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1. Redesign your site: You should think about adding a winter/christmas theme to your website. To capture the festive mood that everyone is in you should be adding some holiday elements to your site. This will make people want to stay longer on your site and shop around a little. You can add a little snow covering to your existing design or have Santa landing on the top of your site. Talk to your web designer for more ideas about a Christmas or New Year’s layout.
2. Coupons and Discounts: You may be planning to have several discounts and offers on your products or services over the Holiday Season. These offers will bring you business while offering your customers a little bit of savings. So how are they going to find your special offers. If you already have a strong Social Media base you should be letting your followers know on a regular basis. Send out tweets and updates daily at different times of the day. There are sites out there that allow you to set up a schedule of updates so you can just work for an hour or so setting it up for the entire season. If you don’t have any social media, we suggest emailing your current clients and even advertising on popular web directories or online advertisers like Google Adwords.
3. Content marketing: Content is king. Getting your site noticed by search engines is all about adding new content regularly. By marketing your content (articles, press releases etc.) you can get higher on search engines and grab more clients. You should publish any new content on various directories and social media. Also you can redo some of your current content to add some holiday cheer.
4. Get the advertising out there: As I mentioned before, it is a great idea to start up a pay per click (PPC) campaign. If you have a little extra advertising cash go setup an account on Google Adwords or other such companies and get your ads out there. Put your discounts in your ads and make sure that they link to a landing page that has your discounts on them.

If you have a free event to tell people about, just submit it and we’ll put it on the site! Want to get rid of something for nothing. We’ll be happy to post it.

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Knowing what you want out of your web site is key to the success of your new web design. Helping your web designer understand what you want is just as important.

Ask yourself the following:

Purpose:

1. What is the main purpose and what are the secondary goals of the web site?

Target Audience:

2. Who is your target audience? Think about who will normally use your site, their occupation, gender, age range, nationality, etc.

3. What might a normal user do on your site? Will they look for contact/company info, purchase something, make inquiries, sign up for a newsletter, login/register, etc.?

Communication Strategy:

4. What is the overall message you are trying to convey to your target audience (informative, entertaining,
reliable, etc.)?

5. How will you convey this message (through the design, content, etc)?

6. How will you measure the success of the site?

Competitive Positioning:

7. Who is your competition (give the name and website of at least 2)?

8. What do you like about their site that you want incorporated into yours?

9. How will your site be different from theirs (what do you dislike)?

10. List other sites that you like/dislike and what you would like/dislike about them (navigation,
design, header, footer, etc.).

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The best way to choose colors for you web site is to look at what your competitors are using. For example medical and banking institutions usually use a relaxing color like blue. If you see that the majority of your competitors are using a specific color scheme you should use it to. Your customers will already be used to seeing those colors and may automatically relate them to your product.

Color Theory

You may remember some basic color theory from your childhood. The primary colors are red, yellow and blue. Mixing them gives you secondary colors: yellow and blue make green, red and blue make purple, and so on. You can continue to mix these colors to get tertiary colors like blue-green and red-orange.

If you look at the standard color wheel you will see that red yellow and blue appear to be at equal distances from each other. The secondary and tertiary colors are found between them. The colors on the red side of the color wheel are considered to be warm colors and the colors on the blue side are cool colors.

Color Schemes

There are thousands of different color schemes available for you web site. There are multiple ways to create a color scheme for your site but they all break down to drawing lines between these colors. Below are some of the most common.

• Monochromatic: These are usually shades and tints of the same colors (light blue, blue, gray-blue). They can be more authoritative but are less vibrant and lack diversity.
• Analogous: Are 3 or more colors that are right next to each other on the color wheel (e.g. blue, blue-green, and green). Analogous colors are usually found in nature and are very pleasing to the eye.
• Split-Analogous: Two colors that are right next to each other and one from across the color wheel (e.g. red, blue & violet).
• Complimentary: These are colors directly across from each other on the color wheel. These colors used together offer more of a visual impact (think red and green of Christmas).
• Split-Complimentary: Four colors in total consisting of two colors near to each other and two more from across the wheel (e.g. red/violet & yellow/green).
• Triadic: Three colors that are equidistant on the colors wheel. Just draw a triangle between three colors.

Colors and their Emotions

One reason why color is so important a choice for a web site is that colors are suggestive of emotions and many have a cultural significance. In western society, pink is associated with love and babies, in eastern societies with marriage, and in Korea with trust. Knowing your market and cultural differences can mean everything and may help get your visitors to stay longer. Check out our previous article on Colors and their Meanings.

For a site that looks professional and serious you want a monochromatic or analogous color scheme. Pastels are good for wedding and baby sites. For more visual impact use a complimentary color scheme. Choosing the right color scheme for your web site is a all about determining what colors will carry your desired message to your target market.

1. Find your Target Keywords

Focus in on 10 – 15 main keywords you think are relevant to your site and for each page in your site. Research your chosen keywords – Sign up for Google Adwords and learn how to use the provided “keyword tool” and “ad text ideas” generator. Learn how to use Wordtracker (paid) and/or the Keyword Difficulty tool (free).

2. Unique SEO Friendly Titles

Every page on your website should have unique, search engine friendly titles. This means that your target keywords for that page should be in your title section. You should keep your webpage titles to 70 characters including spaces. Your website page’s title is actually shown in search engine results and your page title is the true indicator of that page content.

3. Use of Keywords in Meta Description

You should be including your target keywords once or twice in your meta description section. Most of search engines use to showcase your meta description against your website title in search results. You should make sure each page on your website has a unique description.

4. Use Keywords in Page Content

Aside from using your target keywords in web page title and descriptions, you should use your keywords in page and section headings, as well as in the paragraphs. You should be using targeted content from the beginning to the end of page. Use your keywords in a naturally throughout your website and do not over crowd each page with the same keyword over and over again.

5. Good Website Structure

You will want your main keywords in your website URL’s. Your website should have an easy to use navigation structure. You website should not have many sub-directories or slashes. Especially for a small website. Your website page’s URLs should be your main domain plus one or two levels down that include the Titles from Tip 2.

Search engines will keep changing their algorithms, but the above seo tips will help make your website search engine friendly. If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment or contact us.

• >Red – Excitement, energy, passion, love, desire, speed, strength, power, heat, aggression, danger, fire, blood, war, violence, all things intense and passionate.
• Pink – love and romance, caring, tenderness, acceptance and calm.
• Yellow – Joy, happiness, betrayal, optimism, idealism, imagination, hope, sunshine, summer, gold, philosophy, dishonesty, cowardice, jealousy, covetousness, deceit, illness, hazard and friendship.
• Blue – Peace, tranquility, cold, calm, stability, harmony, unity, trust, truth, confidence, conservatism, security, cleanliness, order, loyalty, sky, water, technology, depression, appetite suppressant.
• Turquoise – calm.
• Teal – sophistication.
• Aquamarine – water.
• Purple – Royalty, nobility, spirituality, ceremony, mysterious, transformation, wisdom, enlightenment, cruelty, arrogance, mourning.
• Lavender – femininity, grace and elegance.
• Orange – Energy, balance, enthusiasm, warmth, vibrant, expansive, flamboyant, demanding of attention.
• Green – Nature, environment, healthy, good luck, renewal, youth, spring, generosity, fertility, jealousy, inexperience, envy, misfortune, vigor.
• Brown – Earth, stability, hearth, home, outdoors, reliability, comfort, endurance, simplicity, and comfort.
• Grey – Security, reliability, intelligence, staid, modesty, dignity, maturity, solid, conservative, practical, old age, sadness, boring.
• Silver – calm.
• Ivory – unification, quiet and pleasantness.
• Beige – unification, calm and simplicity.
• White – Reverence, purity, birth, simplicity, cleanliness, peace, humility, precision, innocence, youth, winter, snow, good, sterility, marriage (Western cultures), death (Eastern cultures), cold, clinical.
• Black – Power, sexuality, sophistication, formality, elegance, wealth, mystery, fear, evil, unhappiness, depth, style, evil, sadness, remorse, anger, anonymity, underground, good technical color, mourning, death (Western cultures).

1. Look at what’s out there.

When you are surfing the web think about what makes it easy on you. Which sites do you go back to and why? Check our your competitor’s websites and the style and web design that they are using. You may see an element that will work well on your own website. What is the first design aspect which you see that appeals to you? Is it the logo or an image? Is the navigation system easy to use? Make a short list of websites which have designs that you were impressed with and what design elements you liked best so when you meet your web designer they will get an idea of what you want.

2. Color and branding.

Your website should blend in with everything you use in your business. If you already have a logo or letterhead think about how you can incorporate that into your site. What colors would you like to see in your website’s design? Take a look at any print material you use for marketing and bring them with you when you meet your web designer.

3. A picture is worth a thousand words.

Most people don’t even spend a minute reading the content of your web site. They read it similar to scanning a newspaper, check the headlines, look at the pictures and then, maybe ready what comes next. Do you have any product images or examples of the work that you do? Try to find 5 or 6 pictures that you would use to wow your clients and use them to grab their attention while they are on your site. Have your web designer link your photos to a related page to draw the user farther into your web site.

4. Keep it simple.

Web design is a process. At Inventive Web Design we take the time to go over various designs with our clients. When looking at each web page design, think of how it affects you when you look at the initial design. Is it cluttered or do you feel relaxed while looking at it? What excites you about the webpage, where do you want to click or what design element just stands out like a sore thumb?

5. Who is your market?

Know your clients and what they need and want. What message do you want to get across to them? What services or products do they find most useful? Use this information when designing what pages to include in your web site. Make sure your content and images are directed at them and easy for them to access.

Even though designing a new website may seem a little daunting at first using these simple steps can help you along your way to getting what you want out of your site and making your customers want to come back.