Erich Stauffer

Category: Web Design

  • Tablet PCs and Their Effect on Web Design

    2011 is supposed to be ‘the year of the tablet’ and while growth has exploded since 2009 it hasn’t really affected web design, but all that may soon change.

    imageIn the same way ebook readers are changing the way books are produced, tablet PCs may change the way web site content is produced. For example, how would a web site be designed differently if it were meant to be touched instead of clicked? We already have separate domains and style sheets for mobile phones, why not for other mobile devices?

    Web analytics are currently smart enough to detect browser types, but how will we detect tablet PCs. There are so many different types that we need a tablet comparison just to know what tablet runs what operating system for compatibility!

    Maybe it won’t be a problem. Hopefully it will all work out, but as technology progresses, so must web design.

  • Don’t Forget About Weebly

    Webories, a web directories web site, has a post entitled “Top 5 Hosted Micro-Blogging Publishing Services”, but one web site they missed was Weebly.

    Weebly is a San Francisco, California based company that was founded in 2006 with the mission to help people put their information online quickly and easily. It now enables 3 million people to easily create personal sites and blogs or establish web presences for businesses, weddings, classrooms, churches, or artistic portfolios – just to name a few examples.

    In early 2007, the Weebly founding team joined a seed funding program called Y Combinator and began working full-time to make the Weebly service spectacular. Weebly was named one of TIME’s 50 Best Websites of 2007 under Web Services, and they have continued to improve Weebly’s feature set and ease of use ever since.

    Amescreative says, “Weebly is in a class by itself in many ways since it allows you to build a true website, and not just a blog, but it’s drag and drop interface can be confusing and frustrating for some. It however offers a lot of customization options if you are a programmer or going to use one to customize your site,” and goes on to compare with Tumblr, which was mentioned by Webories, “Tumblr offers a good mix with extreme ease of use for novices along with easy customization options for programmers or designers looking at it for the first time. Tumblr’s balance between these two important aspects are what make me recommend it as the best solution in most instances. If you want a more complete site, go with Weebly, and if you want to do it all yourself as a novice WordPress might be a good choice, but Tumblr is easier to use that WordPress in my opinion and while not doing everything that Weebly does, gets close.”

  • Blogtrepreneurs Blogging for Profit

    The Internet is a great unsettled land not unlike the discovery of a new world – and entrepreneurs everywhere are taking notice

    Entrepreneurs who blog for profit are sometimes called Blogtrepreneurs. Whether they come from a business background, an Internet marketing background, web design background, or are still in high school, anyone who can identity a niche (read: need) can turn content creation into revenue creation. In fact, that is exactly what I do everyday whether I’m actively working on a blog (or mini-site) or not. That is because blogging for profit is like a fly wheel. It takes a lot of energy to get it going (finding a niche, an appropriate domain, adding content, and promoting), but once the fly wheel is going it takes little effort to keep it going and you are free to start a new fly wheel, or blog.

    Niches

    Niches are segments of a market and are generally well covered. Micro-niches are segments of a niche and are generally covered less. This is where blogtrepreneurs can add value to the market by helping people find answers to what they are seeking in a nook of a market segment. For example, digital cameras are a market. SLR cameras are a niche of digital cameras and NIKON SLR cameras are a micro-niche of SLR cameras. A site about NIKON SLR cameras could sell it promote or educate about the cameras themselves and about all of their accessories. I have a blog about family photography that talks about different digital cameras and techniques for taking family pictures, for example. Identifying a micro-niche is not easy, but there are many sites out there that can help you identity how to find a niche.

    Domains

    Once you have a niche picked out, its time to secure a domain. There are still good domains to be had, but everyday there are less and less as more people gobble up the remaining ones. In the same way there is only so much land, there are only so many words and combinations of words, which is what adds to domains value over time. When choosing a domain you should include your primary keywords if at all possible. If you don’t know what your primary keywords are for your niche, stop and find out. There are plenty of sites with advice on how to choose the right keywords, which you should use  in your domain. Domains can be registered at registers like GoDaddy.com, but also at hosts like HostGator, 1and1, and BlueHost. I can recommend any of these.

    Content

    Once you have your domain registered with hosting, you’ll want to start adding content. One of the easiest ways to do this is to setup WordPress on your server. BlueHost makes it easy with SimpleScripts, but you can install it manually almost as easy at 1and1 and others. Once WordPress is installed, you can start adding posts, but where will you get the content? Think of writing content like writing a research paper. You can’t copy works, but you can quote and reference. Ultimately you wafted to add commentary and value to the material without plagiarising. You won’t get an F, but Google may not rank your site if it contains duplicate content so write your own. For my nook covers site I pieced together facts around the web to create something whole and new and its paid off.

    Promotion

    Now that you’ve created your content its time to promote your site. Promotion starts from within and that means finding a WordPress theme that is SEO ready it making it so. I’m not going to go into SEO here, but there are lots of sites that explain all about search engine optimization. The next step is creating backlinks, which are links back to your site from other, preferably relevant, sites. Think of backlinks as votes that Google uses to decide who it should rank first for a given set of keywords. Find relevant sites to create backlinks on by commenting or by adding to a forum discussion for example.  I was able to greatly increase my ereader accessories traffic by adding a link to it in a forum about ereaders.

    So do you think you have what it takes to be a blogtrepreneur? Don’t wait. The longer you do the more you delay getting paid and risk losing out on the perfect domain. Want more? Check out my other blog on how to make money online.

  • Erich Stauffer Web Design

    Erich Stauffer WordPress Web Design and Development for Small Businesses in the Greater Indianapolis Area

    When our sales managers started to realize that what customers really cared about was the ability to control their own website, they realized that they were not just selling great looking web design and SEO services, but control and access to their websites, and the ability to change text or add pages as needed. From this point it was decided to be more transparent about the content management system (CMS) they were using to support their clients: WordPress.

    WordPress is an open source CMS, originally used as a blog publishing application powered by PHP and MySQL, but has since been expanded to be able to support almost any web site. It has many features including a plugin architecture and a templating system and is used by over 12% of the top 1 million websites.

    The most popular CMS in use today, WordPress was first released on May 27, 2003 and has since added features like integrated link management, a search engine-friendly permalink structure, the ability to assign nested, multiple categories to posts, and support for tagging. Finally, WordPress has a rich plugin architecture which allows users and developers like us to extend its functionality beyond the features that come as part of the base install.

    By embracing WordPress and having more upfront pricing, we think this greater transparency will lead to a better customer relationship over time. If you are interested in working with friendly, professional, and experienced WordPress developers, contact us today.

  • The First Day of the Rest of My Life

    While the title of this post sounds a little dramatic, today I did turn in a resignation letter to my day-time job.  The job was well paying and secure.  I had friends and freedom there, but it wasn’t what I was passionate about and the moment I thought I could get away to do what I was passionate away, I did.  It wasn’t an easy decision though.

    A week ago I asked God how I should be spending my time to create revenue.  I decided to fast for 7 nights, skipping supper each night to pray instead.  By the end of the week, my wife and I both came to the same conclusion.  It was time to leave.  After that, our ideas of how things should go slightly differ.  She wants me to spend some time looking for another job and I want to take care of my current customers and build my own business, but I have a feeling I’ll do a little bit of both.  I’ve already informed a couple of old jobs I had that I would be willing to work for them again when needed.

    My wife is pregnant with our fourth child.  We don’t yet know what the sex is or how many there might be or whether or not we’ll have insurance.  My hope is that the path God led us down includes provisions for all of that and as long as I continue to pray and follow that path.  I have goals and plans to focus on the Indianapolis web design business, Growmotion, and Cost Publishing, my blog network, while doing contract work for an Indianapolis computer repair firm and Watershawl [a web design and SEO company I ran from 2007 to 2012].

    I don’t know what the future holds, but I have just under four weeks left at my current job to start finding out.  I have to figure out how I’m going to structure my day working at home, how much time I’m going to spend with my family playing, teaching, and eating, and how much time I’m going to spend resting and reading.  There are a lot of unknowns, but one thing is for sure, today is the first day of the rest of my life, but then again, every day is.

  • Erich Stauffer Helps Local Candidates Reach the Voting Public

    Erich Stauffer Helps Local Candidates Reach the Voting Public

    Erich Stauffer, Inc. is excited to announce a web design and online promotion special to help local candidates during the 2010 campaign season.  Our experienced and local team wants to be sure that you reach the maximum number of potential voters during your political campaign.

    A professionally designed website will let your voters know about who you are, what you stand for, how you will serve them if elected, where you will be for specific events during the campaign, and even be a 24-7 secure donation gathering tool for your campaign.

    We make the process simple by having you fill out a short questionnaire on your time to get all the information we need to build your website.

    With a professionally designed website, you and your campaign team can promote your candidacy with confidence.  Let our team do all the technical work for you, so you can spend your time meeting with the people who will vote for you.  Get started on the road to victory today with your team at Erich Stauffer.  We can’t wait to serve you.

  • Best Dental Web Sites – Reviewing Dentistry Web Design

    Dentist’s web sites have become increasingly more advanced and colorful as competition increases and more dentists are fighting for the same number of patients. Indiana has one of the highest distribution of dentists in the nation and so competition for top Google rankings for the most popular search term, “Indianapolis dentist,” is an ongoing battle. Once the dentist’s website makes it to the first page of Google, then it also has to look good to attract patients. That is what we are discussing today – how spa dentistry, dental studios, and sedation dentistry are hot design and service elements used in dentistry web design.

    spadentSpa Dent plays on the dentist-office-as-spa genre and uses the white flower as an accent. It features crown molding features around the outside edges, giving it a unique web design. The frame of the site is beveled with a drop shadow. The background has a mixture of solid colors and textures. The call to action is the contact box on the middle-right, exactly where it should be.

    austindentalspaAustin Dental Spa uses long-arc graphic backgrounds and a kind of half-file folder tab, half-crown molding graphic outline to the web design. The arc is centered behind the main page and continues on out no matter how wide your monitor is. The blue and white colors remind the patient of a medical environment, but the khakis and oranges warm the site up to make it more spa-like. The bending lines in khaki are probably more intended to by file-folder tabs than crown molding once you view the featured video, which definitely features the file-folder tab top. The call to action here is the contact us area, which instead of a form like Spa Dent, requires the user to click on the nice envelope icon.

    Indianapolis DentistThis site has a textured background with a mix of solid and textured backgrounds inside the main content of the page. This Indianapolis dentist‘s web site features a flash banner, much like Spa Dent’s and Austin Dental Spa. Indianapolis Dentistry is a dental spa and dental studio which uses sedation dentistry. It encompasses all three of the major trends in dental web sites today. The call to action on this website is generally missing, so I would suggest adding a button or graphic somewhere in the middle-right asking the user to “Make an appointment by calling…” or something along those lines. I like the mix of grays, khakis, blues, and whites in this web site. It is clean and well put together.

    inspadentistryIn Spa Dentistry features a nice green background with a black text background, but the site is made to expand to fit your window, which changes the positioning of the contents of the page and generally stretches things out unless the user is still using an 800×600 resolution. I don’t particularly care for the design, but wanted to include it for comparison against the next two dental web sites which use either green or black backgrounds. Like Indianapolis Dentistry, this website has no real call to action. And like Spa Dent, this dental web site also makes use of the white flower with the yellow stamen.

    oradentistryOra Dentistry’s web site is more of what you would have found circa 2003 on the web. It’s got the video, the structure, the flash, but it’s all very old looking. It seems like it hasn’t been refreshed in a while, even though it may have been. Sometimes web designers can get stuck doing something the same way because it has worked for them in the past. This may or may not be the case, but in general the flash animation is a bit fuzzy. If Ora didn’t have all the movie stars appearing on the web site, he may not have had as much success on the design alone. There is no real call to action, but it does seem like the designer wants us to watch the movie. Perhaps the call to action lies within the video.

    studio-dentalStudio Dental is a dental studio, like Indianapolis Dentistry, and also features a flash banner as well as the white flower with the yellow stamen. It has a piano-black background on top of a gray background, which really makes the site pop. This is a really classy design which lines up the pages across the top and the services along the left side. For those who just want to know the location or the hours, that is along the top and for those who want to know what is going on in that location, that information is down along the left-side. The web site if littered with attractive women, even featuring Mrs. Globe, so like Ora Dentistry, famous people don’t seem to hurt your business much, but unlike Ora Dentistry’s web site, this one is very nicely done. The call to action is to “call to make an appointment”, but it is located in the middle-center, which is not the prime location. It should be moved to the right – in between Mrs. Globe and the video featuring his guest appearance on TV.

  • Indianapolis Web Design and SEO Consulting

    Erich Stauffer is primarily an online marketing firm that uses two primary tools to promote your business or brand on the Internet. The first tool is your web page, which tells users about your business, allows them to interact with your business, or is setup to sell things for your business. The second tool SEO, or search engine optimization, which helps drive traffic to that website. The two tools are not mutually exclusive, however. The best SEO techniques involve improving the wording or layout of the web site and as well as promoting the site from outside using link-backs.

    Although relatively new techniques come out all the time to adapt to the methods search engines like Google use, content is still king. The easiest sites to market are those with lots of text about the company and the products or services they offer. Many times, businesses choose to hire copywriters for the sole purpose of helping to write articles for the website. These articles are either about the company or about a product. Another reason for using a copywriter may be to write objective press releases. Press releases are usually one of the best methods to get the word out about a new product or promotion and are a key to any SEO plan.

    If you would like more information about Erich Stauffer, about web design and seo in general, or about web design and seo in the Indianapolis area, please visit erichstauffer.com.

  • Erich Stauffer Reviews “6 Website Fixes to Make Now”

    This is a review of an article originally published on Entrepreneur.com on April 28, 2009 entitled, “6 Website Fixes to Make Now,” by Mike Werling. This article is for small business owners and entrepreneurs who may or may not have a webmaster or web designer and it assumes that everyone is on the same page that every business needs a website.  Werling’s thesis is that, “Relatively minor issues can drag down your site’s effectiveness,” and that these issues could be costing your business money.  We couldn’t agree more, but lets go down the list.

    Website fix #1 is, “Increase the speed.” It’s not about streamlining your site for dial-up users anymore.  Even broadband users can enjoy a fast-loading site while other are increasingly browsing the Internet using their cell phones or PDAs, which also can have slower connections.  Werling writes that technology for tech’s sake is no longer in fashion, which is also Website Fix #3.  Even Flash, which is on 99% of all computers is not as sought after as it once was even, “just a few years ago.”  Werling quotes Ben Rushlo,  director of Keynote Consulting for Phoenix-based Keynote Systems, a service provider that improves online business performance, “People now view [Flash] as annoying. They’d rather read information.” Rushlo recommends using the smallest file sizes for images as well as putting any, “non-essential” pictures towards the bottom of the page to, “help the important information pop up quickly.”

    Website fix #2 is, “Write better product descriptions. ” This has mostly to do with e-commerce solutions and shopping cart design, but we can apply some of these suggestions to anything message you are trying to get across online, whether it be selling a product, service, or an idea.  Werling says all descriptions should be, “Succinct and filler-free.”  One of our web designers tells the story of a supervisor at a previous job declaring a, “No Fluff Zone,” for all client-facing material.  Werling agrees, but says it, “Can be difficult because, as Amy Schade says, you need to, ‘Convince [users] the product meets their needs,” but the verbiage. ‘Has to be short and descriptive.’”  Werling goes on to say that, “There’s no salesperson available on a website, so [users],  “Should be able to see a product and know what it does,’ says Schade.” A director at the Nielsen Norman Group in New York City, Schade is also co-author of the second edition of the “E-Commerce User Experience” report.

    Website Fix #3 is, “Delete tech used for the sake of tech.” This fix is sort of a combination of fixes 1 and 2.  In order to speed up a website, you get rid of slow-loading flash (Fix #1) and any fluff (Fix #2) that doesn’t really propel your website’s goal forward.  Rushlo says, “[Site owners] need to evaluate if things like music, video and 360-degree views are necessary.”  Werling writes that Schade subscribes to Rushlo’s view, “[Schade] says to beware the trendy and new. Anything business owners jump on because it is the latest and greatest has the potential to backfire, especially if entrepreneurs don’t have the resources to keep up with all of the moving parts of their sites. Things like Facebook pages and video are fun; and social networking is quickly becoming an integral part of many businesses’ marketing platforms, but business owners need to weigh a technology’s popularity against their ability to utilize it fully.”

    Website Fix #4 is, “Improve shopping cart and payment options,” but we are going to call this, “Improving the functional design of your website.” Users can be irrational.  The smallest hangup or hint of mistrust can make them change their mind on whether or not they are going to use your product or service.  Yes, shopping carts should have the same look and feel of the rest of the site, but they shouldn’t require setting up an account, for example and of course the site should be trusted and secure.  If you cannot afford a secure certificate for your website or do not want or need to setup that type of environment, Paypal is a perfectly acceptable solution that users trust.  The checkout process or any other primary aim of your website should instill confidence, not regret.  Be as transparent as you can.  Let users know how the information will be used and kept.  This is sometimes called a privacy statement.  Transparency is also a top business trend for 2009.

    Website Fix #5 is, “Use unique page titles on every page.” This is more of a SEO tip than anything, but nevertheless true.  SEO stands for search engine optimization.  It’s what you do on your site to make it more appealing to search engines like Google or Yahoo.  Page titles, what is displayed at the top of your browser window, are important and they should be different for every page.  Each page should have a different description, keywords, and H1 tag, just as a baseline.  There are many other things you can do to improve SEO, but changing the titles on your page is one of the most important.  If you use H1 tags, make sure they are only used once per page.  Use H2 or font tags for other titles on your page.  Use a Strong tag around items that are especially important.  Some CMS programs like WordPress default to using Strong instead of Bold tags.

    Website Fix #6 is, “Shorten forms.” This dovetails into Website Fix #2 and 4.  Basically,  Werling recommends removing what isn’t necessary. If you don’t need the user’s physical address, for example, don’t ask for it.  Werling writes, “Only ask for the information you really need. ” In summary, business websites should be fast-loading and fluff-free.  Give the user just enough to make a desicion. Remove anything that isn’t necessary in order to not annoy the user and improve speed.  We think this is great advice.  If you would like help making any of the above changes to your company’s website, please contact us.  Erich Stauffer is  an Indianapolis web design firm serving the entire Midwest region and beyond.  We offer web design and development services for all types and sizes of businesses.