Website Wednesday: Website Design Trends

Staying up on website design trends keeps you in the "know" and serves as a measure to evaluate the effectiveness of your web design.

This 3 column design is used on an American Express business forum.

The three-column design is everywhere. Corporations like Starbucks, McDonalds, and the American Express Open Forum incorporate the format.

Mid-size companies, small businesses, and the solo entrepreneur can easily make three symmetrical blocks of information using images and text.

The format organizes key blocks of information and a horizontal image on the home page allows the blocks to show above the fold.

Easy-to-use drag and drop platforms mean you can create three columns and bring in the text boxes.

You can see this in my website Running a Small Business.net which is in process.

Need a robust Do-it-Yourself or professionally designed website, then I can provide through Right Touch Marketing.com. Contact me there for a free quote.

One of the credible sites to read up on website design trends is Enfused. One of their topics focuses on the need to design web sites so they respond to different devices, especially smartphones.

Click here to read more from Enfused.

I have no affiliation with them and you can click here to read more on 2013 web design trends.

Use Color to Stand Out from the Competition

This free marketing tip focuses on using color so people recognize your business in a crowded marketplace.

Cabin of an A 330 used from Virgin Atlantic blog

There are small ways to catch the attention of a customer that may require using creativity but not much money.

Virgin Atlantic is a good marketing case study in doing little things to differentiate itself from the competition of other airlines.

I flew the airline for the first time in July 2013 from Los Angeles to Seattle and the first thing that caught my attention was the soft colored lights when boarding.

The hues were red and blue and had a more calming effect than Southwest, United, or others.

The flight attendants outfits seemed classier, too.

When we departed in Seattle I had the feeling I had experienced just a bit of luxury even though we paid less than $275 per person. The cost was less than other airlines.

A simple use of colored lighting is one way Virgin Atlantic sets itself apart in a crowded marketplace.

Business owners can use colors to set themselves apart.

Choose a color scheme for your business and keep it easy to replicate.

A shirt and slacks, business cards, portfolio, and thank you cards can all be the same color. Use the theme on your website, blog, and enewsletter.

It may not make a difference right away but over time referral sources and potential customers will begin to associate you with a particular color scheme.

The use of color is one way to get noticed in a crowded marketplace.

Click here for the 2011 Virgin Atlantic blog post showing the interior of an Airbus A 330.

My Experience Creating a Small Business Website

The basic five page small business website is easy to create for business owners. There are several free website platforms available that are drag and drop with no knowledge of html.

An easy-to-create website isn't necessarily best, though. The most important step is before you log on to the platform or expect a professional designer to shoot back a great-looking comp.

You must plan your website.

Log on to this link below on an article I wrote on Yahoo Finance and you'll see what I mean.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/first-person-creating-business-website-195400359--finance.html

I raise a few key questions in the article:

• what do you say about your company
• what do your customers say about your company
• why do you really operate the business - what is you are helping the customer achieve? 

Answer these questions thoroughly, or enlist someone like me to help you, and you can plan a strong website on any platform and enhance your web presence to aid in marketing and customer relations.

Marketing Services using a Professional Biography

A well-written professional biography is a marketing tool that conveys credibility. A consultant and service provider can benefit tremendously from a professional biography that shows accomplishments and reveals their personal traits.

I wrote a biography for a woman is a former executive with a Fortune 100 corporation. She is offering voluntary employee benefits through an established company local to greater Glendale and Pasadena, California.

Here is how I wrote the copy:

A one-hour interview and took notes, jotting down personal details like how she developed her interest in company benefits during childhood and when in high school she decided on it as a career path.

Reviewed her resume and LinkedIn profile and noted what was similar to the personal interview and what was missing.

Integrated passionate information with factual information at the beginning to hook and inform the reader.

I wrote the biography combining narrative and bullet points so the reader can skim, wrote a letter she could send out and wrote the info for an improved LinkedIn summary that would be more likely to show up in search results.

A well-written bio will give the reader a sense of professional ability and clue them in on personal traits and passion.

Marketing Interview Questions and Why I Ask

Marketing begins with the interview, a series of questions designed to pull out the "why" a business exists, the promised result for customers and clients, and the deeply held values for the entrepreneur-business owner.

As a writer, the interview questions are essential to get me "inside" the mind of the entrepreneur and the people I'm interviewing.

I recently wrote web copy for two hotels where I spent the night. I toured the properties and interviewed some of the key staff at length.

The interview gave me the chance to pull out the unique qualities the hotels possessed and to give the reader a greater chance to experience the property via the web.

Marketing generates promised results when the target customer or client has a positive experience and gains value.

I'll share some of my questions in the next post.