Originally published in the Create Design Studio E-newsletter, to subscribe please click here and fill in the boxes on the left side of the page.

We completed a redesign and conversion of  the CanDoCanBe website to a WordPress blogsite for owner Karen Skidmore.

She kindly wrote the following and posted it on the Linkedin networking site, which has some 14,000,000+ users worldwide.

“David and Charlotte have just put the finishing touches to my new wordpress blogsite. For the past 3 years I have had a static website and a typepad blog working together fairly effectively. But this year I was determined to put everything under one roof and utilise the fantastic blog platform WordPress.org.

Charlotte, the creative director, has yet again, come up with a great new design. Simple, “shiny” and exactly what I wanted. And David has done a grand job of getting the site working, again exactly as I wanted it.

David’s knowledge of wordpress has grown significantly over the past couple of years and I would highly recommend you get in touch if you are looking for a flexible and creative website.”

As a result we have been contacted by a company in New Zealand looking for a logo design and help with a website.

If you don’t know where to begin and you want your own business blog call Create Design Studio because we can make the process easy. Get your business blog off to a flying start by calling David on 01962 737989 today.

Links:
If you are new to blogging here are some helpful hints
Why start a blog for your business?

As markets contract businesses need to maximise their promotional activities and make every promotional pound count.

Strategies for updating your website
Our advice to website owners is to carry out modest updates and additions on a regular basis rather than major annual updates and overhauls. This is because search engines, such as Google, love fresh and updated content and making modest monthly changes to your website will heighten their interest. Regular updates will also encourage visitors to return as well.

But don’t fall into the trap of updating for the sake of it.

Making your updates more effective
Whatever content you add or update on your website, it must be of interest to your customers and relate to the problems and issues they face. Unless you are a market leader, it is unlikely web surfers will be particularly interested in you or your business. What will be of interest to them are helpful tips, free advice and solutions to solve their problems, make their life easier or businesses more profitable.

Write about THEM not YOU!

Spread the cost
The little and often strategy can also help your wallet by spreading the cost over 12 months, rather than having to budget for a large bill.

What are your options for updating your website yourself?
If your site does NOT have a Content Management System (CMS)? An alternative solution to adding a CMS to your website is adding a WordPress Blog, for maximum benefit the Blog should be hosted as part of your website under your domain name.

The cost for us to install a WordPress Blog and integrate it into a typical website, following its design and style, is £595 ex vat. (for more information on our blog services see our website.)

Software to help you with updating your website
If a Blog does not appeal, you can buy a web editing software package. We recommend Adobe Contribute CS4, it isn’t expensive and you can buy it directly from the Adobe website. It is very simple to set-up and use, it will allow you to update and create new web pages, including photos, PDFs and media files. When you hit the publish button it will also upload any new photos and PDFs etc to your site.

We provide full support for Contribute and can assist with setting up the software, as well the provision of templates for creating new pages. In our experience it takes no longer than half an hour to teach someone how to update their website using Contribute.

For those site owners who don’t have the time or don’t feel confident about doing the updates themselves, we offer fixed priced packages that are paid for on a monthly basis by standing order.

Call David at Create Design Studio on 01962 737989 for more information.

Useful links:
Making your website work harder for your business
Create Design Studio Website Design and Build Services

Your website is available to customers 24/7 and it can do more than simply provide a place for people to look up your phone number, address and prices. With planning your website can influence customer perception of your company, differentiate you from the competition, encourage new customers to call you and it allows existing customers to keep in touch by creating a ‘club’ atmosphere to keep customers coming back to you.

How the design of your site affects customer perception
If your website looks as though no thought went into the design, then the impression your customers will have is that your company does not care about its image. Good design improves customer perception of your company and shows you care about your image, your company and hence your customers. It also makes it easy for your visitors to navigate website pages and access information. Look at the website from the perspective of your customer, the site visitor, don’t add bells and whistles unless they help visitors to find what they are looking for and enhance their perception of your company. Sound effects, music and animated graphics that loop endlessly can distract from your content and may annoy site visitors, prompting them to go elsewhere.

Keeping in touch with customers
When did you last update your website? If it was ages ago then not only could your site drop down the search engine rankings but also your customers may assume that you have disappeared and will be less likely to re-visit your site. Updates tell visitors you are in-demand and give customers the perception that you are good at what you do. Tell them about the great projects you are involved in, about your new services and introduce them to new staff members.

If you would like your website to be easier to update and you want to be able to do the job yourself call Create Design Studio and ask about turning your website into a WordPress Blog, it will allow you to update your site whenever you want to. We can teach you how to use the free software in around 30 minutes. Moving your existing site to a WordPress template can usually be completed in less than a week, what are you waiting for? Call 01962 737989 and ask David about WordPress today.

It’s been about a year since Create Design Studio signed up to Facebook and you’ll find Managing Director David Woodroofe has a profile on Facebook if you’d like to link up with him there. We built our own ‘fan’ page for Create Design studio mainly to keep in touch with our clients who use Facebook but also as a way to spread the news about our networking activities and projects.

Create Design Studio's Facebook Gallery Page

There is one part of Facebook that has really impressed us and that is the photo gallery feature. We use it to display the design work we create for the web, for print and our collection of corporate logo designs. It is usually used for personal photos but could just as easily be used for product photos if you sell your goods online or for pictures of your office, networking activities and pictures from trade shows or exhibitions.

It is possible to ‘tag’ these images so you can pinpoint who is in them. In this way you can link the images to a Facebook profile.

The photo gallery can also be shared with people who don’t use Facebook by copying the link from the bottom of the ‘Edit Photos’ page on Facebook. Here is the link to our web gallery on facebook. This can then be shared on Twitter, on your Blog or emailed to a contact who is interested in what you do.

Set up your own Facebook ‘Fan’ page, we can help you get started. Call David Woodroofe on 01962 737989 today.

Tools, kiosks and software to make handling baggage easier are all provided by Baggage Solutions. We helped them by designing a website to showcase their products to their website visitors.

The sophisticated red and grey colour scheme follows the company logo and branding. Images help to locate their services clearly in the airports, airlines and travel industry sector. To visit the website please click here.

EBS (Elvetham Business Solutions) provide services for Performance Improvement and Interim Assignments for businesses. Their specialities include: change management, working capital management and business analysis and improvement.

The website has a refreshed colour scheme and plenty of space for EBS to detail their services to their visitors. To visit the EBS website please click here.

TekTanks is a company that specialises in the design and manufacture of plastic tanks suitable for boats and vehicles. Their range of tanks and fittings is expanding so they needed a website where their customers could find exactly what they want and use the website to buy it.

We designed a clean site with a clear menu system and simple page layout to make it as easy as possible to find just the right tank by it’s application. Each tank has a written specification about that particular model to help customers decide on their purchase. Customers can buy from the site knowing they have exactly the tank and fittings for their needs. The website also have a potential to expand whenever a new product needs to be added. To visit the TekTanks website please click here.

This fresh and classy website was designed for Lifestyle Manager Joan who can help you with all those everyday tasks that prevent you from doing what you really want to do.

We were able to get together with Joan and discuss the kind of style she wanted for her website and enable her to update it herself by putting the design into WordPress. Now Joan can blog to her website visitors about the kind of tasks she can help them with whenever it suits her. If you would like to visit the website please click here.

It is now taken for granted that an organisation will have a web presence of some kind. Even if this is simply a single web page with information and contact details, however, your website can do more than act as a virtual business-card. Because it is available 24/7, and increasingly on the move via smart-phones, your website could be seen by potential customers day or night and in almost any place around the world. Your website can act as an salesman for your products or services at any time and in any place.

Researching your customers can help you to work out what your website should look like and what information or functions it should have. When you understand what your customers want and need to give them confidence in your organisation it will help your website planning. Once you design and plan your website to fulfil their needs and to suit the way they want to buy the chances of them making personal contact or making a purchase are increased.

Identifying who your customers is important because once you know who they are and what they will be looking for on your website it becomes easier to:

• write the text on each page with them in mind,
• organise the pages so they can find what they need,
• include e-commerce or other website functions that they find useful.

Consider your products or services from the perspective of your customers, what do they need to know before they can buy from you? This can be difficult to put your finger on so try asking some of your existing customers why they buy from you. It’s an opportunity to find out why people buy from you that could really help your website plan. Identifying the benefit your particular products or service offers to your customers is the key to communicating that benefit to all the visitors to your website to increase sales.

It can also help to think about how your website visitors will access your website, are they likely to be at a desktop machine with plenty of time to browse your pictures and words, or are they likely to be using a smartphone with a small screen, possibly between meetings? If your customers are pushed for time they may not read all your text or appreciate scrolling through lots of images, although they may also know what they are looking for and will need specific navigation to specific pages to speed up the process. Customers at home may have more time to spend reading your pages and you can take this opportunity to include detailed specs and photographs.

If you have used the web to make purchases and to find information analyse what made you use the websites you chose to do business with. Where there useful features on the website you used? Perhaps there was a convenient way to pay. All of this research can be used to help plan your own website.

If you are selling products online it can is a good idea to make your site look as much like a shop as possible to help visitors know that you sell from the website. Include symbols to show what payment types you accept and make sure you have clear photographs and good descriptive text for each item. Make it obvious that this is a place to buy from.

Your customers need to understand how your website works, find it easy and convenient to use and it must suit their particular style of buying if they are to purchase from you rather than going to another website. That’s why it pays to understand your customer before you plan your website.

If you are planning an e-commerce website this topic is covered in-depth in the FREE Create Design Studio e-newsletter, sign up to receive it on our homepage.

Sign-up using our home page to receive your free copy of our information packed e-newsletter. This month Managing Director David Woodroofe guides you through planning your own e-commerce website and give you all the top tips from Create Design Studio about selling your products online.