We have over 40 templates to choose from, and each template can be fully customized with your company logo, colors, content, etc. To see these templates or get a free quote, contact us at 478-390-6770 or fill out our contact form.

- Make your logo prominent in your site design.
It is so important when you are tying to brand your company to include your logo on all the marketing materials you create.  Your website is no exception.  Make sure your logo is prominent in the design of your website.

- Use your company colors.
Company colors are also an important part of building your brand.  Your website design should be in your colors so customers can easily recognize that they are at the right site as soon as they land on your homepage. 

- Include your company name in your domain name.
It is always a good idea to include your company name in your domain name.  This will help brand your company and help people find you. It is also important to go to a domain registrar like godaddy.com sooner rather than later to reserve your domain name.  Reserving it will ensure that it is under your control and that competitors and domain squatters cannot buy it or themselves.

- Maintain the look and feel of your business.
Your website is an extension of your business and should reflect the personality of your business– whether that is classy and sophisticated, hip and trendy, or fun and energetic. You know if you have achieved this if going to your website kind of feels like walking into the door of your business. And if you don’t have a physical location that customers visit, you have even more flexibility to create the look and feel of your business through your website.
Your customer needs to know within seconds of landing on your site that they have come to the right place. A lot of business names are similar so it is important that your website maintain a look and feel that is uniquely you.

One of the most important things to look for is a designer that takes the time to get to know your business. A big part of our website design process is learning. You need to provide your designer with all of your marketing materials– brochures, flyers, logos, etc.

You also want a web designer that is receptive to criticism and willing to take your input into consideration. Your site needs to be uniquely YOU; it is an important extension of your business. We always tell our clients that we are building THEIR website. So if they don’t like something about the designs we come up with, they should say so. We aren’t here to get our egos fed; we are here to design a website that is going to help your business succeed.

As far as experience levels, you want a designer that has experience with…
- Web design. You want to go with an experienced firm because they know the whole process, and they understand important things like website usability standards and cross-browser compatibility.
-Programming. If you want any kind of interactive quality to your site like forms or administrative back-ends, you you’ll need a web designer with experience in a web programming language such as PHP or ASP.
-Graphic design. Typically, you have web designers that are good at programming and web designers that are good at graphic design. It is rare to find one person that is superior at both so make sure you go with a company that has a programmer and graphic designer. Because building your website is an important part of building your brand, you also need someone who understands formats that are not just web-based so that they can convert the look for your current materials to your website or vice versa.
-Search engine optimization. A lot of web designers don’t design with the search engines in mind. But it will save you lot of aggravation when you are trying to market your site if you have a designer that understands SEO best practices. Sites that are too graphically intense or all flash tend to not rank well in search engines. So unless you are a high profile business that has already built their brand like Chanel, you will need someone who understands how to get you to rank for keywords in your target area. You may have a really cool-looking design but what good is your website if no one can find it?

If you are interested in hiring a web designer to build your company’s website or just to improve it, mention this blog entry and get a free web consultation when you contact us!

However, we know that many small businesses are on tight budgets and feel that they cannot afford to hire a professional web design firm. What you may not know is that having  a custom site built by Goebel Media Group can be financed.  If you take advantage of our website design ‘same as cash’ financing program, your payments can be as little as $100/month until your balance is paid off.

If website financing is something you may be interested in please request a web design quote.

So what do you need to get started building a website? Let’s talk about some of the real basic concepts that we need to understand. This is how we break it down for our clients– think of it in terms of building a house.

• The first thing you need is SPACE to put your house– some “land.” In the web world, the space to store your website is called hosting. A web host runs servers, which are computers connected to the internet at high speeds 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. These computers can be accessed by anyone who has an internet connection all over the world.
• You also have an address so people know where to find you. For your website, you will have a web address, or domain name. This would be something like www.goebelmedia.com or www.google.com. Dot com’s, net’s, and org’s are generally better for SEO and since they are running on short supply nowadays, it is important to buy your domain right away. The cost is cheap, around $10/month. We find the best place to buy domain names is at www.GoDaddy.com.
• Typically, you aren’t going to design your own house so you would need an architect– or for your website, a web designer. You are going to need a web designer with experience not only with web design but ideally with programming, graphic design, SEO, and internet marketing.
• Your house is the actual site design. This is code, typically HTML, that will be place on the hosting, or the land, at the domain, or the address. Just as there are certain critical elements of a house, there are some things you definitely want to include on your website. You want to make sure you have your logo and slogan in a prominent place on your site. You also want to include ways for your customers to contact you, and ways to convert traffic into sales. You could add a sales component to your site or include “lead forms.” It is also important to include analytic tracking code on your website so you can understand where your customers are coming from, how they found you, and how they are navigating through your site.
• Finally, if you buy a house, you have to maintain it. The same goes for a website. It will turn a customer off if your website always looks the same and search engines such as Google or Bing prefer fresh content. Think of these updates or design changes as a fresh coat of paint. As far as redesigning your website, I have heard that this should occur every 2 years. For small businesses, we believe that every 5 years is sufficient.

So, that is some of the basic information you need to know to bring your business online.

If you aren’t convinced that now is the right time to start thinking about your website, consider the following reasons:

1. Customers and potential customers need to know where to find you.

Every business can benefit from having an effective website. That being said, not every business needs the same type of site and not every business needs a large and expensive site. Many small businesses simply need a few pages with their phone number, address and directions to their location. This is going to allow new and returning customers to access the information they need about your business whenever they need it just by searching you out in a search engine such as Google.

2. Your customers are already shopping (and pre-shopping) online.

According to Forrester Research, online sales in the US are expected to reach $331 billion in 2010. This market is only expected to grow.

There will always be a place for brick and mortar retail shops, but e-commerce is something you shouldn’t ignore or resist. Not included in the $331 billion figure are consumers who went online to research, price, and comparison shop products before going into a traditional store to actually make their purchase. So even if you aren’t ready to sell online, a website can motivate your customer to buy from you.

Another promising statistic from Forrester states that although the economic downturn has impacted overall sales in nearly all areas, the online sales growth rate has diminished only slightly and continues its upward trend by as much as 13% per year.

3. The sooner you get online, the sooner you will start making new customers online. 

Building a superior online presence takes time. Having a website built can be quick, but getting into the search engines and ranking well for the keywords you want can take months, even years for competitive terms. The good news is that you can get started right now by going to Godaddy.com and buying the domain name (that’s your .com or .net address). The domain will only cost you about $10/year. The earlier you get started, the sooner you can start getting results.

If you are serious about making 2010 your year to bring your business online, be sure to attend the January Market and visit http://www.goebelmedia.com for more information.

Our default supported browsers will now be IE7, IE8, FF2, FF3, & Chrome.  If you need other browsers supported for your project, just ask and we will accomodate!

Update! After I posted this, I logged into Twitter and noticed one of the trending topics is “IE6 Must Die!” How ironic! Check out that article here: http://mashable.com/2009/07/16/ie6-must-die/

1) Free blogs/sites tend not to rank as well in search engines.
There are exceptions, but frees sites usually don’t rank as well in search engines such as Google and Yahoo. Free sites and blogs are popular as hobby sites and often have poor content and are never updated. Because of this, search engines do not give these pages a high rank.

2) Free websites and blogs make your business seem less trustworthy.
There is a notion that free sites and blogs seem less authentic and less professional. Spammers and scammers use free website services almost exclusively; I wouldn’t want my business grouped with them!

3) Free sites and blogs often look cheap and have an unoriginal site design.
Again, there are exceptions. However, for the most part, free sites and blogs do not look as sharp as professional websites. First impressions count; why would you want your business represented with a poor looking, unoriginal design? Another problem with these sites is that they are not easily customized to fit the needs of your business.

4) Most of these services do not come with a domain name.
Your URL for a free site is usually just a subdomain of the service (ex. example.blogspot.com).  If you do get your own domain (www.example.com) through the service, you are giving them control over the domain. And if you decide to get a professional website in the future, it may be difficult or costly to get the domain back under your control.

5) These services often put ads on your site.
Many free services run their ads on your website. This can make your business look really unprofessional.  If someone is going to make money off your website, it should be you.

6) Some services are unreliable.
One of the most popular free website services (Geocities) is closing on October 26th 2009.  It highlights a good point that these services are free, and some have a hard time making money.  Also, because they are free, they have less obligation to their users to stay open.

Don’t get me wrong– free website and blog services can be a great thing.  They make creating a website or blog possible for anyone, which is great.  But if you’re serious about your website and your business, it’s a good idea to make an investment in some professional web design services.