1. Attract the viewer
2. Declare your message
3. Get them to take action

With so much noise on the web today, and the natural ADD nature of most web surfers, your worst enemy is the browser back button. After someone lands on your website from a search engine, status update, marketing promotion, Tweet, or email link, you have a very short window of opportunity to keep them on your site, so let’s cover each step.

Attract the Viewer

If your site looks unprofessional, is difficult to navigate, has boring cookie-cutter content, or has an overall harsh feel to it, your visitor will probably hit the Back button before the page finished loading. This is where good design matters.

Good design for business websites is about designing for your target market, not your peers, other designers, or your competitors. Good website design is also about is making sure the user can find the information they want quickly and easily. And it definitely helps if your website isn’t ugly and doesn’t look like your “friend’s husband who is good with computers” built it for you.

Declare Your Message

There are numerous small factors in this statement that all add up to a lot when trying to make a first impression with your website in under 10 seconds. If you are using a free hosted web design program and your site sits on a URL with anything other than your domain name in it, you are silently declaring.

1. I don’t take my business seriously.
2. Not enough people actually hire me, so I can’t afford a self hosted site.
3. I have no idea what I am doing, nor do I know who to ask for help.

The same goes for your domain name selection. In the US, a business should use a .com extension, and not a .net, .biz, .tv, or any other extension. The only exception would be for a non-profit to use a .org. Regularly our clients say to us, “But the .com of my business name is taken and I have already registered my business license.” To solve this we suggest using a domain name that declares the solution you provide.

Also, your domain name should be easy to remember and easy to spell with common terminology. Avoid using numbers in place of words and avoid using hyphens. Think about verbally telling someone your domain name. Will you say “Just go to GardeningFunForYou.com” or will you have to say something like, “Just go to Gardening dash Fun for, that’s the number four not the word, You with you spelled out.”

In web design, there is the term, above the fold, that has historic roots to the newspaper industry. After years of study, publishers and editors found that by putting the most important and compelling headlines, stories, and photos “above the fold” of the newspaper so they were the most visible in the racks and stands, they sold more papers. The same holds true for web design. Your most compelling content, calls to action, etc. should try to remain “above the fold”. In web design, this is what is visible in a browser window without having to scroll down the page. Most studies suggest that a height of 768 pixels is what most browser  windows are set to.

When designing your website or creating your content, you need to put your most important items above the fold. We usually include:

1. Business name, Logo and/or Photo, Tag Line
2. Primary Navigation
3. Email Marketing Opt-In Offer
4. Calls to Action or Primary Headlines

When someone lands on your site, and the most important information about your business is above the fold, your visitor can absorb everything quickly and determine that your site is exactly what they are looking for.

Get Them to Take Action

Now this doesn’t mean that you are trying to get someone to buy something or opt-in under ten seconds. “Taking Action” can be as little as scrolling down the page and reading all of your content or clicking on a button or link to learn more. Well written headlines that answer a question that your visitor has, along with important info in the first few sentences, is usually enough to keep someone on your page, especially if this content is visible above the fold.

Avoid pop-up windows, videos or audio messages that automatically start, or too much advertising. Your business website’s sole focus is your target market and serving them to the absolute best of your ability. It should focus on providing useful, valuable information quickly.

• Your content must be easy to find, well organized, clear, and reachable by two to three clicks of the mouse or less to reach it.

• Your design must help reinforce and enhance your brand, position you as an expert, and build your credibility.

• Your back end must integrate automation tools that make your job easier, make the visitors’ experience better, and streamline your processes.

Your goal is to create a synergy between the overall site, the design, and the content that helps create chemistry with your visitors so they keep coming back.

Jennifer Bourn of Bourn Creative One of Only Five Experts for Week-Long Startup Business Teleseminar Series

APRIL 12, 2010 – SACRAMENTO, CA – Web design and online marketing expert, Jennifer Bourn of Bourn Creative, helps her clients harness the power of the Internet and use it to their advantage. Bourn will be featured in a week-long telesummit hosted by the Startup Biz Coach, Randi Pierce.

For five amazing days, five fabulous and successful women entrepreneurs will share their secrets for success, overcoming hard-learned lessons and how you can avoid them, as well as the breakthroughs that opened the floodgates that led to more clients, more freedom and more income.

Recessions spur entrepreneurial spirit that revives the economy. It’s happened many times in the past. According to Jason Daley of Entrepreneur.com in December 2009, “We’re seeing the beginnings of the entrepreneurial economy, a system built on nimble, low-overhead, oftentimes small companies with fluid workforces, rather than the massive conglomerates that have upheld the economy for decades.” The trend has been going on for a while but started to hit a fever pitch since 2009 when the economy really hit bottom.

Daley also points out that, “Self-employment rates have been growing at an average of 4.5 percent annually most of this decade, adding roughly 1 million people per year, and they are expected to keep pace or spike when the 2008 and 2009 numbers are released. Across the country, enrollment in entrepreneurship programs at universities is booming.”

Entrepreneurs are hungry for information from others who have already been through the ropes of starting a new business. In order to help them, Randi Pierce created the Startup to Success Telesummit. The Summit format will offer a chance to listen while Pierce interviews each woman entrepreneur about what they’ve learned as they’ve journeyed down the path of self-employment and financial independence. It’s an opportunity for those who are developing new startups to find out about pitfalls to avoid and best practices to utilize.

Jennifer Bourn was chosen as a featured entrepreneur because she has spent the more than twelve years as a web and graphic designer and marketing expert, with the last five years as the owner of Bourn Creative where she helps clients create a solid identity, especially online.

“I’ve been through it myself and understand what questions they need answered and can also offer them some professional advice on building their brand from the start,” added Bourn. “I’m honored to have been selected to be interviewed alongside women entrepreneurs who I have great respect for,” explained Bourn. She will be in good company with some of the best business coaches in the U.S. such as Jeanna Gabellini, Kim Duke, Gina Bell, and Jessica Swanson.

“Registering for this teleseries should be a no-brainer for budding entrepreneurs,” explained Bourn. It is free to listen live to the interviews and only $29 if you can’t listen live and would like to listen later to online recordings. Register for F.R.E.E. today for the From Startup to Success Telesummit

###

Search engine optimization or SEO is one of the top three most important components of your business website success. You can read about the other two components of successful business websites, good design and quality content, in the blog post Search Engine Optimization: The Two Most Important Things Your Website Needs.

The web design, website content, and SEO make up a trifecta of search engine results page power.

Search engine optimization is a process not a single event. With that fact in mind, your search engine optimization or SEO efforts should begin before the design and content development of your website and continue for the life of your website.

But you may be wondering what is search engine optimization or SEO anyway?

SEO is made up of all of the action you take to get found online and improve your search engine results page rankings. It encompasses everything you do to make sure you audience can find you online.

Here are the absolute minimum SEO strategies you need to implement in your business website:

Page Title: This is an HTML title that is unique to each page on your website and is no more than 70 characters in length.

Page Description: The meta description tag is a short keyword-rich sentence that describes why someone would want to visit the page. The description should be no more than 160 characters in length and unique to each page.

Keywords: Each page should target a specific and focused set of keywords. Those keywords should be included in the page title, description, headlines, and main page content.

Headlines: You should use the Headline HTML tags or H tags to format all headlines and subheadines. The H1 tag carries the most importance on the page, H2 has the second most importance, H3 has the third most importance, etc.

Alternative Text: Search engine robots or spiders can’t “see” what you images and graphic look like. Alternative text tags or ALT tags are a way to assign text to an image or graphic that appears in the HTML of the site. The ALT text is great for SEO because it can be crawled by the search robots or search spiders, and it is also used as a tool for the visually impaired when using the Internet.

I have to admit that as far as kid shows are concerned, I am totally hooked. I even found myself (yes, I am admitting this) watching it the other day when I was home alone!

A couple days ago we were snuggled up watching iCarly before bed and I almost wet my pants! In the episode, Carly and Sam were filming the intro to their live web show and when they were driving people to the iCarly website, they said…

Carly: So visit iCarly.com
Sam: that’s .com
Carly: because .net is for losers

I was cracking up because earlier that day I was educating a new client about the importance of having a .com domain and why .net, .info, and .biz domains aren’t as good. I was totally validated by a kids television show on Nickelodeon! They understand the value of a .com domain name!

Here is the bottom line. The .com domain names are the most popular, most used, most recognized domains on the Internet. It is likely that your prospects will search for you first with the .com name, and only if they don’t find you, will they move on to the .net, .info, and .biz domain name.

But what if the .com domain name is a competitor of yours? What if your prospect doesn’t realize they are on the wrong site? What if your prospect is seduced by your competitor’s website and content and they decide not to continue to search for your website? Or, what if their website is better than yours?

Part of building your brand is making sure you can be found easily and quickly online by the people who need your products and services. If you can’t secure your business name as a .com domain name, think of using a keyword-rich domain name that applies to your services or products, or one that describes the problem you solve or the solution you deliver.

The writers at iCarly clearly understand the importance of a .com domain name and now you do too! Have fun domain hunting!

Jennifer Bourn of Bourn Creative Helps Women Entrepreneurs Gain Valuable Resources for Business

Sacramento, CA – The Alliance of Online Entrepreneurs (AOE), founded by online business development expert, Brenda Rivas, is a community that empowers women to embrace their knowledge, passion and desired lifestyle and leverage those elements into profitable online businesses. Web design and Internet marketing consultant, Jennifer Bourn of Sacramento, CA, has been chosen to serve as one of only twelve on the AOE Expert Panel for 2010 where she will advise and train the membership of women entrepreneurs in Internet marketing.

In her own business, Bourn Creative, Bourn helps successful entrepreneurs, speakers, authors, and information marketers, with branding, web design, Internet marketing, and social media marketing. Her background includes publishing the popular ezine Design and Profit, winning several awards in branding, graphic design, and web design, and being a university Instructor on the subject. Using her expertise can help businesses spend more time following their passion and creating more revenue. Her approach takes the complex systems of marketing and breaks them down into easy to understand techniques. As a 2010 AOE Expert, Bourn will advise the membership, write for the AOE blog and offer teleclasses on Internet marketing, branding, graphic design, web design, blogging, and email marketing.

With a “Go Big or Go Home” attitude, Bourn brings an energetic and fun attitude to the ideas and strategies of Internet marketing.

“I’m honored to have been chosen to be a part of this amazing community of women entrepreneurs,” explained Bourn. “I’m passionate about helping them market their businesses online and I look forward to helping the AOE membership obtain the resources to do so.”

The AOE boasts an attractive, high touch benefits package that includes access to twelve of the industries top experts. “As success stories in their own fields, the Alliance of Online Entrepreneurs Expert Panel is tapping into global reach and 24 hour access of the Internet to give women of every age and race the knowledge, tips, resources and tools to start and grow equity rich online businesses,” Rivas said. “Members receive a copy of The Online Business Navigation Program. In this twelve CD program and accompanying guide, AOE Experts share best practices, and strategies to help you effectively navigate your business through the Internet. The program focuses on the core areas of building and growing a profitable online business”.

“This community isn’t just about making more money. We want women to be able to achieve a work/life balance that includes financial security as a platform that allows them to manifest the life that they really want, “Rivas said. “I want women to imagine what their life would look like if it completely worked and they created an online business as the vehicle to and make it happen.”

About the Alliance of Online Entrepreneurs

More than just a membership community, the AOE places an emphasis on teaching its members to automate their businesses, create systems and leverage their knowledge into a profitable equity rich business while evolving their mindsets. In addition, the AOE connects members with other energetic entrepreneurs with the purpose of creating profitable partnerships, and more!

The AOE is headquartered in Miami, Florida. For more information visit the AOE online at www.aoeconnect.com.

###

What bothers me the most is that most smart business owners blindly turn to a graphic designer or web designer to design them a site that makes them “look cool” to their competitors.

Here’s the problem with that approach: Your competitors aren’t going to buy from you or hire you.

Website design isn’t about your designer adding another edgy piece to their portfolio that pushes the boundaries and makes them look cool to other designers.

Website design isn’t about using all of the programming tricks and capabilities available. Remember, custom animation was popular in PowerPoint when it first came out, but now you’re sort of a dork if you use it. Some of those website features work the same way.

Website design also isn’t about jockeying for the coolest site award among your peers. This isn’t high school and no one cares what stickers you have on your binder or what patches you have on your backpack.

What people do care about is that they can find the information they are looking for quickly and easily. It also helps if your website isn’t ugly and doesn’t look like your “friend’s husband who is good with computers” built it for you.

With that said, here is what designing your website should be about:

Your business website has nothing to do with your competitors. It’s sole focus is your target market and serving them to the absolute best of your ability. It should focus on providing useful, valuable information quickly. Your content should be easy to find and should take as few clicks as possible to reach it.

The website development should include the integration of automation tools that make your job easier, make the visitors’ experience better, and streamline your processes.

The web design should focus on organizing and presenting the information clearly. It should make the content easy to read and should guide the user through the site. The design should also help reinforce and enhance your brand, position you as an expert, and build your credibility.

Think of your website this way – the website is the movie, the content is the leading actor, and the design is the supporting actor.

Your goal is to create a synergy between the overall site, the design, and the content that helps create chemistry with your visitors so they keep coming back.

The two most important things to help you get found more often online and stand out from the rest of the sites in your niche are, in this order:

1. Good content
2. Good design

Good content that is user focused, information rich and valuable is the most important part of your website. Good content that is updated regularly is even more important.

The search engines first and foremost want to see that you are providing information of value on a regular basis. Consistently adding new content to your website shows the search engines that your site deserves to show up in the results because people need access to your newly updated content.

Good design that is user focused, easy to navigate, and clean is the second most important part of your website. Good design shows the search engines that you care about your visitors and that you want to make their experience on your site easy, useful, and enjoyable. Good design keeps the code clean and simple, places the main content no more than 2-3 clicks from the home page, and portrays a visual design that helps guide the visitor through the site.

With that said, here are a few tips to optimize your website content pages:

• Make sure keywords appropriate to the page are in your title tag.
• A short description (160 characters or less) of the page contents should be included in the meta description tag.
• Your page headlines and sub headlines should be placed inside header tags.
• Your page keywords and long-tail key phrases should be included in the meta keywords tag.
• Integrate your keywords and key phrases into your content, especially at the top of your page. But make sure it is a natural integration into the flow of your content.

So, when developing your website, first focus first on smart, fresh content and great design. Second, focus on optimizing the content, image and links. Then, once your site is completely dialed in, focus on building massive amounts of traffic to your site.

Do you agree with my top two things every website needs? Let me know

You can call it anything you want, but ultimately when you break down every business to it’s core, you are engaging in commerce and trading a commodity for payment. Yes you may be aspiring to make a difference in the world, or help other business owners just like you achieve greater levels of success, or you may even be in business to create social change. But ultimately, you as a business owner must do one thing to make it all happen. You have to sell your products, services, and ideas for a profit.

To Make a Profit, Your Target Market Must Know That You Exist.

Your target market must be able to find you and learn more about what you have to offer and how it can help them solve their problems or achieve their goals. Only then will they be able purchase from you.

The easiest way to help you target market find you is:

1. To combine an impressive, eye-catching website or blog with consistently updated, fresh, and compelling content.
2. To optimize every aspect of the website and content. You must optimize first for the user with an easy flow of information, and second for the search engine robots to help increase your search engine rankings.

Gone are the days of merely having an online presence or brochure website. Now with web 2.0, it is all about interaction, engagement, community, relationships, sharing, teaching, and learning.

Your website can no longer be just a place for prospects to learn more about you. It can no longer be a glorified brochure.

With more and more businesses turning to the Internet each day to expand their market reach, high quality website design and blog design is becoming more important than ever.

Your website needs to:

1. Stand out from every other website in your industry. It needs to stick in the minds of your website visitors so they come back and tell their friends about your website.
2. Provide the information your visitors need and want quickly and easily.
3. Be a central hub of activity, sharing, and interaction, as well as a resource for fresh, valuable, useful content.
4. Show up on the first page of the search engine results pages for your keywords and long tail key phrases.

If you can position your website as the hub of activity and go-to resource for your niche, you will fill your marketing pipeline or marketing funnel with a consistent stream of new prospects and new customers. And, you will soon increase profits!

Do you have any questions about updating your content and making your website a lead generating, profit machine? Let me know!

In fact, while search engine optimization efforts do accelerate your results and help drive more traffic to your website, many entrepreneurs and business owners are seeing an increase in website traffic and search engine page rankings as a result of simply adding a blog to their existing website, or upgrading their existing website to include a blog and a complete content management system, such as WordPress (which is what this site is built on).

Here are some quick ideas to add fresh and new content to your website:

• Add a newsroom or press room to your website and add press releases and new articles as appropriate.
• Integrate a blog or upgrade your website to a blogsite to easily add short blog posts with valuable information.
• Create an articles section on your website and add new articles as they are written.
• Publish RSS feeds on your website of other complimentary blogs, positioning you as an information publisher.
• Add a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section to your website and as your prospects and customers ask you new questions, add the question and answer to your website.

Do you have any other ideas on ways you can make it easy to add new content to your website? Have you tried on of these options and had success? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Style sheets are a way to define and style the look of website pages. Style sheets allow web developers to separate the content code and design code. This allows the HTML to be used for the markup (programming) of the content and not the website design and layout. It also helps reduce code duplication.

The “cascading” part is where things start to get interesting.

The best way to explain CSS is to visualize a waterfall. Imagine the water is cascading down over the all sorts of rocks, both big and small on its way to the bottom. Along the way, several rocks help guide the water, but only the ones at the very bottom determine how it flows into the lake or river.

When multiple inter-connected style sheets are used instead of a single style sheet they are referred to as cascading style sheets. This means the information flows freely from one style sheet to another.

Cascading style sheets are used:

• On the surface to define the look and style or design of websites and web pages
• Behind the scenes to style the XHTML and XML markup
• For use offline to define how the site should look when printed

Cascading style sheets give web developers and website owners advantages such as:

• Consolidated Design Information
  CSS files contain all of the website’s style code everything to do with the look of your site can be found in one place. They are linked to the appropriate pages with the HTML tag.
• Better Stylistic Control
  CSS allows for control over many aspects of the website appearance that cannot be controlled with pure HTML.
• Semantic Content Markup
  When using CSS to define the design elements and appearance of a website (aesthetic markup/programming), the HTML code is then used for content (semantic markup/programming). This makes it easier to understand the code and find information when you need to make a change.
• Search Engine Optimization
  With CSS, your website page code is cleaner and easier to navigate. That means there is less non-content related code for the search engine spiders to scan while analyzing your site. This also helps your website’s keyword density.
• Increased Accessibility
  Cascading style sheets help make your website more accessible for the visually-impaired. Using CSS almost eliminates the audio trash generated by aesthetic code that has nothing to do with the page content. An aural browser, used by the visually impaired ignores the visual properties defined in the CSS.