(How good design on a website can return real return on investment)

Having a website presence is one thing, getting that website presence to generate a return on investment is completely another story. You may spend a lot of money building your site and driving traffic to it, but if it does not convert those visitors it is pointless. The key factor in whether your site will attract, interest and retain a visitor is the design.

Your website extends and represents your business on the Internet. The first essential step that it must achieve is attracting the attention of your potential customers. In order to make their websites look super-attractive, a number of online business owners go way too far and cram their websites with too many design and graphic elements. But that is a mistake, these only confuse visitors looking for information on the website; they do not know what to click and where to go!

What really differentiates a good web design from a bad web design are these factors:

• Appropriate targeted design for the intended audience
• Clear simple navigation
• Appropriate use of colour and imagery
• Short pieces of content structured to allow for scanning
• Clear and obvious calls to action

If you have a website, you obviously want it to promote your brand, generate sales leads and prompt sales, but in order to do this, your website must not only pull enough relevant traffic but also retain them so that they can navigate through the web pages and are compelled to take an action.

10 seconds or they are gone

Recent research has shown that you have less than 10 seconds to grab your visitors interest before they leave and go somewhere else. Having an effective, targeted design is absolutely key in making this happen.

A good web design is the first impression of your business. Thought must be given to who your target market is and what the issues, problems or challenges they face are. Your site design should be as clear and simple as possible using simple navigation and well established design principles to ensure the visitor is comfortable and can easily choose the right option to select. Overloading a site with too much content, adverts, flashing promotions and other irrelevant content can be too confusing!

Put yourself in the picture

Say for instance, you are visiting an online shopping store to buy a camera, but before you can even get to the page that lists all the cameras, your computer screen is taken over by a host of banner ads, pop-up commercials, refer-and-win announcements, with loud audio playing in the background that cannot be muted, would you still stay on the website? Definitely not! Remember, your visitors, who can turn into your potential clients, will do the same – navigate away from your webpage and go to your competitors’ website instead!

Essentially a bad website design wastes your potential client’s time. If your visitors cannot find what they are looking for within a limited span of a few seconds, they will visit another website. Even one visitor moving away from your website means one potential customer added to your competitors’ profit. Would you want to drive potential business away from your website?

Getting that return on investment

By spending time and money on investing in a unique, well planned and implemented website design you will achieve excellent return on investment and lots of new business.

Remember, first impression is the last impression. If your visitors are not impressed by what they see your competitor’s sites are just one click away!

Here to help

Want a stunning, unique website design that delivers real results guaranteed? Then give us a call today on 1300 77 3569.

Cloud computing is a set of free or subscription-based services that can be delivered in real time over the Internet. Cloud computing encompasses a host of solutions such as Google Apps (Email, Documents etc), Custom Relationship Management, Email Marketing and file storage solutions (to name but a few) that can help businesses, especially small to medium sized to reduce costs and ease implementation and support issues. Take for instance the case of a small distribution company. By simply moving its business to the cloud offering email, customer relationship management and online ordering it can reduce costs required to install and maintain software and  hardware significantly.

For an average business owner, cloud based solutions and applications are much easer to set up or install and use than a host of other desktop or server based applications. Additionally, most do not even require any external IT support and are much more immune to accidents that may result in permanent loss of data! Business owners do need to maintain their client databases and transaction information, but it protects a business from the possibility they might lose valuable information forever, whilst also undergoing several days or weeks of business downtime.

One of the main benefits of the cloud is they can not only keep all their historical data and valuable information safe and secure but can also access it anytime, anywhere. The companies providing the cloud service look after secure and updates allowing your workforce to quickly and easily get on with their job wherever they are.

Robust businesses that want to operate efficiently and minimise risk of data loss or other factors that may cause business downtime should proactively seek cloud computing services.

Here is an overview of some popular cloud services currently on offer.

• Google Apps is an integrated suite of products from Google which includes Google docs for spreadsheets, word processing, forms and presentations together with Gmail as well as Google Calendar that helps to keep all critical data in one place and make it accessible from any place, anytime. There are also a range of other tools which will all integrate into the one account including Google Analytics, Adwords and Webmaster Tools. Switching your corporate email to Gmail removed the need for expensive hardware, software and maintenance.
• Online accounting tools such as Xero and Saasu which allow you to manage all of your accounting and invoicing through an elegant online interface. This also allows your accountant and book keeper to access the information remotely and even to be working on the information at the same time.
• Online customer relationship management tools such as Salesforce and Zoho which allow you to store and manage your entire customer database and make this information accessible to your entire workforce wherever and whenever they need it.
• Online marketing tools such as Campaign Monitor, Constant Contact and Mail Chimp which allow you to easily manage your email marketing campaigns through a friendly and simple interface combined with powerful functionality and reporting.
• Online file storage and collaboration tools such as DropBox and YouSendIt which allow you to store your data online and easily share with other people within and outside of your organisation.

As we can see cloud computing has many benefits for small and medium sized business. It minimises your data management, IT maintenance, software and computing costs. Storing your files on a secure cloud-based service can free you from the worry of keeping data backups. It is quite easy to use and incredibly powerful. All you need is a computer or a Smartphone with an Internet connection and a browser to connect with your clients or colleagues located at different corners of the world and control your business in an effective manner.

Who are your customers?

Robust brand marketing strategies take into account a host of factors that are related to identifying and understanding their target market. Some of these factors may include the age, gender, nationality, economic status, social status and cultural preferences.

Some examples of understanding your target market

Let’s take a look at a couple of examples to better illustrate these points.

While beef is a commonly used ingredient in the restaurant business in most countries around the world, some nations such as India, it is considered ‘unholy’. However, Indian consumers do love to eat out and are always on the lookout for new restaurants that offer them interesting, pocket-friendly food. To cater to these clients, even the world’s fast food giant, Mc Donald’s has modified its menu to suit the taste and cultural preferences of its patrons in India and offers a wide variety of non-beef dishes!

Similarly, the birth of make-up for women can well be attributed to several factors that led ‘housewives’ to step out of their domestic households and work in factories and banks while their men were fighting for their countries on the warfront during World War I.

The birth of cinema and appearance of glamorous women on screen, who wore bright red lipsticks to look great and seduce men, also motivated domestic women to buy make-up items. Of course, big brands such as Max Factor and Revlon identified their niche target groups and their desire to emulate real-life women in their real life. They also identified the desire of the new class of ‘working women’ to look great while working alongside men.

A common FMCG such as a red lipstick soon became something every woman – working or non-working – wanted to have in her purse!

Understand your market for marketing success

The fact is, the deeper a business delves into understanding its target market, the better are its chances of becoming successful and gaining improved returns on investment.

Another important aspect that a business must bear in mind is to study its competition and examine the factors that might make its target user group choose its competitor’s brand over its own. It is only when a business has a clear understanding of what its target users want, how they want it and what price they are ready to pay for it, can it actually work towards seizing a sizeable market share… or even ruling it in that particular product segment!

There’s been blood, sweat and a few tears thrown in to make this shiny new creation but we’re pretty proud of our new baby.

The site has been designed to be easy to use and find your way around, we hope it helps you find what you need and encourages you to get in touch!

Any feedback you have would be most welcome, whether you like the site or not!

CMS systems were once the domain of big corporate companies with lots of money but now there is a massive range of CMS systems available on the market, some free, some not and all offering different features and benefits. So how to choose one that is right for you?

Keep it simple stupid (KISS)

No we’re not calling you stupid but using the common acronym KISS. Unless you are planning on becoming the next big thing you probably only need some basic functions like editing content, uploading images and adding new pages. In the future you may want to add on some more advanced features like a blog. Take some time to think about what features you need and then pick a system that is easy to start off with but offers plenty of possibilities to expand in the future. Have a look at the demo versions many of the main systems offer, login to the administration side and see how simple (or not!) they are to understand and use.

Go with the flow (no pun intended)

Sometimes it’s cool to buck the trend and try out something new. In this case it is probably not the best policy. Going with a system that is well known and used will often mean it is more stable, secure and efficient at what it does over a new or unknown system that not many people are using.

These systems will also have a large user community and lots of examples to help you learn the system and get help when you need it.

Avoid Custom Content Management Systems

Many web design companies have created and offer their own CMS systems. Some of these systems are really very good, but there are massive drawbacks to using a custom CMS, especially if you no longer want to work with that company anymore.

Chances are that if your site is built on a custom CMS you will not find anyone else that has access to or can use that system outside of the current web design company. This potentially ties you to them forever, which is never a good thing.

If you choose a company that works with well known systems, there will be a large variety of suppliers who all know how to work with and develop your site using that platform, just in case you no longer wish to work with your current supplier.

One of the main benefits of a popular CMS is they are usually backed up by a very enthusiastic user base that will develop and provide many add-ons (plugins) offering extra functionality which can be easily added to the site (often for free!).

Seek Advice

I often come across clients that have done some research, found a system and dived straight in to start building a site. They then come to me because they get stuck or come across a limitation that means they cannot go any further. Often the CMS is badly written and overly complicated, sometimes I am not even sure where they found it and it often results in having to start again. So our advice is to do some research then look on forums and ask questions from other users as to how they rate the system. Here are some things to look for when considering a system:

• How good is the documentation (and is there even any at all?)
• What support options do the developers provide (free, paid, email, phone)
• How good are the support forums and how active are they?
• Do they have links to any showcase sites and how good are they?
• When was the last time the system was updated?

OK so to summarise what do we think is the best CMS?

The best free Content Management Systems

1. Our top spot goes to the wonderful WordPress content management system. This humble system has evolved from a basic blogging platform to a fully featured and insanely well supported CMS that offers everything you need for a basic website up to advance sites and blogs.There are over 68 MILLION websites running WordPress world-wide making it the most popular and most used website in the world.It is super simple to use for the end user, taking on average only 30 minutes to learn how to use it.

   It offers a great range of functionality “out of the box” and offers a dazzling array of add-ons (known as plugins) that can be added to extend the functionality of your site with ease.

   It has an amazing range of documentation, tutorials and support forums that will help you learn at any level.

   A word of caution: Whilst you can often easily install and setup your own site using your web hosting control panel we would STRONGLY recommend you engage an experienced developer to help you setup your site correctly to ensure it is secure and optimised. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing and we get many clients coming to us for help after their site has been hacked. Being the most popular system in the world also makes it one of the top targets for hackers.

2. Our second recommendation would be Joomla or Drupal. Whilst we have worked with theses systems to implement some more complex sites it is not something we do often, primarily due to the confusing user interface for clients. The systems are hard to learn and often quite confusing to use. They offer a lot of power and versatility (especially Drupal) but can be bloated and over complicated for most websites. Joomla is also the most hacked CMS world-wide due to it being difficult to secure correctly for those without the relevant experience.

The best paid Content Management Systems

There are so many paid CMS systems out there it is impossible to cover them all or even to evaluate them all. The price point to access these systems is more often than not outside the budget of small to medium sized business. Saying that we work with an AMAZING paid CMS that is truly remarkable in terms of what it offers for a very low monthly cost.

Introducing Business Catalyst (or what we call SideClick)

Business Catalyst is a hosted CMS owned and operated by Adobe (the largest software manufacturer in the world).

It’s like having 10 systems in one offering you full content management, email marketing, blogs, forums, ecommerce, web forms and web applications. All of this is centered around a core customer database offering full Customer Relationship Management (CRM) allowing you to log and track all interactions with your customers.

It has the power to grow with your business, allowing you to start out with a super simple content management system and then allowing you to easily add on more advanced functionality as and when you need it.

Your website is hosted and managed in Enterprise class hosting centres based in Australia that would cost thousands to setup and run, offering you peace of mind and security for your site.

We are increasingly using this system to build sites for clients that want to have an online business rather than just a website. Check out our dedicated site for more information.

What Now?

• We hope this article has given you some food for thought and helped you understand content management systems and what to look out for.
• If you are feeling adventurous maybe you can install one and have a play yourself to see how you get on.
• If you are looking to use a content management system for your business website we would strongly recommend you engage a competent and experienced web design/development company to help you out, your business could depend on it.
• Want to know more? Then give us a call for a free no obligation chat to dicsuss your requirements. Call Ivan on 1300 77 3569.

Scam 1 – Notice of Internet Intellectual Property email scam

In this scam you will receive an email from a Chinese company stating that they have had a request from a company (often Tianhua Ltd) looking to register your main domain name with the .cn, .asia, .com.cn (etc) extensions.

They ask you to contact them if you want these domains for yourself.

This is just rubbish, do a search for the company name (Tianhua Ltd) and you will see lots of people asking why this company is trying to register all these domains. You can safely ignore this email.

Scam 2 – Domain renewal letter

This scam is much more clever. You will receive a very official letter in the post stating that your domain name is due for renewal with details of how to pay (often for a very inflated price). They even list the domain name in the letter.

BUT look closely….the domain listed will NOT be the same as your main domain. For example if you main domain is a .com.au they may well be showing you the .com address (if it is available)

We have had clients who have been convinced by these letters and paid the full amount not wanting to loose their domain and the whole process looks very official and legitimate. The company claim it is not a scam as they are legitimately selling you an available domain which they will register in your name.

The good news is clients have contacted the company and demanded their money back or they will report them and have got their money back.

Protecting your domains and costs

When you register a domain name (or your web design company does it for you) always ensure it is registered in your (company) name with your email as the main contact. That way you will get notifications when it is due for renewal.

Always check very carefully any notices regarding your website hosting or domain name, if in doubt contact your web company or check your original documentation to see who it was registered with and contact them.

In terms of costs you can get domain names from as little as $25 for 2 years registration. If you are paying more than this you are getting ripped off!

Facebook provides business with the facility to create a custom “landing page” for their business to promote themselves on Facebook. You can customise these pages to include graphics, video, audio, images and integrate Facebook options including the Like  and Share buttons. This gives your business the ability to have a branded page advertising your products and services.

Sadly it can be complicated and frustrating trying to setup these pages, that’s where are new service can help.

What do we offer?

We offer an end-to-end service helping you to:

• Understand the posibilities and benefits of a Facebook Landing Page
• Design and layout of the page including interactive or dynamic elements
• Coding and implementation of the agreed design and functionality
• Secure dedicated Facebook “hosting” to store your page

To find out more about this service and the benefits of a custom facebook landing page please visit:

http://www.customfacebookbusinesspages.com.au

The NSW government are currently running the Business Growth Program initiative.

This aims to assist established small to medium sized business to grow and improve their competitiveness.

Financial assistance of up to $5,000 is available, on a $-for-$ basis for eligible SMEs to offset the cost of engaging external support for any or a combination of the following activities:

• Financial Management / Improvement
• Planning Activities
• Implementation Activities

So for every dollar you spend the NSW government will pay a dollar.

Applications are assessed on a case by case basis and you must adhere to performance monitoring conditions. Conditions apply.

Been thinking of your next project or upgrade to your website, why not apply and get it for half price!

Contact us on 1300 77 3569 if you would like  more information and a formal quote to submit as part of the process.

There has been quite a lot of press and comment about whether this is worth the time and effort involved.

At Flow we believe it is worthwhile as long as you have a plan and goals that you wish to achieve.Facebook functions very well as the top of the “funnel”, a great way to get exposure to a wide audience and to potentially get some of those people to interact with your business whether that be via:

• Competition entry
• Newsletter sign-up
• Share or Like

Having a customised landing page presents a branded, interesting and potentially interactive experience for a user all within the confines of Facebook. By having goals in place that you want users to take when they reach that page you can measure success and return on investment.

Case Study

We recently created landing pages for Cruise Passenger. They frequently run competitions and drive traffic to their landing page via Facebook ads. By ensuring the ads match the content of the landing page and that the landing page is well designed with clear calls to action they have a very effective mechanism for getting competition entries and newsletter sign-ups. Go check it out if you fancy winning a free cruise!

Landing pages can be just used for brand awareness but what purpose do they serve? Someone may come to the page once but there is no reason for them to ever come back. Better to create an interesting landing page with calls to action to Like or Share. This then needs to be followed up with regular, relevant and value add status updates that form a conversation of value to the user. Think special offers, articles, freebies etc.

By giving your Facebook landing page concept some thought you can make this additional marketing channel work hard for your business.

Interested in finding out more? Contact us today to have a free no obligation chat.

The site showcases the flexibility of the SideClick platform and it’s ability to support complex site requirements.This site is available in English, Spanish and Japanese.

Patrick’s Friendly Tours needed an integrated system to help them market the business and manage their tour bookings and enquiries in one central location – perfect for SideClick!

The site includes the following functionality:

• Content Managed site
• Blogging Component
• Secure Zones
• Secure Booking Forms
• Gallery Component
• Announcements Component
• Customised language templates
• Customised system messages and emails
• Customised customer relationship management workflows and database

Visit Patrick’s Friendly Tours