Website design, as well as your online presence, is something your small business can not afford to cut corners on. If you live in the Schenectady area and are looking for a New York-based website designer, contact Shawn Tooley today at 315-307-3359.
Whether you’re a new small business owner or a seasoned small business professional, one thing is for sure: the success of your small business depends on maintaining a fresh supply of brand new customers. In today’s digital marketing world, it is clear that a professional website design needs to be the cornerstone of your strategic marketing plan. Small businesses who value and use a professional website and social media presence make more money by attracting new customers. In short, you have to make sure that your small business is visible wherever your customer are spending their time.
Web design companies from coast to coast are working night and day to help small businesses get found online. According to a recent study at MIT, the average consumer spends over three hours online per day using a combination of search engines and social media.
According to Google, there are 63,000 search queries done per second in 2018. So this means the average consumer in Schenectady performs multiple online searches per day – do you want your small business to show up in a search result for your product or service? Of course you do! Continue reading for more information on what is involved in professional website design and the benefits of incorporating a website design into your company marketing budget.
Statistics show that a small business who has a great online presence receives far more business opportunities than a small business who uses older marketing techniques such as newspaper, radio, or television advertising. We’re positive that reaching customers in Schenectady is easier with professional website design.
Responsive Web Design — What Is It And Why Does It Matter?
Responsive web design, simply put, means everything displayed on your small business website looks great on mobile devices and tablets.
10 or 20 years ago people could only viewed websites from desktop computers. Most monitors back then were between 15 and 22 inches wide. This means that nearly all websites were made so that they would look great on a desktop monitor. However, with the introduction of tablets and smartphones, a great website design needs to look great on everything. This is where responsive web design technology shines.
Today’s mobile devices have much smaller screen sizes than their desktop counterparts. This means that in order to display website content properly, the website items usually need to be rearranged. In the example below, we show the services offered by a construction company. On standard monitors, the viewer will see these services listed horizontally.
When viewed on a mobile screen, the website content will need to scale and adjust itself to be readable by the viewer. In this particular case, each of the three columns of services would stack on top of one another for readability. This adjustment happens automatically with a well designed responsive website design.
Responsive website design isn’t something we view as an option it’s mandatory. If you’re hiring a website design company in city to build your website, you need to be sure that responsive website design is included in the company’s website design services. If you can’t find a web design portfolio that includes responsive design, choose another web design company in city to be your small business website designer.
Website Design Pages – What Information Should I Include?
Website design doesn’t have to be confusing or complicated. There are 16 fundamental pages to a great small business website design. We’ve taken the time to discuss each one of these website design page necessities below.
Home Page
Your website starts with a home page. This is your primary “sales” page and should provide specific information about what your small business can do for your customers. Website home pages are meant to give visitors a complete overview of what they are going to find on your site.
Products / Services
Websites that use a separate page for each product or service and write details about each convert very well. It’s very smart to begin each page with a brief summary of the product/service and then provide as much information as you can. Remember, if your website pages are too long, you can always break it up into additional pages or add pictures to the page to help. Websites that lack content typically do not perform well. Your customers are searching for information and they want to get that information ASAP. They don’t want to wait until tomorrow when they can speak to you on the phone. The more information you can provide about your products/services, the better.
Contact Us
Professional website design includes multiple places for your contact information. It should not feel difficult for your customers to contact you. Create a stand alone “Contact Us” page, include your details in an “About Us” page and it is also recommended to add your name, address, and phone number (NAP) to the footer of each website page.
Pricing
Equally important is a page you can include on your small business website which displays your pricing. It is fine if you can’t be specific, as long as you can put a price range. Example: professional website design starting at $400.
Testimonials and Product Reviews
Web design professionals often build websites that include testimonials. The goal in a testimonials page is building trust and a testimonial from your current customers can show your soon to be clients that you are reliable and trustworthy! We recommend that you make it a point of every sales transaction to have your happy clients leave positive reviews on your Google and Facebook pages from their home computers a day or two after working with your company. Simply send them an email and direct them to the best place to leave a review.
Frequently Asked Questions
Your Customers will have questions!
FAQs have proven to be a huge timesaver for many small business owners. Nobody likes to answer the same question repeatedly – so the more information you have on your website, the less time you’ll spend answering questions by email or phone.
Inquiry Form / Contact Us Form
Do you have a mailing list for your customers in Schenectady? If not, get one ASAP. Email marketing is affordable and quite effective. To start, most people don’t like giving out too much personal information, so ask for only the basics: Name and Email Address. Then, once every 7 to 10 days, keep in touch with your customers and include information that may be of interest to them.
About Us
As we mentioned earlier, customers love information about your company. The about page is a very important page as it tells your customer 3 key elements.
- Who you are.
- Why they need your service/product.
- Why they should trust your company.
If you own a physical retail store in Schenectady, you should also include a photo of your store as well as your business hours. Many small business owners include their mission statement or purpose on this page, information and photos of their staff, professional bios and qualifications, recently completed projects, and more.
Policy Pages (Privacy, Refunds, Terms of Service)
To make your customers feel more comfortable when making a transaction at your website, you should provide them with your return/refund policy. Try to avoid legalese and technical terms and spelled out step by step. Privacy continues to be a major issue for customers in online shopping. They often have concerns about how their information is going to be used. This can be a major barrier when making a sale. The Internet shopping experience is built on trust and privacy is the number one ingredient in trust.
Blog
Here we are: the most challenging part of a website design for most small business owners, the dreaded blog pages. Let’s be real: if you’re not a writer – you don’t like to write.
Your blog is simply a series of pages that are available on the web which have to do with the topic that your small business falls into. Blogs are usually updated quite often using software that helps people without experience in blogging to keep their blog updated. Blogs are a great tool as they assist with SEO, communicating important information to your customers, and adding additional content to your website which helps you stay ahead of your competition. Website designers in city often offer content writing services available to their customers to help them keep a weekly blog up to date.
Photo Gallery
Do you have photos of your Schenectady business? Perfect! The term “a picture is worth a thousand words” was coined well before the internet was imagined … but now more than ever – it’s importance is visible. Your small business website HAS TO include a photo gallery of some sort. It is quite important to how your products or services are being appreciated by your customers.
Site Map
Even though this page typically isn’t viewed by your site visitors, it’s a must have for Google and Bing. A site map is like a table of contents in a book. A sitemap instructs the search engines about the pages and photos that you have on your website so that they can find it simply and when it was last updated.
Website design, as well as your online presence, is something your small business can not afford to cut corners on. If you live in the Schenectady area and are looking for a New York based website designer, contact Shawn Tooley today at 315-307-3359.
Website Design Timing – How Long Does It Take?
Small business owners always want to know two things about website design: how much does it cost and how long will it take until we launch the website? Professional website designers in city will often utilize software and plugins for your website that can speed up the building process.
When website developers first started designing sites, they hand-coded page upon page of content for small business websites. This was a very time-consuming and tedious process. Veteran website designers thought they had to charge a lot of money to compensate them for the countless hours building these HTML websites.
Web designers today incorporate content management systems (CMS) into website design so that they can easily add additional pages, color schemes, font choices, and provide all of your website pages a consistent look and feel. A popular CMS such as WordPress can cut development time in half and save you lots of money.
Many website specialists have a structured process, splitting their web design projects up into three or four phases.
As an example:
Phase One: Discovery – learning as much as they can about your small business before they get started on a design. This process can take anywhere from a day or two to a week.
Phase Two: Website Design Mockup – typically done in Photoshop or as a wireframe. This phase of web design often takes a week to complete.
Phase Three: Website Design Alpha / Beta – a special, private first draft of your website, which usually allows for multiple revisions. This can feel like the longest phase and can take anywhere from a few days to a few months, depending on how many pages and the functionality that your website design requires.
Phase Four: On-Page Optimization – very important for SEO the process of making sure that all of your images and pages are properly optimized for search engine standards. While this can add more time to the project – much of this work is done during phase three of this example. Phase four typically takes an extra week.
Estimated overall time to complete a website (after content is received):
5 page website = 14 days | 10 page website = 21 days |20 page website = 35 days
Website Design Prices – How Much Will it Cost?
Now to the most important question of them all: how much will this all cost? For better or worse, this may surprise you. Website design has a wide range of professionals who charge all sorts of prices. Some developers charge a flat rate monthly fee while others send an estimate and quote as a unique customized project with seemingly high price tags.
Here are examples of numbers that we believe are fair to both small business owners and developers as a flat fee:
5 page website = $1500 | 10 page website = $2000 | 20 page website = $2750 | Ecommerce Websites = $3000+
North Country Design offers SIMPLE Flat-Rate Pricing!!!
Website design, as well as your online presence, is something your small business can not afford to cut corners on. If you live in the Schenectady area and are looking for a New York based website designer, contact Shawn Tooley today at 315-307-3359.
Here are our prices for Fully Managed Website Design in Schenectady for flat rate monthly fees:
Landing Page = $99 down & $59/month
5 page website = $200 down / $199/mo.
10 page website = $500 down & $199/mo.
20 page website = $1,000 down & $199/mo.
Note: $199 monthly fee includes all system updates, 1 new blog written monthly, cross-posted to Facebook, Google, & Twitter accounts.
We understand that budgeting can be tough. Give us a call and talk with us about it. We’re reasonable. We can help most people get started.
Website Design and Social Media Channels
Next year, people around the world will spend more time being online than they will be watching TV, according to new data from measurement company Zenith. Most of that online time will be spent split between searching Google for information, shopping online, and using social media channels.
As a small business owner you need to incorporate a couple of social media channels into your marketing plan so you’ll be able to reap the benefits in both Google and your customer loyalty.
According to SproutSocial – 73.4 percent of social media users follow local small businesses because they’re interested in their products or services. Beware: 46% of social media users will unfollow a brand if they’re posting too many spammy messages.
It’s quite important that your marketing messages are developed so that they’re valuable to your customer without screaming ‘Click Here To Buy! every day.
Social media is important when you’re running a business in Schenectady. Professional website designers aim to incorporate social media links in their website design because Google has specifically stated that social relevancy is important for ranking. When you post on Facebook, Google, Instagram, or Twitter – a social signal is noticed by Google.
Ongoing social signals and consistent updates to your small business blog is not only really great for your customer engagement… but also to your overall optimization efforts. People looking for goods and services in Schenectady can easily find your small business.
Website Design and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Creating a web presence for your small business is very important but the ideal goal is having your business become more profitable, your website needs to be seen in search results very often.
The words and phrases that people type into Google (ex. Professional website design) are known as keywords. Whenever searches are carried out using your particular keywords, your small business should appear.
Websites that do not show up on page one of Google results when people carry out searches are basically irrelevant. Ensuring that your site ranks very high for specific keywords is the sole purpose of SEO. SEO plays a critical role in web design.
Value of SEO
Website Development and SEO work together. Today, more web designers are choosing to integrate SEO when designing websites. We can’t stress enough how critical it is for small business owners to not only be aware of how important SEO is in terms of their website design – but the financial value it adds to the lead generation process.
In the online world it’s all about traffic. If your website design is compatible with SEO, it is likely to draw more traffic. A website can look hot and represent your business splendidly … but if nobody ever sees it, then what’s the point? If it is not search-engine friendly, you are limiting the ability of Google to access your content and rank you properly for your products and services.
Choosing The Best Small Business Website Designer
Are you ready to hire a website designer in Schenectady? Here are some things to keep in mind:
Web Developers should want to get to know you, your business, understand your audience, and implement your marketing goals. How can they possibly design a website that reflects your brand if they’re not taking time to get to know you?
Do they have an structured, systematic planning process (remember when we spoke about phases of website design above?) that helps lead you through the design phases. A trained website designer will usually have all of these things clearly laid out.
Be sure to ask them what they know about SEO and internet marketing. They should be creating a completedsite that strategically incorporates SEO into the development process.
Remember, a good website design expert is as valuable to your company as a Master Jedi!
Ask your developer for a highly detailed quote with every cost listed clearly and with no surprise charges after the proposal is signed. Also ask them how they bill you. Are you invoiced periodically or do they work on a completion basis?
If possible, talk to some of their clients, to see how smooth the website design process was. Ideally you will want to work with who has great communication skills as well as good project management skills.
Inquire about website maintenance. Do they work with the website after they’re finished designing it? If you’re going to handle updates yourself, ask them if they’ll design your site in WordPress so that it is easily maintained by a business owner.
Read through the contract line by line and understand if and when you own the copyright to the entire website. All of the content, including images that you hired someone to custom-create for you, and all the coding work, should be yours at the end of the project. Additionally – make sure you own your domain name. GoDaddy charges around $20 a year to renew a domain name and it should be in your name on an account that you own.
Website Design: Putting It All Together
In conclusion, your website is crucial to the underlying success of your business. Choose someone that you can trust to do quality work. Understand the entire process, the pricing, the timeframe, and the inner-workings of the website design process. We can’t stress enough, pick an experienced website designer that you’re happy with who has the best price for the services offered.
Our company would be honored to be given the opportunity to work with you on this web design project. Contact us today for a detailed quote which will show you our complete cost, timetable, and references for completing your website design project.
