A small business owner recently called me wondering why their website wasn’t moving up in the search engines. I said I would take a look at it and set up a website strategy session to go over the results with them. When I first landed on their website, I thought “Wow, this is a really beautiful website. I’m not going to be able to find anything wrong here.” Here is what I landed on:
Website Strategy Session – this is what the website looked like before the website redesign. It was very beautiful. Showing lots of images of their work and had a great layout. At first glance, the only thing I found terrible wrong was that there was no call to action.
As you can see, it’s a really nice looking website that is set up to engage visitors. It did have a few problems though.
So, I get to looking around and first thing I notice is there is no call to action. That’s something I come across all the time. No big deal and easily correctable. Then I take a look at the images and sure enough, none of the alternative text tags were filled in. Because this website relies very heavily on images, this is a big no-no. What you have to remember is that the search engines can actually SEE the picture you put on your site. So it has to READ the alternative (alt) tag. The unfortunate thing is that this site was built using GoDaddy’s Website Builder and they don’t have a way to add those alt tags. One last thing about the images on this site. They weren’t optimized for the web causing the site to render (show up) slower than it could.
Okay, that’s enough of the bad because there was a lot of good stuff on this site too. Things like: they used their own pictures instead of stock photos; the images were clear, giving the visitors something original to look at; the layout and design were really good, great in fact; the navigation was easy to follow; and the contrasting colors and accent font used were great.
If you have a website that looks great but just isn’t getting any traffic, set up a website strategy session and I tell you what’s causing the problem.
Paws at Your Doorstep is a mobile veterinary service located in Cary, NC. The owners already had a website that was done by a friend a number of years ago.
Their challenge was that their existing website looked too simple, difficult to update, and wasn’t up to date with what people expected to see from a successful veterinarian practice. The one request they had was that the website’s redesign keep the gold and purple colors they use in their marketing materials.
Our solution was to provide Paws at Your Doorstep with a custom WordPress website and train the owners on how to add and change content to their website without the need of a webmaster. This will save them quite a lot of money over the years on website maintenance costs.
Now Paws at Your Doorstep has a website that showcases and promotes their business to pet owners in the area who are looking for a mobile vet.
Nelson Handyman Service in Illinois is a freelance handyman service owned by Michael Nelson who was in the market for a website to showcase his new business.
Normally I work with clients who have an idea what they want on their website. Michael professed that he may be great at fixing things but marketing isn’t really his forte. His goal for his business was to be able to help as many people in his region with home repairs. Since I’m not familiar with the handyman business or the area where he provides his services, I relied on Michael to provide a very extensive list of his services and the names of the areas he wants to cover.
Our solution was to provide Nelson Handyman Service with a simple yet eye catching website that has keywords relevant to his business strategically placed throughout the website. Because Michael was new in the business and didn’t have any original photographs, we had to rely on using stock photos to spruce up the site with.
Now Michael has a website that showcases his business and attracts his ideal clients via the search engines. He currently enjoys receiving phone calls and emails from potential clients in his area.
Triad Connection is a transportation business run by Frederick Shuler. Triad Connection’s base of operations is located in Durham, NC. Freddie already had a website and he also uses Google Adwords to drive traffic to his site.
Freddie’s challenge was that his website looked rather homemade and he wanted to portray a professional image that was anything but homemade. In addition, because he was using Adwords to drive traffic to his site, it was important to make sure that his website was in alignment with his ads. Before the redesign, they weren’t, which was costing him more money.
Our solution was to provide Triad Connection with a website redesign (using WordPress of course) that contains keywords relevant to his business. We also created a couple of specific landing pages that his ads could point to which would bring down his advertising costs.
One of Freddie’s concerns was wanting to capture his visitors attention and get them to take action. We put a slider on his home page in order to get people’s attention, keeping people on his site longer. And because many of his clients find his services using a mobile device, we made sure that his site was mobile responsive.
Triad Connection’s new website after the redesign
Now, Freddie has a website that is easy to keep up to date and is in alignment with his Google Adwords PPC campaign. He currently enjoys receiving more traffic to his site which has his phone ringing more than it did before his site was redesigned.
The Doing Good Network is a non profit organization that helps other non profits raise money. The purpose of this website is to provide information to prospective sponsors, non profits, and musicians.
This website was originally designed by another company using what is called a parallax theme (scrolling single-page design). The main challenge with this site was to make it so that it was responsive across all platforms but keep the same look and feel. For those who may not know what that means – make the site look good on computers, tablets, and mobile phones.
The solution was to change the theme to a more traditional design with regular pages. I chose to use Builder from iThemes because their layouts are so versatile and I used the LayerSlider plugin from Code Canyon to do the slider on the home page.
Now DGN has a website that is responsive across all web browsers and devices so no matter how their web visitors choose to find them, they will see the website as it was intended.
The Stop Clinic is a specialty clinic, that helps people to stop smoking, end addiction, and lose weight. Stop Clinic operates out of the Town of Cary and has been in business for more than twenty years. Leslie Lyons had a website that already was being ranked on the first page of Google for a particular keyword but she realized that she needed a website redesign.
Leslie’s challenge was that she had a separate blog that didn’t look anything like her main website. A visitor to her main site could get to her blog but anyone on her blog couldn’t go straight to her main site. One of the things that Leslie was doing very right was sending out a newsletter to her database. In her newsletter, she was directing people to her blog. Which is a good thing but the problem again was that you couldn’t get to her main pages from her blog. One of her goals was to be able to generate more traffic and conversions online. However, when your blog is separate from your main website, Google treats them as separate, therefore, your traffic gets diluted.
The old site for www.StopClinic.com had a lot of wasted white space.
The old blog for Stop Clinic had a completely different look from the main site.
Leslie had been using a hosting service that cost her $29 a month and the only analytic she had on her site was that which her hosting company provided which only gave her the number of visits she was getting per day.
Our solution was to provide the Stop Clinic with a website redesign that contained a blog, installed Google analytics and implemented a SEO strategy on her new site. I also trained Leslie on how to use WordPress so that she can keep her website up-to-date.
As a result, the Stop Clinic’s traffic increased by 40% in just one month, her visitors have a way to read her articles as well as check out her services all on the same website, and she can track her traffic using the installed analytics. Her site now has a cohesive look throughout and Leslie can easily add and/or change her content as she likes.
