James Carnes Center Relaunch

10T Web Design is happy to announce the relaunch of the James Carnes Center Website. The new website features a calendar of events, making it easy to find out if the Carnes Center is available for your event.

Why not head over there now and check it out?

Belmont County Auditor Relaunch

10T Web Design is happy to announce the relaunch of the Belmont County Auditor’s website. While 10T Web Designs has been maintaining their website for a few months, we have now completed the transitions to new the new design. The layout is a reworking of its previous design, updated to more modern web design techniques.

For the Auditor’s website, the font was modernized and enlarged for easier viewing. The front page’s Flash slide show has been replaced with a pure CSS slide show, eliminating the user’s need to have Flash installed and the security risks that come with a Flash installation. The Auditor’s News is now presented in an RSS feed, allowing users to subscribe with a news reader or by signing up to receive the Auditor’s news by email.

The Auditor’s website can be found at belmontcountyauditor.org. Head on over and check them out!

Belmont County Fair 2013

Had a great afternoon and evening yesterday at the 2013 Belmont County Fair Livestock Auction. We bid on several animals and bought a goat from Allison McIntire. Thank you, Allison, for all the hard work you put into your goat project this year, and also thank you for the gift package, especially the candy buckeyes, which I’m enjoying right now.

It really was awesome seeing so many local businesses out at the fair supporting the youth of Belmont County. It’s no wonder that this is one of our favorite days of the entire year.

Choosing a Domain Name

Choosing a domain name is one of the first steps in getting on-line. Once you pick a domain name, you are sort of stuck with it, so you need to pick a good one. But how do you choose? Here are a few suggestions:

Shorter is, usually, better.

In general, the shorter you can make your domain name, the better. It makes it easier for your visitors to remember and it’s easier to type. So, if your business is named Super-Super Widgets Service and Custom Installation, instead of supersuperwidgetsserviceandcustominstallation.com, try to get supersuperwidgets.com or, even better, supersuper.com. The less you make your visitors type, the better.

Try to get a .com.

It’s not always possible, but if given the choice, pick the .com variant instead of other top-level domains like .us or .net. I know supersuper.info is a few bucks cheaper than supersuper.com. You’re going to be selling thousands of widgets, so what’s the big deal about spending less than the cost of lunch over the course of a year for the better domain name? People are so used to hearing .com that even if you tell them supersuper.info, they still hear supersuper.com.

Fear the hyphen.

Ok, maybe you don’t have to fear it, but you should be leery of the hyphen. Only use it if there is really no other option. I know the company is named “Super-Super Widgets” but people are going to leave they hyphen out. Not to mention that if you register super-super.com and a competitor notices that supersuper.com is available, they will register it, they will direct it to their website, and they will get visitors who are trying to find you. Worst of all, there really isn’t much you can do about it, short of a possible law suit.

Does it look good on a billboard?

You want a domain name that just ‘looks’ good. If it’s all gnarly and hard to remember, people are not going to remember it. As it turns out, super.com might be up for auction, but it’s going to cost you a couple hundred (or possibly thousand) dollars to buy. Why? Because super.com would look awesome on a billboard. You have to use your judgement and decide if the extra investment is right for you, but you have to admit, getting super.com would be pretty cool.

Grab them keywords.

Maybe super.com is out of your price range, and supersuper.com and any other variant you can think of isn’t available. Try to get a domain name that has some of your business’s keywords built in. Maybe you’ll get lucky and widget.com will be available. If not, maybe superwidgets.com will be.

Make it something they will remember.

Last, but not least, it needs to be catchy. Most people don’t walk around with a pen and paper to write down domain names they come across, so make sure it’s something that will stick in their mind.

Maybe super.com would be worth the cost after all. It’d look so good on a billboard…

Happy Birthday, Sir Berners-Lee!

Wanted to take a moment to wish a ‘Happy Birthday’ to Sir Timothy John “Tim” Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, which was born with the first communication between a ‘web browser’ and a ‘web server’ in mid-November of 1989. Sir Berners-Lee is also a director of the World Wide Web Consortium, the founder of the World Wide Web Foundation, a senior researcher at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT, and, naturally, a knight.

Everything on the web today, and everything we do here at 10T Web Design, builds on the Hypertext Transfer Protocol designed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee over two decades ago.

Thank you, Sir Berners-Lee, for getting this crazy thing we call the web going, and have a very happy birthday!

Improve Your Google+ Profile for Business

Most people are not taking advantage of Google+ for their business, as many people have been slow to using Google+. It is, however, continuing to gain traction in the social networking world. If you are interested in improving your business’s Google+ page, Small Business Trends has a nice article to help you improve your profile.

Somerset Primitives Launched

Wanted to take a moment to announce the launch of the Somerset Primitives website.

The latest website designed by us here at 10T Web Design, Somerset Primitives is a full e-commerce website and is integrated with their Facebook page for one-stop news updates and easy user sharing. It also has tiled image galleries and the ability to post from basically anywhere with a smartphone.

Head on over there now and check them out.

Why Your Business Should Advertise Online

Anyone who has made use of advertising knows the impact that it can have on your business. However, many companies are reluctant to advertise online because it is a relatively new advertising format. Why should you consider online advertising for your business? Well, here are seven off the top of my head:

1. Specific targeting –  Be as specific as you like with your advertising. Want to be huge in Sheboygan? You can tailor a campaign to focus on just one city.
2. Global reach – Ever check into a country-wide television advertisement? Me either, because I’m sure it won’t fit in my budget. Advertise online and you can attract customers from just about anywhere.
3. Affordable prices – Spend only what you want because you set the limits. As little as a dollar a day can let you see if it is going to be right for your business. Even with a moderately conservative budget of five dollars a day can make a huge impact.
4. Enhanced analysis – Online advertisers offer a huge amount of information about how your ads are performing, allowing you to get a better grip on what is working, and what isn’t.
5. Quick changes – With quick analysis comes the ability for quick changes. You can change your advertisements at any time with just a click. Want to stop running an ad? Just click stop.
6. More effective use of funds – Ever figure out half way through a ‘traditional’ advertising campaign that it isn’t being effective? Too bad you had to pay for it up front. With online advertising, you pay after your ads display, so a dog of a campaign won’t cost you a fortune.
7. Only pay for those you attract – With an advertisement on television, radio, or in the newspaper, you basically end up paying to the potential people who see your advertisement. With online advertising, you can choose to pay only for the people who show enough interest to visit your website. Plus, with good keyword selection, you will only advertise to people who are looking for what you are selling.

New Year’s Resolutions for your Business

So, how are your New Year’s resolutions coming along. Good, I hope. How about your business’s New Year’s resolutions?

What? You haven’t set resolutions for your business in 2013? Why not? It’s a great time of year to start fresh and see if you can attract new customers. Here are a few on-line based resolutions you might want to consider.

Give your business a new website. Been thinking about taking the plunge and going on-line? The first of the year is a great time to start a website before you spend the year’s advertising budget on something else. (You really should consider the costs as advertisement, because that’s exactly what it is.) More and more people are making buying decisions based on what they find on the web, and if you don’t have a website, you are missing out.

Update your business website. Already have one, but haven’t even looked at it yourself in the last year? You should. Out of date information turns customers off, and with a properly designed website, even a technophobe can post updates. I tell my customers that if they can Facebook, then they can learn how to post to their website, provided the website is well-built from the start.

Get social! Speaking of Facebook, does your business have a Facebook page? If not, get cracking! It’s totally free and a great way to build your customer base. Post about your specials, new products, or even industry news, just keep your business in front of your customer’s eyes. Once every couple of days is a good start. If you want to post updates every ten minutes, then you should go with a Twitter account instead.

Buy some advertising. Ever notice those ads at the top of your Google searches? You can do that, and they are probably not as expensive as you think, especially if you are already advertising on other media. Even a budget of a few dollars a day can make a huge difference in the traffic that your website gets.

It’s a Contact Form, Not a Credit Application

So, tell me your name. Great, and what’s your email address? Awesome. Now, what’s your address, complete with city, state, and zip code? OK, daytime phone? Nighttime phone? Late-afternoon phone? Birthday? Oh, almost forgot, cell phone? Right, and your birthday again was? In what city were you born? Do you use an electric blanket? Electric socks? What’s your stance on beans in chili?

Overly intrusive forms are annoying, not to mention unnerving, to your visitors. After all, they just want to ask you a simple question and, to do so, have to give you their maternal, fraternal, maternal great-great-grandmother’s maiden name. Do you really need to know that?

In a world of Privacy Policies, the more information you require from your visitors, the more information you have to keep private. And, really, do you need five different phone numbers for one person? They just want to know if you have that hand-made scarf in blue.

Keep your contact forms simple, and don’t ask for too much information. Four to five pieces of information is generally enough to get the conversation started, and getting the conversation started is what you want.

Ask for too much information, and chances are the conversation it will never get going.