So here’s the thing; I recently spoke with several of our clients about their previous experiences with other design and marketing agencies, and whether they received value for money. What I found out wasn’t good, and certainly didn’t paint the design & marketing industry in a good light. But also, I wasn’t surprised by what I heard. In a nutshell, the felt that they had been talked-down to, taken advantage off, and in some cases ripped off, just because they were small businesses who didn’t have much in the way of tech knowledge, or have their ear-to-the-ground when it came to websites and technology.
Here are some examples:
One company wanted a basic website with 5 pages and some simple SEO, just to point customers towards for details, testimonials, etc. they were quoted over $3,000 just to build the website!
Another business was charged over $5,000 for an annual Search Engine Optimization program for their website, with virtually no results to show for it. The marketing agency hadn’t even added even the most basic SEO data to any of the pages.
Yet another company purchased a $10,000 annual marketing program from an online marketing firm who promised hundreds of new clients over the course of the program, but they didn’t get a single lead!
All of it is just money for nothing, and it’s not right, especially for small businesses, and indeed any business, especially those in a more remote or rural location.
If you’ve had any experiences like this; please let me know – I’d be happy to hear about it, and maybe I could help!
Now, I’m not in the business of naming and shaming. Its a free country, and anyone can do business how they want to, and its down to the individual conscience of these agencies as to whether they feel that they’re being fair and honest. But I don’t think its fair, honest, or ethical to misquote, patronize, or be just plain lazy when your clients are paying you with their hard-earned money. Please don’t misunderstand me; I’m not saying that all design & marketing agents are disreputable; on the contrary, there are some really good ones out there, in urban and rural areas, but there are some bad apples just as in any other industry.
And that’s why Gleneden Ridge Design tries to do things differently.
I like to be fair, honest, flexible, and inexpensive, because small businesses need all the help they can get in today’s climate. And I include Gleneden Ridge Design in that; we need each other!
Our plans and programs are flexible, driven by value, not by greed or elitism, and we won’t talk down to you; we won’t baffle you with buzzwords, or lose you in tech speak. We’ll talk to you on your own terms, work with you, and make the whole marketing thing much more palatable.
We are professional, but we’re not pretentious!
Take some time and think about what you really need; not what you think you need, or what someone else tells you that you need. And if you’re unsure, talk to us; we’d be happy to advise on any aspect of your graphic design, website, social media, and marketing projects.
And we’re damn sure that you’ll get a better experience than you would have thought!
Updates and maintenance to your website may, to some, seem like a pointless task. You design your website, publish it, and that’s it; it’s done.
Isn’t it?
Well no; not really. A website is never just ‘done’. Unlike printed material, the Internet is constantly in motion, and your website needs to be constantly updated to stay ahead, otherwise, search engines like Google and Bing will start to ignore it, and you’ll be losing customers pretty soon. After all, you don’t keep going back to your favorite book store if it doesn’t offer any new titles do you, It’s the same with website; people won’t come and view your site if you don’t add new stuff to it.
But What Updates Should You Make?
So what should you add to your site? If you’re a store it’s easy as you just keep adding new products as they come in. But some businesses don’t sell their services online; construction companies, ground works, health clinics, agriculture etc. – these types of businesses find it difficult to sell online since pretty much everything is custom or unique, so what can they add? Here are a few suggestions:
Client testimonials
New services or products
New staff or staff news
Images, videos, and galleries
Careers & job openings
Current & prestigious projects
So really there’s lots for any business to talk about, and if you organize the new content well enough, you can not only add it to your site, but also create blog and social media posts from it too, all of which can add to your all-important web site SEO.
You can also look at doing some other design changes to refresh your pages, for instance, you can:
Change images and/or text in header banners and image sliders
Update images in galleries
Change the colours of your overall theme to reflect seasonal trends, holidays, or events
Again, all of these things, no matter how small, help to keep your site looking fresh to users, and go towards your website’s online visibility, SEO, and viewer retention.
These items you can do yourself, but quite often, small business owners don’t have the time or the skill set to get them done efficiently; that’s why Gleneden Ridge Design offer a time bank program, whereby the customer purchases a block of hours – at a reduced hourly rate, depending on the amount purchased – to use for any website or graphic design purpose they choose.
Talk to us to discuss website updates and tie bank options.
People don’t always like that ‘maintenance’ word as it’s frequently associated with paying out lots of money and getting little or nothing in return.
But it is necessary.
Depending on your website CMS, your core software needs to be kept-up-to-date, as well as your modules, plugins, and extensions, Security software needs to be in place and properly configure to defend against hacking attempts, spam, viruses, etc. And of course you need backup software that runs on a regular schedule so you can always revert your site to an earlier version if anything goes sideways.
And of course there’s always the unexpected, for instance, sometimes during an update or configuration change, a change goes slightly wrong and your site goes offline. Someone needs to troubleshoot the issue and bring the site back up as quickly as possible, but quite often the site owner doesn’t have the time or skills to fix the error, a developer needs to be hired to fix it, which can be costly.
But with Gleneden Ridge Design’s website annual maintenance program, all of this will only cost between $240 and $480 per year, depending on the size, complexity, and software of your website. We will monitor your site, keep all of your software up-to-date as updates are released, ensure a new backup is always available, keep a tight rein on your security, and troubleshoot any issues, so you don’t need to worry.
Both website maintenance and frequent content updates are important and integral parts of the website puzzle. They’ll both pay benefits to your business if implemented correctly: your SEO will develop, growing your online presence, and your site will remain much more stable, and the greater up-time and stability will also benefit your SEO.
Many users think that to add an image to their web page is as simple as downloading the image from their phone or camera, uploading it to the website files, and adding it to a page. Well, technically it is that simple, but there is actually much more to using images on your website that just uploading them.
Online Image Use Guidelines & Best Practices
Here are some guidelines on how best to optimize your images for web use, and for maximum searchability too, so they become part of your website’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO) profile.
Image Names
So you find an image on your phone that you’d like to use on your website, and you save it to your computer, upload it to your site, and add it to your page. But it’s file name is something like img0015869.jpg, which means absolutely nothing to Google or any other search engine.
To make the image way more SEO-friendly, rename it something that’s relevant to the page that you’re adding it to. Just click once on the file to highlight the filename (or right-click and select rename), and type in your new name; that’s it – easy!
Image sizes
The image size of your file can have a huge effect on your website; a large file size can slow down your website’s loading speed, and a image that too large for a mobile screen to display properly is highly un-user-friendly at the very least. Both of these examples will negatively impact the SEO of your website. ideally, you need to optimize your image for web use. This means re-saving the file so that it’s physical dimensions are the correct size for where you’re placing it on your page, and also minimizing its disc size, so that it doesn’t take forever to download to a viewer’s web browser. Optimizing images for your website isn’t difficult, but in does add another step in to your website updates process. Below are some ways to do it.
Optimizing Your Images with Adobe Photoshop
If you’re fortunate enough to have access to Adobe Photoshop, all you need to do is open the image in Photoshop, select File/Export/Save for web. You then type in the required image size in the Image Size fields, select the format from the Present drop-down list (I’d suggest ‘JPEG’ & ‘High’ settings) as a good start. The click save, title your image, and save it down. this will automatically create a web-optimized image.
Optimizing Images if you don’t have Photoshop
If you don’t have Adobe Photoshop, you can use a tool like MS Paint or similar to resize, and re-save the image. There are also a range of free tools available; here are a few:
TINYPing: an online smart PNG & JPG compression tool
JPEGMini: another online smart image compression tool
ImageOptim: an image optimization tool for Mac users.
Trimage: an image optimization tool for Windows users.
All of these tools are free and produce results that are more than adequate for any web project.
Alt Tags
Alt-tags, also called Alternative text or Alt-description, is a piece of HTML code that is applied to an image in order to make it SEO-readable (search engines cannot read images). Alt tags are easily added in most web platforms as they are normally a field that you fill in when you click on the image in the editor. Adding an alt-tag can have a big impact on your SEO scores.
SEO Title, Caption, and Description
Similarly, the Title Caption, and Description fields are also easily edited in most Content management Systems (CMS) these days.
Sizing Images in Your Website Editors
Most CMS editors have built-in image sizing components. In DotNetNuke for instance, they are Rich Text modules, and in WordPress, they are Image blocks.
Sizing WordPress Images
WordPress make it very easy to size your images. If you’re using a Image block:
Place an image block and select your image.
Click on the image in the block, and you’ll see the ‘image Size’ drop down in the right hand side bar.
Select the size of your image from the drop down, or enter a custom size.
Note that in these Image block controls that you can also add in your alt-text and apply rounded corners if you want them .
If you’ve added a Cover block:
Place a Cover block and select your image.
Click on the image in the block, and you’ll see various image-related options in the right hand side bar.
You can enter a custom height for the image, set the central position of the image, image opacity, content position, and more.
You can’t typically change the width of a ‘Cover’ block, unless there’s something specific in your theme that allows you to do so.
In Conclusion
Playing around with images online can be fun and creative, but remember to put some side aside to plan and get it right, otherwise, you could find that your website load speeds suffer, and of course your website SEO and page ranking.
If you’re having any problems with the images and graphics on your website, come and talk to us; we’d be happy to help!
Many small businesses have discovered to their cost that some high-street and online marketing agencies can be full of buzzwords and slogans, coupled with some waffle and bloat, and lots of cost, often with no results and a lack of responsiveness. They talk to you in their language, not the customers, and they give themselves a perceived value and price tag that vastly outweighs and negates any return on your investment. We have customers that have spent $3,000, $5,000, and even $10,000 with marketing agencies who’ve promised them the earth, but the client has come out of it with virtually nothing to show for it, save an empty pocketbook of course.
This is why we’re different; this is why we treat our customers differently.
We’re based locally, on a farm in Gleneden, Salmon Arm, in the Shuswap, BC, and we’re normally in outdoor gear. We don’t like to see small businesses get ripped off, talked down to, and have the wool pulled over their eyes. We speak clearly to our customers, and in their own language. Many businesses in the region aren’t that tech-savvy, but they’re specialists in their own fields, and they need people like us to guide them through the maze of choices, apps, settings, and options that are presented to them when they start creating their online marketing, websites, and social media. Many have heard of SEO, CTAs, landing pages, and PPC advertising but don’t really know what they are.
Creating a website and developing your marketing can be a daunting prospect to many, and that’s why we’re here.
We talk to you, find out what you want, what you need, and how you want to work. Then we tailor our approach to you, customizing our programs, pricing, and strategies to your business.
We like to take as much of the marketing strain away from you as we can, so you can just focus on your own areas of specialization. We might bother you occasionally for things like design approvals, project feedback, or if we need more content, but otherwise, we’ll be your independent graphic design, website development, and marketing department, ready to respond to your needs, quickly and efficiently, without fuss, and at a price that you actually can afford, and that gives you a tangible return on investment.
Everyone talks about SEO, search engines, keywords, and online ads, but there’s much more to online marketing these days than just adding a bunch of keywords to your webpages and firing up your Google Ads.
SEO Relevance
The (recently updated) Google search algorithms want to make sure that you’re that you website is not just searchable online, but also relevant and accurate as to what viewers are searching for. Your content and on-page SEO needs to be concise, informative, and accurate to your business. Avoid the use of duplicate and similar content and filler text to pad out your content,
And you need to consider the content of your each page on your site, each post, and each store item. Make sure that each has a search-worthy SEO title and description, that each has an appropriate on-page description, that images have good descriptions and Alt-tags attributed to them, and that your SEO contains information that can easily be shared amongst the myriad of search engines, networks, and social media platforms.
Are Keywords Still Relevant?
Well yes, keywords are still relevant, but not like they used to be. Today’s search engines analyze your on-and-off page content and can discern for themselves what your keywords are; you don’t have to go into your SEO settings, throw in a dozen relevant keywords them make sure that you use them at least 7 times in your text – that’s the ‘old school’ way of doing SEO. The time is coming when you won’t need to enter any SEO setting info – Google will simply do the SEO for you, basing its positioning of your site on things like your content, headings, image titles, inbound and outbound links. At present though, keywords are still useful for providing a focus for the page or post, especially ‘long-tail’ keywords, which are essentially search strings of more than three words, so make sure they’re still included in your page settings.
Domain Authority
Off more importance is domain authority, which is essentially a rating of whether or not you know what you’re talking about, how well you present on your website, and how well it fits within a specific area of interest or industry. Search engines use a range or four dimensions to calculate Domain Authority:
Website and author prestige (how well connected the site and/or author is as a source of information for others sites and users)
Information quality (how good the content is)
Centrality (how central and well-related the site is within a given field or industry)
Competitive subject situation (how competitive the field or industry is)
Each of these areas is considered and weighted, which results in a page rank that has direct impact on a site’s search engine rankings. And once more, its pointing towards the fact that you know what you’re talking about, rather than just using a join-the-dots approach.
Pay-Per-Click Advertising
As attractive as it may be, Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising from vendors like Facebook and Google can be expensive, and you need to be careful with it. Your Google Ads may be bringing thousands of clicks to your website, but how many of them are actually becoming leads or clients? Like many, you may be finding that the quantity of clicks that you’re getting is simple not worth the money that you’re spending, but those visitors are not really interested in what you’re offering.
So, you need to be more focused with your ads; make sure they contain information that users are interested in, and that they direct them to a landing page specific to those interests; that way, you’re more likely to find quality leads, rather than empty clicks.
In conclusion
As you look through today’s SEO and think about your online marketing strategy, it’s quite easy to see that everything is interlinked, from your on-page content, your off-page SEO, store items, PPC ads, and you’re social media, not to mention the fact that you can no longer ‘fake’ your content or your knowledge, which is now the key driver in putting your pages in front of your prospects.
For many small businesses, creating their first website can seem like a daunting task. Online tools like Wix and Squarespace make the task much easier, but there are still a plethora of options, modules, plugins, settings, and configurations that can confound and baffle all but the more tech-savvy users; add to that the fact that many small businesses simply don’t have the time or manpower to figure out all of this stuff, it’s no wonder that so many businesses either barely get off the starting blocks, or end up with a half-finished site that doesn’t do their company any justice.
Growth-Driven Website Design
That’s where Gleneden Ridge Website Design comes in. From the moment that you first speak to us, we get to know you and your business. We provide detailed project outlines, plans, and quotes that are easily understandable to both tech-savvy and non-technical people. We provide feedback if you have any questions or queries, then when we start on your project, we proceed step-by-step using growth-driven design methodology to plan, launch, and improve your website, from initial site plans and strategies, to wire-frame designs, through to the first pages of your site, to the final features and details, keeping you informed all along the way, and we react quickly if you have any edits, changes, or concerns.
And when your new website goes live, we’re here to support you and continue the growth and development of your online presence to wherever you want it to go. Remember, you don’t have to have a website with all the bells-and-whistles fully functional when you launch – web stores, calendars, booking systems, blogs, and many other features can all be added gradually once your basic site is live, making it quicker to get your site live, and with less investment up-front.
If you need references, we’ll happily provide them.
The best thing of course is that we’re based locally in Salmon Arm, in the Shuswap region of the BC interior, serving local business, with flexible plans and inexpensive rates.
Additional grant funding and expanded eligibility criteria announced for the Launch Online Grant program.
The BC government has invested an additional $30 million to help BC-businesses move their business online. There is now $42 million of grant funding in place to help small- and medium-size businesses across BC move their business model online.
Grant eligibility criteria has been expanded. Businesses that want to enhance or build an online booking system are now eligible to apply. The original eligibility criteria for businesses that want to enhance or build an online shop remains in place.
The Launch Online Grant program provides funding to BC-based business to create an online shop or an online booking system and/or improve their existing online operations to attract new local customers and expand to new markets. The grant will pay for up to 75% of eligible expenses, up to a maximum of $7,500 per business.
The program supports a rapid response for businesses and is accepting applications from businesses ready to start and finish their online shop within 12 weeks.
Up-to 30% of funds will be reserved for Black, Indigenous and people of color owned businesses and businesses operating outside of the lower mainland and greater Victoria.
The funds must be used to hire a BC-based company to do the online store or online booking system development.
The program application has three steps
Step 1:
Develop a grant proposal that explains how you plan to use the funds. Businesses need to show a cost estimate that includes how much funding you need and how the money will be spent.
Step 2:
Complete the online application demonstrating that you meet the eligibility criteria and submit your online shop proposal.
Step 3:
Applicants will be contacted within three weeks with the outcome of their application.
Application deadlines
Program application intake is open until September 30, 2021 or until the funds have been fully subscribed. Funding will be awarded on a first-come first-serve basis to small- and medium-sized BC businesses.
For the projects to have an immediate benefit, the funds will be given as soon as a business has been approved for the program.
We all like interactive movement and animated features on our websites, and back in the day we’d design multi-featured websites in Flash, with images zooming in-and-out from the sides, have icons whizzing around, make buttons flash through the rainbow, and have text flying around the screen, just because we could! But now we make more judicious use of animated effects to create more subtle and tasteful features. So how much is too much?
Subtlety is Key
These days, we tend to avoid the overuse of animation techniques on website. They can be distracting, annoying, and can chew-up resources, like your bandwidth, but effects don’t have to be complex or weighty. Here are some examples that help to focus attention, rather than drive away users:
Headers and other image panes: rather than have your entire header image or pane zoom in and around, have elements fade in, move, and pulse to attract attention to your CTAs.
Animated statistics, charts, and graphs: use these to focus attention on specific facts and figures
Galleries: use galleries with subtle animation, such as scrolling, highlighting, and mouse-over effects
Images: use subtle mouse-over effects like an enhanced drop-shadow, slight wobble, or background or rule colour change
Parallax effects: this is where the background of a pane or panel – particularly image or video background – move or remain stationery as you scroll down or up the page. These can be engaging, but use sparingly as they can become distracting of overdone.
Things to Avoid
When it comes to animated features that really need to be avoided, there are a few things that definitely need to be avoided:
Websites created entirely in Adobe Flash or Animate: a remnant of the past where designers would do what they liked for no other reason than because they could. Building pages in this manner makes them heavy-weight, cumbersome, difficult to edit, and unfriendly to SEO, so avoid at all costs.
Having all elements on the page animated: this can be extremely off-putting; having items flashing and flying around everyone can drive people away when you want to keep them on the page.
Animated galleries with massive images or videos: again, save your images so that they’re web-optimized, otherwise you’ll find you page speed slowing down, which may cause people to just click away rather than view your galleries. And be minimal with animated galleries as viewers want to look at images, not how they whizz into the page or dance around when you mouse-over them.
These are all simple things to consider when designing your website, but they can have a huge impact on your website speed, your SEO, your interactivity, and your user retention, so think about animated features carefully before implementing them. As well as the actual size of any image, graphic, or video that you’re using, you also need to consider the amount of code that goes into the animation. For instance, many animations may have light-weight CSS code, but may have some hefty JavaScript code that slows down your page load speed.
From now until June 20th, the Summer Solstice, get savings of 10% when you purchase a website development, graphic design, logo design, video or slide design, or ad design service!
That’s right, we’re excited about Spring time growth, so when you order one of the services below, we’ll give you a 10% discount on the price.
The offer extends to these products and services:
New website design
Upgraded website design
Blog design and setup
Social Media custom profile images and design
Graphic design for collateral, stationery, posters, flyers, etc.
Logo design
Video editing, slide, & presentation design
Illustration
Ad & marketing design (website banners, print ads, Facebook ads, and Google ads)
*Note that this discount does not apply to design and development time banks, website SEO plans, website maintenance programs, or blog & social media plans since these programs are already discounted.
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