Design Tips and Tricks

The following is a general list of website design tips and guidelines. Many of the following issues have been addressed in previous blog posts, some of them are tips we will go over at greater length in the future.

1. Content Relevance – All of the content and images should be absolutely relevant and focused to the task at hand. Don’t confuse your viewers on what you want them to pay attention to and do.
   
   
2. Clarity of Purpose – Related to content relevance. Content must be organized so it’s very easy for the visitor to figure out what to look at, in what order, and how to take the conversion step when they are ready.
   
   
3. Visibility – Make sure the critical elements in your creation are visible to almost all visitors, above the fold without having to scroll down. Keep them inside the upper 300 pixels of the page. This way you are making sure that 98% of your visitors will be able to see and act upon critical elements. Remember that the first screen of visible content a visitor sees is what they make their first decision on. This happens in those very first critical seconds of viewing your site. Your initial screen shot is the one that needs to convince them not to leave.
   
   
4. Font Style and Size – Never use a font style and size that is hard to read. Never use a font size smaller than 10 point. If you are targeting older adults or young children, use a much larger font size for easier reading. Use web-safe font styles that most computers will have.
   
   
5. Left vs. Centered – Avoid centering text, with the possible exception of one-liner headlines. All text should be flush left. It is harder to read a series of centered text vs. a series of flush left lines of text.
   
   
6. Color – Using the right color scheme is important to the mode and image you are trying to convey. Avoid using white text on a colored background as it is difficult to read. The best practice is to use a white background, or a slightly gray one, that way the majority of your text appears on a color that is easier for the human eye to distinguish text against. Select multiple colors that complement each other and do not look out of place. Also avoid using dark or brightly colored backgrounds because they are too hard to read against. Blue is a favorite color of about 80% of men and 50% of women.

I’ll have more on these critical subjects on Tuesday. To my readers in the United States, have a wonderful and safe Labor Day weekend.

Heritage Web Solutions offers a number of different completely custom design options with a dedicated team. Call us or visit our website for details.

For more information, please visit http://www.heritagewebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

More On Flash And What It Can Do For You

As I mentioned yesterday, Flash can be an attractive and attention getting part of your website design. A Flash intro can introduce your customers to a world of possibilities – as long as it is not too long. If you have an intro that drags on and on most likely the customer is going to leave. One of the most important things to do when you are designing your Flash intro with the designer is make sure there is an option to skip the intro altogether. If this option isn’t present it tends to irritate your viewers and you will likely lose quite a few of them before they even enter the site itself.

Many things can be displayed in a properly done Flash introduction. It can act as a slide show for photos, a showcase of your work, a list of possible services, a list of testimonials for your goods and/or services. However, I can’t emphasize enough the point that you must optimize the intro. It has to load quickly, be viewed quickly and grab the attention of your viewer immediately. If it doesn’t load quickly people will get impatient and skip it. If it isn’t easy to see quickly they will skip it and move on.

I’d like to emphasize that you should not use too much Flash. A little Flash here and there goes a long ways. To have a Flash intro and a Flash banner is alright, just avoid making it too long. I highly recommend Flash as an attention getting device; it just needs to be within reason. There are also many ways of using Flash within the body of your site to gain attention to particular items you wish to highlight. Your professional Flash designer can help you with the implementation of any ideas you have. A subtle yet powerful technique is to have something change or appear when you roll over that section and/or link.

Heritage Web Solutions offers a number of different completely custom Flash options with a dedicated Flash team. Call us or visit our website for details.

For more information, please visit http://www.heritagewebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

Flash - Helpful Tips

Flash can be an interesting and attention getting part of your website design. There is no doubt that a properly managed flash banner or intro can be critical in getting your customers attention. There are some mistakes that can be made and we will go through those here. Also, determining what you really need in flash as compared to what you may think looks ‘cool’ can be the tricky part and we’ll examine some practical aspects of that.

A flash banner, a moving flash area at the top of your site, can be a great attention grabber. If it is implemented correctly it can be entertaining and fascinating to the viewers of your site, help improve the ‘stickiness’ of your site (stickiness is the term to describe how well your site is at keeping viewers – how long they stay and what pages they are staying longest on. A page that keeps visitors longer is considered to be very ‘sticky’) and get across a marketing message or important information. Having abrupt, flashing, brightly colored banners is usually not a good idea, but visually pleasing and stimulating banners can be quite attractive and can distinguish you from your competition. Most of the time people enjoy looking at quick flash banners that don’t distract them from the reason they are at your site to begin with. Large, slow loading banners are a mistake as they do exactly that – load slowly and distract from the purpose of your site; get people to buy your product and/or services. A flash introduction to your page, or flash ‘intro’ can be a great way to do exactly the same thing and add some showmanship to your site – again, do not distract those people from what you want them to do, just provide them with some clever entertainment and way to get some important information from you. The same rule of thumb goes for flash intros as it does for flash banners. Do not have a slow loading, distracting flash intro that takes people a long time load and isn’t relevant to why they’ve come to your site to begin with.

Heritage Web Solutions offers a number of different completely custom flash options with a dedicated flash team. Call us or visit our website for details.

For more information, please visit http://www.heritagewebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

A List of Important Design Tips

I want to reiterate some important design tips – these will help you with visitors, making sure not only is your site easy to understand, it is desirable to stick around on and for your visitors to actually read your content and, hopefully, buy something from you. Below are things you need in order for your customers to have a good experience on your site –

• FAST load times for optimized loading; keep them interested and moving forward in order to keep them on your site.

• Easy to understand purpose – why are they at your site? Make it easy for your customer to understand what it is you want them to do. Do you want them to buy? Make it easy for them and they will.

• Easy to use navigation with clear links to content they are interested in. If you have a page dedicated to information about how to contact you, it would be good to have that link say, “contact us” rather than “click here”.

• Make sure the colors you are using for your site and your logo are appealing and make sense for the industry you are in and are optimized for the marketing of your product.

• Optimize your written content and the look of your site to grab people’s attention immediately and keep them there. Also keep in mind with the written content that people need to read it, understand it, and it needs to be friendly for the search engines as well. Your site needs to be custom – a site that is unique and inventive.

• Give your visitors a clear call to action once they are on your site. As stated above, make it easy for your customers to know exactly what it is they are supposed to do once they actually hit your site. Make it easy for them to spend money with you.

• Market your site every way you can. Bring attention to it, shout it out to the world so everyone knows it is there. If you don’t bring attention to it, your site will sit there like a lump on a log and do nothing.

For more information, please visit http://www.heritagewebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

More Common Site Design Mistakes and How To Avoid Them

You’ve spent a lot of time designing your site and marketing it. It is hard work to market your site and has probably cost you a lot of time and a lot of money. You are getting visitors now – and no one stays to see what you have to offer/sell/say. There are a lot of reasons this might be so but today I want to go into a common mistake that costs people a lot of visitors – slow loading pages. The number one reason people get annoyed and leave a page is because it takes forever to load. Making them wait for graphics isn’t going to wow them; it is going to irritate them.

Graphics aren’t the only thing that can cause your site to load slowly though, and are also not the only thing that can annoy your visitors to the point where they want to leave. Slow loading and distracting flash banners and entry pages, music that you force them to listen to and slow loading java scripts are all killers and will turn your viewers/buyers away quickly. Unfortunately we have social networking sites these days like MySpace that have made these kinds of things popular – believe me there is a world of difference between a MySpace page and a page you are using for commercial purposes. Under no circumstances should you use annoying animated gifs or bright and flashing Flash banners – nothing screams out “leave here immediately” more.

Don’t mistake me, MySpace can be a great tool and can be a form of marketing for you in itself. You can and should make a MySpace page to network and promote your regular website. I would have it designed so it matches the look of your webpage, but don’t base your website design on the design of a MySpace page! Looking through MySpace pages you can see in any five pages pretty much every violation of good website design. Why spend all that time and money to get people to your site so you can then hold them captive and make them watch something that you think is great but they may or may not is interesting. Just let people get on to the business of buying something from you. Make it easy for your customers to spend money with you.

For more information, please visit http://www.heritagewebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

Avoiding Common Mistakes in Marketing Your Website

Today’s topic is something that I’ve been thinking about for a while. Looking around the web at different professional sites and keeping track of trends is sometimes a full time job in itself. I’ve seen a lot of sites out there and many different approaches to marketing them. One thing I see over and over that makes me want to leave a site immediately is obvious misspellings. Nothing turns me off faster and makes me trust someone less. Why would I trust someone to perform a service for me or sell me a product if they can’t even take the time to spell check their website content?

Grammar and punctuation mistakes can be forgiven. Much of the time I don’t even notice them until or unless I’ve read the material several times. However, misspelled words stick out like a sore thumb. They are distracting and unprofessional. Whenever I see them I think to myself how sad it is that the person doesn’t care enough about their reputation or their customers returning to take the time out to use spell check.

Use a spell check in your word process program, hire a professional writer or just take your time and check each word, but whatever you do, avoid misspelled words on your site. There is absolutely no faster way to turn your customers away from you than to have blatant misspellings. At least let someone else look at the text you’ve written and proof read it for you. There’s absolutely no way you can build credibility and a reputation for reliability unless you show you’re willing to go to the work of making sure the text on your site is correct. After all, if you go to a site and the first thing you see is “Welcom too are websid” believe me it says worlds about the care you’ve taken and what a customer can expect from you. Leaving a detail like that unfixed can make someone believe you are trying to run a scam or rip them off. Heritage Web Solutions employs a staff of full time writers who do nothing but spell check our customer’s content and our own website content as well. This is the least I can recommend to someone wishing to look and sound professional to their customers and site viewers.

For more information, please visit http://www.heritagewebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

Marketing Your Website - Tips and Tricks

There are definitely a myriad of ways to market your website and your web based business. Some of those you might overlook because you may not think of a website as part of a traditional media campaign. Some of the least expensive and yet surprisingly effective ways of marketing your sites are some of the oldest in the book. Some things you can do that are commonly overlooked –

Make sure your website address is on all brochures, business cards, letterhead, email signatures etc. Basically anywhere you print your business address and phone number needs to have your web address as well.

If you have a yellow page ad, newspaper ad, TV and/or radio ads…all these should include your web address. Television and radio ads can be very effective especially in a local market. Newspaper definitely shouldn’t be ignored, and a yellow page ad can often be invaluable.

If you don’t have one already, develop some kind of free gift that you can give to your customers that has your web address on it. Pens, key-chains, refrigerator magnets, plastic squeeze bottles, hats, bags – a nice item that can be fairly inexpensive if you order them in bulk and has great keeper value are small thumb drives. Give these out at every opportunity and have your branding and web address all over it.

Develop magnetic signs and/or vinyl lettering for your vehicle with your web address and your branding on it. Not only does it get your branding and your web address out there, it gives you an opportunity to speak to people about it if you do it uniquely enough to grab people’s attention. It also might give you the ability to deduct business expenses involving your automobile. Check with your tax professional for details.

Ads on local movie theatres ‘between show’ slides can have a surprising return if the ad is effectively done. Other ways to get your site out there are billboards, mobile billboards, flyers, grass roots word of mouth campaigns, ads in trade magazines or specialty magazines can be effective too. The bottom line to advertising and marketing is doing whatever gives you the best return on investment. Keep track of where your customers come from in order to decide in the future where your precious advertising dollars and energy need to go in order to get the best return on your investment. It takes a lot of hard work and energy to make a business work and a website is no different.

For more information, please visit http://www.heritagewebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

Email Marketing - What Software Should I Use?

E-mail marketing is a great way of reminding your customers who you are, getting your brand in front of them, providing them with useful information and helpful tips as well as great deals you might be offering. How do you implement it though? That’s where a great software program can be invaluable. Heritage Web Solutions has an easy to use and easy to understand piece of software we can install on your site called the “The Stay-N-Touch”. After researching different options out there on the web I would have to say this is definitely the standard that all software should be judged by.

The Stay-N-Touch software tested successfully with 300,000+ mailing lists. All known e-mail lists file formats are supported so compatibility isn’t an issue. The Stay-N-Touch Marketing program includes advanced reports on mailing campaigns, click-throughs, new subscribers and more stats. It also gives you the ability to create custom forms for any mailing group, use custom fields, and custom design- the advanced online editor allows you to build cutting-edge newsletters and emails using both HTML and Text.

I will list the qualities of the Stay-‘n’-Touch and say that any software you decide to go with to help you with your e-mail marketing program needs to have these functions to be of true use to you.

• Create and manage highly targeted mailing campaigns
  Mailing list builder, newsletter editor, subscription forms, auto responders, tracking, reports and more. All in one place.
  
  
• Customization and Personalization
  Send personalized and customized emails to all recipients, groups or to custom mix of mailing groups.
  
  
• Custom fields
  Create multiple custom fields and use them in the newsletter body, mailing lists and subscription forms.
  
  
• Advanced tracking and reports
  Track mailing campaigns, click-throughs, and get detailed mailing reports.
  
  
• Automatic bounced emails
  The system will automatically move bounced email addresses to a special folder. You can make these emails active again or delete at any time.
  
  
• Multi-language support
  Supports over 50 main world languages. These include European, Asian, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and other languages.
  
  
• Advanced auto responder
  Create a series of unlimited follow-up auto responder tasks. Choose basic, multiple or mailing campaign auto responders. Choose a start point: any date/time or deliver emails once a user joins your mailing list.
  
  
• Full support of huge mailing lists
  This software tested successfully with 300,000+ mailing lists.
  
  
• Easy-to-use interface makes administration a snap

For more information as well as a complete demonstration, please visit http://stayntouchmarketing.com or call your customer service representative at 1-866-211-0743.

E-mail Marketing - Tips On a Successful Campaign

You’ve decided on an e-mail marketing campaign through your double opt-in, offering bonus services, discounts, helpful information and tips to all your customers. This can be very successful or it can be downright frustrating, and a lot of what happens with it depends on you and avoiding some common pitfalls that can take the energy out of your campaign before it even begins.

One of the first things you want to do make sure you’ve put an obvious “call to action” on your e-mail that cries out to the customer as soon as they open your e-mail; this is the same concept we talked about when creating your website. You want to make it as easy as possible for your customer to buy from you so in order to capture their attention you need to provide them with an easy to understand opportunity to buy as soon as they see your message. If a customer doesn’t see what you want them to do they usually won’t search; they will close that email and go on to the next one. Also make it easy for them to understand what they are getting out of doing what you’ve asked them to, otherwise, what is their motivation?

Another tip is to make the e-mail (if it is an HTML based e-mail especially) consistent with your corporate look, website and other marketing, no matter what media it is. This helps with branding and helps your customer understand immediately it is message from you. Inconsistency in marketing messages can look ‘messy’ and can have a detrimental effect on the message you are trying to convey as well as an overall harmful effect on your corporate image. It makes you look unprofessional, inconsistent and can portray you as an entity that can’t be trusted. A unified look in marketing efforts provides instant branding as well as a sense of security in the reliable look.

You should also be consistent with the times you send out e-mail messages. If you do it too frequently you will run the risk of alienating your customers, but not often enough and they forget who you are. There is no real rule about it but putting your name out there in front of your customers at least once a month should be considered your minimum. Any other kind of time line will have to be determined by you and how often you feel your customers need to hear from you or can tolerate yet another marketing message.

For more information, please visit http://www.heritagewebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

E-mail Marketing - How To Do It Right

As I mentioned in Friday’s web log, E-mail marketing is an extremely efficient means of keeping yourself in touch with your customers. You can use it to give your customers helpful hints and tips, answer frequently asked questions, as well as provide you with opportunities to get your products out there in front of your customer base, introduce new products and generally keep your brand in front of them in a helpful, non-intrusive and generally inexpensive way. But how do you get that list of customer e-mails to begin with? If you’ve sold to them, as part of the process you can ask them for their e-mail address, but it is critical that you ask the customer if it is OK for you to send them e-mail messages from time to time, otherwise you run the risk of alienating them. But how do you get e-mail addresses from people who haven’t purchased from you but may be interested in what you have to offer? There is a simple way that is easy to implement on your site and relatively inexpensive; it is called confirmed subscription opt-in, or, the “double opt-in”.

Confirmed subscription opt-in or double opt-in is a method for those seeking information from you to confirm with you that it is actually them asking to be included on your mailing list. The customer or potential customer fills out a short form on your website asking to be included in your mailing list. Once they submit the form, the form sends them an email that they have to respond to in order to complete the subscription. They are confirming, twice, that they actually want to receive the e-mails from you that you send out, be it informational, marketing or otherwise. This prevents anyone from posing as someone else and entering their email address as one that wishes to receive the information you send to your email list, be it marketing information, FAQ’s, a newsletter or sales opportunities. The potential abuser may put in a second parties email but doesn’t control that person’s email address therefore eliminating this particular scam. Not only does it confirm that they want to receive information, it is also a way of confirming that someone is likely to spend money with you and is genuinely interested in your products or services.

For more information, please visit http://www.heritagewebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

E-mail Marketing - What It Is

E-mail marketing is an enormously effective tool to keep yourself in touch with your customers when utilized in a legal (non-spam) way, and can benefit your customers as well as provide you with opportunities to get your products out there in front of your existing customer base, introduce new products and generally keep your brand in front of them in a positive and cost effective way. Depending on how effective and helpful you make the message you’re trying to get across you can significantly increase your bottom line. In reality e-mail marketing is so inexpensive even if it doesn’t have a significant return; almost any amount of return becomes worthwhile.

The great thing about e-mail marketing campaigns is it doesn’t matter what size business you are, it is just as effective for a small business as it is for a large business; in fact, sometimes it benefits a small business considerably more. A good e-mail opt-in database can be worth infinitely more than what you spend on it to begin with as it can be used in so many different ways. Not only can you use it to get a marketing message across, you can use it as an ambassador of good will to your customers, sending them out helpful hints and tips, as well as utilizing it to follow up with customers who have purchased from you lately. It can have many, many different uses. However, with all that said let’s examine and define exactly what a decent e-mail marketing campaign is, and what it isn’t.

Wikipedia defines E-mail marketing as –

E-mail marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to an audience. In its broadest sense, every e-mail sent to a potential or current customer could be considered e-mail marketing. However, the term is usually used to refer to:

• Sending e-mails with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a merchant with its current or previous customers and to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business,
• Sending e-mails with the purpose of acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to purchase something immediately,
• Adding advertisements to e-mails sent by other companies to their customers, and
• Sending e-mails over the Internet, as e-mail did and does exist outside the Internet (e.g., network e-mail and FIDO).

You can find that definition at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_marketing. This definition pre-supposes that you are not e-mailing people that haven’t asked to be included in your mailing list. Sending unsolicited e-mail is called ‘spam’ - so what is the difference between e-mail marketing and spam? E-mail spam is defined loosely as unsolicited, bulk, commercial e-mail. Most people find e-mail spam to be distasteful at best.

For more information, please visit http://www.heritagewebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

What Your Website Can Do For You

Your website can and should increase your bottom line. After all, the reason you have a website is to increase your marketing opportunities and increase your profit. If you’ve taken advantage of great design and marketing tips your site is going to give you a plethora of opportunities to increase your bottom line and with a properly managed contact database increase your customer contact and repeat customer prospects. Let’s face it, the internet is definitely here to stay and will be around for a long time to come; if you don’t have a site these days it can seriously hamper your marketing and sales. The internet is and will remain an essential part of marketing and sales for the foreseeable future. The internet is a tool you can use to increase sales, reduce your overall marketing budget, it can be used as part of your customer service arsenal and actually reduce costs by providing opportunities to your customers to buy online, answer frequently asked questions and even give them an opportunity to put themselves on your mailing list. Your website is a marketing rep/customer service/sales person that doesn’t sleep and operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year. If a customer wants to buy from you sitting in their pajamas in their front room at 3:00 AM in the morning then they can do it, giving your customers unparalleled convenience.

So in short, a website can;

• Increase your bottom line by
• Increasing sales and sales opportunities
• Provide you with marketing opportunities
• Increase customer contact
• Reduce your overall marketing budget yet provide better opportunities to market your goods
• Provide your customers with incredible convenience and
• Provide them with great customer service by giving them instant access to information at any time of the day or night

So exactly how much does your site increase your bottom line? That depends on you. How much do you bring attention to it? How often do you give the link out to your customers and direct them there for sales and frequently asked questions? How much your site benefits you will depend on how much you utilize it and take advantage of its customer service opportunities.

For more information, please visit http://www.heritagewebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

How to Protect Your Content

There are some very easy ways to protect your website from someone illicitly copying it and using it for their own. The first step is to create a back up copy of your site and burn it to a DVD or CD. This can be used as an evidentiary backup copy in case you ever need to use it as support in some kind of dispute. This is a generally wise idea anyway as you want to make sure you preserve your site without relying on electronic copies. I would recommend making a physical copy of the site at least once a month but no less than every 3 months. Having a physical copy of it in your hand can be extremely valuable.

Another way of protecting your content on your site is to make sure it is registered at the U.S. Copyright office. This is relatively inexpensive (about $35.00) and relatively easy as well. Go to the U.S. Copyright website for instructions on how to do this. This is probably one of the must secure ways to protect your content as well as one of the surest.

These are the only ways of protecting text, besides keeping your ear to the ground and paying attention to any and all possible competitors. That can be a lot of work. With protecting images you have a few options. One of the best is adding a digital watermark. There are software programs out there that will help you do this and it is a pretty sure way of keeping track of your images online and making sure no one is stealing them for their own uses. Doing a search in Google or another search engine will be sure to net you some very useful results.

Most importantly, your content should change from time to time just to make sure everything is fresh and that your buyers have a motivation to come back. Return visits and buyers are the important thing. You want to capture your customer’s attention, hold it and turn them into raving fans and buyers of your products.

For more information, please visit http://www.heritagewebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

More on U.S. Copyright Law

You’ve worked hard to build your website. Long hours spent coming up with the perfect text, taking pictures of your business, working with the designer to build the site, finding great ways to market it. It’s been a long road but worth it as it is paying off in return business now.

Then one day, someone says, “Hey, I went to thisonesite.com and it looks a lot like yours. Is that your site too?” You go to the website and find that not only does it look like yours, but they have copied your text and even taken some of your pictures. Imagine how upset you would be! Instead of going to work on their own and doing their own research and work they’ve essentially taken what you’ve created and “borrowed” it for their own profit. You would be burning up!

Luckily, you can protect yourself against this type of theft. For one thing, as discussed in Friday’s blog article as soon as you put down your text in tangible form, either electronic or written, it is protected under U.S. Copyright law. The exact definition of what is protected by Copyright is as follows: (Taken directly from http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.pdf)

“Copyright protects “original works of authorship” that are fixed in a tangible form of expression. The fixation need not be directly perceptible so long as it may be communicated with the aid of a machine or device. Copyrightable works include the following categories:

1 literary works

2 musical works, including any accompanying words

3 dramatic works, including any accompanying music

4 pantomimes and choreographic works

5 pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works

6 motion pictures and other audiovisual works

7 sound recordings

8 architectural works

These categories should be viewed broadly. For example, computer programs and most “compilations” may be registered as “literary works”; maps and architectural plans may be registered as “pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works.”

These definitions certainly go a long ways towards protecting your site content; however you can and probably should go to extra lengths to protect your content. It isn’t hard to do so and is very much worth it in the long run. These days, if you publish to the web, you can almost guarantee that at some point someone will attempt to “borrow” your content.

I’ll have more on this important subject tomorrow.

For more information, please visit http://www.heritagewebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

U.S. Copyright Law and You

When writing the copy for your site, it will be tempting to look at others who have written essentially the same thing; your competitors and others in similar industries, and perhaps to ‘borrow’ some of their ideas. It is a lot of work to come up with all new content on your own, especially if you are essentially starting from scratch with no copy of your own. It is a good thing that you research what others are doing, what is not good is to copy or take without permission any content from another site and put it on your own as if it is yours. There are copyright laws that protect website owners from just such plagiarism; besides it just being downright sneaky. If you worked your tail off coming up with unique content for your site the last thing you would want to do would be have someone else take that content and use if for their own without so much as a thank you.

But what exactly is Copyright?

According to the United States Copyright Office and their website, copyright.org, Copyright is the following:

“Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States (title 17, U.S. code) to the authors of “original works of authorship,” including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works. This protection is available to both published and unpublished works. Section 106 of the 1976 Copyright Act generally gives the owner of copyright the exclusive right to do and to authorize others to do the following:

• To reproduce the work in copies or phonorecords;

• To prepare derivative works based upon the work;

• To distribute copies or phonorecords of the work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;

• To perform the work publicly, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisualworks;

• To display the work publicly, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work; and

• In the case of sound recordings,* to perform the work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.

In addition, certain authors of works of visual art have the rights of attribution and integrity as described in section 106A of the 1976 Copyright Act. For further information, see Circular 40, Copyright Registration for Works of the
Visual Arts.

It is illegal for anyone to violate any of the rights provided by the copyright law to the owner of copyright. These rights, however, are not unlimited in scope. Sections 107 through 121 of the 1976 Copyright Act establish limitations on these rights. In some cases, these limitations are specified exemptions from copyright liability. One major limitation is the doctrine of “fair use,” which is given a statutory basis in section 107 of the 1976 Copyright Act. In other instances, the limitation takes the form of a “compulsory license” under which certain limited uses of copyrighted works are permitted upon payment of specified royalties and compliance with statutory conditions. For further information about the limitations of any of these rights, consult the copyright law or write to the Copyright Office.”

This is pretty definitive as to what you can and cannot do. More Monday on this extremely important subject.

For more information, please visit http://www.heritagewebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

Continuation On Color And It's Importance To Your Marketing Message

Continuing on the theory of color and how it can affect your viewers and sales, there are three colors that go along with the primary colors. When you mix red and blue you get purple, when you mix yellow and blue you create green, and when you mix yellow and red you have orange. These colors can be significant and important in the message they convey to the users of your site.

Purple in the past, and still to this day, represents royalty and nobility. Many think of it as a creative color, a rich color representing depth of thought or wisdom. It is often a good color for creative sites or websites that encourage education or have something to do with education. It is often used in various shades for winery sites for its obvious association with the wine grape.

Green is an often associated with nature, plants, healing, and spring time. It is a soothing color that is easy on the eyes. It is generally associated with vitality and productiveness. Because it is so easy and pleasing to the eye it is a good color to use in abundance on a site design. It is a great color to use for any website that has to do with nature, natural processes, farming, landscaping and anyone who works with the outdoors.

Orange is one of the warmest and most inviting colors. It carries with it the warmth of yellow and the vitality of red making it a wonderful color to represent energy. It is a good color to use to represent fun, vigor and cheerfulness. Orange is an appropriate color for a site that wants to convey a fun message; it's a great compliment for green in representing vitality and nature. It is often used for restaurants and food vendors. Orange is associated with fall as well.

This is just a general guide to color and I hope it serves to inspire you to learn more on your own about how to use color to attract and hold the attention of visitors to your site. Color is very important in marketing and this is something your graphic designer can help you with. Don’t make the mistake of just going with your favorite colors – your favorite colors may be entirely wrong for the message you are trying to get across or will be most effective in marketing your product. My recommendation to anyone when looking at colors for their site is to go out and look at the most commonly used colors on their competitors sites and websites that are associated with the product and/or services that are related to theirs. This will give you a guide to go on when picking your own color scheme.

For more information, please visit http://www.heritagewebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

The Importance of Color in Your Website

When creating your website there are a lot of considerations, not the least of which is the actual design and color scheme itself. This can affect your sales, how people see your company and how they use your site. There is an entire field of study called color theory or the psychology of color, but you don’t have to go to years of school to pick the colors for your logo and/or website.

I’d like to introduce you to the field of color awareness by briefly going over the reasons behind color theory. First off, there are physical reasons behind why color affects us the way it does. I don’t want to get sidetracked on this as it isn’t necessary to understand why we see colors the way we do, it is only important to understand how they affect us and how they affect the way we buy. I do want to point out that most of color theory is what they call “soft science” in that it isn’t really provable by scientific method nor can it be explained by mathematical reference. That doesn’t make it any less true. Statistics in sales often “prove” something beyond a shadow of a doubt.

First we will look at the primary colors. Because there are only three primary colors, all other colors come from those, making the primary colors some of the most significant. The three primary colors are Blue, Yellow and Red.

Blue, the color of the sky and water, is associated with coolness, serenity, stability and solidity. It invokes a sense of permanence and strength due to its association with the sky and the sea. This would be a good choice in colors for a financial institution or a mortgage company.

Yellow is almost always linked with the sun. This is pretty universal throughout the world, so this color conveys the same message in almost every culture. It is generally associated with energy, happiness, optimism, warmth and heat. Yellow captures people’s attention better than any other color because of its brightness. It is usually a good choice for schools, daycares and creative enterprises.

Red is the color of blood, so can be linked with vitality, life and passion. It is an aggressive color in many ways and is a hot color because of its association with flame and blood. It can also be used to convey danger. This makes it an exciting color and one that is associated with thrills and energy. It is often used in association with fast foods, certain restaurants and anywhere people want to associate vitality and thrilling energy.

More tomorrow on this very important subject.

For more information, please visit http://www.heritagewebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

More Testimonials for Heritage Web Solutions

Continuing the post of yesterday; I just want everyone to know we have many, many satisfied customers. We wouldn't be in the position we are today if we didn't. Read on below...

WOW! I have been so please since calling your company two days ago and being assigned to with Mr. Miles Hillier to work on my LOGO with me. I told Miles that I needed to have my LOGO in one day as I was being asked for this item by a third party. Miles and I spoke for the first time on Thursday the 5^th and after I had emailed my idea for the LOGO he got right to work and had two different representations of it within 24 hours. I really appreciate your company following thru on what the sales rep said you would do—(follow up from Richard Brandt was also appreciated). The pressure was on Miles, but he took the challenge and REALLY PERFORMED. He didn’t get stressed and took the project in stride and most importantly did GREAT WORK. We worked through three generation of the logo in a matter of 2-3 hours and presto, I have a finished logo I love.

I would like to make sure I work with Miles on my Webpage as I am not in a hurry for it and I think I have found someone I really like working with. You can rest assured, I will tell anyone that needs WebDesign or Logos about your company and the professional and caring people that work there. I cannot say enough about Miles.

Respectfully,
Alan J. Winkler

JIRREH, INC. (PEO/Staff Leasing Brokers)

Some more from another satisfied customer....

I'd like to take a moment to recognize the great work that Anthony Rosado had done for us. My domain is dycinc.org.

Mr Rosado was assigned my site. When we spoke I had asked him as a favor to put up a coming soon page with some important info we needed displayed on the site immediately.

Not only was Mr. Rosado able to get the info up quickly...but he completed the site in LESS THAN A DAY!!!

I can't say enough good things.....thank you!

Mike Buckley

And one more....

I wanted to pay Dave Danis, my webpage creator, designer and programmer a well deserved compliment! I am the owner of a small business and wanted a personalized, professional, easy to use website for my clients - many of whom suffer from extreme hair loss, cancer and other devastating illnesses. In addition I was unsure of exactly what I wanted but I knew I wanted something very classy for my clients and to represent my product. Needless to say, Dave produced a wonderful easily navigated site that was customized to my personal taste.

I must admit, I am a type "A" personality as well as a bit of a perfectionist and Dave worked well with me even though some of my employees consider me a handful and a challenge to work with. In addition to producing a beautiful website that I am PROUD of and proud to show my clients, family and friends- he was always polite (even when I changed my mind), helpful, made excellent suggestions (when I was unsure what I wanted and did not know how to put it into words), very competent (suggested alternative ways of incorporating different aspects into my site) and the utmost professional!

I am employed with a large research university (as a research investigator and project director) and work on many different projects including clinical trials. Thanks to Dave's outstanding work and your HWS team- I will recommend your services to many others! Dave's creativity and professionalism shine's through on my website.

Honestly, I did not expect the site completed so soon! We are well ahead of schedule! As a matter of fact my marketing materials and brochures have not arrived but my website is ready and will be up and running soon.

In closing, I cannot express how pleased I am with my designer, the product and outstanding service I have received within the last month! Given his hard work, the amount of time he has put into my project and the final custom product he produced- the least I could do was to let HSW know how much I appreciate and respect Dave's talent. In conclusion- job well done- I will highly recommend HSW- in particular Dave. if you have questions feel free to contact me via email or at 205-980-0404. Thanks for you the outstanding service!

Sincerely,
Dr. Ella M. Temple

As you can see, Heritage does have many, many satisfied customers. I hope this helps you to realize Heritage Web Solutions is not a scam or a rip off.

Testimonials for Heritage Web Solutions

Lately I’ve heard a lot of people asking whether or not Heritage Web Solutions is a scam or not. Do we rip off our customers? I’ve heard many questions of this nature just recently. As a matter of fact, there is a website that features a lot of complaints about Heritage on it, called rip off report.com – it has puzzling search engine results, as it comes up quite high on Google yet is penalized on Yahoo as well as MSN for spamdexing… anyway that isn’t the point. The point I’m getting to is this – is Heritage Web Solutions a ripoff or not? The answer is easily investigated by going to the BBB or investigating public record. What is interesting is, for the volume of business we do we have very few complaints. The vast majority of our customers go all the way through our process with no snags. That is not to say we don’t have problems, but those problems are few in comparison to the volume of business we do. There aren’t sites out there who shout out to the world how good Heritage Web Solutions is though….because only those with complaints tend to be vocal. That isn’t to say we don’t have a lot of happy and in some cases ecstatic customers – we do. To prove this, I will post just a few, dare I say, glowing testimonies, below. This is the side of Heritage Web Solutions those looking at us on the internet rarely see. But I’ll let the following posts speak for themselves. Read on…

Hello Lance,
I absolutely needed and wanted to send 100% POSITIVE feedback regarding my experience with Renee Wasula. Renee is not only a wonderful website designer, but she is without a doubt an excellent communicator. It was a sheer pleasure to speak with Renee by phone AND by email in discussions about the design of my website. I am totally pleased with my website, and I am definitely ready to move on to the next steps in the process to getting my website to go 'live'.

Actually, I have had a very good experience with almost everyone that has helped me so far. (But THIS message is primarily a huge compliment to Renee Wasula and her intuitive skills and abilities.)

I will definitely request Renee if I need future design services. In my opinion, Heritage Web Designs is very fortunate to have her under contract.

Thanks a million,
Mary Nolfi
www.CrochetAsylum.com
(757)258-1781

Another…

Kevin Fox was my website designer for Alpha Omega Armor. His workmanship is exemplary. He represented his professionalism from the first day he was assigned to me, through the weeks of development. He was clear about what his role is and wasn't misleading.

He often went beyond the call of duty and contacted me after business hours to keep me posted about progress, or just to see if I had any concerns or questions. He always remained professional, proficient and friendly, not at all impersonal.

Kevin is highly recommended to anyone looking for a great web designer.

Eric Freeman
Alpha Omega Armor - Wear it Faithfully
http://alphaomegaarmor.com/

And another…

Let me begin by saying that my whole experience with Heritage has been outstanding. From my first phone call with Chris, to Mike Bell, and then ultimately to Amanda, everyone has done exactly what they said they would do.

Amanda has been amazing in her ability to take what was in my mind and place it in living color on the Internet. I am not the easiest person to work with when it comes to a certain look that I am trying to achieve. I tend to be overly critical and especially picky but Amanda took everything in stride and produced a great site. When I work with Heritage in the future I want Amanda doing our design work. She is to be commended for her hard work and diligence. Amanda represents Heritage Web Solutions very well as one of your graphic designers.

I look forward to doing more business with your company in the future.

Thank You,
Dave Ragan
Pastor,
Destiny People Worship Center, Inc.

For more information, please visit http://www.heritagewebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

Converting Visitors to Buyers

You’ve worked hard at creating your web site. It is now complete, live for everyone to see, and now you need to do some business. You want the site to pay for itself and become a benefit for your business. So you’ve worked equally hard to get people to the site, bring it into the public eye and make it visible to the world. However, all the traffic to your site means nothing if you aren’t converting those visitors to actual paying customers.

How do you accomplish this? Through a process called conversion. Conversion is the process by which you take browsers, or viewers, and turn them into a customer; someone who pays for your goods and/or services. Your conversion rate is the ratio of visitors to your site compared to how many of those visitors are actually buying. Without this all important conversion, the work and money you have spent getting those visitors to your site is wasted. So how do you change the viewer to a customer?

According to Forrester as of August 2007 the average conversion rate in e-commerce is 2.9%. Your target then is to match this or exceed it. Increasing the conversion rate of your online business makes sense in a lot of ways. You’re maximizing your efforts in marketing and making those dollars make more sense for you as well as increasing revenue without spending further marketing dollars or manpower. There are some simple ways to make sure you are doing all you can to maximize your potential in conversions.

First of all, make sure you’re providing great content in the site. I’ve talked a lot about that in earlier blog entries and can’t emphasize enough how important great written content is. Make sure your content is grabbing your visitor’s attention and that it tells them exactly what it is you want them to do immediately. Don’t make them guess. Along the way, think about ways to build customer loyalty – that way those marketing dollars not only get a onetime customer but build a future relationship that keeps bringing the customer back again and again. Some kind of reward for the customer to return usually works – maybe a coupon for a percentage off on their next visit to your site.

In short –

• Write and implement great content for your site
• Grab your visitor/buyers attention and hold it
• Make it easy for them to know exactly what you want them to do on the front page
• Find ways of building your customers loyalty

For more information, please visit http://www.heritagewebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.