If you’re a small business looking to create a new website or upgrade your existing website, you’re probably wondering how much it will cost and the options available for different budgets.

The good news is that there are plenty of great options catering to small businesses like yours. To help you make an informed decision, we’ve created this comprehensive guide to provide all the answers you’re looking for in establishing a practical budget for your website design and development.

Today, consumers are looking for the absolute best deal on their favorite electronics, clothing, and general necessities. However, the method through which consumers receive their coupons today is entirely different from times past. Newspaper cutouts and coupon clubs aren’t as popular as they once were, but with the advent of the internet customers are receiving even better deals than before. 

As a small business or website owner how can you tap into this potential? Do coupons really benefit your conversion rates and increase your customer base? The answer is yes. 

Consider the fact that in 2015 more than 74 million tablet and mobile device users will redeem coupon codes through their device, and you can easily see just how important coupons continue to be for the retail industry. For business owners hoping to nail down a loyal following coupons can be the Holy Grail, especially when used in conjunction with powerful social media campaigns. But what is the best way to use them to experience these kind of results?

By offering coupons to new and existing clients, you make consumers feel valued. You’re in effect saying to them “yes I know you’ve ordered from us before but I want you to keep choosing us.” By making people feel valued you are more likely to get them to come back to your site when they need your product or one similar to it. Coupon codes also generate traffic for your site which is important if you want to entice people to check out your latest offers. 

Coupons are more effective than ever for gaining new customers and retaining your current client base. By using the right methods you can keep your clients interested in your brand and can keep them coming back for more. 

Each step of the web designing process is crucial. It involves knowing intricate details that are both time-consuming and incredibly important. Most experts and seasoned web developers take advantage of tools specifically designed to help speed up the process. By combining powerful tools with a finely tuned outline, you can create superior websites that hit all the important points. 

HTML Templates 
The first step in web development is deciding on the right template. The most popular option is HTML but you can also opt for CSS if you desire. Once the code is decided upon the next step is to choose the right editor. Usually the experts use Sublime, MacVim or Brackets. 

Choosing and Setting up a Local Server
After you have decided on the proper coding, the next step is to determine what format to use for the template. The best CMS options include WordPress and TYPO3. However, these typically require a local server to be setup in order to properly function. Tools such as MAMP and XAMPP allow you to make the best out of PHP Service Side language and improve the function of your page. 

Pre-Processors
To increase the efficiency of speed with which you can write your site, consider using tools such as preprocessor language based SASS and CodeKit. Task runners such as Grunt and Gulp are also important in the web development process. 

Tools for Revisions and Edits
To edit and adjust your site once it is completely finished, consider such programs and software as GitHub, BitBucket, and Beanstalk to properly manage your site. 

By using these tools you can fair better throughout the development process and experience excellent results once your job is complete. 

In the midst of constructing a brand new website, working with a talented web designer, or laying out your minimalistic graphics it is easy to lose sight of your goal. For example, most people build a site to create their brand or to sell their products, but the first rule of marketing is to get to know your audience. What do they want to see when they visit your site? Flashy graphics? Unreadable sales copy? No. They want to know what you offer and why. The only way to communicate that message is through your web copy. 

Many storeowners and site makers want to rush through their content so they can launch their site. Capturing a creative bit of content is not always a top priority, but it should be. Even if you don’t have the time or the desire to create content you can keep the message simple and still develop worthwhile copy. Simple headlines, powerful verbiage, and brief descriptions of your services go a long way to get the ball rolling. 

Remember, designers typically build around the ideas and mission of their clients, and if you aren’t sure what type of content you want for your site you could end up with a design that doesn’t suit your goals. After all, if your content doesn’t match the powerful graphics and images you requested, you could have your visitors scratching their heads. 

Before beginning any project with an agency, ask them to focus on content first and graphics later and reap the benefits along the way. 

Social media provides countless outlets for consumers to engage with brands and let them know what they think. While this may sound ideal on the surface, there are in fact some negative aspects of social media that all brands should take into account when posting and sharing content. In fact, it has never been more important than it is now to analyze your brand’s presence online. 

Brand awareness and management correlate to a host of key values that help identify your brand in a growing marketplace. Below the team at Small Business Web Designs has highlighted a few of the key features that consumers are looking for in companies representing the products they purchase. 

Values
Above all else, your brand should have relatable and clearly defined values for the world to see. Social media can be harsh, and if your values don’t align with what you actually do you can earn yourself a horrible reputation in the eyes of online consumers. 

Identity
Everything from the background color of your website to the logo that you choose, makes an impact on how people view you. It also helps people remember who you are and what you do (think McDonald’s golden arches). By maintaining a fluid identify across all platforms you stand a better chance of expanding your audience. 

Who Should Manage Your Brand
Once you’ve established your brand and integrated your marketing essentials across all platforms, the next step is hiring someone to manage your social media accounts. Of course, you can also choose to do this yourself, but if you do keep in mind that the most important factor is that your brand and your message stay the same. 

Managing social media is not always easy, keep track of things by focusing on your message and then following through on every platform.

Landing pages are simply single point pages where web owners can generate leads. While many people assume a home page is a landing page, nothing could be further from the truth. Home pages give a simple overview of services and serve as a formal introduction to the company. Landing pages inspire visitors to take action, and give them a reason to do so. 

Landing pages are extremely specific in their nature. The idea is to keep the users attention focused on the page long enough to give them a reason to sign up for x y or z. Other pages are more comprehensive, and include information that isn’t necessarily sales related. Additionally, landing pages make it easy for visitors to locate a company’s contact information or to inquire about a specific service offered, and eliminate any confusion regarding the action visitors should take. 

After giving a pitch of some sort (i.e. my free eBook will solve your marketing problems etc.) the landing page will have a call to action at the bottom. The call to action signifies what the visitor should do next, whether that be downloading a book or offering their email address for a newsletter. This effectively turns a nonchalant browser into a conversion, thereby increasing the likelihood of a sale. 

Your ultimate goal as a small business owner is undoubtedly to connect with your audience and to generate sales. Whether you are offering a service or a product, a landing page can strengthen the bond you have with your audience and increase your business.

Fortunately, you don’t have to go it alone. Connect with our web design team to discover how we can create a landing page that produces the results you want. 

Think that only your homepage matters? Think again! On a wide-open internet, this simply is not the case. You need to think of each webpage as a potential gateway and entrance to customers. Doing so can seriously help to boost online sales, convert customers, and get new sales leads. It may also help you to gather information through forms if you direct your customers correctly. Here, we will talk about why this is so important, and how you can make each webpage great. 

Customers Can Enter Anywhere
It is possible for any of your webpages to be ranked via search engines. This means, in theory, that customers can enter from anywhere. Your homepage may look great, but unless your site makes everything else looks just as great, expect your possible customers to click the “X” and the top right hand corner. When you optimize each page both textually and visually, you can actually keep customers on your webpage. The longer they are on your webpage, the more likely they are to see and respond to your call to action. 

Making Each Webpage Great

So how can you make each webpage great? It truly is not that difficult. Any design agency can help. When designing your webpage, always be sure to use the title tag, and make the title for each page clear. Think about using a design that has a clear heading on each page. You also want to quickly present customers with an issue as soon as they land on a page. Then, tell them, just a quickly, how your product or services can help them to solve that problem. Lastly, think about how each of your pages encourage your customer to buy your product. 

Widen Your Sales Funnel Today
Making each webpage great is all about widening your sales funnel. By widening your sales funnel, you can increase sales, potential customers, and much more. If you sale products online, trying to make a sale on every page of your site is even more important for your business. But what if you know very little about the right designs or landing pages? No worries; we can help. Just give us a call today and let us handle it. In no time, we can bring each of the pages on your site up to speed. 

If you want a site that works  on every page, contact our team today on 0800 995 065 today - we work with clients from all over New Zealand. 

This is a common question, and keeping things current really depends on what type of site you have. As SME sites tend to be static (in terms of information), the question about "fresh content" is pertinent. Recently, Google Webmaster Matt Cutts, speaking in India to an SEO forum, confirmed that Google does not use freshness of content as its sole ranking measure, and many sites do not require freshness at all. SBWD's developer Chris discusses below: 

In a nutshell, Google looks what people search for, and ranks the results accordingly based on a variety of factors. There are three main types of searches people do,informational (looking for product/service information), transactional (looking to buy online and/or contact a service provider etc), and beyond that, fresh seeking searches(i.e. news reports on rubgy matches or world events). Not every search query needs freshness, so it is irrelevant to be fresh for searches that do not require freshness. Chatting with Matt Cutts, SME sites do not require you to be vigilant or focus creating on fresh content.  Google uses over 200 signals for search engine ranking, with "freshness" being one; randomly changing words or inserting lower value content is not helpful for your ranking and popularity. 

Where this leaves your site?
1. There is no need to look or be "fresh" to stay relevant. The searches for small businesses are informational and/or transactional - your SBWD-designed site ensures all the relevant information is presented and what a user would expect to see on your site is easily located. 
2. The web pages our team designed are as good today as they were yesterday and will be tomorrow! 
3. SBWD's team writes high impact content, which is designed to be found fast as well as being engaging for the reader. We only emphasis that your contact details should always be up to date and any new services/products included too. 

The latest threat to security on the web are these crazy emails that are being sent to website owners asking them to pay for their domain name! 

Why This Scares People
Imagine you purchased a domain name for your business and have suck a lot of time, money and effort into the site that bears that name. Then imagine if you get what seems to be a rather official email about that domain name and how it is getting ready to expire in some cases. In other cases the email states that the owner of the name never really paid for the name it was an oversight and it would be removed if they do not pay up. It can be very scary to think of all that work being lost if you do not pay up.

DO NOT PAY UP
First things first DO NOT PAY UP! Do not send money to anyone EVER that is claiming you are about to lose your domain name. Contact your webmaster or your web designer before you ever pay anything out of pocket to anyone that is claiming you have to pay up or lose your domain.

The Easiest Solution
If you do not recognize the person that is sending you the email simply delete it and than contact the webmaster. If you open it the right thing to do is to contact the webmaster and forward on the email. This is most commonly happening on .co.nz sites and it is simply a group of unsavory individuals that are doing their best to take advantage of people. They will offer you a 10 year contract, they will tell you that you are impinging upon a protected trademark and they will try their best to convince you that you are at fault. Ignore this nonsense!


Eventually they will go away and look for another victim.