Graphic Design and Web Design

We recently launched a new web site for Cougar Construction of Barre, Vermont. One of the unique aspects of the web site is its graphic design features. In web design, where the web site will be viewed by the general public, you must ask the following questions in relation to graphics...

• how important are graphics for the web site?
  
• how many graphics per page?
  
• how large is each graphic?

How important are graphics? How many?

The purpose of the Cougar Construction web site is for offering their construction services. It was very important the web site have photos and a decent amount of them to show off the previous work of the company. Photos are definately more important than the actual text to get people interested in their services as they are visual in nature. However, from a internet
marketing perspective, a decent amount of text is always essential for search engine marketing. You need the text so that the search engines have something to search so that the web site shows up properly in the search engine's search results. For example, with the Cougar Construction web site, if we just had a bunch of photos and no text, it would be very unlikely that the web site would ever show up for a search like "Vermont Contruction" or "Metal Building Construction Vermont", which are terms that Cougar Construction's clients might use to find their web site. Therefore, there must be a balance. For Cougar Construction's web site, I would say we had about a 50/50 ratio for the main pages and much higher amount of graphics on the gallery pages.

How large should the graphics be?

There are two aspects of photo size that we consider. First, you have the actual size of the photo. Second, you have the image quality. What we did for Cougar Construction's web site was create smaller and low quality images (within 140 x 140 pixels with a 60 jpg quality) for all the photos, which load very fast. Please note that these two processes must be done in a graphics program
such as Photoshop or Fireworks. Just shrinking the image in an web page editor such as Frontpage or Dreamweaver does not shrink the size for image loading purposes. The graphic size (both quality and dimensions) is very important because if you have a web page with a bunch of full quality images on it, it will significantly increase the loading time, scaring off visitors with slower internet access.

The next thing we did was add a link under each image that allows the visitor to click to view a full quality and larger image (usually within 500 x 500 pixels), which loads faster as it's a pop-up with only that image loaded within it. We have found that this is very efficient and effective way of creating a photo gallery. We always optimize all graphics to appear at a decent quality along with an acceptable loading speed. Again, this is very important for a web site's success as people with dial up internet access will not wait 2 minutes for a web site to fully load... they will just move on to the next one. Especially, if they don't know you or your web site.

Finally, we included a flash animation for the web site on the top of the main page. It's basically a presentation of some of the best photos along with photos of Chris who owns and operates Cougar Construction. This is really great way to get the visitor's attention and by using flash as opposed to other media methods, it loads much quicker. Flash is really on the most efficient ways to add video or animation to a web page. I always suggest to use Flash sparingly and to not have your entire web site in Flash as it's difficult for search engines to index flash content. Also, too much flash content can make a web site look busy and distract from the purpose of the web site.

Please contact me if you have any questions/comments regarding web design, internet
marketing or any other web development topic.

How to Get All Your Web Pages Included in Google.

Google just unveiled a new and improved method for get web pages indexed in their search engine. They call it Google Sitemaps. Google Sitemaps allows webmasters the ability to submit all the web pages of your web site directly to Google to be indexed into their search engine.

Google is doing this because they want to be able to index more information in order to offer better search results. However, their current methods are limited as it's difficult for their system to find every web page available. Therefore, it makes sense for them to come up with a way for webmasters to be able to upload the information directly into their system. This will keep their search results more comprehensive and fresh.

Use of the new method is free, however inclusion is not guaranteed. However, this is certainly a great way of getting Google to at least take notice of all the web pages your web site has to offer. We intend to use it with all the web sites we own and operate, including Advantage Creations!

Google requires a "feed" in "xml" format, which is basically a listing of web pages in a specialized code that enables the web pages to be directly imported into their system. We have already learned how to do this and have uploaded a feed for our ChamplainCoffee.com web site. We included each individual product page in the feed. The submission appears to have been successful. We intend to do the same with our JLRyan.com and CosmicVitamins.com web sites, each having around 400 products.

We believe this to be a tremendous opportunity to increase traffic for our web sites through Google by giving each individual product page the best opportunity for being included in Google's search results.

We plan to offer the service of submitting Google Sitemap feeds to our clients for as little as $25. This would include gathering the list of web pages, creating the special-coded page and submission to the Google Sitemaps system. Please contact us if interested.

First Draft of Three Forks Pizza Web Site is Done!

Jim and Kathy Brown of Three Forks Pizza approached us to create a web site that would specifically help them sell more pizza
kits to fundraiser groups, such as school and church groups, that may be interested in pizza fundraising.

We just completed the web site design in its first draft. We strived to create a web site design that fits Three Forks Pizza's existing marketing materials and also gives you the feeling of "I want pizza!" Therefore, we worked a couple finished pizza photos's into the main header design and used a "homemade" pizza crust with pizza sauce spread photo as the background for the header. As always, the web pages were designed to fit all screen sizes and we strived to make the pages fast loading with an easy-to-use and consistent web site navigation scheme.

We are now in the process of working with the Browns on fine-tuning the details of each web page and formulating a search engine promotion strategy. We suggested a strategy involving both pay-per-click advertising and search engine optimization. We feel that the web site has great potential for both of these areas as Three Forks Pizza has a good niche business with little
competition. This means it should be easier for the web site to reach top rankings on the search engines for pizza fundraising terms and purchasing clicks through pay-per-click services should be quite cheap, therefore, maximizing profits.

Check out the web site at ThreeForksPizza.com and let me know what you think so far. Feel free to make any suggestions for improvement. The Browns and I would really appreciate it!

What is the Best Way to Drive Traffic to My Web Site?

This is a common question I'm asked. Since 1998, we have tried many different strategies and over the years pay-per-click advertising has emerged as the
quickest and most profitable way to drive traffic to our web sites.

What is pay-per-click advertising?

Pay-per-click, or PPC, is an advertising strategy where you bid to get an ad placed near the search results for a given term at a set bidding price. For example, if you go to Google and search for “low acid coffee”, you will see blue rectangle at the top of the screen with text ads in it and some text ads to the right of the search results. These are all labeled “sponsored ads”. When a visitor clicks on one of these ads, the advertiser is charged a fee. In this example of low acid coffee, we bid on this term for our ChamplainCoffee.com web site. You should see our ad in the right hand side of the screen for search results.

There are many advantages to using PPC advertising. You have a lot of control on where your ad will be placed and how much you will pay. Also, you only pay if a prospect clicks on your ad to go to your website... you only pay for qualified leads! You can pay as little as .10 to $10 per click
on your ads. What you may have to pay to get listed on the first page depends on how many competitors you have for a given term and what they are willing to pay. Because many businesses are now using PPC advertising, we do much more research than we used to do in figuring out which terms are best for us to bid on.

For example, we could bid on the search term "coffee" for ChamplainCoffee.com, as we were advised to do by some pay-per-click firms. This really made no sense to us as the term is too generic… we would get a whole lot of traffic, but at too high a cost. The sales wouldn't justify the
advertising cost. However, being that we sell low acid coffee that is 75% acid free, we decided to bid on terms such as “low acid coffee” and “acid free coffee”, which through our research, turned out to have a lot of searches and very high rates of return.

Interestingly, we found that while the term "acid free coffee" has less searches and an average bid cost of almost half as much as “low acid coffee”, it produces more sales. Therefore, being the most profitable. We also found that bidding to be #1 or even #2 in search results is often most
unprofitable.

In conclusion, PPC advertising is quicker and easier than other methods of getting traffic to your web site. However, due to increasing popularity it’s more difficult than it used to be, but still by far the most effective.

As we have been very successful with doing it for our own businesses generating over $1 million in sales as a result, we have decided to offer pay-per-click advertising management services to our clients. We are able to do this for as little as $25/month, which should be affordable to any
business serious about doing business online. If you are interested, please contact us to discuss it further.

Is Your Business CAN-SPAM Compliant?

Many businesses online now engage in email marketing of some sort. Whether it be sending a press release/company news, new product notice, sale notice, web site update, or surveys. However, since January 1, 2004, the CAN-SPAM act has set some very specific requirements in order for an email to be legal to send.

I personally find that not many small business owners are aware or understand the rules. Blue Sky Factory reports that 50% of email marketers in the US do not understand the CAN-SPAM laws.

Basically, the law requires the following:

• It bans false or misleading header information. Your email's "From," "To," and routing information – including the originating domain name and email address – must be accurate and identify the person who initiated the email.
  
• It prohibits deceptive subject lines. The subject line cannot mislead the recipient about the contents or subject matter of the message.
  
• It requires that your email give recipients an opt-out method. You must provide a return email address or another Internet-based response mechanism that allows a recipient to ask you not to send future email messages to that email address, and you must honor the requests.
  
• It requires that commercial email be identified as an advertisement and include the sender's valid physical postal address. Your message must contain clear and conspicuous notice that the message is an advertisement or solicitation and that the recipient can opt out of receiving more commercial email from you. It also must include your valid physical postal address.
  
• "harvest" email addresses from Web sites or Web services that have published a notice prohibiting the transfer of email addresses for the purpose of sending email.

Penalties

Each violation of the above provisions is subject to fines of up to $11,000. Deceptive commercial email also is subject to laws banning false or misleading advertising.

Another good reason to comply is you can avoid the aggressive spam filters. Many ISPs and personal computers now have Spam Blocking Filters, which often filter legitimate email along with real spam. So, by following the rules, you not only avoid fines and prison, but you ensure that your customers are actually getting your email.

We have are hugely successful at ensuring that the highest percentage of email sent reaches the recipients and the unsubscribes are handled promptly. Our service includes creating an email-list database and integrating with our innovative bulk email marketing software which personalizes each email with the recipients name and any other details you wish to include such as previously purchased products/ services or their location.

Email lists can be segmented by area, zip code, last name, products/services purchased, whatever you like. We can also purchase additional names of people who have requested to receive email offers as well.

Costs: only $10 per emailing

If interested, please contact us.