by Mary Killelea November 8, 2009 Portland Web Design

Here is a list of 13 great sites/tools that are FREE to help you with online market research. Be smart and do your market research.

1. https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
2. http://www.google.com/trends
3. http://www.google.com/insights/search/
4. http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
5. http://labs.wordtracker.com/keyword-questions 
6. http://technorati.com/search
7. http://www.google.com/alerts
8. http://www.spyfu.com/
9. http://www.nichewatch.com/
10. http://pulse.ebay.com/
11. http://new-pulse.ebay.com/
12. http://www.amazon.com/
13. http://www.shopping.com/top_searches

by Mary Killelea November 6, 2009

One of the first steps in having an online business or web site  is choosing the URL. The URL is the web address that someone types in when going to  a website. The URL you use for your business is important and you should definately put some thought into it. 

 The URL you use should have your most important keywords in it.  Here is an example of what you not to do www.maryjos.com  where instead if I was a cupcake shop owner I should try and register a domain that has my business keyword in it and  a URL that is more descriptive of my business like: www.cupcakeshop.com

If your business is already established it’s still smart to be selective and mindful when choosing a domain and try to incorporate a keyword that your are targeting in your domain name.

Take these things into consideration when selecting a domain name:

1. Is it easy to remember
2. Are you incorporating your keywords in it?
3. Does it properly reflect your business?

Another SEO Tip would be to tell you to name your additional web pages with keywords that your are targeting. An example of this  would be instead of  cupcakes1.html you might title it chocolate-cup-cakes.html or birthday-cup-cakes.html … you get the idea, be mindful of your keywords when creating your site. It will pay off I promise.

I will leave you with a really good tip that could save you hundreds of frustrating hours.  You must check to see if your domain has ever been used by someone else. If your brand new domain name was used for spam or unethical internet practices, it will be extremely difficult to get it indexed in the major search engines. Before purchasing a domain always check http://www.archive.org and see if it has ever been owned before and if it has, take a look at the archives to see if the person who owned it ever did unethical stuff.

by Mary Killelea November 3, 2009  

Did you know?

• 80% of users scan pages (users don’t read every word) - Lesson: Write for your audience and the medium in which you are delivering your message
• Only 10% of people look at the web page below the fold. - Lesson: put your most important info on the top half of your page.
• Users decide to stay or leave your page within 10-15 seconds - Lesson Make a good first impression and give them something good to keep them interested in staying on your site. (make your site sticky)

It’s important to have goals when creating your site:

 Company goals

• know your company mission & vision
• Is your goal Business to Consumer (B2C)  or Business to Business (B2B)

Define your website goals

• do you want to increase sales?
• do you want to build a list of leads?
• do you want lots of traffic?
• do you want to sell a service, product, share news or entertain?
• what valuable web content will you share? white papers, ebook, blog articles, videos

 Provide value for your customers

• figure out how you are gonna make your site sticky
• what can you offer your visitors that your competitors can’t or aren’t
• what are the benefits of your services, products,news or entertainment ?

Know which type of site you you should have to best suit your business goals.

• static website
• dynamic website
• content management site
• eCommerce site
• flash website

Website Must haves:

• professional, non distracting design, use a natural palette of colors, create a strong contrast between a pages background and it’s text, use an average of 3 different colors consistently throughout your site 
• call to action
• formatting - write for your audience and the medium
• easy clean and clear navigation
• strong enticing headlines (utilizing keywords)
• rich interesting copy
• current up to date info (never out of date info)
• your page must load quickly
• contact info
• contact form
• no pop ups
• no frames
• avoid distracting bells and whistles

Great resources for choosing colors for your site:

http://www.2createawebsite.com/design/color-psychology.html
http://www.avangate.com/articles/color-web-site_59.html

Great resource for designing the perfect “call to action button”
http://www.leemunroe.com/web-design-trends-call-to-action-signup-download-buttons/

• color, location, language, size, and margins