Cost is obviously an important factor to consider when getting a new website designed by a web design company. For starters though, you need to know what your website is supposed to do for your business. What is the website meant to do add to your business? What end results are you expecting? You should have some idea of what kind of content you need on your site and how many pages it will be, what images will be included, what will the basic structure of your site look like. To get some ideas you can visit other websites that perform similar roles to that which you want yours to perform and get an idea from there. After your objectives are figured out, and you know how to structure your website efficiently, it is possible to talk to suppliers and companies in order to get the job done. This will be helpful because you now know what you need from the website, so you can properly articulate this to your web designer. Since there are so many web design companies out there, you can definitely have the advantage when determining price, since everyone is going to want to do your website. Just like everything else the web design realm is full of good companies, OK companies and just plain bad companies. It can be difficult to determine which is which so a good rule of thumb is if somebody promises to provide you with everything you want for an extremely low price, they are likely not going to be up to the standard you want. In the event that you have all the money in the world, and can afford to just pick the most expensive company there is, you can trust that you will receive top-notch service and impeccable quality when it comes to your website. You can just Google ‘web design company’ and pick the first one that you see. However, you have to do some research and find the best one if you have a budget to consider. You can find numerous web design companies that just consist of a handful of people, but who will be dedicated and skilled enough to get you the results you need. The best part is that, due to their lower overhead, they will charge you far less than the big guys do. As a result, you should look into these kinds of companies, as you can save money and still get great results.

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If it is your first time having a website designed for your company then it can seem like a daunting task. You want to make your company look as professional as possible and to get across to prospective customers relevant information that is likely to turn them into paying customers. Your website’s appearance and feel is not something that should be overlooked or taken lightly, as this is the first point of contact between you and your potential clients, and you want to impart a feeling of competent professionalism. These are some tips that you should keep in mind when discussing what you want with a web design agency:

Avoid information overload – Avoid the temptation to cram as much on to every page of your website as you can. Keep your homepage simple, giving customers the purpose of your business, the products or services that you sell, and the qualities that make you good to deal with. You can always provide links within the essential text to other more specific information that you feel your potential customers may wish to know about.

Text – Most websites are predominantly made up of text, and so getting the text aspect of your website correct can really make or break it. Visitors tend to prefer black text against a white background, but provided that you set the text apart from the background enough to make it easily readable, you can use whatever color scheme you see fit. Arial, Times New Roman, or Verdana are the ideal fonts to use for your text, since they are most familiar to web users and the are easiest to skim read.

Pictures – A few well chosen and well placed pictures will improve the look of most websites. As a rule of thumb, you do not want to have pictures on a particular webpage taking up more space than the amount the text on that webpage. You can definitely save some money if you take your own pictures, but if you want to guarantee quality, you should hire a professional to take the pictures for you, or buy them from a stock photo website for as little as a few dollars a piece.

Auto-play videos and music – While you may think that everyone loves music and videos, it is often not the case. If you feel that music and / or videos are essential then give your visitors the choice of whether to play them or not. Forcing visitors to do something, which is what you are doing if your auto-play music or videos, has been shown to be the a big factor in web users quickly deciding to leave a website.

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Those making websites, especially those making themselves instead of using a professional web design agency, often make the same mistakes, with these being the main ones to avoid:

Do not center everything on your website pages because doing so creates an unprofessional look. The books and magazines that you read always use a full page left to right layout for text, so why should web pages be any different? People are simply not used to reading large amounts of centered text and so if they come across it on your website then they will see it, instantly think that it does not look ‘right’, and click the back button on their web browser.

Do not have music that plays on your website because then the site takes longer to load and not everyone will like the music that you select to play. Your visitors might even leave if the music playing while they are waiting for your site to load is displeasing and they feel they are being forced to listen to it. A better option if you must have music on your site is to have a noticeable play button at the top of the pages that the visitors can use to start and stop the music

Do not use JavaScript for any critical elements of your web pages since about a fifth of all Web users are not able to or do not want to run JavaScript. That means that part of your site will not work for them, and they will either think that your site was designed incorrectly or that you neglected to fix the problems that developed. So, by using JavaScript, you will potentially be losing 20% of visitors to your website within seconds of them arriving at your site.

Do not design a full flash website if you want high rankings in search engines because search engines, not being able to read the content on flash websites, tend not to rank these types of sites as highly as mainly text and image based sites. You do not have to forget about using flash altogether, you just need to make sure that there is a good amount of text included too. If you ignore this advice then you will hardly get any visitors from Google, Yahoo and Bing, which are the best sources of getting visitors to your website.

There are other common mistakes too, but those are the main ones that you should be aware of. When designing your website do not forget that the most important factor to bear in mind is user experience, outweighing even your desire to make the website look attractive. If you are not totally convinced in your ability to create a website that both looks good and provides a good user experience, then it highly advisable that you hire a web design company to do the work for you.

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Even if you’re not planning on selling online, a well-crafted site is essential for any business.

Q: My business is very small, just me and two employees, and our product really can’t be sold online. Do I really need a website?

A: That’s a good question. In fact, it’s one of the most important and most frequently asked questions of the digital business age. I personally have been asked this one question more times than I could count, yet my answer has always remained the same. “Yes, if you have a business, you should have a website. Period. No question. Without a doubt.”

Also, don’t be so quick to dismiss your product as one that can’t be sold online. Nowadays, there’s very little that can’t be sold over the internet. More than 20 million shoppers are now online, purchasing everything from books to computers to cars to real estate to jet airplanes to natural gas to you name it. If you can imagine it, someone will figure out how to sell it online.

Let me clarify one point: I’m not saying you should put all your efforts into selling your wares over the internet, though if your product lends itself to easy online sales, you should certainly be considering it. The point to be made here is that you should at the very least have a presence on the web so that customers, potential employees, business partners and perhaps even investors can quickly and easily find out more about your business and the products or services you have to offer.

That said, it’s not enough that you just have a website. You must have a professional-looking site if you want to be taken seriously. Since many consumers now search for information online prior to making a purchase at a physical store, your site may be the first chance you have at making a good impression on a potential buyer. If your site looks like it was designed by a barrel of colorblind monkeys, your chance at making a good first impression will be lost. (Unless of course your target demographic happens to be colorblind monkeys.)

One of the great things about the internet is that it has leveled the playing field when it comes to competing with the big boys. As mentioned, you have one shot at making a good first impression. With a well-designed site, your little operation can project the image and professionalism of a much larger company. The inverse is also true. I’ve seen many big company websites that were so badly designed and hard to navigate that they completely lacked professionalism and credibility. Good for you, too bad for them.

You also mention that yours is a small operation, but when it comes to benefiting from a website, size does not matter. I don’t care if you’re a one-man show or a 10,000-employee corporate giant; if you don’t have a website, you’re losing business to other companies that do.

Think of this, 75 years ago, the American population felt that the telephone was an expensive luxury and not crucial to business growth.  That sentiment continued for 30 years.  As social communication trends changed, businesses changed to insure profitability.  Use of the Internet will only increase in the next ten years.

For those who may say “a website won’t attract our type of customers,” keep this in mind; the internet targets everyone in almost all demographics.  And those demographic shift and change.  Ten years less than 50% of the population used the internet.  Five years ago, primary users were people who worked in offices in jobs that were above the median income level.  Three years ago the fastest growing demographic for internet use was minor children.  Today it is retirees.  8 out of every ten people you meet in America uses a computer at least once a week.  “Are your potential customers the other 2 who don’t?”

Here’s the exception to my rule: It’s actually better to have no website at all than to have one that makes your business look bad. Your site speaks volumes about your business. It either says, “Hey, look, we take our business so seriously that we have created this wonderful site for our customers!” or it screams, “Hey, look, I let my 10-year-old nephew design my site. Good luck finding anything!”

Your website is an important part of your business. Make sure you treat it as such.

Sketchbook Media Group now has a partnership with Constant Contact® so we can offer you state-of-the-art Email Marketing services!

It’s a great tool to build customer loyalty, increase referrals, and promote repeat business.

We’ve teamed up with Constant Contact, the leading email marketing service, focused exclusively on small-business needs. That means we can bring you a proven, powerful and cost-effective way to stay in touch–and stay connected with–your customers and prospects. In fact, Email Marketing complements your current promotions, and takes advantage of what loyal and satisfied customers can do for your business – referrals, repeat purchases, and increased revenue.

Email Marketing makes it easy for you to:

• Communicate regularly with your customers and remind them of your value, so they’ll think of you first
• Easily create and send high-impact, professional-looking email communications in no time at all
• Review, and learn from, your email results with revealing, easy-to-read reports that show you who opened your emails, what links they clicked on, and more
• Build and segment your list of email addresses, so that you can send focused, tailored emails that get results.®
  

The official launch of sketchbookmediagroup.com will be coming soon!

We are currently working to revamp the site to serve our clients better.