This is a hard one for me. I’m a detail-oriented person. I don’t like to leave anything out in case I miss something important. If I’m telling a story, I like to embellish it with details. Getting to the point is often a long drive round the houses. But sometimes, keeping it simple is a must. On your website, for example.

When a visitor arrives on your homepage, he/she needs to know what it’s about almost immediately. They don’t have time to drive round the houses trying to find what they are looking for and they don’t need or want to be confused by irrelevant stuff. They also don’t want to leave with eye strain due to glaring colours or zigzagging down your page.

How do you make it easy for them to navigate your site and keep them there longer? By keeping it (stylishly) simple.

This doesn’t mean you can’t go into detail at all; there will always be some visitors that want to know more. But make it so they can get the gist from a five second glance and if they want more information, provide them with a means to get them there.

Here’s some  tips on keeping your website stylishly simple. Read the rest of this entry »

• Often your free website has a web address with an extension like wordpress.com or weebly.com. This not only makes your web address extra long and difficult to remember, it doesn’t sound very professional.
• Often, without a yourcompanyname.com domain name, you’re more than likely also using a Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo email address. Does this really create a professional, I’m-in-it-for-the-long-term image for your business?
• Often with free website hosting, you’re probably advertising other businesses on your website. And you have absolutely no control on what’s being advertised even if they are competitor sites. Does that really make good business sense?
• If your free website is content managed (you add content and make your own changes), are you able to back up your database file to your desktop computer or to your email? In some cases, the answer is no.
• If you’ve uploaded images and other media files to your free website, can you access them through a file manager or via FTP? In most cases, the answer is probably no.

Read the rest of this entry »

WordPress, originally developed as a blogging platform, is an easy-to-use, FREE content managed system that is available to anyone with a domain name and web host (and even those without).

WordPress is the ideal solution if you just want to add a blog to your company’s existing website (or for personal blogging), but WordPress is not just a blog.

It can also be used as a standalone website with “static” web pages that you can quickly add and change at any time as long as you have an internet connection.

Working off a database, the default WordPress installation comes packaged with a number of features and is constantly being developed to improve user experience (both that of the owner and visitors) as well as to maintain a high level of security for your website. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the best ways to keep your website fresh and interesting for your loyal visitors is to add new content. Not only will it encourage them to keep coming back on a regular basis but it will help your website stay at (or close to) the top of Google search results pages (provided you are using the right keywords in your content).

The type of website you have – static or content managed – and how much time you have available, will determine whether you can add or change content on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. I recommend changing your content at least monthly, but if your time or budget is limited, choose things that are quick and easy to change or add.

Below are 10 quick and easy ways to update your web content you might want to try. Read the rest of this entry »

Since starting my business almost 4 years ago I’ve networked with a lot of other new and/or small businesses owners. Over the course of the years, I’ve noticed how many of these business owners “save money” by getting cheap, “free” or home-made business cards. But are they really saving money in the long run?

One of the main things I’ve noticed in recent months since changing the prescription of my contact lenses, many cheap cards are difficult to read because the text is either too small due to cramming too much on the card, there’s not enough contrast between the text and the background, or both.

Added to that, their business cards are not unique, the card stock is often flimsy and bendy, and poor quality images are often unrecognizable, distorted or cropped badly.

All-in-all, their unprofessional-looking business cards give the false impression that they themselves are not professional and not in it for the long haul. For this reaaon, I thought I would highlight some of the pitfalls of buying cheap or “free”.

• Your business card (or flyer or website for that matter) is not unique
• Often the card stock is thin and bendy
• Text is not readable especially in half light
• Images are often low resolution and distorted
• Free doesn’t always mean free
• Your business does not look professional

If you need business cards designed or printed, contact Kaz Design Works for pricing? Read the rest of this entry »

Kaz Design Works will be attending the Cambridge Chamber of Commerce Salute to Women in Business on Tuesday, January 18, 2011.

We will have a table at the event, which is being held at the Cambridge Holiday Inn, and will have copies of the Winter issue of Powerful Women in Business for all the women attending the event.

Valerie Pringle is the guest speaker. Hopefully I will get to meet the TV host/presenter, and give her my business card and a copy of Powerful Women Magazine. Who knows, perhaps she will want to be featured in on the cover one day.

When I create websites for my clients I usually index them with the major search engines Google, Bing and Yahoo. I also add the web address to AboutUs.org which is a wiki providing information on websites. But it is more than just a “whois” look-up.

It provides a title, page description, tags and a snapshot of the home page. Now, with the added features of the “Online Visibility Audit” I can check the online visibility of my clients’ websites with regard to their keywords as soon as they are published to ensure we have done everything possible to improve page ranking.

Want to know how your website’s home page appears to both search engines and visitors?

Do an online visibility audit at www.aboutus.org

Read the rest of this entry »

In my last article I mentioned the cool FREE tools Google has on offer to help small business owners become more visible on the internet.

Amongst the free tools is Google Analytics which, as you probably know if you own a website, is great for analyzing statistics on visitors and the keywords they used to get there.

But did you know that you can now find out what the World is searching?

Underneath the Analytics report for your keywords your visitors used, there is a link to “Google Insights” where you can find out how many searches for those same keywords have been made around the world during a given period. But more than that, “Google Insights” is another free tool, which in Google’s words, you can use to “compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties.”

How is this useful? you’re probably wondering.

Read the rest of this entry »

Have you tried these Free Google Tools?

Everyone knows just how powerful a search engine Google is. You can find pretty much anything you’re looking for these days. Whether you’re curious about who your favourite singer or actor is currently dating (or breaking up with), you want to know why you have some ailment or other, or you’re desperately looking for a local business to fix your plumbing, heating or air conditioning in a hurry, 99 times out of 100, Google will find tons of websites with answers to your problems. Which one you visit will depend on a variety of things… attention grabbing heading, interesting description, and of course relevancy.

How does it find these websites?

In brief, Google “spiders” crawl the internet looking for key phrases on web pages, starting with the homepage, and depending on the relevance of those key phrases, as well as a number of other factors, it will rank your website accordingly. How often Google’s spiders crawl through your website depends on several criteria, not least how well your site has been “search engine optimized”.

If your site has good internal SEO, that is fantastic. But did you know there are a number of Free Google Tools that will not only let Google know you exist, but may also improve search engine optimization and visitor conversions?

Here are five free Google tools that you can use on your own website:

1. Submit your content to Google
2. Map your business with Google Maps
3. Analyze your website traffic with Google Analytics
4. Create better conversions with Website Optimizer
5. Add events to Google Calendar

Read the rest of this entry »

Rediscovering StumbleUpon and some free marketing guides

Sometime last year I became a “StumbleUpon” user and for awhile I used it regularly each day, particularly enjoying the fantastic photography I would stumble upon. But I realized today I had not stumbled upon anything in a long time. Why? Because I generally use Firefox for my browsing and I have StumbleUpon set up with Internet Explorer.

Read the rest of this entry »