What makes a great social media post?

1. Good Content

• No one wants to read boring posts!
• Find ways to compel your audience
• Interesting excerpts or funny commentary make article links more engaging.

Tip: Before you post anything, ask yourself if it is something that would interest you.

2. Quality Visuals

• Visuals are processed 60,000x faster than text
• Images on social media get more engagement than links and text

Tip: Pair an awesome picture with your text posts and links to encourage engagement

3. Positivity

• Positive content gets more likes and shares on Facebook than negative content
• Positive content also gives a better impression of your brand

Tip: Keep your posts upbeat and never complain or badmouth another business

4. Engagement

• Tweets that include the phrase “please retweet” get 4x more retweets
• Facebook posts that mention “like or “share” are more likely to receive that action

Tip: Use calls-to-action to increase engagement, but don’t overuse them or your posts might seem “spammy”

5. Timing

• Know when your audience is online on each network
• Schedule your posts for maximum reach

Tip: Make sure your posts are timely and current based on the latest industry-relevant news and events

Do you have other tips or suggestions for social media post? Share it with us!

Also, don’t forget to like us and follow us!

facebook.com/InfiniteDigiSolutions

twitter.com/InfiniteDigiSol

Sources:

http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33423/19-Reasons-You-Should-Include-Visual-Content-in-Your-Marketing-Data.aspx

http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33860/New-Face-book-Data-Proves-Social-CTAs-Lead-to-More-Comments-Likes-Shares-INFOGRAPHIC.aspx

http://blogs.constantcontact.com/product-blogs/social-media-marketing/facebook-engagement

21 Rules for Effective Social Media Marketing Strategies

Like everything else, there are unwritten rules involved in social media marketing. Everyone is obliged to follow these rules, but those that are new to the game, may miss out the basics. Here are 21 unwritten rules of social media marketing that are designed to create a solid foundation for any social media marketing campaign.

1. No shortcut

Social media marketing involves investing time, energy and creativity. It’s a commitment that can’t be avoided or overlooked.

2. Contribute

If you can’t contribute something of value to the community, no one will listen. It’s that simple.

3. Position yourself to be an expert

Why would anyone take advice from someone who doesn’t know anything? If you need to learn more, then do so, but make sure that you can offer valuable advice to fans and followers.

4. Meaningful conversation

If you aren’t saying anything meaningful, you shouldn’t be saying anything at all. If you’re adding to the noise, you’re sure to be ignored.

5. Activity = Productivity

Just because you’re active, doesn’t mean your accomplishing something. Be productive, not noisy.

6. Quality > Quantity

Keep it simple. Offer friendly concise morsels of advice instead of constant rambling conversation.

7. Avoid spamming

Constant self-promotion isn’t attractive. If you feel a need to constantly draw attention to yourself, you’re not accomplishing anything.

8. Keep it real

Be authentic. Draw crowds by drawing on your own experiences, knowledge and humor.

9. Conversation is a two way street

Give followers and fans an opportunity to sound off. If you’re monopolizing the conversation, it becomes a boring lecture instead of a successful marketing strategy.

10. Connection don’t imply permission

Take time to build trust and relationship with your followers.

11. Access doesn’t equal entitlement

Just because you’re being followed doesn’t mean people grant you permission to interrupt their lives. You have to take time to build relationships and trust.

Making connections may give you access, but it doesn’t mean fans and followers owe you anything. Don’t allow an enthusiasm for sharing lead to a drop in quality. Fans and followers aren’t required to listen to whatever you have to say.

12. Adaptability is essential

What’s hot today may not be hot tomorrow. Keep up with topic trends and stay adaptable.

13. Accomplishment

If social media marketing efforts aren’t leading to conversions or some sort of productivity, then your efforts are pointless. Measure your efforts and make adjustments as needed.

14. Engagement and enrichment

Engagement for engagement’s sake isn’t effective. Engagement efforts should lead to enrichment, otherwise all efforts are wasted.

15. Use images and multimedia

A picture is worth a thousand words. Video is probably worth much more. Don’t just tell, use your platform for showing as well.

16. Always follow up with connections

Don’t ignore fans and followers who make connections with you. Always follow up: it makes people feel special and more likely to listen to you.

17. Mind your manners

Sometimes fans and followers may not be polite. They may disagree with your content or views. Allow them to speak up and respond in an appropriate manner.

18. Patience is crucial

Social media marketing rarely delivers instant results. Don’t give up after a short time. Patient marketers have more chance to reap rewards.

19. Don’t be an obsessive joiner

Following too many groups can hamper your marketing efforts. Spreading yourself too thin can harm any campaign. Always limit group participation.

20. Better to be a blogger

Yes, successful social media marketers do maintain blogs. If you’re active on social media, you should blog regularly.

21. Have fun

If you’re not enjoying yourself, you’re not doing it right. Social interactions should be fun and purposeful.

Social media marketing campaigns can lead to sales success if they’re applied correctly.

Do you have other tips you would like to share? Or having difficulties with social media? Share it! Now!

Source: Social Metrics

The Ultimate Epic Guide To Create A Successful Online Business

1. Make an amazing first impression

It takes about 50 milliseconds for users to decide if they like your sire or not.

2. Why photos matter

Your customers will remember 80% of what they see and only 20% of what they read.

3. Improve your site’s navigation

You want to have a stress-free navigation, allowing visitors to easily find what they’re looking for because if they won’t find it, they can’t buy it. Add a “What’s New” category. Your returning customers will want to see your latest collection; they don’t want to browse the old stuff searching for new products.

4. Have a unique idea

Being creative and selling something people didn’t even know they needed should be your starting point.

• What can you craft?
• What are your skills?
• What products do people secretly want?

It can be something as simple as a shop with only pink home furniture and decorations or your product.

5. Craft a strong USP

There are around 110,000 ecommerce websites. You must have an unique selling proposition so you can make those sales.

6. Start blogging

When you blog, you can increase the number of visitors by 50%.

7. About Us

Your About Us page is a window into your business and you want it to be appealing and fresh. 7% of visitors coming to a home page click to see the About page; those who see it convert 30% more than those who don’t visit it and spend on average 22.5% more $. This alone should be enough to get you started drafting this page.

8. Develop a successful SEO strategy

In 2013 there were 2.2 trillion Google searches but 90% of the users clicked only on the first 3 results so if your product is ranked last on your page you rely only on the rest 10% to find your site.

9. Target the right visitor with the right product

Product recommendations deliver a personalized shopping experience and can increase your order value with as much as 40%.

10. Use live chat to help potential customers make a decision fast

44% of the online shoppers agree with the statement: “Having my questions answered by a live person while I am in the process of my online shopping is one of the most important features on a Website”.

11. To coupon or not to coupon

Pricing is tricky. You have to offer a lower price than your competition while making a profit. Around 75% of mobile platforms buyers use coupons which can lead to a huge loss if you have year-round promotions and most of your visitors come from mobile devices.

12. Improve shopping cart experience

Window shopping has never been so popular! Your users cram their carts with items they would want/like to buy but 71% of these carts are abandoned for:

• Not enough payment options
• Slow websites
• Shipping fees

13. Develop a successful shipping strategy

Now customers expect to see the “Free shipping” banner on every online store they visit and 78% look for the cheapest shipping available.

14. Ask for feedback

77% of online shoppers bother to read a review for the product they intend to buy. 90% of them make a decision based on what they read.

15. Rethink your newsletter approach

In Q3 2013, 2.53% of online sales where generated by emails while all social networks barely hit 0.22%. Do you know the estimated email ROI? It’s 4,300%, an unbelievable number! Yeah, some statistics say that people tend to get annoyed when their inbox is crammed with tons of emails, but they still end up checking it and buying something.

16. Show people your site is secure and trustworthy

“Secure shopping-cart systems are essential for maintaining the integrity of the payment process” – Ella Nevill

Online data is very sensitive. More and more customers are extremely careful before placing an order so you have to check all the bulletpoints to make sure your site is secure and trustworthy.

• Picking a secure platform
• Using strong SSL authentication
• Tracking all your orders
• Asking for strong passwords
• Running PCI test

17. Use the power of social media to promote yourself

Social media is huge and very ecommerce site should have a short term and long term strategy to gain more popularity on social networks. While Pinterest and Instagram may not be suited for all niches, Twitter and Facebook are a must.

Set up your profiles and be as active as possible, without spamming your fans.

• 37% of consumers have recommended a business on Facebook.
• 30% of Twitter users gear up in holiday shopping mode before October.

18. Implement an affiliate program for your store

Affiliate marketing can generate up to 90% of the total revenue. Setting up your own affiliate program can be challenging but it can generate a lot of revenue.

19. Don’t forget mobile users

70% of mobile searches lead to an action in under an hour. 40% of the customers will go to a competitor site if they end up on an unresponsive site.

Do you have other tips or additional tips? Share it! Spread it! We love to hear it from you!

Source: ecommerce

How the coming soon page can save your image

The first thing we should do is focus on the existing website and its appearance. Of course we don’t want to spend too much time fixing, adjusting or tweaking anything.  Instead we advise some customers to simply deploy a coming soon page or some may call it a SPLASH page.

This approach not only implies to the world that your site is under construction but it helps with your image.  Why else would you want a re-design in the first place right?

We feel you need some basic things covered.

1. Its okay to be “under development”

Let’s be honest, you are and most people are actually ok with that. In fact studies have shown, that most people are more interested and eager to see what you will launch.

2. The 30 second elevator pitch

It’s a splash page; let’s simply tell the world what you do. Let’s not print a book. No one has time to read that.

3. A clean visual impact

Just because its’ a splash page, or coming soon page, does not mean it needs to be boring, have an image or two.  Have a clear way of displaying your contact info. NO CLUTTER.

4. Make contact simple

Have you contact info handy. A mini contact form or a “sign up, and we’ll let you know when our site launches” button is a great idea.

5. Drive traffic to social media

If you have social media sites, might as well drive traffic there. Ensure they are kept up to date of course.

What area would you say you need to improve at? Share your insights we love to hear from you.

Source: Silent Blast

Compelling Content Creation

Think Like a Journalist

Before getting too bogged down with the meat-and-veg of the content, remember that you’ll win or lose about 90% of your target audience with your headlines and intros alone. Win them over here and you’ll have a much easier job with the rest.

Inspiration

If you’re in the midst of a dry-spell, try finding out what pearls of wisdom are floating aroud the brains of those around you. Family, friends, and colleagues alike – even those with no interest in your niche can offer new and interesting perspectives.

Bite-Sized

If you think they’ll be willing to red ream after ream of text until they find something of interest, think again. A few lines is all you’ve got before they get bored and do a runner, so be sure to keep when you’re saying concise, to the point and ideally in bite-sized chunks.

News-Jack

The nature of the news world has always been one of poaching other people’s stories and headlines – the key is getting their first and making it you own. As such, never underestimate the importance of keeping one finger on the pulse of your niche at all times, sharing anything you hear of interest before it goes stale.

Keep it Conversational

English that’s over-formal is a big turn-off for most as you quickly feel like you’re being lectured, rather than informed. So, be sure to keep the tone always at an appropriately conversational level, without crossing the line into inappropriateness.

Don’t Oversell It

Your audience already knows that you think you’re great, so there’s really no need to keep blowing your own trumpet and going for the hard-sell. If you do, anything you say will lose its sparkle and interpreted as pure sales spiel.

With Photos, Keep it Real

If planning to use any images whatsoever to back up your text, don’t fall into the habit of using those oh-so easy and readily available stock photos. Sure they look nice, but they don’t tell your readers anything about you and what makes you tick.

Invite Guests
guests posts not only allowed for new angles and new inspiration, but also show readers that you’re welcoming and open – hugely attractive traits. Whether it’s a guest blog, a comments section or a simple open-invite to share a few view, you can’t go wrong when they’re doing the graft for you!

Reach Out

If you seem to be constantly striking out in terms of figuring out what interests your audience, why not take the bold and brave move to actually ask them? Send out a few emails, make a few calls or even post a few questions online – quite assuming you know what they want and find out for sure.

Memory Lane

If you struck gold in a big way with an amazing piece of content you wrote a few weeks or months ago, don’t go depriving your new and hugely valuable readers of its glory. Instead, repost it for those that haven’t already read it – reuse and recycle at all times!

Honesty Policy

You don’t have to guess what’s hot and not right now in your niche – you can count on Google and Co. to give you all the info you need. Look into plenty of up-to-date statics and analytics to find what the masses are into and give it to them!

Navigation

Make it clear, easy and fast for readers to find what they need and where they need to go to find it. There’s really no point promising them the world on your page if they then can’t find where to click to move forward – millions of conversions are lost this way every minute of every day.

Keep ‘em Separated

Topics with their own landing pages have much better conversion rates than those squeezed in on other non-dedicated pages…fact! As such it is vital that you give every topic you consider to be of importance its own landing page – this is a great way of conveying its importance to readers

Timelessness

When it comes to the permanent content on your pages, never include anything that can or will go stale in a matter of weeks. Or in other words, don’t make permanent content relevant only to today – make it ‘evergreen’ so it’s still as relevant in a year.

Transcribe

Last up, don’t forget that not every reader will be in a position to listen to your audio or video content, so be sure to include transcriptions to be accessed when and where needed. The added bonus here is that there transcripts will be picked up and indexed by search engine spiders – video and audio content will not.

What do you think? Do you have other tips and inputs you would like to share? Comments are always welcome.

13 Ways To Make Your Website More Successful

1. Make your site simple – With all of the bells and whistles available, too many people are trying to see how impressive they can make their websites. They may be attractive but unless your goal is to win a contest for best site, impressing people with glitter will not make sales.
2. Make sure your site loads quickly – You do not have long to grab your customer’s attention. Make sure that you at least get a fair shot at grabbing his attention. If your site takes too long to load, you will lose a lot of potential customers without even giving your site a chance.
3. Don’t have too many items on one page – You do not want to confuse your visitors. You want to make sure that they understand the purpose of your site. Too many items on one page can make this difficult for some. Don’t take the chance. Make all of your pages simple.
4. Make sure every page links to home page – It is much easier for your visitors to navigate if all of your pages link back to the home page. You will not lose as many potential customers if you make your site easier to navigate.
5. Get your own domain name – Free servers are great for some things but trying to gain credibility in a business is not one of them. It is well worth the price to get your own domain.
6. Make sure your hosting service offers full support – You want your service offer secure ordering. This is a place that you don’t want to go for cheap. Make sure your service offers the things you need before you choose and save a lot of headaches down the road.
7. Offer as many options for ordering as possible – The more options you provide for ordering, the fewer customers you will lose. You should have a secure order form on your site. Offering the options to order by phone, fax and by regular mail can also increase the number who will order.
8. Make sure you accept credit cards – If you don’t accept credit cards, you are making a huge mistake. The biggest percent of your customers will pay this way if the option is available. Don’t take the chance that they will choose another method if credit cards are not a possibility.
9. Offer free information on your site – You will want to offer some type of free material on your site. Free material such as courses are a very good way to build yourself as an expert in the eyes of your visitor. Free ebooks are another good thing to offer. Make sure these freebies are good solid information that can help your visitors.
10. Get your visitor’s email address – You can accomplish this in quite a few different ways. Giving away the courses or ebooks is one great way. You can publish a newsletter or ezine that your visitors can sign up for on your site.
11. Make sure to build your site with purpose in mind – If you are trying to sell a product on your site, then sell that product. If you are just trying to get addresses and make the sale later, then make that your purpose when building your site.
12. Encourage feedback – Make your visitor feel like his opinion is important. Offer him the chance to provide you with feedback. Don’t be too proud to make changes if you start hearing some of the same things from your visitors.
13. Remember that you are building this site for your customers – This is not a site to fulfill some fantasy of yours. Remember the purpose of your site. Keep your customers wants and needs in your mind as you design it.

Your website is one of those things that will determine if you are a marketing success. Make sure that you make your website user friendly. Also make sure that you don’t lose sight of the purpose of your site. If your site does not come across direct to your visitor, you are going to lose many visitors before you can even make a pitch.

What area would you say you need to improve at?

Sourece: Pinterest

Is It Possible to Upgrade a Website Without Starting Over?

Have you recently launched a website, but you just can’t seem to get any real traction online? Are you aggravated by how much time it takes to figure out how to make the simplest of updates to your site?

Are you starting to regret spending all of that time and money on your new site, because it doesn’t seem to be really doing anything for you or your customers?

Having said that, I think we all can honestly relate to running across the “not so reliable” plumber or “flaky” hairdresser from time-to-time, but that does not mean we let that leaky faucet keep leaking or never get our haircut again. So why do so many small business owners abandon their website after its launch?

Trust me if I had the answer to this riddle – I would be rich! I don’t have an answer to that question, but I can provide you with some insight as to why your website may be missing the mark and how you can fix it.

Keep Your Content Fresh & Up-to-Date
If you are not keeping your website up to date with fresh content, most likely via blog posts, it will over time directly impact your search-engine rankings. Your search engine rankings will drop as your content ages. That means as it gets older and older and older.

The more high value, fresh content you post on your site, the more opportunities your website will have to reach out to {and be found by} your target audience who’s searching for the very thing you are talking about online.

Every other month or so – you should block-out some time to make sure that your site is properly “optimized”, to ensure the long-term benefits of a higher SEO ranking.

What that means is that you don’t have any broken links, missing images, you’ve got a proper 404-Error page, an xml site map {just Google it}, the titles of your blog posts and your descriptions of your pages and posts are “keyword-rich”.

There are other things you should be aware of, but this is just good, standard SEO maintenance. Google, Bing and Yahoo will all give you “brownie points” for keeping your site SEO-optimized and running properly.

Make Your Content Easy to Share
You also want to make sure that your website makes it easy for visitors to “share and distribute” your content online. This means having a dynamic site ideally in the framework of a CMS {content management systems}. “

If you have a static website – it’s much more difficult to update your website on your own, because you will need to have a not-so-basic understanding of the code {used to generate “share buttons” on your site} to copy and paste on the pages in your site.

There are great plugins for CMSs that allow you to add this functionality to your site very easily, one of the most popular is ShareThis, but you can also use Flare. ShareThis can be used on a website with or without a CMS and Flare offers a lot of really nice built-in styling options.

Trying to figure this stuff out can be counterproductive and costly if you choose to keep a developer on retainer, for what they would consider a “minor task”.

Your Customers & Prospects Want to Hear From You
There are a lot of great content strategists and creators out there, but the majority of your content will need to come from you or you’ll have to shell-out even more money to pay someone to generate content for your site. Again, this isn’t cheap.

In all honesty, even if you hire someone to generate content for you, you should take the time to make sure that it is written in the same tone and manner as if you were writing it yourself {if it’s a personal blog} or in the tone and manner of your brand or company’s overall messaging, otherwise it can be confusing to your audience and remember “a confused mind – never buys”.

Keep in mind that people love getting the industry-insider “scoop” and tips from an industry pro – that is why they are tuning into the blog or your newsletter in the first place, they want to hear from YOU – not a “ghostwriter”, so tread lightly here.

I can hear the grunting and moaning already, but let’s get real here for a minute, if YOU don’t want to take the time to talk about your business or at the very least make sure that whomever is doing the talking for you about your business, knows what they’re talking about, then why are you in business?

Why should your target audience invest their time and money into your business when you won’t? I know – it stings a bit, but it’s the truth {to quote Marie Forleo – that’s a tweetable}!

Conclusion
So just how does a small business owner enjoy the benefits of the web without pulling their hair out trying to make updates? Well you don’t have to tackle all of your site updates at once; you may want to hire someone on a project-by-project basis to help you update it on the “techie” side.

You can also save money by creating the content yourself and finally – make sure your site is SEO friendly so you can reap the benefits of those elusive search engine rankings.

Question: When it comes to keeping your website up-to-date, what do you struggle with the most?

How Long Does It Typically Take to Get a Website Online?

When a small business owner is ready to design or update their website, they often struggle with how much time it is going to take to launch or relaunch. That can depend on a few things.

Typically the biggest deciding factors are determining whether their website is set-up properly, how much content do they have already and how much of that content is “production ready”? What that means is how much content is technically suitable to use online.

Many want to also generate new content for their site, like taking photos of new staff members or a newly renovated office space or embedding videos from events.

This takes time because they have to account for how much time it will take them to get the work from a third party vendor like a photographer, manufacturer or a copywriter.

For a basic website that provides essentially the same information that you can find in a brochure, it should take no longer than a month. For something more complicated like an e-commerce site for a shop, it could take 3 – 4 months, but here are 2 things you should keep in mind:

Make Sure You Have a Proper Site Installation
Hosting a site with a good web host and ensuring that the basics on the front-end and the back-end of the site are in place can take time, but in my own experience, unless they have an resolved dispute with an independent web host most of those problems can be resolved relatively quickly.

Making sure that a client’s website is planned and installed properly, so the client can increase the functionality of their site as they grow is very important. Having a well-planned site from the very beginning can save a small business lots of time and money.

Small business owners already have packed schedules and if my clients manage to carve-out some time to work on their website, I try to help them make that as carefree and seamless a process as possible.

The goal is to get it right the first time – so neither of us waste time or money and when they are ready to take their website to the next level they won’t have to start from scratch.

Expect to “Tweak” Things Along the Way
But once a site is designed, programmed, tested and launched – it has to be monitored for minor tweaks and improvements that can’t be detected before a site goes live. I offer my own clients a 30-Day Customer Service and Quality Assurance policy.

In short, I help my clients “breaking in” their new site in “real time” and on occasion we may need to make some fine adjustments or “tweaks” here and there, that we did not catch before.

I also like to provide my client with step-by-step training so they can walk away with a clear understanding of exactly what their site can and can’t do and why.

Quality assurance tests and client training add to your project’s timeline. They are services that most small business owners want but don’t consider when they are looking at timelines and proposals from designers for their site.

Conclusion
The bottom line is, how long it will take to get a website up will depend entirely on your needs, your budget and your availability. Work with your designer, to develop your project’s timeline and don’t forget to take into account your schedule, the designer’s current workload, the holidays, family obligations and the time needed to get all of this done as well as all of your other work.

On average I find that a project realistically can take anywhere from 2 – 3 months. But take your time! Plan and then plan some more. It will save you time and money in the long run on and then you can get back to doing what you do best!

Don’t forget to subscribe on your mailing list. Promise we won’t spam your inbox! www.infinitedigisolutions.com

Let’s stay connected

Facebook – facebook.com/InfiniteDigiSolutions

Twitter – twitter.com/InfiniteDigiSol

Google Plus – plus.google.com/+Infinitedigisolutions

Me – facebook.com/einej

Need help with your website or with your online presence? Get in touch with us – info@infinitedigisolutions.com

Thanks for reading!

Jenie

Source: Sylvia Adams

TALK THE TALK – WEB DESIGN

Does your body cringe when you hear the words back-end or HTML? Don’t worry, you’re not alone.  For most, the technical jargon associated with web design and development is a confusing and very foreign language.

Below is a simple guide to a few of the more commonly used website terms. This should get you well on your way to understanding what the hell your web designer is blabbering on about.

BACK END
The back end of a website is the part hidden from the view of regular website visitors. The back end generally includes the information structure, applications, and the CMS controlling content on the site, allowing the owner of the website to make changes to the front end.

BANDWIDTH
1. The rate at which data can be transferred

2. The total amount of data allowed to be transferred from a web host during a set service time before additional charges are applied.

BELOW THE FOLD
“Below the fold” refers to the content that is generally going to be below the first window frame of content for the average website visitor in their browser (viewers would need to scroll down to see the content).

BOUNCE RATE
A website’s bounce rate is the percentage of people who leave the site from the same page they entered the site, without clicking through to any other pages. This is therefore a good indicator of how successful a website’s navigation is, as well as an indicator of the quality of the site’s content.

BROWSER
Browser refers to the application a website visitor is using to access the website. Eg. Safari, Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, and Internet Explorer.

CACHE/CACHING
Cached files are those that are saved or copied (downloaded) by a web browser to the local computer, so that the next time that user visits the site, the page loads faster.

CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (CMS):
This is a back-end platform that is designed for website owners to easily manage/ update their content. It separates the content from the design and layout of the site and is designed to make it easy for non-designers to update and manage their sites.  For example, WordPress platform is a type of CMS.

DOMAIN
The domain is the name by which a website is identified. Domains can be purchased with any combination of letters, hyphens and numbers.

E-COMMERCE
Short for electronic commerce, meaning the buying and selling of goods online, through websites. Products purchased through e-commerce can either be tangible products that require shipping, or digital products that are delivered electronically.

FRONT-END
The front-end is essentially the opposite to the back-end. It comprises of all the components of a website that a visitor to the site can see, e.g. pages, images, content, etc. Specifically, it’s the interface that users interact with directly.

HOSTING
In order for a website to appear on the internet, it must have hosting. Think of it as being the rent you pay to have your site existing on the internet.

HOSTING MIGRATION
The process of bringing all the website data (including emails), over to a new hosting provider.  Think of it like changing banks, and moving all your funds over to your new account.

HTML
Stands for Hypertext Markup Language. It’s the gobble-dee-goop code used by web developers to write web pages.

HYPERLINK
A hyperlink is a link that takes you from one webpage to another, these can be within the same site or completely different one. They allow you to hide the long and potentially messy URL’s in text or images.  Hyperlink’s that are embedded in text are fairly easy to spot as the text is often underlined or in different coloured font.

NAVIGATION
Navigation refers to the system that allows visitors to move around a website. Navigation is most often thought of in terms of menus, but links within pages also allow a visitor to move from one page to another.

PLUG-IN
A plug-in is a piece of code provided by a third party that extends the capabilities of a website. It’s most often used in conjunction with a CMS or blogging platform, e.g WordPress. Plug-ins are a convenient way to extend the functionality of a website without having to redo the core coding of the site.

REALLY SIMPLE SYNDICATION (RSS)
Is a format that allows content to be published simultaneously from one site to another.  It’s mainly used on blogs, where users can subscribe and receive updates via a feed reader in their email account.  The moment a blog post is published you get notified, just as you would if you received an email.

URL
Stands for Uniform Resource Locator. A site’s URL is its address, the item that specifies where on the Internet it can the found.

USER EXPERIENCE
As the name suggests, it is the overall experience a user has with your website and how easy it is for them to use your site.  Focusing on areas like; navigation, content, images, and other interactive elements.  User experience is more than simply function and flow, but something that incorporates all the senses.

WEB DEVELOPMENT
This is the process of turning all those beautiful designs into that stuff that resembles alphabet soup, aka HTML code.

Hope this first batch of terminology around web design give you some light. Don’t forget to subscribe to our mailing list to get more insights about Web Design and Digital Marketing – www.infinitedigisolutions.com

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Jenie

Managing Director, Infinite Digital Solutions

Source: Smack Down Design

How Much Does It Cost to Build a Website?

I have been asked this question many times and I pretty much always say the same thing. It depends on how you would like to use your website in your business. Now this may sound like I am dodging the question but just hear me out.

A website is essentially a blank canvas that you do pretty much what you like, but most businesses use it to either market or sell their products and services in some form or fashion.

How big a role your website plays in your business really has to do with how much time and money you want to devote to it. I often advise my prospective clients not to invest a lot of money into a website until they have a specific goal in mind.

Websites can take up a lot of time and the idea of you just building a website and the people will come is a myth.

Many business owners have unfortunately had such a poor experience with their first website that they never want to do it again. The frustration comes from feeling like they wasted valuable time and money on a site that isn’t doing anything for their business.

Go Beneath the Surface and Dig Deeper
What I often find when I run into this situation with prospects and clients, is that if we dig deeper we discover that the designer they worked with before didn’t push hard enough to find out what they wanted to use the site for and in turn just gave them something so they could get paid.

Look, you can have the most up-to-date, beautiful website in the world, but if you don’t integrate your website into your overall business, even if it’s just for marketing or for sales – then you essentially have a glorified billboard that won’t do anything for you or your customers.

Launching a website with no goal or plan is like saying you want to finally loose those last ten pounds. You join a gym, sign-up with a personal trainer and then you never go back. Instead, you just sit on the sofa in your apartment and wait for the pounds to come off. Are you going to lose the weight this way?

Most likely not, but does that mean the personal trainer, classes and equipment in your gym were no good? No, it just means you didn’t use them. The same holds true for a website, it’s only useful if you actually use it.

Plan Accordingly
So what does this have to do with the cost? Everything – it doesn’t matter whether you spend 5,000Php or 50,000Php you need to ask yourself what do I want my website to do for my business? Then plan accordingly, I know people get tired of hearing it, but it’s the truth.

Find the right people to work with you and schedule time to work on your website during your day. If you are just starting out and you are too overwhelmed by all of the choices out there, you may want to start off with a basic informative website.

This gives all of the pertinent information about you, your products and/or services. It should be no more than 5 pages and can start from about 25,000Php for a basic installation to up to 60,000Php on average for a custom designed site.

These are not agency prices however. Most agencies even the small firms of 4 to 5 people won’t even consider a website for less than 15,000Php. It just isn’t cost effective for them to do so, but they should be able to refer you to one of their “subs” who most likely is working with a small business owner like yourself already.

For more complicated jobs, like an ecommerce site or for custom social media and email templates, these projects typically start at around 50,000Php and go up from there depending on the “scope of work”. The more complex it is the more work there is to be done and the more you will likely pay.

In any case, you want to make sure that whoever builds your site that they set it up on a reliable and well-documented CMS like WordPress or Drupal. This will give you a great foundation to build upon and the flexibility of being able to move your site fairly easily, without having to start from scratch which can be costly.

Now I’m sure by now some of you are wondering about those free themes and templates out there. Well, I have nothing against them, until you ask me to try and fix them. The time I have spent in the past trying to clean-up mistakes made by clients who tried to go it alone and code their own site, is more than twice the time I would need if I had coded the site from scratch.

Suffice to say – the less you pay for a website, the more work you are going to have to do yourself. Plus, even if you manage to find a theme or template that you really like, what good is it to you if you don’t know how to use it? It’s like buying a really expensive car before you even learn how to drive. This is what I mean about “planning accordingly”.

Conclusion
Websites aren’t cheap and you want to make sure that you get started off on the right foot. Don’t be afraid to do a little research and reach out to a few designers and ask for a brief consultation.

A professional designer, should be able to answer your questions fairly easily or if they aren’t able to help you, at the very least they should be able to point you in the right direction.

Question: What’s the one thing you would like to be able to do with your website? Share your comments below.

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Cheers!

Jenie

Source Sylvia Adams

The Importance of Having a Website

“I have a Facebook page.” This is the usual answer I get every time I asked do you have a website for your business. Then at the back of my mind I asked myself would you consider Facebook page a website or that is something that you frequent often or consider your first choice for finding a business? If you do, I apologize but the first thing people do is hop on their computer or mobile and Google whatever it is they are looking for… and they will usually be looking for your official website, not a random Facebook page filled with different information.

Facebook is not supposed to be used this way. It is a social networking site, and it is great to have your own company page to interact with your customers and keep your business fresh in their minds, but it is by no means a great place to call home. Why? Because Facebook is not personalized. It’s freebie website jam packed with other attention-grabbing details that have absolutely nothing to do with your business. Your own website should have your own logo in the top corner, not the Facebook logo. So while it is a great place to increase your customer base and share photos, deals, and extras, an official website with proper navigation and important information should still be the place that you direct these fans to so that they can actually see all aspects of your business.

Think of it this way: your website is your business card. It is your brochure, your flyer, your billboard. It is the very first impression somebody gets to see of your company, which is also why it’s important to have a website that is nicely designed. A poorly designed website is just as bad as having no website at all. It is like you showed up for an important business meeting with potential customers in your pajamas.

Your website should be easy to navigate and provide a wonderful customer experience. What attracts you to other websites? Think about these elements and try to replicate them in your own design and user experience. It should contain your contact information, clear and straight to the point information about your company and products/services, your location and/or a map to your location if you are a brick and mortar business, great imagery with nice photographs, and overall it should be a place that gives the visitor the impression that you are a professional business and care about how you portray yourself.

If you hand somebody a business card without a website URL on the front of it, your chances of actually having that person check you out are slim to none. Why? Because they physically can’t check you out. You can talk somebody’s ear off about your business and paint a picture in their minds about what you do, but do you think that they will remember your story three weeks from now when they find your card sitting on their table? Chances are the answer is no. They will grab your card, look for a website URL in hopes of having that memory refreshed and be disappointed to realize that there is none. Case in point: we get a lot of people dropping business cards and brochures and everything in between. If I receive a business card from a business owner that only contains their number and no website URL, into the trash that card goes. How is somebody supposed to check out your work and choose you if you have no portfolio or web gallery?

So let’s recap all of the reasons you need your own website:

• To stand out among 100s of other businesses
• To show your professionalism
• To separate yourself from text listings
• To attract new customers through web searches
• To brand yourself and not rely on freebie websites with their own branding
• To show that you care about how you portrayed
• To paint a visual picture of you company

Finally, when creating your new website, we already mentioned how a great design is important, but something that is equally important is having your own custom URL and custom email addresses. This is just another way to (once again) portray your professionalism and show that you don’t need to rely on freebie websites like Gmail or Hotmail for email, or free website builders (i.e. yourcompanyname.freewebsite.com) for your domain. It is easier to tell somebody to check out www.sallysalon.com or http://sallysalon.thisismyfreewebsite.com. Which one do you think they would remember?

Source: Pinterest