Tracking what your customers sees first!

Eyeflow eye tracking data along with click data from a group of individuals is rolled up into an Eyetools eyetracking heatmap that shows what is seen or ignored by website visitors.

Can the design of my website affect my rankings?

This phase assists you in determining if your site utilizes any programming formats that limit search engine exposure. Special marketing techniques need to be implemented in order to get around these elements. For the most effective search engine exposure we highly recommend a static HTML site. In addition, having a site map and navigation buttons on every page is also a good practice, as well as hypertext links at the bottom of every page in the site, for every page in the site.

First here are two things we know play a role in rankings.

Purchase your domain name for 10 years.
Make sure your site is W3 compliant.

When will my website show up on the search engine rankings after submission?

We run our first rank report at eight weeks and another at twelve weeks. At that time, you will begin to see listings and the effects of our search engine optimization strategies. We also install Google Analytics so you can watch your website's traffic increase.

However, the longer your site is up and running effectively on the Internet, the better the rankings will become. Slowly your site will develop more links and achieve saturation, as well as mature through structural tweaking and refreshing of content. With search engine optimization, your site will only improve as time goes on.

Signs It's Time To Redesign Your Website

By Erin Ferree (c) 2007

Designing your first website is a stressful undertaking. It requires you to dig deep into your business in order to write the copy for your site. You need to work with a designer and go through the process of creating a site that looks unique and works well. Plus you'll end up investing a lot of time, energy and money. And finally, after all that, you're finished and it's time for the site to go live. What a relief!
Many business owners go through this same process. By the time the process is finished, many entrepreneurs are very glad that it's over - and don't want to do it again anytime soon.

Unfortunately, websites don't last forever. Even if you plan your site to work for the current vision for your business, you can't accurately account for the entire future of your business.

Eventually you'll have to make some changes to your website. Some of these changes can be accomplished with simple maintenance, and by making updates to your site. But there's only so far that patching and revising your current site can go. If your site is particularly outdated, or if it's not working well for you, it's probably time to consider a full-scale site redesign.

Some signs that it's time to redesign your site include:

Your Business Has Changed or Grown

If your business is no longer the same as it was when you designed your site, chances are that you should redesign your website to reflect that. If you've only had a few small changes, you might be able to just update your current website. But, if you've changed your business direction, decided to provide new products or services, or if your company has grown significantly, it will pay off to redesign your site. Reconsider how the changes to your business should be reflected or addressed in the structure, design and strategy behind your website.

Your Site Looks Like It Was Designed in 1995

Some signs of an outdated web site include: chunky, slow-loading graphics, old-style "framed" coding, where the site is divided up into panes that load separately, little animated cartoon clip-art throughout the site, and text created as images instead of in HTML. Having any of these on your site could reflect poorly on your business, making you look 'behind the times'. It can also make you look like you don't care enough about your business or about technological advances to keep abreast of them. Keeping your company's website looking modern will improve its credibility.

The Information on Your Site Isn't User-Friendly

If you cringe when you read your site text, or if you regularly get questíons on your site text from visitors, re-structuring your copy or rewriting it can help to fix these problems. If you've been adding to your site over time and the navigation has become unwieldy or confusing, restructuring your navigation could be another pressing reason to redesign your site. You want visitors to be able to easily find their way around your site and to be able to access all the information you have within a few clicks. Laying out your site to make that possible can make your visitor's experience on your site a lot easier.

You Apologize for the Site When Referencing It or Handing Out Your Business Cards

Your site should be a source of pride. It should provide your clients and prospects an easy way to get a lot of information about your business. And, if you have to apologize for out-of-date information, broken images, poor design, difficult navigation or anything else on your site, it makes you look unprepared and unprofessional. Make sure your site is in top shape and looks impressive, so your clients believe your business is in good shape too.

You're Not Getting Good Results in the Search Engines

Poor rankings in the Search Engines can be a result of not optimizing your site well. Poor search engine ranking can also be a result of bad design choices or coding on your site. Make sure that your site isn't designed using frames and that the text is coded in HTML. Flash sites are also more difficult to optimize for Search Engines.

It's Not Bringing in inquiries and Helping You to Make Sales

If your site was designed long ago, then there's a good chance that it was designed as "brochureware". This means that the site was designed just to act as an online brochure. This was very common a few years ago, when websites were new. But recently businesses have realized that a website can do a lot more than just impersonate your brochure - it can help you close sales, bring in new prospects and make your business easier to run. To bring in more inquiries and make more sales include the following when you redesign your site:


Calls to action to encourage your visitors to take specific actions - like purchasing something, contacting you, or signing up for a newsletter.

Forms, scripts, or programs to make your business easier - like contact forms, project estimating tools, and an autoresponder email series that can help you keep in touch with your clients and prospects. Including a shopping cart or Paypal buttons on your site can also help you to make more sales without any additional work.

Downloadable information packets, articles, questionnaires and white papers can answer a prospect's questíons about your products or services and help them to move closer to buying. And, if you require the prospect to enter their email address or other contact information, it can help you to grow your prospect líst as well. These are just a few of the functions that your site can perform for your business. To get ideas for other ways that your site can help you improve your business, look at the other sites that you visit and note the functions they perform.
Your Site is Costing You a Fortune to Update

If you're racking up huge bills because of changes and still have a lot to go, it might be time to consider a whole site redesign. Make a líst of everything that you want to do on your site and consult a web designer about redesigning your site with those changes in mind. Often, if you have extensive changes to make to your site, it can be less expensive to just start over.

If your site has any of the problems mentioned here, it's time to redesign. The steps needed to update and revise will differ depending on the problems and issues that your site has - you may not have to start from scratch. But, do make sure that you address all of the problems that your site has so that you won't have to redesign again any time soon!

Why Web Templates May Not Save You Money

The fact is that is if you have the time and patience, than a web template may be for you. If you are willing to learn html, Search Engine Optimization and photo optimization than you should not have a problem with a web template. The fact is that companies hire web developers because they don’t have the desire or time to learn a new trade. I don’t know or want to know how to work on my car – I pay someone who has experience to do it. In the long run I won’t mess something up that I know nothing about. Believe me my husband and uncle worked a year on my brakes and could not figure it out. We would have saved a lot of time, money and frustration if I would have just taken it to a mechanic. Most likely you have a business to run and the reason you need a website is to get your name out there. What is your time worth? Some of my clients have tried to build there own website and never want to do it again. They are happy to let us do the work, and most of the time very ecstatic. I have used templates before and I was so frustrated I designed my own. I have a web design and multimedia degree. I know something about something and I was so frustrated.

Here are some of the disadvantages of using templates:

1. You can get web templates for free or at a low-price. But these templates are not unique. Several people may have already bought or downloaded the template you have chosen. If you can’t change the colors or layout a bit, your site looks like a clone of several sites. If you want a unique template design licensed only to you, you need hire a web designer or buy the template. Which will cost you more than hiring a designer and you still have to do all the work.

Example:
Price: $64
Unique Price: $1895


2. Often, templates don’t look good if you stretch them a bit. For example, if there is space for 100 words in a block and if you try to insert 200 words in that space, the template layout may change. And this may not look good. This puts limitations on text you can place in a template based web page, thereby restricting you from optimizing text or being descriptive about your business. It is well known that the more verbiage in a page the more attention it gets from search engines. A template doesn’t come with Meta tags.

3. Templates are good for static pages. If your site needs dynamic pages with a database and forms than this is probably not your best option.

4. If you are doing customization for yourself, always work on a copy of the template files. Templates are often done with simple HTML. But if you try to edit HTML tags instead of text between them, you might end up with bad page layout.

So if you really want to use a website template and need a basic website and are willing to learn photo optimization, a little html and Search Engine Optimization than go for it.

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