ARTICLES

THE ECOMMERCE WEBSITE AND WAYS TO DO IT

maria.maisuradze@gmail.com (Maria Maisuradze) — Fri, 28 Jan 2022 01:45:59 GMT

To build an online store you need to use the right platform, but which platform is right for you?

There are many options, all of which offer different approaches to building your store.

If you are an eCommerce novice, it isn’t easy to go through all the technical jargon to find the right platform — So we have done it for you.

#1. Hosted eCommerce Shopping Cart platform for personal and startup websites

The first benefit of utilizing this type of platform is that hosted eCommerce carts allow you to successfully build an online store without having any technical experience. This type of platform is ideal for business owners that are just starting their first store and want to test the water in a cheap risk averse way.

Other reasons to use hosted eCommerce builders include:

No technical administrative duties – hosting and security is managed by online store builders, meaning you’ll have more time to focus on your business.
It’s a turnkey solution – this means all shopping cart tools are pre-installed and are ready for use. No integration and very minimal configuration required.
Drag and drop website construction – hosted shopping carts “hide” the coding, allowing you to drag and drop images, upload products, and connect your website to payment processors.

For personal/small business websites, the following are great options:

#2. Self-Hosted Open Source eCommerce platforms for small to medium businesses

Open source shopping carts are essentially standalone programs that require you to install them onto your own host, meaning that you also have to set up, configure and manage your own hosting service for your online store. After setting up the hosting service, you’ll need to install the shopping cart platform onto your hosting account. Once a shopping cart platform has been installed, you’ll then need to install a design template and code it to make specific changes. The main benefit of using self-hosted open source software is that it’s extremely flexible; you can configure functions and customize every single part of your online store.

Here are some Self-Hosted eCommerce platforms:

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WHAT IS INCLUDED IN BRANDING PACKAGE AND WHAT IT IS COST?

maria.maisuradze@gmail.com (Maria Maisuradze) — Thu, 27 Jan 2022 19:18:16 GMT

Before you can roll out on-brand designs, you need a robust brand identity package. But what does a branding package include? How much does a branding package cost? And where do you even begin with selecting the right design partner to help you develop your brand?

If you haven’t been through the brand development process before it can be difficult to know what to expect.

What is a branding package?

The most common scenarios where companies when a business is looking for a branding package include:

a new business going live
overhaul of an existing image after completing a brand audit
a brand refresh or update
launch on a major marketing campaign

What is Included in A Branding Package?

When you hire another company to create a brand identity package (sometimes referred to as a brand kit), at a bare minimum you should get;

A good design company will also look into your marketing strategy, competitive research, customer feedback and any other essential criteria to create a branding package that aligns with your goals . That’s of course assuming your brand isn’t completely brand new, so you have that data and information to use!

Logo and Visual Identity

The logo is the cornerstone of your brand’s aesthetic and company association. As an inherent part of your visual identity , you need to invest more in the quality of your logo design as this will set the tone for the rest of the branding to follow.

Style Guide

A style guide, also known as brand guidelines or a branding standards document, establishes the visual direction of a brand’s website, ads, and any other marketing assets.

Think of it as a comprehensive rulebook that governs how your brand should (and shouldn’t) be displayed.

By having a style guide, you ensure you create a consistent brand experience that doesn’t confuse your audience. These brand specifications also create a foundation that can easily be handed over to designers, marketers, web developers and community managers to ensure everyone does their part in representing a unified brand front.

Typography:

Rules and information regarding your typefaces and font system.

A list of typefaces used for your brand or custom typeface
Font system: How your fonts should be used i.e. primary and secondary, digital typefaces
Type hierarchy: a combination of font styles for headings, body copy, CTA etc.

Fonts are powerful and selecting fonts for your brand should be chosen wisely. The most famous fonts are recognizable even when taken out of context.

Typography is the medium to connect who you are and how you communicate to the world. Each typeface—such as script, serif, sans serif etc.—can convey a different feeling just as what color conveys emotion.

Photography:

Approved image examples. This includes best practises in terms of Image tonality and any image treatments.

Graphic design elements: Custom graphic shapes, lines, patterns or other elements that best compliment your brand identity. These elements are often used in marketing collateral, in creative advertisements , on social media and so forth.

Iconography: Icons that your brand can use on your website, app, packaging and so on. These can be stock icons or custom made!

Illustration: Similarly, your brand style guide can include illustrations —stock or custom made.

Level Up Your Brand Identity Package with Additional Add-Ons

One size doesn’t fit all, and some companies may need additional design elements to help round out their brand.

Once you get the basics down (your core branding package), there are some additional on-brand supporting graphic elements that you might require for creating an extended visual language. Let’s go through some of the basics!

Presentation Templates

Presentation templates give you a default document to create presentations faster for events, investor calls, team meetings, new hire onboarding, or any other recurring needs. See some presentation templates we made for Satair , a massive aircraft component and service company, below!

Business Cards

Digital Advertising Graphics

Take ad banners, email templates, or any other visual projects off your plate. A great design company saves you time as you don’t have to worry about whether key graphics are on-brand.

How Much Does a Branding Package Cost

Since every brand’s specific needs vary, branding package pricing ranges from $2,000-$75,000. If you’re working with one of the big agencies, you can expect to pay even more than that. The price of a branding package depends on your desired turnaround times, the company or designers you’re working with and the scope of work done.

With brand identity design services , we spend time on:

Getting to know your brand vision and the outcomes you want to drive
Completing visual reviews of your competitors
Taking a 10/50/99 approach with our designs

Every brand design is unique. Thus, every branding package is also unique. This is often reflected in the pricing of your overall package.

You want to make sure you’re investing your budget wisely. This is why we include a dedicated design team and project manager with our brand design package. As new needs come up, you’re not waiting on getting a new designer up to speed on your brand.

ESSENTIAL FACEBOOK AD TERMS YOU NEED TO KNOW

Wed, 26 Jan 2022 18:37:59 GMT

As Facebook continues to dominate the global market, Facebook Ads are undeniably the powerhouse of the advertising world.

FB Ads Essential Tools

Business Manager

As the name suggests, Facebook’s Business Manager helps you to organize and manage your business. It houses everything for you: your pages, your ad accounts, all your stuff.

Think of the Business Manager as an office for your company. It’s where you will work from, it’s where you create your ads, and where you monitor metrics.

Rather than creating a business page using your personal account, Business Manager allows you to create a separate account just for your business. While you will need a personal account to log into the Business Manager, the two aren’t completely intermingled so when you share photos of your friend’s birthday party or your top 10 movie list, all your customers on your business account won’t see it.

Keeping your professional and personal social media accounts separate is especially useful if you plan to have co-workers with access, or other people coming in to work on your account. They won’t have access to your private information, and it’s just a more secure way of managing things.

A good analogy is an office building where every room in your office requires certain access passes with different security levels. Staff can come and go using their access pass depending on their level clearance, and you can easily take someone’s pass away if you don’t want them coming into the building anymore.

Business Manager also allows for different levels of access for users. Got a staff member working on advertising but only want them to see one specific ad? Easy, limit their access. If you have a consultant coming on board and you want them to have full access, you can select the ‘assign partners’ option, click ‘Business ID’, and enter their own Business Manager ID.

If someone leaves the company or you decide to switch agencies, it’s as simple as revoking their access.

Ad Account

This is where you can examine the actions that Facebook is recording to get further data. This data helps you to optimize, scale, plan, and make decisions on what you want to do with your advertising.

Your ad account will give all sorts of data on user behavior, but all this data can essentially be divided into two groups: unique metrics and general metrics. When it comes to accurate reporting, the rule of thumb is to always examine the unique metrics rather than the general metrics.

The reason for this is that the unique metrics count how many individuals accomplished this metric. Let’s say you have 3 people purchasing one item from your e-commerce store, you will see 3 purchases and you will see 3 unique purchases.

If just one person makes 3 separate purchases, you will see 3 purchases but 1 unique purchase.

If you already feel a little confused, don’t stress. Just understand that “unique” metrics are the ones to look out for.

The Facebook Pixel

Also known as just the pixel, this handy analytics tool allows you to measure how effective your advertising is by understanding the actions people have taken or will take on your website.

The Facebook Pixel is a JavaScript code that helps to track activity. When someone visits a page of your website, the pixel will notify Facebook to record their activity.

This is the brain of your business, it’s the reason you are able to optimize. It allows you to measure user activity across all devices and allows you to build audiences that you can remarket to. It allows you to track performance and calculate the ROI (return of investment) of your campaigns.

Facebook Pixel Helper is a great little Chrome extension that will help you to debug the implementation of the pixel.

Funnels

We could write a whole library on what a sales funnel is and how it relates to your business (in fact, we have! Check out our other articles for a more in-depth dive on using sales funnels ), but for Facebook ads and terminology, we have these terms for you:

A sales funnel is a step-by-step process that enables you to draw a prospective customer closer to your sales offer. Let’s have a look at the customer journey and how it lives in a holistic view:

Prospecting: This is where all your first interactions with consumers will be.
Re-engagement: This is where the consumers who are just learning about you are. Maybe they haven’t bought anything yet, but they are getting closer too! These people might follow your social media posts and profiles but haven’t visited your website yet.
Decision/Bottom of Funnel: These people have visited your website. This is where your hottest leads/customers are just waiting for you to give them the final budget.

Understanding funnels and the lead’s journey will help you to understand exactly what’s happening behind each metric.

Clicks

Let’s have a look at the different metrics that are being recorded in your ad manager:

Facebook Clicks

“Clicks” is a measurement of the number of clicks on your ads. Clicks cover the following links:

Link clicks – (these include Facebook and outbound, more on that later)
Clicks to Business Page profiles or profile pictures
Post reactions
Likes
Shares
Comments
Clicks to expand media
Playing videos
CTAs

Basically, anytime someone hovers their mouse over your ad and then clicks, it’s a “click”.

Link Clicks

There’s often a little confusion between link clicks and outbound clicks. Outbound clicks measure the number of clicks that take people away from Facebook-owned websites, for example, a link on your Facebook page to your personal website. Whereas, the link clicks metric shows both clicks to destinations on or off Facebook-owned websites.

Link clicks help to measure the amount of interest that your ad has generated with your audience. A lot of digital advertisers consider the click-through rate as a measure of success for an online advertising campaign.

This metric assesses link clicks in the text of your ad, CTAs, media, or your attached links to external or internal destinations. It doesn’t include clicks on content or links in the comments section of a post.

Outbound Clicks

As discussed before, outbound clicks measure the number of clicks that take people away from Facebook-owned websites completely.

Examples of Outbound Clicks include clicks on a link or CTAs within an ad that direct people directly from their Facebook News Feed to an external page. If you’re using a full-screen experience as your ad format, outbound clicks will most likely provide more insight into the performance of your ads rather than link clicks.

Sometimes, clicks can be reported as both a link click and an outbound click which can cause a bit of confusion when you’re looking at your metrics. For example, if you’re using a single image ad to drive traffic to a website along with a CTA button taking people to your website too, Facebook can get a little confused and will both the clicks on the CTA button or image as both a link click and an outbound click. It shouldn’t mess with things too much, but this is something that’s good to know.

Unique Outbound Clicks

An estimated metric of the number of people who performed an outbound click. This metric uses sampled data to count the number of people who clicked, not the number of clicks.

UOCTR (Link)

Unique Outbound Click Through Rate (Link) is one of the most important metrics in the game.

This metric tells you the percentage of people who saw your ad and clicked on an outbound click. This metric is calculated as the number of unique outbound clicks, divided by your reach.

Key Metrics/Terms

AIT

Asset Iteration Testing. This is another isolated dynamic form of testing your newest creative that is more focused on the manual campaign, ad set, and ad build.

AOV

Average Order Value. This is where all your money comes from, and refers to the average amount spent per purchase.

CAC

Cost of Acquiring a Customer. What is your overall cost to acquire a customer?

CPA

Cost Per Acquisition, or Cost Per Result, reveals the average cost per result on your adverts. Your results are objectives that you have set in your ad campaign. CPA or CPR helps you to compare the performance of your different campaigns and see what’s working and what’s not. It’s influenced by a wide variety of factors, from your target audience behaviors, optimization, and even what schedule your ads are on.

CPC

Cost Per Click. This is the price you pay for each click on your Facebook ad.

CPM

Also known as your cost per 1000 impressions. This is how much Facebook is charging you to deliver your ad for 1000 impressions.

CPUP

Cost Per Unique Purchase. The estimated average cost of each unique purchase.

DCT / DCO

Dynamic Creative Testing. Facebook’s Introduction to multi-variant or multi-element testing within campaigns.

Destination/Link Setting

The landing page that you are marketing and directing everything towards. The understanding destination is extremely important because it’s the combination of your ad, your audience, and your landing page that will give different results.

Landing Page

Your landing page is: where am I driving my leads to? What are they looking at? Where are they going? This is where you are sending your leads after they initiate a click on your ad. These landing pages are different from other pages on your website, like product pages, because they’re tailor-made to complement your Facebook ad. This is your lead’s first impression of your business away from Facebook, so make sure that it not only connects to your ad but that it’s suitable and on-brand.

LTV

Lifetime Value. The total value spent across a customer’s life.

ROAS

Return On Ad Spend. This is an important one. ROAS is the money you receive derived from spending on advertising and tells you how effectively your spending on marketing is. ROAS is based on the value of all conversions recorded by the pixel on your website.

UATC

Unique Add To Cart. So, your lead has found a few things they want to buy. This is the holy grail of any business. This is the first step in the checkout process, where your lead has selected “add to cart” on a product or service.

UCPATC

Unique Cost Per Add to Cart

UCPIC

Unique cost per check out initiated, also known as cost per unique checkout initiated. This estimated by taking the total amount spent, and dividing it by unique checkouts initiated.

UCPLV

Unique Cost Per Landing Page View. A metric of how much it’s costing you per a unique view of your landing page.

UIC

Unique Initiate Check Out.

ULPV

Unique Landing Page View. This is the number of consumers who made it to your landing page.

UP

Unique Purchases. This is the estimated number of people who completed at least one purchase. This metric counts people, not actions taken, and it’s calculated based on your use of Facebook’s business tools.

full article: https://foundr.com/author/perrie

HOW MUCH DOES A WEBSITE COST?

Mon, 24 Jan 2022 19:50:43 GMT

There are three ways to build a website:

with a website builder,

2. with Joomla, Drupal, WordPress, Duda or other web platform

3. by hiring a web professional agency or web designer/developer.

The route you pick will affect the overall cost of building your website.

If you choose to use a website builder , it could cost you as little as $6 per month, whereas using WordPress increases that monthly price to anywhere between $11 and $50. Hiring a website designer is the most expensive option, with an upfront price tag of over $10,000.

Below, we’ll take a deep dive into all three methods, giving you a rundown of all the full costs involved, so you can choose the best route for your budget.

First of all, let’s play a quick game: which website do you think costs the most?

EXAMPLES OF BAD WEBSITES - AVOID THIS 20 WORST WEBSITES

Sun, 26 Dec 2021 22:42:14 GMT

Are you looking for the best websites on the web? You’re in the wrong place!

Today, we will be looking at bad websites. The 40 worst websites on the web to be precise.

But these aren’t just regular ‘bad websites’, we’re covering popular websites with bad design. So, you’re a website designer or care about good design, cover your eyes ��

1. Craigslist

Why it doesn’t work: So popular and so in-demand, one can only think if the overt simplicity of the site is rationally intended.

https://craigslist.org/

2. Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

Why it doesn’t work: While clean and light, this website is just way too far from what a multinational holding company should be.

https://berkshirehathaway.com/

3. Yale School of Art

Why it doesn’t work: The website looks old, distracting, hard to read, and the Elitism GIF background is just plain wrong. It leaves you wondering if you are in the right website.

https://www.art.yale.edu/

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4. University of Advancing Technology

Why it doesn’t work: Website design looks outdated and distracting because of so many things that try to steal your attention.

https://www.uat.edu/

5. Suzanne Collins

Why it doesn’t work: Who doesn’t love Hunger Games? You’d expect their website to look great but instead, it’s stuck in the past. Even the portrait image of the author is unclear!

http://www.suzannecollinsbooks.com/

What Kind of Website Do You Need?

6. Budgets Are Sexy

Why it doesn’t work: Featured in prestigious firms like NYT and Forbes, this website looks cramped, busy, and monotonous.

https://www.budgetsaresexy.com/

7. Internet Archive Wayback Machine

Why it doesn’t work: For a website that serves millions in a day, and for a website that has a strong clear purpose, this website has a backward design and has tons of links at the header.

https://archive.org/web/

8. Interrupt Tech Corp.

Why it doesn’t work: A good domain name, but this website design felt like it’s just there for the sheer sake of being on the internet. What’s more hilarious is the way they explain why such is such.

http://itcorp.com/

LANDING PAGE VS PRODUCT PAGE. WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE?

Sun, 26 Dec 2021 22:22:48 GMT

A landing page is a standalone page designed for a specific marketing campaign.

Typically, it has only one focus—to guide the visitor to take a specific action with minimal distractions. This action can be anything from signing up for an email newsletter to accessing an online course, or buying a product.

Landing pages still contain focused offers, but they don’t necessarily have to be for an ecommerce product.

The best landing pages out there know how to be captivating and compelling. Here are beautifully designed landing page examples doing just that. An effective landing page grips the visitor’s attention through copy and visuals. It imparts all the pertinent information about the brand’s service or product to the visitor and tells them, “Hey, you need this, you need us.”

In short, the best landing pages are persuasive and poignant. They are designed to beautifully communicate a brand’s value and call to action (CTA) while also increasing conversion rates and consumer engagement.

Meanwhile, a product page is designed to get visitors to buy a given product by providing specific information about it .

These pages aren’t explicitly designed for conversion and can have several goals versus just one call to action.

They often contain many links the visitor can click to navigate away from the page, where a landing page is typically where you’ll only want one focused link for visitors to click and may even exclude site navigation.

Landing pages and product pages are both useful in ecommerce, but they are designed for slightly different purposes.

How to Increase Your Domain Authority

Sun, 26 Dec 2021 00:03:25 GMT

How to Increase Your Domain Authority

When we talk about search engine optimization (SEO), domain authority has become an industry standard. Originally developed by Moz , domain authority attempts to quantify how well a website will rank on search engine results pages (SERPs). Websites rank somewhere on a scale from one to 100, and the closer you are to 100, the higher you will rank and the more traffic your website could have.

Domain authority is a sort of proxy for the Google “PageRank” score, which indicates how credible your website is. Moz calculates your domain authority by combining all of their other link metrics — linking root domains, number of total links, MozRank, MozTrust, and others — into a single score. Essentially, they are looking at the number of other (credible) websites that link back to your site to determine whether you are producing quality content.

One important thing to remember about domain authority is that it’s a comparative metric. While increasing your score is important, it’s more important to look at the ranking of your competition to get an idea of how your website will place.

For example, a local florist shop (Florist A) might only have a domain authority score of 34, while a national company like 1-800-Flowers would have a much higher domain authority score of 70.

But, Florist A isn’t competing with 1-800-Flowers for the top spot in “local florist” searches. They are competing with Florist B two miles down the road, who only has a domain authority score of 8. In this case, Florist A would appear much higher on the SERP than Florist B.

Now, what if Florist B wanted to improve its rankings? Is there a way to increase domain authority and move up on the SERP?

How to Increase Your Domain Authority

A website with a high domain authority is much harder to outrank. So, while Florist B could relatively easily increase their domain authority to outrank Florist A, it would be difficult to outrank 1-800-Flowers. Still, there are some practical tips that can help you increase your authority and climb the SERP ranks.

What’s in a (domain) name? They say that wisdom comes with age — so the older your domain is, the better. Older domains are seen as more credible and have higher domain authority than newer ones, so every time you change your domain name it’s like starting from zero. That’s why it’s important to use a custom domain name from the beginning, especially if you are using a blogging platform like WordPress.com.

Build up your internal linking structure. You might have noticed that we often link back to past blog posts. That’s because internal linking is one of the factors affecting your domain authority that is easiest to control. A good rule of thumb is to add two to three links to content that exists on your own website to boost your authority. When you upload new content, it’s also important to go back through your old blog posts and add links to the new content, where it’s appropriate.

Focus on your inbound links. We’ve talked about the importance of “backlinks” in a previous post , but here’s a quick refresher. Backlinks are inbound links from another website to your content. It provides social proof that your website is credible, and it shows search engines that your content might be useful for searchers.

A few quality backlinks can be worth their weight in organic search traffic, so focus on gathering links from sources at different geo-locations, domain extensions, or sources that don’t link to each other. Essentially, you want to show that people around the world and in different information sharing circles all value your content.

It’s worth noting that a bad link can actively harm your domain authority, so you want to keep up with who is linking to your site. If you find a bad link, you can either request that the site owner remove the link or use the Google Disavow tool to ignore those links.

Produce great content. None of these link-building tips will work if you aren’t creating exceptional content. When you create something that adds value for your readers, they are more likely to share it with their friends, family, and social networks. It makes link building so much easier.

You can also leverage your great content to build links by:

Guest blogging
Contributing to round-up articles
Providing testimonials for other businesses
Pitching articles to the media
Hosting a webinar

Remember, domain authority is important, but it isn’t the only thing affecting your ranking. Google isn’t that simple. With dozens of ranking factors to consider, you need to take a wholistic approach to SEO in order to land that coveted spot at the top of the first page of results on Google.

FREE STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY

Tue, 23 Nov 2021 02:42:06 GMT

Pictures are where it’s at if you’re looking to get your point across. Unfortunately, quality images can be elusive or come at a cost. As a small business owner, we thought your website, feeds, and blogs could benefit from this list of free stock photography sites.

Before Downloading: Terms to Know

Attribution

Sometimes, a deal can be too good to be true. This can be true with ‘free’ stock photography. While you’re surfing the sites below, or anywhere, be on the lookout for the phrase ‘attribution’. Many of the images you’ll find on ‘free’ stock photo sites will allow you to download and use the image at no monetary cost. However, the photographer (or the site) may require that you make a note on or near the image attributing where the image is from. We believe that the most professional way to present your small business is without attribution. So, be sure to find images that do not require attribution.

Commercial Use vs. Personal Use

Some free stock photography sites allow you to download for free and without attribution for personal use only. If you’re a small business, and using these images on your business website (or anywhere to support your business), that is considered commercial use. Personal use is different altogether. For example, personal use would be an image used to create your child’s birthday party invitation.

Royalty Free

The meaning of ‘royalty free’ is different than ‘no-cost to purchase’. The “free” in royalty-free refers to being able to freely use the image without paying additional royalties . For instance, as a small-business owner, you may opt to pay a one-time fee for royalty free image for use on a website.

Our Favorite Free Sites

There are a growing number of free stock photo sites to choose from. Over the years, we’ve found a handful of these sites that we continue to visit. They deliver high quality images and professional photographers are continually adding to the libraries. Of note, be sure to read each site’s ‘About’ page to learn what you can and cannot do with their images. The sites below represent those that will offer you the most freedom of usage.

Unsplash

Unsplash – This site has a wide variety of images that you can use commercially or personally without having to attribute the photographer. We really enjoy the search feature.

PikWizard

(new to this list as of November 2020)

PikWizard – This site is a (mostly) free stock image and video site.

The PikWizard libraries have over 1 million stock images and videos and they are added to weekly.

All assets are high-quality, contemporary and completely copyright free.

But what makes them unique is that they also have an editing tool attached called Design Wizard. A free stock site and a free graphic design editing software tool all-in-one.

Pexels

Pexels – This site also provides completely free and high quality stock photos. The library is fully searchable.

Rawpixel

Rawpixel – This site puts a twist on their ‘free’ downloads. They offer different file size options (e.g., print vs. web) for download. They also allow up to five images per day from their Free collection. If you need more, they offer subscription pricing for unlimited downloads.

Bonus: Rawpixel offers a Public Domain section. The term “public domain” refers to creative materials that are not protected by intellectual property laws such as copyright, trademark, or patent laws. Anyone can use a public domain work without obtaining permission. Items typically end up in public domain after a significant amount of time has passed.

Gratisography

Gratisography – Oh my goodness. If you’re looking for something a bit left of center or quirky, look no farther. This site has compiled some of the most unique images you may find on the internet. They also have a fairly strict review process for which images they will allow to be housed on their site.

BONUS: Our Go-To For-a-Fee Stock Photo Site

Adobe Stock

If your business is just getting started, finding and choosing free stock photography is a very helpful option. At Studio Barn Creative, while we utilize this option, we also subscribe to Adobe Stock . Adobe Stock is a professionally curated, for-fee, stock photography database.

As designers, we appreciate the option to preview watermarked images inside our designs first before downloading. Once we decide that the image will work, or our customer approves, we can then license, access and manage them directly within Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, and other Adobe desktop apps.

Pros and Cons of Stock Photography

Stock photography, especially the free kind, can make small business owners feel warm and fuzzy. And, it can save them a great deal of time. It feels like a win/win.

There is, however, a downside to stock photography: it eliminates your ability to be truly unique.

If you start to pay more attention to images in your daily web surfing, you’ll begin to see some of the same photos over and over. They are great images that can be found on free, or paid, stock photo sites. Because they are great, several (if not hundreds of) people have downloaded and used them.

So, what’s the alternative? If you have a quality camera, you could begin taking some of your own pictures. Or, you could consider hiring a photographer. A photographer can be especially helpful in capturing your business specific location or team members.

For many small business owners, the pros outweigh the cons most any day of the week.

GOOGLE MY BUSINESS LISTING – WHO OWNS IT

Tue, 23 Nov 2021 01:53:29 GMT

Do you have a Google My Business Listing for your small business? It’s easy enough to find out with a quick Google search using your business name. If you see one, do you know who owns it? Moreover, can you access it?

Your Google My Business Listing: Are You the Owner?

Whether your business is large or small, maintaining this listing is one of the keys to your overall online success. If you do not have access to your own listing, or cannot remember who does, it’s time to do some digging. Why? Because if this business listing isn’t being properly maintained, your business’s online presence may be taking a hit.

How Do I Know if My Business Has a GMB Listing?

Firstly, you’ll want to determine if your business has a Google My Business listing. One of the quickest ways to do that is to go to Google and perform a search using your business name. Below, is the Studio Barn Creative GMB listing as shown in a simple search for our name.

Start a Search at Business.Google.com

The other way to find a business listing on Google is to navigate to the website https://business.google.com .

By clicking ‘Manage Now’ you’ll be asked to sign-in. We recommend using your business email to get started. It is more likely that your GMB account would be linked to your business email (but, maybe not). If you end up creating a new account, this is the email your new account should be attached to.

If you have a Google My Business account, you’ll be logged into it here showing your listing. Yay!

However, if that doesn’t work, and if you think your account may be registered through a different email address, log-out, and try again with the other email(s).

I Do Not Have an Active GMB Account

If you sign in and do not have a GMB account, you’ll be taken to this page where you can enter your business name to start searching. As you type, business names will start to auto-populate.

If you see your business name in the dropdown, it means that a GMB listing already exists for your business. Select the listing that is yours. If your business is a ‘brick & mortar’ location, the next screen will allow you to Request Access to the GMB listing. You may recognize the somewhat redacted email that originally verified your listing. It may be a personal account of yours. Or, it may be the email of a previous employee or marketing agency.

When you click the Request Access button, you’ll be asked a series of questions to verify that you are who you claim to be. When you complete this form, an email will be sent to the current owner. They will be able to accept or deny your request for access.

If you recognize the redacted email as one that you used to own and no longer have access to, use the Account Recovery help guide.

What if I’m a Service Area Business and Not Brick and Mortar?

If your business services an area (e.g., plumber, HVAC repair, web designer) and does not have a storefront, the claim process will be different.

The next screen will not allow you to request access. Instead, you’ll be asked a series of questions as if you were creating a new listing (essentially, you will be). Be sure that if that is the case that you are logged in with the email primarily attached to your business.

WARNING! Be sure that you are logging in with your business email. This will save you some trouble down the line. This little step is an important one. We promise.

Once this process is completed, verification of your business is accomplished by mailing you a hard-copy postcard to your business address.

There is Not a GMB Listing for My Business

If you do not see a listing for your business, you can begin creating a business listing with your business name from the search screen. Simply follow the prompts. To confirm your new listing, you’ll be mailed a postcard with a verification code. You will enter this code into your new, unverified listing, to complete verification.

WARNING! However, be sure that you are logging in with your business email. This will save you some trouble down the line. This little step is an important one. We promise.

Why Does It Matter Who Owns My Google My Business Listing?

It matters who owns your Google My Business listing the same way it matters who owns your business. Both have their privileges.

If your GMB listing shows misinformation or is missing information, potential customers may overlook your website/business altogether. Even worse, if it is showing erroneous information (e.g., an incorrect phone number), and you do not own your listing, you cannot change that phone number. Same with your address, website address, services, photos and more. The long and short of the importance of owning your listing is that you may be losing customers if you don’t.

Primary Owner, Owner, Manager or Site Manager

At Studio Barn Creative, we often create new Google My Business listings for our small business owners who are just starting out. The significance of this listing for new businesses is of the utmost importance for SEO.

When a listing is created, the email address used to create it becomes the primary owner. From there, we ‘invite’ additional users (the customer) as Owners. Then, we change the primary owner to the customer and move our email to owner or manager (it is the customer’s choice).

Google’s support website lists the differences between owners, managers, and site managers . Understanding these differences will help you when inviting new users and assigning an appropriate role for your business.

Keep Your Listing and Users Current

Like most things on the internet, Google views updated and current data favorably. To ensure that you get the most out of your listing, be sure to update it frequently. To ensure that you or your team are able to update it, review the roles of your users periodically.

For instance, if your business has an employee that is leaving, remove them as a Manager from your listing. Similarly, if you are retiring from your business and handing the reigns over to someone else, transfer the Primary Owner role out of your name and into theirs. As a result, you will save time and money.

To sum up, maintaining your GMB listing is one of the keys to your online success.

UNDERSTANDING DOMAIN NAMES AND HOSTING

Tue, 23 Nov 2021 01:23:29 GMT

Understanding domain names and hosting can be one of the most confusing things for new small business owners. Especially for the non-techy. We get it. And, we’ve been there. Below is a high-level overview of these two items and how to understand them for your business.

WHAT IS A DOMAIN NAME

A domain name is like your last name. It identifies and is connected to the name of your business. You can keep your name for as long as you continue to pay a Domain Registrar (a company that registers the name for your use only because you paid for it).

WHAT IS HOSTING

Hosting is like your house. It is a service that ‘houses’ all of your website files. You can move houses as many times as you want to wherever you want (like if you are moving from Ohio to South Carolina). So, your domain is your name and will always be your name. Hosting is your house and you can move your house as often as you’d like and keep your name.

HOW THEY WORK TOGETHER

Just like when you move residences, you have to tell the USPS at what address they can find you. No matter where you go, for as long as you are living, your name will have an address associated with it.

For a website to be shown to the world, we have to tell the internet where they can find your name. An internet address is called an IP Address. The IP address consists of several digits. Each Website Host location has a different IP Address (makes sense — different hosting company, different locations). We use that unique Host IP address to inform the world what it will see when it types in your domain name (which gets programmed with the IP address).

WHAT IF I LOSE ACCESS TO MY DOMAIN NAME ACCOUNT?

Losing access to your domain name isn’t the end of the world, but it can create a few issues.

Try to Work With with the Existing Domain Name Registrar

Before giving up trying to regain access to your domain name account (e.g., GoDaddy, NameCheap, Register), we suggest reaching out to your domain name registrar and working with them, over the phone where you can speak with a human, to try to verify your identity and that you really are the owners and should be granted access. They’ll ask you questions, one of which may be the last 4-digits of the credit card on file that made the original or renewal purchase.

Using a “Who Is” search, you – and anyone – can search for the identity of the Domain Registrar of any domain name. This search result may also, if not private, provide you with the name and address of the person/company that is paying for this domain name, when it was originally purchased, and when it expires. We like to use the GoDaddy Who Is website for searches https://www.godaddy.com/whois

Studio Barn Creative Domain Name Registrar Search Results

What if I Need a New Domain Name?

If you cannot come to an understanding with the Domain Registrar to grant you access to your domain, you will most likely have to purchase a new domain name. This, in the short term, solves the problem. Be aware, however, of the following issues that may occur in the future:

Once the original domain name expires, someone else can purchase it and start using it for their business
Once the new domain name is being used, you may lose access to the content of your existing website (there are several variables here)
It will be impossible to redirect website visitors from the old website pages (e.g. mydomainname/homepage) to the new website pages (e.g., newdomainname/homepage) because you cannot access the original domain to tell it where to send visitors
Search engine indexes (Google or Bing, for example) will continue to show results to your original domain/website and cannot be redirected to the new site (see note above).

Good To Know

A helpful piece of information to understanding domain names and hosting is that they can be purchased together or separately.

For instance, did you know that you can purchase hosting with Flywheel (our fav!) but not a domain name? Did you know that you can purchase a domain name and hosting with GoDaddy? Did you know that domain names function the same? However, hosting can be very different from company to company.

As a final tip, be sure to keep your domain and hosting account information (company name, username and password) written down in a safe place for future use.

THE PURPOSE OF A WEB SITE FOR A SMALL BUSINESS

Thu, 18 Nov 2021 18:41:08 GMT

Today I wanted to talk to you about the purpose of your website

A lot of people are confused when they think about their website. The problem is they kind of put a bunch of different things together in terms of their expectations and smash them all together and call it their 'website'.

The challenge is is that a website actually performs several different functions that are not all the same or related to each other. And it’s really important to be crystal clear on the different functions your website serves and how the website works within your own business process.

That way, you can go about making improvements as well as just judging the success of your website.

But let’s cut to the chase, the purpose of your website is to make money. And how does it make money?

Typically it is by selling your product or service.

So there are three main phases when I can when it comes to selling something on your website.

Traffic Generation
Lead Generation
Lead Conversion

So let’s go through all three phases and see how your website functions in each one of them.

1. Traffic Generation

If you remember the old movie called Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner hears a voice that tells him if you build it they will come. Well unfortunately that’s not usually the case when it comes to your website

A lot of times someone will build a brand new website and then kind of not know what to do next because they’re not sure how to generate traffic to their website.

One of the main functions a website can have is to generate traffic specifically via Search Engine Optimization /SEO/

And this can be done by targeting the correct keywords for your industry and making sure that your site is optimized to rank for those keywords in Google. This way when people searching on Google will come across your website and you will get traffic from those people searching.

2. Lead Generation

The second purpose of a website is to generate leads. The way I define a lead is basically someone who has raised their hand and contacted you either via email a contact form or a phone call to get in touch and learn more about your product or service.

So the purpose of your website is to take a random stranger who is anonymous and visiting your website and move that person down the line so that they now become a lead. A lot of times I’ll ask established businesses how they currently generate traffic to their website and they will reply that people don't come to their website. But that’s not actually true.

A lot of established companies have reliable ways of generating new traffic to the site typically this is in the form of networking and word of mouth. And so what generally happens next is someone hears about this company and the next thing they do is Google them and find their website.

The purpose of the website at that particular time is to help that prospect make a decision to take that next step and become a lead.

And so a lot of people who contact me, their website is a bottleneck in that process. Their current website might be very dated or unprofessional looking. The website does not represent the company well and they might lose some of those potential leads they might otherwise have gotten due to a poor website.

3. Lead Conversion (a.k.a. Make a Sale)

The last purpose of a website is to generate a sale or new business.
So, in this case, they’ve already heard about you somehow. They’ve already raised their hand and contacted you either via the website or some other means and they are now a lead. They are someone who might become a sale but they have not yet become a sale.

And in this case, the purpose of your website is to educate the prospective client. To establish yourself or your business as the authority and leader in that particular industry.

It is to bring Goodwill by providing valuable content.
It is to provide reassurance by supplying testimonials and case studies.

But the website is effectively acting as a support system to help close the deal and generate that sale.
Now by the way there are actually a bunch of other purposes a website could have such as:

Finding new employees for your company
Helping to answer questions and save your own time for existing clients
Provide a resource to people who might be giving you press
Highlight your company in a positive way for people who might invest in your business
Etc.
Etc.

But I’m trying to keep it simple here for this article and focus on the task at hand which for most people is generating new leads and new business.
Now that you have a better understanding of the purpose of a website; particularly for your own business.
Try mapping out the three different phases and how they relate to your own current website right now.

How do you currently generate traffic or interest in your website?

How does your website currently do in generating new leads? Is it helping you or is it a bottleneck?

And how does your website do in converting leads into sales? Are you providing useful information of value that could educate prospective clients? Does your website position you as the authority in your field?

Well, that should be enough to get you started.

Hope that helps get the wheels turning.

Talk soon.

WEB SITE SITE MAP

Thu, 18 Nov 2021 18:24:50 GMT

Today, I want to talk about your website sitemap, which is the foundation of every website project. Not only is it the framework upon which your entire website rests, it also informs many other factors including your project’s timeline, budget, user experience, and overall design.

Why a Sitemap is Important

People often have a hard time thinking structurally or ‘meta’. (The word ‘meta’ means ‘about’ and to think ‘meta’ means to think ‘about’ something.) Your sitemap is a ‘meta’ representation of your entire website -- a zoomed out, 10,000 foot, birds-eye view. And having this perspective allows you to see the forest for the trees throughout the project.

What is a Website Sitemap?

A website is nothing more than a series of web pages on the web. Your sitemap gives these pages priority, context, and structure.

Priority

Not all pages of your website are equally important. Your sitemap allows you to prioritize pages that are more important than others, as well as which pages a user will see first or most frequently.

Context

Not every website visitor arrives directly on your homepage. Your sitemap helps them to quickly identify where they are in relation to the rest of the website.

Structure

The purpose of a website is to get a visitor from point A to point B. Your sitemap allows the visitor to see exactly where they are and where they want to go.

How to create a website sitemap

Step 1

Find a tool to organize your sitemap. I recommend using an excel spreadsheet.

Step 2

List out ALL the pages you think you will want on your website. This includes pages you might not need. Just get them all out there and you can pare them down later.

Step 3

Don’t reinvent the wheel. You can look at your competitors and see what pages they have on their site and add any that look good to your spreadsheet.

Step 4

Organize the TOP LEVEL first. These are the main navigation links that you see on the top menu bar of the website. You don’t want more than five to seven of these. You can organize by grouping the pages you have into categories. For example, if you have the following pages: Team, Company History, Giving Back and Philosophy, you could group these all under ‘About’.

Step 5

Once you have the top-level penciled out, move the other pages beneath them, otherwise known as your SECOND LEVEL. I recommend that websites with 25 pages and under only have two levels and that most websites should have no more than three levels of navigation.

Sitemap Best Practices

Here are best practices when it comes to creating a sitemap:

Five to seven links max for the main navigation menu
No more than two to three levels of navigation
Every page on the site should be reached within three clicks
Use easily recognized terminology when naming navigation links

How a sitemap impacts your project’s scope (and budget)

The larger the sitemap, the more it will impact your project’s scope and budget. People often don’t consider the implications of having a larger sitemap but it does impact things like SEO, finding imagery, content writing, editing, project management, among other things. Each new page requires additional resources, many of which you might not have considered.

How a sitemap impacts the users coming to your site

In the book The Paradox of Choice, the author cites a famous experiment where customers at a supermarket bought less jam when they were given more choices to choose from. Increasing your website sitemap can also dilute the impact of each page. You want your website to help visitors not confuse them. So, you must be very careful when selecting the number of pages to have on the site.

How a sitemap impacts your design

Your sitemap will have a huge impact on the design of your website. Think about Craigslist and Amazon. You can feel how massive their website is based on the sprawling site maps and need to accommodate all the links. This greatly impacts the design.

How a sitemap impacts your timeline

Larger sitemaps add complexity. There are many ‘unknown unknowns’ that emerge with larger sitemap projects and these unknowns typically impact a website timeline geometrically.

Conclusion

I strongly advise you work on your sitemap first. Try to have an understanding of the number of pages you want as well as the structure. This will save you a ton of time and energy on your next website project.

Talk Soon...

WEB DESIGN PROCESS

maria.maisuradze@gmail.com (Maria Maisuradze) — Thu, 18 Nov 2021 17:58:39 GMT

Web Design Process that we have developed over the years

One thing I'm obsessed with is the idea of systems. When I started my business 11 years ago I devoured books like the E-Myth and Work the System , trying to learn everything I could about how to systemize my business. Today, I'll watch various 'How It's Made' videos with my kids to see how other businesses run their systems.

What I thought may be helpful for you would be to share our Web Design Process that we have developed over the years. This is the exact same process we use with all of our clients when completing a web design project. And while this isn't the only process that can be used, it's something that has worked for us over the years with consistent results.

Website Kickoff Meeting

Our project begins with a website kickoff meeting. During this meeting, we will establish your goals for the project, identify the unique users coming to the site and establish the current and desired traffic sources driving visitors to the website. We will then go over our entire design and development process and assign next-step homework assignments for everyone.

Content Phase

Sitemap
We will work with you to structure the content architecture of the site which is commonly referred to as the sitemap. We will first identify who the major visitor types are and make sure that all content is intuitively available for all visitor user types. We will also dive into your current Analytics data to see how current visitors are interacting with your content.

Content
It is the client's responsibility to actually provide us with the text content. If this is something you need help with we can refer you to some highly trusted writers who can help you with your content writing needs. We do help organize the content by pulling it from your current website and adding them to a series of shared Google Docs.

Imagery
There are a few options when it comes to imagery. If you have existing images for us to work with, we are happy to use them. Or we can help source and curate imagery for your approval. If we use stock imagery we can purchase the images on your behalf and then bill you back for them on the final invoice. (for the Free Mockup Offer we use watermarked placeholder imagery which is free)

Design Phase
Homepage
The first step to the design of a new website is locking in the design for the homepage. The Free Mockup Offer is a mockup of the homepage of the website. Once we start working together there will be plenty of opportunities to go back and forth with revisions to get the design of the homepage just the way you want it. Once you have signed off on the homepage design we will move forward with the mockups for the inner pages.

Inner Pages
Once the homepage mockup is signed off on we will mockup all the unique inner page templates. The page templates are all mocked up together at once and the revisions for these pages are all done together in batches. Once we have gone back and forth with revisions for the inner page templates the design process has been completed and we're ready to start the development of the site.

Development Phase
Website Development
We will develop your site on a live test server. The site will be developed to be fully mobile responsive and display properly across the latest version of all major web browsers.

Content Population
Once the site is developed we will populate the new site with all of its content and imagery.

Search Engine Optimization
We will identify the keywords you need to be ranking for and tag and structure your site to be optimized to rank for those keywords.

Mobile Responsive Development
The mobile responsive design will take place during the development phase so that the website adapts to the iPhone, iPad, and all other mobile devices.

Internal Quality Assurance
We will test your site across all the major devices and browsers to make sure that everything is functioning and displaying properly and looks just like the design we agreed to.

Client Quality Assurance
Once the website is ready for your review you will have ample opportunity to provide your feedback on the development. We will work together to resolve any bugs or issues with the developed website.

Training
We will provide you with detailed tutorials on how to update and edit all aspects of the site without having to know code. We are also happy to provide over the phone or skype tutorials for your team.

Launch
Once you have seen the final version of the test site and given your final approval the site is ready to launch. The launch process typically happens within 24hr hours.

Conclusion
So there you have it. That is our web design process. And the key thing I've found is that to consistently deliver results, you need to follow a proven process. So whether you choose us or not for your next web design project, be sure that the person you work with has a proven process for success.

Talk soon.

ARTICLES

THE ECOMMERCE WEBSITE AND WAYS TO DO IT

#1. Hosted eCommerce Shopping Cart platform for personal and startup websites

Other reasons to use hosted eCommerce builders include:

#2. Self-Hosted Open Source eCommerce platforms for small to medium businesses

Here are some Self-Hosted eCommerce platforms:

WHAT IS INCLUDED IN BRANDING PACKAGE AND WHAT IT IS COST?

What is a branding package?

What is Included in A Branding Package?

Logo and Visual Identity

Style Guide

Typography:

Level Up Your Brand Identity Package with Additional Add-Ons

Presentation Templates

Business Cards ﻿

Digital Advertising Graphics

How Much Does a Branding Package Cost

ESSENTIAL FACEBOOK AD TERMS YOU NEED TO KNOW

As Facebook continues to dominate the global market, Facebook Ads are undeniably the powerhouse of the advertising world.

FB Ads Essential Tools

Business Manager

Ad Account

The Facebook Pixel

Funnels

Clicks

Facebook Clicks

Link Clicks

Outbound Clicks

Unique Outbound Clicks

UOCTR (Link)

Key Metrics/Terms

AIT

AOV

CAC

CPA

CPC

CPM

CPUP

DCT / DCO

Destination/Link Setting

Landing Page

LTV

ROAS

UATC

UCPATC

UCPIC

UCPLV

UIC

ULPV

UP

HOW MUCH DOES A WEBSITE COST?

There are three ways to build a website:

EXAMPLES OF BAD WEBSITES - AVOID THIS 20 WORST WEBSITES

Are you looking for the best websites on the web? You’re in the wrong place!

1. Craigslist

2. Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

3. Yale School of Art

4. University of Advancing Technology

5. Suzanne Collins

6. Budgets Are Sexy

7. Internet Archive Wayback Machine

8. Interrupt Tech Corp.

LANDING PAGE VS PRODUCT PAGE. WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE?

How to Increase Your Domain Authority

How to Increase Your Domain Authority

FREE STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY

Pictures are where it’s at if you’re looking to get your point across. Unfortunately, quality images can be elusive or come at a cost. As a small business owner, we thought your website, feeds, and blogs could benefit from this list of free stock photography sites.

Before Downloading: Terms to Know

Attribution

Commercial Use vs. Personal Use

Royalty Free

Our Favorite Free Sites

Unsplash

PikWizard

(new to this list as of November 2020)

Pexels

Rawpixel

Gratisography

BONUS: Our Go-To For-a-Fee Stock Photo Site

Adobe Stock

Business Cards