adding a chat button
   Many of your website visitors might prefer to discuss business before jumping on a call or buying a product. Installing a chat on your site is relatively inexpensive and will give you one more way to convert visitors into leads.
8. Customize landing pages for top performing geographic areas
   Where are your sales coming from? Identify the most profitable geographic areas and create dedicated pages offering local deals (e.g. free shipping in New York.)
9. Conversion rate of returning users
   Invest in users that have visited your site, spent enough time on it but did not convert. They are likely to be interested in your offer but prefer to compare all available products first. Create campaigns to target past website visitors and test different offers and/or unique selling propositions to incentivize sales.
10. The checkout process
    Create a smooth and fast checkout process to avoid missing out on potential customers when they are ready to convert. Test guest checkouts, short billing information forms and one-step checkout pages!

Testing is the best way to improve the conversion rate of any site. While there are numerous methods you can test, the ten elements above are a great starting point. This process is neither easy nor quick but it is worth investing the time to benefit your business long term.

Related: 12 Ways to Increase Online Sales

Related Book: Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords

How To Increase Conversion Rates

What are Conversion Rates?
Conversion Rates are the percentage of prospective customers who take a specific action you
want. For example, the following are specific conversion rates that an organization may track:

• The percentage of website visitors who fill out a form, call your company, or purchase something from you online
• The percentage of callers who are issued proposals
• The percentage of proposals you win
• Etc.

Increase Conversion Rates to Improve Profits
No matter how good your current conversion rates are, they can always get better.  And improving your conversion rates dramatically improve profits.

For example, if you spend $1,000 on advertising, you may bring 1,000 prospective customers to your website. If your online sales conversion rate is 5%, then you’ll secure 50 new customers. Alternatively, if your conversion rate improved to 6%, you would gain 60 new customers. In this latter scenario, you’d gain an additional 10 customer for no additional advertising cost, thus boosting your profits significantly.

How to Increase Conversion Rates
There are numerous ways to increase conversion rates. Below are several ways to improve your rates, broken into two main categories:

Increasing Online Conversion Rates

1. Social Proof:- adding social proof, via customer testimonials and/or case studies, to your website virtually always increases conversions.
2. Clear Contact Information:- clearly showing contact information, perhaps a phone number and/or live chat options, typically increases conversions by giving visitors confidence that your company is “real” and is there to answer any questions they have.
3. Credibility:- Having “trust” seals, such as from the Better Business Bureau or from web security firms like Verisign, will nearly always conversions.
4. Guarantees:-  offering a guarantee gives customers more confidence in your offering and thus generally increases conversion rates. Likewise, having a longer guarantee (e.g., 365 days vs 30 days) will generally increase conversions even more.
5. Headlines:- the headlines on your website pages are typically the first thing visitors read, and often compels them to read more or exit your site immediately. The right headline could dramatically increase your conversion rate. So test new headlines frequently.

Increasing Offline Conversion Rates

Much of the same strategies that improve online conversion rates should be used offline. For example, showing pictures and testimonials of other satisfied customers nearly always helps conversions.  Likewise, offering more credibility and longer guarantees helps too.

A couple other ways to increase offline conversion rates are as follows:

1. Trial Closes:- trial closes are questions you ask prospective customers that don’t ask for a final buying decision. For example, you might ask the question, “If we were able to offer you this for a price that works for you, is this something you’d like to move forward with?”
2. Get customers to invest time:- For bigger purchases, the more time customers invest in the process, the more likely they often are to buy. So, rather than quickly giving customers a price, it’s often best to have a few conversations. Perhaps in the first conversation you learn about their needs. In a second conversation, you present some research/information you think they’d find helpful. And in a third conversation, you present a proposal to work together. Although this process might slightly lengthen your sales cycle, it gets prospective customers to invest more time in working with your company; this often prompts them to want to do business with you. With such a question, if the prospect says “yes,” you’ll know that price is the only potential thing standing in the way of them buying. Alternatively, if they say “no,” listen to find out what their objections are so you can overcome them before offering your price.

Tracking Your Conversion Rates
Of critical importance, always remember that you can’t improve what you can’t measure.

That’s why you need to track your conversion rates on both a daily and monthly basis. Doing so allows you to immediately correct problems (e.g., why is our conversion rate so low today?, it’s because our website isn’t loading properly) and make sure you are improving your conversion rates over time. Use conversion tracking tools like Guiding Metrics, which is an amazing tool to expertly track your metrics and improve profits.

Your conversion rates are absolutely key to your sales and profits. So, figure out the most important conversion rates in your company (e.g., online visitors to sales, proposals won/lost) and start improving and tracking them today.

Social media and how consumers purchase

Social media is becoming a hub of commerce with more Australian consumers than ever researching and then buying products and services

3 Great Pattern & Texture Resources for Websites

I have, at one stage, been called The Queen of Patterns by my clients, to my somewhat obsessive use of patterns and textures in my website designs. I love them. Any excuse to use a pattern, I will. A well-placed pattern, subtle or loud, can not only give the design depth and dimension, it also evokes tactility. A website, to simplify it right down, is just colours and shapes on a screen. To have the ability to make a screen appear soft, fluffy, sharp, metallic, crunchy, hot, cold, wet etc with patterns and textures is irresistible to me as a designer.

Now, I’m certainly a fan of the flat design trend that’s currently sweeping the design world; a sharp, corporate website begs for it. But if I’m designing a site that sells cupcake ingredients, children’s toys or beautiful fabrics, I run straight to my trusty patterns. Here are three of my favourite free pattern and texture resources:

Subtle Patterns

My absolute favourite and my main go-to website for seamless patterns. As the name suggests, the vast collection of patterns are brilliantly subtle and are perfect for a hint of texture in website backgrounds or as an overlay on coloured elements and images. Wood, concrete, paper, fabric; Subtle Patterns is a treasure trove of tasteful patterns and are all seamless, ready for instant use in your design. You can preview a tiled version of your chosen pattern with a click of a button and you can also download a .pat file for quick use within Photoshop.

The Pattern Library

We’ve had subtle, now for the LOUD; these patterns will blow your socks off. From waffles and chicken legs to bicycles and lighthouses, The Pattern Library is perfect for a bold and tongue-in cheek design statement. These delightful patterns are also seamless and ready to add straight to your design. I’m dying to use some of these in good kids website.

Texture Lovers

While the previous examples are great for illustrative patterns, Texture Lovers is perfect for photographic textures. If you’re looking for a cloudy sky, rusty metal or weathered concrete to boost your design, this site is for you. While most of the textures aren’t seamless, a quick edit in Photoshop can give you the perfect textured website background.

So next time you’d like to add some depth and tactility to your design, give these great resources a go and be your own King or Queen of Patterns!

Good Web Design

Good web design can be deceptively difficult, as it involves achieving a design that is both usable and pleasing.  This is done through a balancing act of communicating the brand, conveying and presenting information though a visually coherent and technically sound design.

The quality of a website is the balance between the visual details and the usefulness of the site.  Good websites produce a unique experience and present relevant content in a clear and convince manner.  The  quality of a website is purely design focused and orientated.  

The design is made up of three components: 

• Colour
• Grid and space
• Typography

Colour
Colour schemes need to be thought through very carefully,  they add a sweet flavour to every website. When choosing a colour scheme the creator needs to keep in mind that the colour can change slightly on different devices.  This is mainly due to the screen quality and specifications. In addition different combinations of colour are required to create the best outcome.

Grid and Spacing
Spacing and alignment is crucial for a great looking website, and it makes the development process a lot more fluid.  For a great design to succeed every element needs to be placed in balance with other elements, and a grid system provides a great structure to keep the layout in harmony. When elements are not aligned or well balanced this creates a displeasing site design which disrupts the sites ability to communicate effectively. Unstructured content not only disrupts the communication it can disrupt the users experience, which can also result in a loss of leads or checkouts.

Typography
The third and final segment of aesthetics is the typography of your website, this is more important than you think.  The user must be able to read the web content easily.  A hierarchy of must be implemented to covey the most important content quickly and efficiently.  When designing a site, typography aesthetics should be a priority.  Leveling typography of importance is a key feature is selling your content and communicating effectively to your audience.

Is your business website letting you down?

How many times have I heard from businesses around Sydney that they are really unfortunate with their website and it dooms their business. They complain that they have had their website for a few years and haven’t been bothered to do anything about it. It’s a real tragedy cause a website can be such a great marketing tool and to let it sit there and do absolutely nothing is a real waste of your companies resources. The best thing business owners can do is stopping the damage being caused, pick up the phone and do something about it.
Not every business lends itself to online retail, but it's still important to have an online presence.

More than 80% of Australians now use the Internet as a research tool while shopping, even if they make their final purchase in a physical store. If you're not visible online then you're simply not in the picture.

It's easy to get a basic business website up and running quickly, but a poorly designed and resourced website can do more harm than good. Is your business website kicking goals or is it letting the side down?

It's important to develop an underlying strategy for your website. The old "build it and they will come" approach just doesn't cut it anymore. Who will come to your website? How will they find it and exactly what will they be looking for? What actions do you want them to take next? Once you've clearly established the purpose of your website then the path forward becomes clearer and it also becomes easier to measure success.

One key to a successful website is effective search engine optimisation – give potential customers the best chance of finding your website. Make sure you use appropriate keywords throughout your site, especially in the page titles and major headlines. Create a search engine-friendly site map and include keyword-rich descriptions in the ALT tags for your images, to help give search engines a clear picture of your site.

Linking to other pages within your site helps drive internal traffic, so make sure the anchor text offers a good description of what it's linking to. Cultivate reciprocal links with key websites in your field to help boost your search rankings, but don't try to scam search engines by paying for links – Google is awake to such tricks and your search rankings will plunge rather than rise.

These days more and more people use the internet from mobile devices; quite possibly while standing in your store or perhaps one of your competitors. As such it's vital to allow for mobile devices in your website design, perhaps utilising a mobile-friendly skin which automatically kicks in when it can tell you're browsing from a handheld gadget.

Website performance on desktop and mobile devices is crucial, especially if you're expecting heavy traffic. Use resource-hungry eye candy such as Flash sparingly, so as not to bog things down. Don't skimp on hosting costs either, as the longer your website takes to load the more likely someone is to change their mind and look elsewhere. Australian-based web hosting is often more expensive than US-based hosting, but in return complicated websites should load faster for Australian users. Also optimise your website to ensure that key components load first, so people can start reading while the rest of the page loads.

Regardless of what your business does, it's worth running a regular health check on your website to ensure that it's still delivering the goods.

Contact us or simply comment below to find out more information.

Website Tips: Prove it, socially

Things have certainly changed over the past decade when it comes to how people engage and interact with each other online. The world of social networking through services such as Facebook and Twitter now plays an important role in purchasing decisions. Product reviews and service testimonials, both good and bad, are at our fingertips. It’s never been easier to seek out, listen to and discuss other people’s opinions on a particular product or service. This means monitoring your own brand and maintaining a positive reputation in the social arena is now more important than ever.

It’s far better to let your happy customers tell your story, so creating the opportunity to do so and displaying these on your website can be a valuable tool. A quick email survey takes almost no time at all and providing you ask the right questions it can pay big dividends in giving you goodwill collateral you can promote online.

By posting real testimonials and references on your website you give new customers the opportunity to get instant feedback on how you perform as a company. We can help you create a dedicated ‘Testimonials’ page on your site or a testimonial ticker on your homepage. You could also have 5 star ratings and reviews on your your products or services pages so that it  relates directly to your specific offering.

Even better, if you can find a few ‘champions’ of your business who feel a really strong connection with what you do, then creating a dedicated ‘Case Studies’ page is a great way to let people drill down further into how you operate and how others feel about you.

Call Boutique Business Consulting today and we will help ensure your website can answer the ‘why’ questions. Proof, credibility and trust are all factors a great website gives to your prospective customers.