lovewebdesign

The Value of Web Site Usability Evaluations

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Once again, this is gained through many nights reading and gathering information from all over the web, books and training courses that I too attend in order to try and provide a better service.

Some blogs ARE better than others and read by potential clients who are seeking ideas and resources. Commenting intelligently on blogs can be a very good way to build a reputation in your field of experience, it can also be one of the quickest ways to discredit yourself too!

Make sure that you read the whole post that you would like to comment on thoroughly, and maybe even draft your response away from your screen so that you are not tempted to make a hurried response – this can often result in half hearted comments.

Try to use facts so that over time other readers of the blogs to which you post know that you know what you are talking about. It is always a good idea to keep comments short and to the point.

Guidelines for Commenting on Blogs

It is usually necessary for you to sign in to most blog sites before you can leave your comments.  You are normally asked for your email address and the URL of your website.

Stick to the facts about what you do.

Because of comment spam, many bloggers ask you to register.

If you have a business connection to a product or service mentioned in the blog post, make this clear to anyone reading your comment.

Comment only when you feel you can offer something of value.

Bloggers may shorten your comments. Better to simply write shorter.

When quoting material, ALWAYS be accurate, provide attribution for the quote, including source and URL (if available).

Hope this helps,

Sarah

When was the last time you asked a customer what they were actually looking for?  Most businesses wait for the customer to tell them, offer a service to them or supply a questionnaire for the customer to fill in…

Here are some quick questions:

• What are your new and existing customer’s needs and requirements?
• Do your customers realise all of the services &/or products that you offer?
• Does your marketing material reflect all of the services &/or products that you offer?
• Does your marketing material need updating?
• Does your website / logo look outdated?
• Do you communicate with your customers on a regular basis, by any method?

If the answer to any of the above questions is no, then maybe it is time to have a review of both your customer relationship management and marketing materials.

The better we perform during the tough times the more likely we are to survive.

If you are a small business or sole trader and have larger competitors who have their own premises and employ staff? Have you ever considered approaching them and asking them whether or not they could refer the work that they do not do to you?

Lots of larger companies take work on from a particular starting price as they have overheads, staff, bills, rates to pay etc. If you are looking for work you could always approach them and ask them to take on the work that is not appropriate or relevant for them, or is under their start price limit (not sure what the correct phraseology is for this!).

This way you can, if they say yes get work from them, remain onside with your competitor(s), they get to know you and vice versa and everyone gets work – this also works the other way round as well; if you get work that you are unable to handle or is outside the scope of your experience you can then pass or refer it to them. This way no-one has to turn work away…

If you are not happy with this you can always negotiate a referrals agreement, if both parties are happy to do so – but DO check out the contract side of doing this BEFORE you sign anything.

This also keeps work local and increases the scope of work on offer as well.

Has anyone ever considered this? Does anyone have a successful relationship that works on this basis? Or on the downside has anyone ever had a bad experience working this way? It would be good to gather some views on this.

PXtoEM.com: PX to EM conversion made simple.

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Had a quick read of this and if you are seriously into online socialising and networking then this may give you some additional information and possibly even some new sites to visit

Link : Social Networking for Business

Courteousy of WSG Links for Light Reading

A simple, step-by-step presentation on CSS inheritance that covers the document tree, rule sets, basic inheritance and font-size inheritance. Hope you find it useful!

Link : CSS Inheritance

Courteousy of www.maxdesign.com.au (taken from WSG Links from Light Reading)

Love Web Design has become a member of the BNI Teamworks Chapter, that meet every Friday morning at the Dale Hill Golf Course Hotel, near Flimwell, East Sussex.

BNI provides a structured, supportive, business environment in which local business people can get together to network, learn valuable new marketing skills and develop the strong personal relationships that lead to trust and the consequent generation of significant business for each other.

If you are interested in the BNI for yourself you can contact Sarah or go direct to the BNI website at www.bnisussex.com.

Many small businesses I have networked with recently have said that they have considered reducing their marketing budgets over the next years. My own personal opinion is that this would be a mistake!

During this “recession” we need to make the most out of every single penny, but we also need to remember that our profiles need to be seen. If our potential customers cannot “see” us then they will not use our services or buy our products! So how do we go about marketing during a recession?

We need to be more selective about where and when we market ourselves; we need to read ALL the small print to ensure we can end contracts when they are not working for us; to monitor them and to be realistic about the time they will take to have an impact on business – for example a radio advert may cost upwards of £500 per month (as an off the top of my head figure) and may take 6 months before the phone begins to ring, so it is worth bearing that investment in mind. Whereas networking campaign may cost £500 membership for 1 year plus £10 per week for mileage and 1 hour of your time to attend thereby making it more cost effective to network as opposed to advertise. However, depending on your business – it may be that networking is not appropriate for your business – all things to consider.

Research has in previous tough times shown that those that continue to market themselves have gained market share from those that have ceased marketing…

Remember – speculate to accumulate! also walk away if it doesn’t work.

Any thoughts anyone?

Sarah

Once again all my articles are written from my own perspective so some may or may not agree with me but as I develop my own skills in blogging I find that I am asked more often how I go about managing my own blog and these articles are based very much on this – I hope this information will help from an advisory point of view…

When I first started I found I had very little to say and that I struggled to find a topic matter so I just wrote a few “Hi, here I am“ type posts which obviously did little for the blog or for me come to that!

But now as clients, colleagues and people I network with ask more and more questions I find that every spare moment is used writing little article in a huge (now up to 20 pages) word document that when I get time I proof read and then paste into WordPress and then publish.  This saves me oodles of time!

About Writing the Articles…

There seems to be some basic style guidelines when writing blog article which I tried to stick to when I first started writing, I vary a little now – these are:

• Try & keep it direct; declarative is good.
• Link to any other article, book, product, website that you can link to, it provides background/supporting info regarding your subject.
• Write little & often:  You can always comment on responses, but short & succinct is always good.
• Don’t take yourself/your blog too seriously, but never lose your sense of humour:  Don’t get personal; formal writing is for “solicitors”.  Blogs are more informal & friendly.
• Use Simple sentence structures & remember to always read your post out load before you publish it: This helps – honest!
• Bullets are good, so are subheadings, bold & italics for emphasis.

Finally a checklist before you hit the “Publish” button:

• Does the title apply to the content?
• Does the leading para explain what the article is about & why the reader should read &/or care?
• Is it worth reading?
• Would someone who knows nothing about the topic be able to understand it?
• Is it jargon free?  Have you explained the jargon?

Hope it Helps,

Sarah