Saskatoon Web Design Tips for small business to maximize their money spent on their online presence. Articles on web design, online marketing, web usability, search engine optimization, and running a small business in Saskatoon. Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 4 0 102 1659

Articles from Saskatoon Web Design

O IN ONE website launched 2008-01-28 14:50:00 This week, O IN ONE's redesigned website and online store has launched. View the golf clothing and accessories store. O IN ONE is the brainchild of a Saskatoon based entrepreneur, selling golf shirts and other accessories. The shirts sport a unique hole in the collar to hold sunglasses or carabina clips. ...

Open Source Solutions 2008-01-14 20:39:00 I'm a big fan of efficiency. Same with the idea of core competencies. Also with saving money. Those three things also happen to be reasons that I'm a big fan of open source solutions when they're available.What is open source?Open Source solutions are programs or applications whose code is "open". This means that anyone may alter the code for their own specific uses and distribute it for free. This approach to software differs from the big players in the computer world who prefer all of their products to be proprietary. Good luck making a change to Microsoft Word and offering the new 'improved' version to your friends over the internet.What are the benefits?Cost for one. With Open Source solutions, you don't pay for the software yourself. I often recommend open source E-commerce applications because cost-wise, they are great value in comparison with most proprietary applications. Usually a packaged ecommerce shopping cart system will be at least $1000, and if it is custom built f ...

New Website Launched! 2008-01-01 20:56:00 To help bring in the New Year, I've redesigned Saskatoon Web Design. The old site was serviceable, but not quite as sleek as I would have liked. Feel free to email me with your thoughts on the new look.Website RedesignsHow often should a website be redesigned? It depends upon the site of course, but I think a good rule of thumb is every two or three years. Of course, a well designed site can last for longer than that, but generally speaking once a website turns 5 or 6, its age starts to show, even if its still functional and usable. ...

Gender equality in Web Design 2007-12-15 00:59:00 The staff at A List Apart (quite honestly the best web design zine I know of) just recently released the results from their massive annual survey conducted amongst new media professionals (web designers, developers, webmasters, etc). There is a lot of data, and you can view their analysis here (pdf file, 1.6mb). I'll write a few posts about things that surprised me.Gender demographics83% of web professionals are men. Despite the fact that most computer related occupations share a similar statistic, I thought that it would be a little different in this field.First off, a good number of the respondents' job titles were: web designer (19.9%), designer (10.4%), or creative director (5.4%). Unlike other responses, such as developer, webmaster, information architect, these titles suggest a "left brain" approach to the web. Typically, women are well represented in other artistic or creative fields.Second, this industry has a very high rate of self-employed/freelance individuals (23.4%). Aga ... Design

Web Promotion Campaigns 2007-12-02 23:07:00 In this post, I'll go through some of the common elements of an online promotion campaign for a typical small/medium business website. First off though, let's talk about the goals of a campaign:Increase search engine ranking (ex. PageRank in Google): some people view this as the end goal of a campaign, but in reality, it's the starting point. Because being number one on Google doesn't make you any money on its own.Increased website traffic: goal number one will help this, but there are other ways to increase traffic than just through search engines. Again though, visitors alone don't pay for your time, unless if you're selling your traffic (to advertisers of your own), but most small businesses don't fall into that category.Increase leads, inquiries, or sales. Here lies the true reason for starting a promotion campaign, to increase the number of people interesting in purchasing your goods and services.How do we go from 1 to 3? Let's start with the search engine rankings and som ...

Voice over Internet Phones 2007-11-29 02:28:00 Potential Savings for Small BusinessesVoice over Internet Protocol or VOIP is a phone line running over your internet connection. Many larger corporations and institutions are making the switch, and it's worthwhile for small businesses to think about it as well.I use vonage, but there are a lot of options, depending on where you live. In most cities in Canada you can transfer your existing phone number to a VOIP line.MisconceptionsBefore delving into the issue, I'd like to just mention that first of all, VOIP has improved A LOT over the past few years. There can still be issues with sound quality, but by and large, it's comparable to a phone line (which can also have issues with sound quality). Also, you don't need to have your computer running in order to use your phone, and you can certainly use a "normal" phone assuming it's relatively new. Some people are concerned that they'll have to use a headset and microphone, and sit down at their computer to answer any call, don't wor ... Internet

Does a small business need a website? 2007-11-22 17:46:00 According to the BBC, the Federation of Small Businesses in the UK claims that half of small to medium sized businesses in their country lack a web presence. The article presents the rhetorical question: Do small firms really need a website? Of course, by the end of the article the answer is yes, of course. The why of it is more interesting, so I’ll speak to that. Again according to the article, “new technologies fundamentally alter consumer behaviour”. What has changed in our behaviour as consumers since the Internet age began? As part of a trend that may or may not be caused solely by the internet, the pace of decisions has been sped up. What has been precipitated by the internet is our expectation that access to information be immediate. Imagine writing a letter to Sears today about a new product in their catalogue, and getting your hockey sweater three months later. If for example, I am researching electrical contractors at 2 a.m. I only have two sources of informatio ...

High fidelity testing (i.e. how to save time and money) 2007-11-21 00:57:00 High fidelity testing is a fancy term for low tech and high idea design work. Ideally, before anyone approaches a computer, stakeholders or focus groups get together, discuss, and create a website on paper. Poor ideas can be discarded or reworked before significant time and effort is put into them. Sounds reasonable, but this step is often missed in design cycles.So what is high fidelity testing in practice? One example is the card sort method. In this exercise groups of people take a pile of index or recipe cards. On each card they write out a single hypothetical page of the website and organize them into categories or menu items. Each group then discusses their final site and collaboratively comes out with one that incorporates the best of everyone’s.The discussion should focus on putting yourself in your user’s shoes. Imagine yourself as a target client (or even better, organize a focus group of target audiences), and individually look at each page title. Ask yourself the follow ...

Cost of a Web Site 2007-11-18 12:50:00 A common question asked and often not answered among web designers is: what is the cost of a website. This is a complicated question as there are a lot of factors, custom web design work isn't like the retail industry with clearly defined price points. Below, I'll go through a few of the factors, and then, even go into the hard numbers.Hard CostsThese costs are pretty fixed, there are certain things you need to host a website that can't be avoided:Domain name: from $15-35/yearHost: from $5 to thousands per month, depending on the traffic and services. For example if you are hosting a direct to drive movie service, with tens of thousands of users, this won't be cheap. For most businesses this cost will be closer to $10-$30/month.PreproductionThis is the stage before your site itself is made.Photography: both the purchase of stock images and hiring a photographer can be expensive. This could be anywhere from $0 to thousands, but I'd recommend setting aside a few hundred dollars if y ...

Setting up a Saskatchewan Business, part 1 2007-11-18 01:48:00 PreparationBefore you get into any nitty gritty, the first step is to step back. Analyze your idea, yourself, and your market. Is this what you want to do? Will people pay you money to do it?Next up, who is your competition? Take your time, make lists, visit their places of business. Every bit of information you glean now will repay your time tenfold. If after surveying your market, you still think your business idea is sound, rejoice. Otherwise, spend some time tinkering with the plan. LegalitiesPerhaps the least fun but most necessary step in starting your business is registering for all of the necessary permits. This list isn't exhaustive as many types of businesses have specific licence requirements (visit BizPal, an online service to help you find out what kinds of licenses you may need):Name RegistrationStart this early, because first you'll need to do a name search, and only if your requested name is not already used will you be able to purchase the business name. Visit Saskat ...

Analyzing Link Partners 2007-11-18 00:15:00 So you have a website. You’re also bright enough to realize that it isn’t going to do you any good if no one is visiting it. So you’ve set yourself a goal to find online partners to exchange links with, or you have a budget set aside to purchase links online.PrioritizeVery quickly you’ll realize there are a thousand different opportunities out there and more people willing to take your money than you have money to give. You need to separate the great from the good and the good from the bad. Here’s a quick list of questions to get you started:How relevant is this site? There will be a few criteria, such as geography, products, approach, all compared to your own site.How respectable is this site? Sometimes this is tough to determine, but often amateurish or poorly designed sites stand out.What do the search engines think of this site? Visit an online tool such as iwebtool to see the PageRank of the site. Obviously the higher the better.How much traffic does the site get (and mo ...

How to Get Banned from Google 2007-11-17 13:24:00 Search engine optimization and online website promotion is incredibly important to creating a successful website. There are however pitfalls to avoid as you build your online network. Google does watch for certain behaviours and, if caught, an offending website can see a dramatic drop in its PageRank or even worse, it could be banned from the index altogether. In this article we’ll go through some of the major ones you’ll want to avoid.There are lots of fish in the seaWhen picking link partners, be cautious. Avoid link farms: sites with thousands of unrelated links but no content. Google will assign a value to any link to your site based on the quality of the site it’s coming from. Link farms are often banned altogether. Online directories are a different story. They are often focused in the links they carry, for example: Saskatoon small business; web designers; freelance graphic artists; etc. Google acknowledges these directories as different from the link farms.Black Hat SEOSea ... Google

Why Build a Website 2007-11-17 13:19:00 By Robert Blizzard Though some may respond to such a question with “Well, why not?”, the continuing investment of time and money to have a meaningful web presence demands a better answer. I’ll offer three to start us off, even though there are many more. Meet organizational goalsIncrease ProfessionalismVisibility & Promotion Goals Before deciding on embarking on a web project, a moment should be spent on seeing what you hope to accomplish with it. It is best to view the Internet like any other marketing medium, perhaps it has more potential and functionality, but it will not provide an immediate return on investment if you’re not sure why you need it. For example, a local community garden would not find a full page ad in a national newspaper to be an effective use of resources. Similarly, a flash-driven, web database of what is growing in the garden would also be a poor use of resources. But perhaps that garden is always looking for new community members who want to be ...

Search Engine Optimization 2007-11-17 13:18:00 By Robert Blizzard Your domain name: there is a reason speculators have bought up hundreds of thousands of .com names. Because the words that appear in your domain name are a head start in getting your website found by a search engine. Tips:Incorporate your keywordsKeep it as short as you canMake it memorable Use every opportunity At this point, search engines still can’t analyze images. This means that it is the words on your website that matter. Be sure to take every opportunity, whether it is in the name of your images, the meta tags for your html documents, or descriptions of your links, to reinforce your keywords. Not everything is equal Search engines will give more weight to some words than others. The title of your web pages, for example, is one of the most important as the engine will assume it is the best description of your site. The same applies to the header tags, or items appearing higher up on you page. Tip:Use CSS based layout so that the content is loaded before ...

6 Steps to Creating a Website 2007-11-17 13:08:00 By Robert BlizzardStep 1: Why?The first and most important step when creating a website, or having another person do it for you, is to spend some time deciding why you want one. A lot of time and money can be wasted if you don’t have a clear idea of what you’d like to achieve with your web presence.Examples of goals for a website:Leads for your businessInformation for your customersCommunity for your membersStep 2: What?Once you’ve decided what you want your site to do, the next step is to decide what information you’ll need to achieve those goals. Before writing the copy, or choosing images though, it’s a good idea to create a sitemap that will define, down to the page, what will be in your website.Example sitemap:HomeProductsNewUsedTestimonialsContactNow that you know where the information is going, the hard part of actually writing the content down starts. Keep your content short. Users are unlikely to read more than three lines beneath a heading. Be sure that you make eve ...