Design Standards Insure Website Success

The internet is a haven for creativity, and the ingenuity of designers will no doubt constantly evolve and continue to impress. Nevertheless, when it comes to usability and function, there is a strong case for adhering to a “standard of design” when developing websites. In fact, many designers, in spite of their creativity, have migrated to a set of similarities, whether by imitation or accident, it is hard to say. Nevertheless, this “standard” now impacts users since they grow accustomed to certain things, then grow to expect them.


For example, it has become customary to place the logo in the top left corner of the header of a website, and then link that logo to the home page from any other page that displays the header. Many web shoppers and surfers grow to expect that functionality at every site they visit. But, if it isn't there, or if other functionality they expect is missing, they get annoyed, impatient, and then leave. Jakob Nielson observed, “In my recent research into Web-wide user behavior, users left websites after 1 minute and 49 seconds on average, concluding in that time that the website didn't fulfill their needs.” (See his research.) Thus, to insure the success of your website, there is strong case for making sure your website follows acceptable standards of design and function.


At HIT Web Design, emphasis is placed on adhering to a design standard known as W3C, which stands for the World Wide Web Consortium. Since 1994, this organization has advocated certain standards, and by adhering to them, websites benefit in many ways. For instance, W3C compliant websites can be viewed successfully on any browser, they can be viewed from any devices such as a cell phone or a personal digital assistant (PDA), and they are easily accessible by the handicapped. (See W3C Compliance.)


Perhaps most important, however, W3C compliance is critical to search engine optimization (SEO) as well. By following W3C guidelines, designer can insure “that not only is the copy marked up in a semantic fashion which search engines can interpret and weigh without confusion, it also skews the content-to-code ratio in the direction where it needs to be while forcing all of the information in the page to be made accessible, thus favoring the content.” (See W3C Compliance.) Thus, as the current trend in search engines is to give high marks for original, well-written content, the significance of a W3C compliant website is obvious.

For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

Adding Keyword to Your Videos

When posting your videos on your own site or others, if you want people to find them in web searches, you must optimize them as you would optimize your text. In other words, the video needs key words and well-written summaries to maximize its chances of being found and cataloged by search engines.


To start, do a keyword search for your video. The word “video” is an important word to include in the filename, title, and summary of your video since many people will type that word into their searches, but think about other important or significant words to use as well. Then, include those words, along with “video,” in your video filename and title. Next, write a summary of your video. Again, include key words and important search phrases to enhance your search rankings. Be sure to pay attention to meta tags as well. (See Video Search Optimization.)


When posting on social sites such as YouTube or Facebook and others, you can maximize your efforts by incorporating your keywords, summaries, and meta tags on the pages supporting your video.


Once you have your video prepared for search engines, the next thing to consider is a “linking strategy.” As explained by marketing guru Michelle Bowles, “Video is judged by the same linking standards as all other forms of digital content. So building both internal and external links is crucial for video SEO. Ideas for a linking strategy include: cross-linking to other videos, linking to videos from relevant web pages, linking to videos in blog posts, Tweeting the video, linking to videos from social media pages, (and) bookmarking the video.” (See Tips for Video Optimization.)

For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

Getting the Most Out of Your Videos

One way to increase the reach of videos used on your own website is to post them on video sharing sites. By doing so, you can immediately boost the viewers who are exposed to your product, services, or important message. Also, you create links back to your website, and those links in turn boost your search engine ratings.

Posting on other sites is an easy way to leverage your video assets to the maximum. In addition to popular places like YouTube and Facebook, you may also want to consider using a “video distribution service like TubeMogul to deploy your videos to the top sharing sites,” suggests Michelle Bowles. (See Tips for Video Optimization.)

Posting on your own site requires special care and consideration as well.

“The impact created by the video not only depends on the quality of the created video, but the final quality of output that reaches the viewing audience...A good video backed up by a poor video player is often a let down and fails to create the impact that it would have...” (See TalkGold.)

Many wonder about whether to use Flash, Quicktime, or some other plug-in, or to employ a code-heavy embedded player to display video. The decision hinges on several factors. Quicktime is known for easy integration with the iPod; Flash is known for ease of use, good quality display, and excellent functionality. Sometimes web visitors don't have the proper plug ins loaded on their computers to see the content, but that is fixed easily enough once they take time to load them. The important challenge is that adding keywords or video summaries is not extensively supported with such plug ins. The way to compensate is to make text on the page key-word rich and SEO optimized. So, for a site with just a few videos, it is probably better to use a Flash player since its quality of play is comparatively better than other players. On the other hand, an embedded player or a custom video database is advisable for websites that will manage a lot of videos, or where videos are intended to be uploaded by visitors.

An embedded player is more accessible to search engine spiders than are plug-in players. The Video Conversion and Management Database offered by HIT Web Design can take any format of video that is uploaded and convert it behind the scenes to a manageable file for display on your site. It also allows you the ability to add keywords, titles, captions, and summaries to the video information, a critical step to making the videos show up in search engines.

For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

Website Search Bar Navigation

Website navigation and usability are important aspects of web design. Traditionally, websites have buttons and links for navigation. This may require visitors to your site to read a lot of information on your site to find what they are looking for. Adding a search bar to help navigate your site will not only help people find what they are looking for more quickly, it will also help you know what they are looking for.

We all know that most people will not spend too much time on your site if they can not find what they are looking for. The search bar will allow them to do a quick search for the information they are looking for on your site, in the same way a search engines like Google may have brought them to your site in the first place. This means you will need to have well-written text on your site using keywords that accurately describe your services or products.

Also, by adding search bar navigation on your site through HIT Search, you will be able to gather information about what people are searching for on your site. If several people are searching for a product that you do not carry, maybe it is time to start carrying that product. If they are searching for an informational topic on your site, maybe it is time to update or add to the content on your site. Knowing what they are searching for can help you customize your sites content to your customers.

For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

The Call to Action

Have you ever shopped at a retail store that didn’t have someone working behind a cash register? Of course not! In most stores, cash registers are easy to find. They have a light with a number on it, a sign that says check out or pay here, or some other way of letting you know where you can trade your money for a service or product.

Most websites are selling a product or service—not all of them have a store page. Each page on the website should have a purpose (usually selling something).

The “purpose” for each page can also be called the call to action. Placing a call to action on each page gives the website’s customer a place to trade their money for a service or a product. The call to action may be “give us a call to find out more information!” It might be “To sign up for an appointment, please fill out the form below.” You may be trying to get the potential customer from the home page to the services page. No matter what the call is, you should work it in to every page of text. If there is no call to action on the page, then why even have the page on the website?

In many cases, a call to action is associated with contact information. Because of this, you probably want to include contact information in a visible spot on the page, not buried beneath (or mixed with) a lot of text.

For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

How To Know Which Keywords to Use

Make sure that you are learning correct SEO principles. There are some things that you can do to momentarily boost your search engine rankings, but when you are caught, you will be blacklisted by the search engines—your site won’t show up.

Researching keywords, writing text that markets your business, and writing effective page titles can take up a lot of time. If you want to increase your natural search engine rankings but you don’t have the time, let us help. HIT Web Design offers a wide range of products and services to help you maximize your web site’s potential.

Instead of “he has worked in the area for several years” try using something like “he has worked in the Atlanta area for several years” OR “Luis Argyle has sold Ford trucks in the Atlanta area for over 15 years”, etc. In this example, you could even mention what trucks (F-150, Ranger, etc.) Luis sells.

If you are offering a service or a product to a specific area, then use the city, state, region as one of your keyword. Be specific in the products or services you offer. If you sell jewelry, mention what kind. If you build homes, where do you build them? If you were searching for the service/product you are writing about, what keywords would you enter into the search engine?

For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

Tips for Creating SEO Friendly (and Visitor Friendly) Content

Remember that site visitors want text that is easy to read. Adding too many keywords and/or hiding keywords on your site (keyword spamming) are not acceptable practices.

Once you have written your content, you will want to create a page title for each page. A well-written page title will help your Search Engine Optimization. Your page title should have 5-6 keywords and include a keyword phrase.

You want to create a page title that is visitor friendly. In addition to great content and a page title, you can add a site map and a blog (with well-written, informative blog articles). Site maps and blogs can help bring people to your site and increase your natural search rankings.

Before you begin optimizing your site, make sure you’ve spent time educating yourself.

For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

Keywords and How They Effect Your Website Traffic

In SEO, content is king. Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide says, “Creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any of the other factors discussed here. Users know good content when they see it and will likely want to direct other users to it. This could be through blog posts, social media services, email, forums, or other means. Organic or word-of-mouth buzz is what helps build your site's reputation with both users and Google, and it rarely comes without quality content.”

Your quality content should have enough keywords to benefit your search engine ranking without annoying your customers.

What is a keyword, exactly? A keyword or key phrase is the word or group of words that your potential customer enters into a search engine.

Do your research and see what keywords and phrases your potential customers are using. You can then add these keywords to your text. The more specific your keywords are, the better. For example, if you are an auto dealership, you would want to use a phrase like “black 2008 Mazda CX7” rather than “Mazda” or “new vehicle.”

For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

What is SEO?

Building your web site is only the first step in having a successful online business.

Once your website is up and running, you need to do something to get people to it. SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, encompasses several ideas that, when implemented, can increase your natural search engine rankings.

It can be a big challenge. After all, you may be competing against companies that spend tens of thousands of dollars a month on Search Engine Optimization.

Fortunately there are things that you can do, at very little or no cost, to optimize your site.

When you are considering Search Engine Optimization and your website, you need to think of every page of your site. Some website owners spend a lot of time and energy optimizing their home pages but neglect optimizing the other pages of their site. For each page of your website you should include, as a minimum, excellent keyword-enriched content and a page title.

For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

Tips For Writing An Effective Marketing Email Or Newsletter

Whether you are sending a marketing Email or Newsletter there are several things you can do to help increase their effectiveness.

The most important aspect of any e-mail is the subject line. Make sure your subject line catches the recipients attention while avoiding common spam phrases that may result in your e-mail going straight to the junk folder.

Make sure it has a hook, something that tells your customers the reason you are sending them the e-mail. Your hook should be clear and concise and often should be a call to action as well.

Choose your words carefully. Emails tend to be less formal but should still be professional. Make sure you choose words that effectively convey your message in a concise manner.

Contact HIT Web Design to have a professional writers write a marketing newsletter to help grow your business.

Keep your text short and use bullet points and dashes to call attention to important information. This is useful since most people will only scan an email and not read the whole message.

With the body of the text make sure the paragraphs are short only a few sentences each. Use a standard font such as Times New Roman or Arial. Short paragraphs and standardly used fonts are easier to read.

For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

Keeping Products Related When Cross-Selling and Up-Selling

Cross-selling and up-selling are great ways to promote the products in your online store, giving your visitors a wider selection of items to choose from and possibly making you more money.

When attempting to cross-sell and up-sell, make sure that the products you are promoting are in some way related to what your visitor is looking for. When your visitor searches for a particular item you gain valuable knowledge as to what interests that person has and need to use that to your benefit.

It does no good to promote ballet shoes when your visitor is searching for golf clubs. You want to promote other items that the client would be interested in, such as golf balls, bags, tees, or apparel.

If you bombard your visitors with a myriad of products that are not relevant to what they are searching for, your visitors are more likely to ignore your suggestions and not notice a product that they could potentially be interested in.

Cross-selling and up-selling are integral parts of creating a successful online store. Making sure the products you promote to your visitors are related to what they are searching for will increase your bottom line and keep your visitors coming back.

Ask about HIT's Recommended Products Module and how you can take advantage of cross-selling and up-selling on your website.

For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

More Common Site Design Mistakes and How To Avoid Them

You’ve spent a lot of time designing your site and marketing it. It is hard work to market your site and has probably cost you a lot of time and a lot of money. You are getting visitors now – and no one stays to see what you have to offer/sell/say. There are a lot of reasons this might be so but today I want to go into a common mistake that costs people a lot of visitors – slow loading pages. The number one reason people get annoyed and leave a page is because it takes forever to load. Making them wait for graphics isn’t going to wow them; it is going to irritate them.

Graphics aren’t the only thing that can cause your site to load slowly though, and are also not the only thing that can annoy your visitors to the point where they want to leave. Slow loading and distracting flash banners and entry pages, music that you force them to listen to and slow loading java scripts are all killers and will turn your viewers/buyers away quickly. Unfortunately we have social networking sites these days like MySpace that have made these kinds of things popular – believe me there is a world of difference between a MySpace page and a page you are using for commercial purposes. Under no circumstances should you use annoying animated gifs or bright and flashing Flash banners – nothing screams out “leave here immediately” more.

Don’t mistake me, MySpace can be a great tool and can be a form of marketing for you in itself. You can and should make a MySpace page to network and promote your regular website. I would have it designed so it matches the look of your webpage, but don’t base your website design on the design of a MySpace page! Looking through MySpace pages you can see in any five pages pretty much every violation of good website design. Why spend all that time and money to get people to your site so you can then hold them captive and make them watch something that you think is great but they may or may not is interesting. Just let people get on to the business of buying something from you. Make it easy for your customers to spend money with you.

For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

Avoiding Common Mistakes in Marketing Your Website

Today’s topic is something that I’ve been thinking about for a while. Looking around the web at different professional sites and keeping track of trends is sometimes a full time job in itself. I’ve seen a lot of sites out there and many different approaches to marketing them. One thing I see over and over that makes me want to leave a site immediately is obvious misspellings. Nothing turns me off faster and makes me trust someone less. Why would I trust someone to perform a service for me or sell me a product if they can’t even take the time to spell check their website content?

Grammar and punctuation mistakes can be forgiven. Much of the time I don’t even notice them until or unless I’ve read the material several times. However, misspelled words stick out like a sore thumb. They are distracting and unprofessional. Whenever I see them I think to myself how sad it is that the person doesn’t care enough about their reputation or their customers returning to take the time out to use spell check.

Use a spell check in your word process program, hire a professional writer or just take your time and check each word, but whatever you do, avoid misspelled words on your site. There is absolutely no faster way to turn your customers away from you than to have blatant misspellings. At least let someone else look at the text you’ve written and proof read it for you. There’s absolutely no way you can build credibility and a reputation for reliability unless you show you’re willing to go to the work of making sure the text on your site is correct. After all, if you go to a site and the first thing you see is “Welcom too are websid” believe me it says worlds about the care you’ve taken and what a customer can expect from you. Leaving a detail like that unfixed can make someone believe you are trying to run a scam or rip them off. HIT Web Design employs a staff of full time writers who do nothing but spell check our customer’s content and our own website content as well. This is the least I can recommend to someone wishing to look and sound professional to their customers and site viewers.

For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

Don't Overwhelm Visitors with Too Much Information

Imagine going to a retail store where products are not neatly organized on shelves, instead they are scattered randomly throughout the store without rhyme or reason. They have several products, and you came to the store because they have a product you want. Imagine how overwhelmed you would feel. You have to dig through hundreds of products to possibly find what you’re looking for. With that in mind, how cluttered is your landing page?

Too much information will overwhelm website visitors. Keep your landing page text somewhere between 350-500 words. Use one or two good images that help set the tone for your website.

If you use white-space, use it cautiously. While you don’t want too much information, you don’t want empty space in the wrong place. When you look at your landing page, where is the first place you look? The first place you look should be the most important piece of information on the page.

For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

More on U.S. Copyright Law

You’ve worked hard to build your website. Long hours spent coming up with the perfect text, taking pictures of your business, working with the designer to build the site, finding great ways to market it. It’s been a long road but worth it as it is paying off in return business now.

Then one day, someone says, “Hey, I went to thisonesite.com and it looks a lot like yours. Is that your site too?” You go to the website and find that not only does it look like yours, but they have copied your text and even taken some of your pictures. Imagine how upset you would be! Instead of going to work on their own and doing their own research and work they’ve essentially taken what you’ve created and “borrowed” it for their own profit. You would be burning up!

Luckily, you can protect yourself against this type of theft. For one thing, as discussed in Friday’s blog article as soon as you put down your text in tangible form, either electronic or written, it is protected under U.S. Copyright law. The exact definition of what is protected by Copyright is as follows: (Taken directly from http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.pdf)

“Copyright protects “original works of authorship” that are fixed in a tangible form of expression. The fixation need not be directly perceptible so long as it may be communicated with the aid of a machine or device. Copyrightable works include the following categories:

1 literary works

2 musical works, including any accompanying words

3 dramatic works, including any accompanying music

4 pantomimes and choreographic works

5 pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works

6 motion pictures and other audiovisual works

7 sound recordings

8 architectural works

These categories should be viewed broadly. For example, computer programs and most “compilations” may be registered as “literary works”; maps and architectural plans may be registered as “pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works.”

These definitions certainly go a long ways towards protecting your site content; however you can and probably should go to extra lengths to protect your content. It isn’t hard to do so and is very much worth it in the long run. These days, if you publish to the web, you can almost guarantee that at some point someone will attempt to “borrow” your content.

I’ll have more on this important subject tomorrow.

For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

So You've Discovered You Need a Website...

You look around on the internet and you see a lot of different options. It’s seriously confusing! Who to choose? Should you do it yourself? Do you go for someone that is inexpensive? Or do you pay top dollar figuring that you’ll get the best work that way? How do you avoid getting scammed?

There are many questions to ask yourself in this situation. We’ll start at the beginning…doing it yourself.

Much of the time we know someone who has put together a website. It seems like everyone has done it these days. There are a lot of opportunities out there to edit or create a site out there. You may have even dabbled in it by creating a Myspace page or something similar. Doesn’t seem that hard. Perhaps you can even have a student you know create it. Why hire a professional design company when you can do it yourself? There are many reasons this may not be the wisest course…

If you choose to do it yourself, are you prepared to spend the time creating and maintaining the site? It can be incredibly time consuming to keep a site fresh. Also, do you have the knowledge of search engine optimization that will get your site ranked where you need it? Can you create a custom design or will you have to use a template that who knows how many other company’s have used as well? These are just some of the questions you have to ask yourself before taking on the task of creating a website that is going to represent yourself and your company.

Many of the same questions apply to giving the project to an amateur designer. There is no doubt there are some very talented amateur designers out there, but do they have the experience to tell you exactly what you actually need for your site? How to design it to optimize it for the viewers you are after? Do they have the time to maintain it for the long run? Do they know how to do search engine optimization?

A professional design company knows all these things and more. They can optimize your site for search engines as well as optimize the graphics for fast download times. They know from first hand knowledge what kind of things your site will need for your business and how to design it for the optimum viewing experience for your viewers. You know your business, so more than likely it is to your advantage to let the expert use their time to build your site while you concentrate on building your business. Creating a website takes a lot of time; everything from writing your content to figuring out what will work for your site on the different kinds of browsers. So there are many things to consider when deciding who is going to help you with your web presence.

Tomorrow we will go into price; what is reasonable and what do you actually need to spend to make sure you have a website that will not only be functional but easy to use for your clients and viewers.

For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

How Much Time Should I Spend On Social Networking?

Back to Basics: Quality and Word-of-Mouth Advertising

As a business owner, you can benefit by harnessing the power of networking sites, but you must employ extremely subtle strategies. According to David Meerman Scott, marketing strategist and author, “The online community at social networking sites hates overt commercial messages.” (See The New Rules of Marketing and PR, p. 229.)

Before diving into the details of actively using social networking for marketing purposes, however, considerable time must be spent focusing on your business itself.

• First, you must make sure your have good quality products and excellent customer service, not just lip service, empty promises, and hype.
• Second, you must make sure your website is artistic, professional, and effective—meaning it contains well-written, substantive content that is presented in an aesthetically pleasing way.

Why? People talk.

There are over 200 million members on Facebook, while MySpace has about 100 million. Many of these are asking each other for product recommendations, directly or indirectly. If your product or service measures up, they will speak highly of you. If they go to your website and like what they see, the will bookmark you. Either way, you benefit.

A recent study shows that women are turning to social networking for fun, entertainment, and to connect with friends at a higher rate than ever before, and they are twice as likely to turn to blogs verses social networking to get product recommendations. (See Social Media Optimization.)

If your products or services don't cut the mustard, look out, because, according to Mike Grehan, online marketing guru, the algorithms that drive search engine results are changing to include, with much more added weight—

1.) product recommendations on social networking sites and blogs for your products or services, and
2.) bookmarks placed by unique visitors to your website.

Thus, the days of key word manipulation to get to the top of the list of search results are going by the wayside. Soon, it will be your good products and services that get you there, not just your good use of key words. (See Mike's Is There a Link Between Search and Social? article, pp. 12-13.)


Time Well Spent

Knowing this, you can see that your efforts to use social networking as an avenue to promote your brand and your business is crucial to long-term growth. The key to success is to experiment! Try placing videos on YouTube, inserting interesting articles into your Blog, creating profiles on MySpace, and establishing Groups on Facebook—and see what happens. You might find the next internet spokesperson star is sitting inside the walls of your own company!

You can track your hits easily by employing the technology at www.bit.ly, where you can enter web addresses (say, your YouTube video, for instance) and see how many people are stopping by to see it. Spending time to measure and analyze results is the only way to see if your efforts are paying off. It will take some time to find the right niche or angle for your business, so dedicate enough time and resources to see the effort through. Don't cut things off prematurely.

Also, it's important to update your material frequently, even daily. Since web users want the latest information available on the subject they are searching for, search engines in turn look for the freshest material online. By changing your content, you can insure optimal results in search engine rankings. (See Content Optimization.) This of course will require a committed and dedicated staff to manage, and the unflinching support of the organization behind them.

For more tips on optimizing your web presence and harnessing the power of social networking sites, contact the professionals at HIT Web Design.