How Can Facebook Help My Business?

Facebook®, a social networking website located at http://www.facebook.com/, has recently gained popularity as an online tool to help market businesses. Accessible via the Web or the latest generation of smart cell phones and PDAs, Facebook's mission is to give people the power to share ideas and make the world more open and connected.

Because of the large number of users visiting this social platform, many businesses have turned to Facebook as a way to connect to potential customers. This can be done with a Facebook Fan page.

A Facebook Fan Pages' audience consists of "Fans." These are the Facebook users who have elected to ‘Become A Fan' of your business in order to receive updates about your business. The updates show up on that Facebook user's "wall" (a wall is a Facebook user's profile page) as they are added to the Fan Page. Many popular business Fan pages, including Victoria's Secret®, Toyota®, and Starbucks®, have thousands or tens of thousands of users who display Fan page updates on their walls.

Determining exactly how you might want to use Facebook for your business is the first step to take. A plan should be in place before you even set up an account.

Should I Use Facebook for My Business?
There is no hard and fast answer as to whether a business should be on Facebook. Consider the following and then decide whether this tool is right for you:

1. Upkeep: Setting up a Facebook account "just to be on it" is not useful. Social media is a continuous process that requires regular attention. Think of it as starting a conversation with your customers and "friends" of your customers. You don't want to just "go quiet" mid conversation. You will not attract new visitors or keep your current Fans coming back if you don't keep your Facebook Fan Page updated on a regular basis.

2. Time: Once you decide to use Facebook as a marketing platform, another consideration is how much time you should spend making the most of this marketing tool. Though it can be a useful tool, generating fresh content and keeping the page updated can be time consuming.

3. Fresh Content: Keeping your page updated with fresh, original content will keep your current Fans coming back and can also attract new Fans: Your updates will be visible to their friends and family on your Fan's wall and may entice them to visit your site and also become a Fan.

4. Monitoring the Discussion: You will also need to be able to monitor your wall and discussion boards to address and feedback your Fans are posting to your Facebook Page. Unaddressed or unnoticed issues can create more of a headache and is something you will need monitor consistently and be able to respond quickly.

5. Fan = Customer? Businesses should also be aware that a Fan doesn't equal an active customer. Many people who become Fans of a page are simply saying, "I like this." Facebook Fans don't necessarily interact with the company more or increase their level of spend.

6. Strategy: For Facebook to make sense for your business, you should target a specific goal that's relatable to your business strategy. Such a goal might be, "I want to increase revenue by 15% in 25-34 year olds." Then you could decide whether Facebook is one of the right platforms to reach your business demographic or if you should be spending your marketing efforts elsewhere.

Getting Started
Once you've taken all of the above into consideration and you've decided you'd like to utilize Facebook to help your business, you are ready to begin. There are a few ways you can engage with Facebook via a Fan Page.

1. Use Facebook for your business only with a Fan Page: Business accounts are easily set up by creating a page without setting up a personal profile first. This can be preferable to some people who don't want to provide a lot of personal information to get started. To create this type of account, just click on the link "Create a Page for a celebrity, band or business." This will give you access to your Fan pages. From here you may also administer an ad campaign. However, this type of account (where you haven't provided your information) will provide only limited access to your Fans' profiles and other features on the site. (Facebook Help Center FAQs on Business Accounts)

2. Using Facebook for personal and business: Many people already have a personal profile they use to connect with family and friends. If you already have a personal account, you just need to create a Fan Page for your business. Facebook is set up to be tied closely to your personal profile and your business page, so you many want to update the privacy settings on your personal profile to ensure you don't have any potentially embarrassing photos visible to business contacts. You can use Facebook Profile Privacy Settings to make updates.

3. Using Facebook for your business with a personal profile and Fan Page: If you haven't signed up for a personal profile yet, you can start one. Keep your business in mind. In other words, don't include personal pictures or personal information that's not relevant to your business contacts. You can use this page as a professional networking source and add a Fan Page to create greater awareness of your business.

Fan Page Setup
Thousands of people have created Fan pages, so don't be intimidated. It's easy.

1. Fan Page Name - When naming your Fan page, keep branding efforts in mind. If you have been promoting your company with a particular name, you should use that as your Fan Page name as well. Also, use spaces and full words while entering your business name. Your business will be easier to find when people do a search for your company on Facebook or in search engine such as Google®, both of which may be helpful as you manage your online reputation.

2. Link to Twitter® - If you have a Twitter account already, you can link your Fan Page to your Twitter account. This will add your updates, links, photos, notes and events to Twitter and allow your Twitter Followers to view all your Facebook information. Keep in mind that the content on your Fan Page should be unique so your Fans will keep coming back and not just become a Fan and forget about you. The same applies to your Twitter account. Having unique content on both Facebook and Twitter can keep your Fans and Followers engaged.

3. Photo - You want people to know it's your page with they arrive. Adding your logo as a photo to your Fan Page helps brand your Facebook Fan Page and can bring more awareness to your brand.

4. About - The next step is editing your page and providing useful information to let your people know who you are and what your mission is. You can list other ways people can connect with you: through your main website, blog, and social profiles you maintain.

5. Adding Content - Utilize the other Facebook tabs to add more content to your Fan Page. Changing these settings is only a matter of checking or un-checking a box on the Edit Page section of your Facebook Fan Page.

Wall - This tab is for viewing your recent activities and what your Fans are posting. If you are worried about what people will say when they add comments, you can limit what your Fans can post in the Fan Permissions area of the Wall Settings. However, not allowing comments might make them feel less connected with your Page and your business. 
Discussion Boards - Allows users to engage with each other on your Page. 
Events - You can let your Fans know about upcoming promotions, sales and other events. 
Links - Make it easy for user to see your business's main domain name, newsletters or other value-added information. 
Images - Visuals are at the top of the online accessibility pyramid: show products, events, etc. 
Reviews - Fans can leave reviews about your business. This can be a good tool to interact with your customers and hear honest feedback. However, you should monitor this closely and respond immediately to any negative feedback. 
Video - Appealing videos can really help keep your content fresh and interesting so Fans will come back to your page.

6. Other ways to add more content: You can use your Fan Page to connect with your customers and keep them engaged. Here are a few ways that you can add content to your Facebook page:

Content you create: Post details about business events in the Facebook events tab or display exclusive discounts to your Facebook Fans. Provide helpful information about topics that are on the mind of your ideal customer. You can include intriguing details about your products or services, but don't get too "salesy" or your Fans will feel "marketed to" and leave.

Auto Generated Content: You can include RSS (really simple syndication) feeds from your Blog(s) and Twitter® account. This will automatically insert the content from your blog posts and tweets into your Facebook page. This can help you to keep your content updated and help show activity on your site. Constant activity on your Facebook page can help your Fan Page rank higher in organic search engine results. However, you do want to be careful about having too much of the same information on a blog, twitter and Facebook. Having some information unique to Facebook will help entice your fans to return to your Facebook page.

Content your Fans create: There are many ways to encourage your fans to interact with your Fan Page, including discussion boards, surveys, and reviews of your products and services. Giving your visitors the ability to voice their questions and opinions on your Fan Page can keep them engaged and connected to your business. It may also give you more insight into your consumer's wants and needs. 
7. More Applications - Many applications are available and can be easily added to your page. For example, a popular application is Static FBML (Facebook Markup Language). This application allows you to add custom HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) to a tab to give you more control over how your page looks. If you decide to set up a custom page, you can set that as the default landing tab in the Wall Settings.

Gathering Fans

Once your company's Facebook profile is set up and you have added some information, it is a good time to begin building an audience of Fans. This should be done both on and off Facebook. This can be done in a number of ways:

Link to your company's Facebook Fan Page on your home page of your company website. 
Link to your company's Facebook Fan Page in all email. 
Become a Fan of your own Fan Page and suggest it to your Friends list. 
Use Twitter to announce your new Fan Page and offer deals to new Fans. 
Link to you Facebook Fan page on your Blog and other social profile sites. 
Use Facebook content in email newsletters. 
Post links from newsletter articles on Facebook. 
Use Facebook to write about the latest news, worthwhile forum posts, controversial case studies, inspiring blog entries, etc. 
Social Media Relations: It's Not Media Relations
Social media sites and the networking opportunities they provide are changing the way people market their businesses. Instead of mass advertising, social media has ushered in an era of inbound marketing.

Word-of-mouth marketing and the many avenues available for customer engagement means that businesses can leverage their current, loyal customer base to help market their business to other potential consumers. For example, if you provide interesting content, other users will share your posts with others, who can pass along the information to even more Facebook users. This can build new readership and attract new Fans. Here are a few rules to play by now that you're in Social Media Relations:

Play nice: What you publish on the Web, even though it can be deleted from Facebook, will still be archived permanently somewhere. Just as maintaining a reputation as a friendly source for helpful information can be good for business, negativity can have the opposite effect. Incendiary or extreme statements, heavy-handed marketing, or disrespectful language don't go far on Facebook or in any social media venue. 
Encourage sharing: Provide free information and encourage others to share it; this will engage new potential customers as it harnesses the power of bloggers with high readership and a large number of Fans. 
Avoid coercion: Do not try to trick potential customers. 
Lose control: This might sound scary, but it's ok to lose control. Once the information you have published is out there, let people do with it what they will.

Conclusion
In many ways, using social media sites is based on common sense. Once you have learned the particulars of a certain tool like Facebook®, it becomes fairly intuitive. Be friendly, be helpful, share information, build a good reputation, and current and potential customers will know they can trust you. This is truly how to use Facebook to benefit your business.

If you have any questions, or if you would like for Network Solutions to set up a Facebook Fan Page for your business, contact your Account Manager at any time. We will be happy to help.

How Domain Names Work – All You (Really) Need to Know

Millions and millions of people all over the world browse the web every day. They browse it by typing in something called a domain name into the address bar of the web browser. The browser and technology behind it then does their magic and you get the website you requested. If you’re reading this, you know the drill.

But how exactly do domain names work and what are they anyway? Find out everything you wanted to know about domain names in our Ultimate Guide to Domains and DNS!

What is a Domain Name?

A domain name or domain is a structured label which is connected to a specific IP (Internet Protocol) address of a server where the web page is being hosted. Here’s an example: http://www.domain.me is a domain name of our own site. You’ll notice we said that domains are structured labels. Let’s have a look at the structure of the domain.

The Structure of a Domain Name

Every domain consists of at least two parts: the actual domain name and the TLD or Top Level Domain. In our domain.me example, “.me” is the TLD of Montenegro and the “domain” part is a domain name or domain label we chose for our site. You’ve surely heard of some other top-level domains like .com, .net, .org, .info, .us etc.

Domains are under the jurisdiction of ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers which is responsible for creating new and maintaining current top-level domains.

On the other hand, you can choose your domain name and register it with a domain name registry. So, if you want to register this-is.me, go right ahead!

Now you know that a domain name consists of an actual name and the TLD suffix. There is also something called a subdomain, which is the third-level of a domain. If you own john.this-is.me domain, “.me” is top-level domain, “this-is” is the level 2 domain name and “john” is the subdomain of “this-is” domain. It’s really not that complicated; just follow the hierarchy from right to left.

What is DNS?

By now, you have learnt what domains are and that they consist of a domain name and TLDs like .me or .com. You also know that websites are hosted on servers all over the world. The problem is, the servers aren’t really recognized by domain names. TheyR#8217;re actually recognized by IP addresses. A typical IP address looks something like 72.167.131.92 (which happens to be the IP address of this blog; try to enter it into your browser, you should end up on domain.me website).

DNS stands for Domain Name System and it is a set of specialized DNS servers that have only one purpose: they serve as a database, or to be more precise – they serve as a phone book for connecting IP addresses with corresponding domain names. These servers are called name servers.

How DNS Works

The sole purpose of the DNS system is to make your browsing more comfortable. You really don’t want to remember all those number-dot-numbers-dot-more-numbers, right? It’s a lot easier to remember domain.me or some other domain. When you enter that pretty domain name, the browser will search through the DNS system and find the exact IP address of the corresponding website.

This is where domain name hierarchy really shines; if you want to open domain.me, the browser will first go to the root DNS records and try to find all the name servers within the .me top-level domain. It will then go to the first server on the list and try to find the actual IP address which is connected to domain.me. Once found, the browser knows the IP address of the “domain.me” domain and opens up the site. Magic.

9 SEO secrets every business should know

The search engine optimization (SEO) world has undergone some big changes in the last few years—the biggest being coming in the form of Google’s heightened push towards strong user experiences. It’s hard to imagine that just 10 years ago, SEO was a discipline governed by blackhat marketers whose sole objective was to increase rankings and drive traffic. Long story short—it wasn’t pretty, and Google didn’t like it.

Today, the ‘secret’ to SEO is no secret at all. It’s common sense. Brands that rank high on search engines have great content, address their target audience’s search intent, and take the time to optimize their sites from a technology standpoint. Here are 9 SEO ‘secrets’ that will lead your brand to awesome.

1 – Stop overthinking it

The biggest challenge with SEO is that it’s ambiguous territory—but you shouldn’t let the uncertainty get the best of you. Understand that almost every marketer is exactly where you are now. Everyone’s trying to figure out SEO’s ‘hidden secrets’ with little direction. The best thing to do is to keep your mind off the complexities and instead, focus on delivering the best possible user experience.

2 – Keep content fresh

When people conduct research, they want up-to-date, accurate information. That’s why it’s important to keep content updated. Recency is becoming an increasingly important ranking factor in Google’s search algorithm and for good reason—your audiences don’t want to waste time reading dated content.

3 – Prioritize usability

Technology is an important part of the user experience equation. In addition to providing audiences with helpful and informative content, you’ll want to make sure that your website is easy and enjoyable to browse. Make sure to optimize your website to be mobile friendly and to ensure that it has a quick load time.

Just recently, Google announced that more than half of its US searches are now coming from mobile devices. This stat, coupled with the recent ‘Mobilegeddon’ algorithm update provide strong signals that even greater emphasis is going to be placed on businesses mobile websites in the coming years.

You can use WebSite Auditor to identify potential technical flaws and to crawl your site on a consistent basis.

4 – Build relationships, not links

“Link building” is a term that SEO practitioners use to describe the process of building credibility. The idea is simple: people link to your website when they perceive your brand as a source of authority. Often, however, SEO specialists take the expression ‘link building’ too literally. By asking for links, they end up with the extreme opposite—absolutely nothing.

Links are the key to ranking well in Google, but what marketers often forget is that links are built upon relationships with people. The best way to ‘build links’ is to forge connections and offer value to bloggers and other influencers in your niche.

Try using SEO SpyGlass to see who’s linking to your website—and to identify potential patterns.

5 – Prioritize the long-tail

Search engine experiences are becoming increasingly personalized. That’s why it’s important for businesses to focus on long-tail and location-based keywords—so that audiences can find your company based on the exact value and service that you provide.

Ranking highly for a vague search term like ‘San Francisco Doctor’ might be an ego booster, but it puts you in direct competition with all the doctors in San Francisco, regardless of their practice area. A top rank for a more specific term, such as ‘San Francisco orthopedic surgeon’ will generate a lot more qualified leads.

6 – Use the right keywords in the right places

Get specific by taking a structured approach. It’s not enough to focus on the right keyword—you need to make sure that you’re communicating the ‘right’ information to Google in a structured way.

In order to improve rankings for long-tail keywords, make sure that they’re present in your main body copy and page titles. If your website structure doesn’t allow for this, attach a blog or news feed to your site and create content around these topics, with the long-tail keywords in the titles and copy.

A good place to start would be Rank Tracker, which can ensure your content is fully optimized for specific keywords.

7 – Replace keyword research with customer research

People turn to search engines when they have questions. When they’ve arrived at your website, they’re likely looking for immediate answers.

Think of your brand as a publisher and source of high-quality information. When you produce helpful, informative content like blog posts, how-to articles, and research, you’ll get in front of searchers and earn their trust.

8 – Don’t ignore the small details

Often, marketers will focus on optimizing elements that are direct SEO ranking factors. In doing so, however, they’ll overlook a very important detail—meta descriptions.

Your meta descriptions, for instance, provide previews of your website. It’s your brand’s chance to stand apart from competitors on search engine results pages and encourage click-throughs to your website. A well-developed meta description, in a few short lines of text, will drive more traffic to your website.

9 – Be a go-to resource by creating a dictionary

One of the most efficient ways to rank for a term is to create a ‘dictionary’ page with objective and thorough definitions. Rather than ‘keyword stuffing,’ however, it’s important that marketers take the time to create content that helps their target audiences learn.

These pages often rank highly in search engines all on their own, as they are naturally somewhat keyword dense and are usually very helpful to people who searched for those terms. They tend to position brands as authoritative sources of information and generate backlinks.

You can use a keyword research tool to identify potential dictionary terms and low-hanging areas of opportunity.

Final thoughts

The days of self-serving, scammy, and spammy SEO are long-gone. And that’s a good thing. The ‘secret’ to success with SEO is no secret at all. Just focus on serving your audience’s needs and answering their questions in a thorough and empathetic way. Focus on your customers, and take the right logistical steps to make sure that search engines can find your content. Focus on the ‘road less traveled’ with long-tail opportunities, and you’ll be set.

How can a website help build my business?

This is no news! You get a much bigger and relevant audience to showcase your products or services using a website than by publishing ads in a regular printed media.

Today's businesses need a website as in the past they needed a phone line. There is no way you can survive without having a presence in the web. Think about it!

A website has no geographical limitation. It is like having a very dynamic, well organized sales force available to your customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Abundant, fun to read content, is the key to success

In order to take full advantage of these great new tools you will need to understand how they work and learn to use them correctly. The abundant content of your website is the key to its success. Your online customers are curious about your products and services and the website should be prepared to provide all requested information.

Don't just list your products and services there. It is necessary to provide all sorts of details, show images and have a section where your visitors are able to leave their comments, ask questions, etc. A dynamic and vibrant website will function as a bridge between the client and your products. No other means of business promotion will provide your company with this level of interactivity with potential customers.

The company that will develop your website should offer a detailed plan about the necessary structure to manage the content of your new site in the beginning of the project and how this structure can grow over the years. Keep in mind that your website will never be completed but must be constantly maintained and systematically updated. The website is your company in the digital format. If you update your company's portfolio you must not forget to update your website as quickly as possible.

The website should be prepared to absorb and expose those products innovations to its visitors. If you offer services basically, the website is absolutely the best way to display the new tools and methodologies that your company is taking to better serve the customers you already have and to attract new ones!

Measuring the results and improving performance

Make no mistake: Competition on the Internet has dramatically increased in recent years and the quality of the content of a website is as important as its looks. If you own a store or an office, you probably keep an eye on your competition and always strive to deliver a differentiated product or service to your customers. The Internet works the same way.

It is considerably easier to adopt new tactics for promoting and selling using a website than to update flyers, catalogs and brochures you have already printed. To determine whether changes are needed, you must know your competitor and your visitors and constantly evaluate the performance of your website.

The company that will develop and maintain your website must be able to help you with these technical tasks. Earn your place on the Internet now! Discover the potential of the online media. Know the level of involvement required to make your website project an absolute success. In the short term, all the investment in a well designed, constantly updated website will bring you amazing results.

Ten ways to develop your website to help your business grow

Whatever the size of your organisation, a website is an essential business tool. However, having a good-looking site is no longer enough — it needs to actively work for you by attracting new business and driving your company forward.

Few small businesses have huge budgets to spend on their website, but the good news is that focusing on certain key principles when developing and managing your website will almost certainly yield a healthy return on investment. Here are ten steps to ensure your website works hard for your business.

1. Be business driven. Remember that your website is a business tool, and whilst good design is important, first and foremost it should be business-led. Increasingly, current and potential customers engage with a company via their website, so think of it as your showcase. Consistent branding and developing a defined identity starts with your website — and is then carried on through marketing, stationery, brochures and other activity.

2. Review and reflect. You may be perfectly happy with your website, but like any practice or procedure it’s important to review it regularly to ensure that it still meets your needs and that of your customers. Does your site reflect changes in the marketplace? Does it still address your target market? Are the design, content and graphics still relevant? Does it accurately showcase your business? If your website has been up and running for several years it’s difficult to remain objective, so it can be helpful to get an opinion from an outside source who can bring a new perspective.

3. Differentiation through design. People have such short attention spans and they will quickly leave a site that doesn’t capture their attention — and that’s where great design comes in. Thanks to faster broadband speeds and improved software, website design has evolved hugely. Graphics and images can now be bigger and better, and are a key part of establishing and reinforcing your branding and identity. Great design is also another way that you can really differentiate yourself from the competition, so ensure your site looks attractive and professional, as well as being functional. Ultimately, this will help to increase visitors, page view rates — and new business.

4. Work in progress. A website should be continually developing. Unfortunately, many people tend to think of their website as a finished project, similar to sending a brochure to the printer, failing to take advantage of the fact that a website can and should be regularly updated by changing and adding relevant content. This can be done by writing blogs, adding to news sections and creating links to and from your site. This is important because clients, visitors and search engines are attracted by active sites. For example, if Google sees that content is being updated, it will visit a site more often, revising listings which is likely to improve both Google and page rankings. However, there is a specific skill to writing relevant content that features the most popular key search phrases on Google. These may refer to specific products or services, geographical areas or a particular customer need.

5. Getting to number one. When people look for products or services online, the chances are that they will use a search engine, so it’s crucial that your site is picked up by them. Smaller companies might think that only larger businesses can achieve page one of Google’s listings, but actually any company can rank highly if they use the right techniques and are prepared to put in the time and effort that is required to both get and stay there. However, the process is complicated by the fact that search engines are constantly changing, which means that SEO needs to be ongoing. It also requires off-site optimisation which involves linking to and from other sites, carrying out social media marketing and creating blogs and current content to enhance your site’s overall online influence.

6. Get your priorities right. It’s always best to have a clear strategy when marketing any aspect of your business — and marketing your website is no different. Set short, medium and long-term goals but be aware that your web designer may not be the best person to help you achieve them. Designers often lack experience in SEO, which means that any optimisation of title and meta tags will be at a basic level and unlikely to generate the traffic that an active marketing strategy devised with an SEO/web marketing specialist will achieve.

7. The value of online marketing. The internet is essentially demand-led, with SEO and some other forms of web marketing such as Google Adwords more highly targeted than offline advertising. This means that people who are actively searching for your product or service will be directed towards your site — so you get more bang for your buck on the internet than advertising in a magazine, for example.

8. New marketing methods. In addition, companies are faced with relatively new strategies for web marketing including social media, YouTube and pay-per-click, some of which they may be uncomfortable or unfamiliar with. Whilst it would be great to do everything, financial and time constraints inevitably mean that you will have to choose the media and tactics that work best for your business.

9. Be mobile friendly. The popularity of smartphones and tablets as a way of accessing the internet has risen rapidly and will only increase in the foreseeable future — so it’s important to bear this in mind when setting up or reviewing a site. Having a mobile-friendly site is increasingly important and (as long as you follow tips 1-8) a site that is easily accessible for mobile users is highly likely to increase sales and raise your profile, particularly if your business is primarily B to C. This is a whole topic in itself but in a nutshell, a mobile site should be built around the existing website, carrying through the brand identity. From a user point of view, it needs to capture the key elements of your main site, offering a point and click functionality that allows the user to access the aspects that interest them. 

10. Encourage your customers to take action. You have done the hard part, creating an attractive, functional website that can be found and stands out from the competition, so make sure you take the final step and encourage the visitors to act. Include and highlight plenty of calls to action throughout your site. Adding a reminder to “phone us” or “email us” or “click here to buy” is simple — and amazingly effective.

Your website should always be a work in progress. As search engines continue to evolve, content and SEO need to be regularly revisited. Our experience has taught us that it is the sites that are proactively managed and updated that contribute most to business growth. The best web developers will work in a partnership with the website owner to help them “make their website happen”, with constant review, dialogue and improvement.

The good news is that, no matter what your size, you can create a well-optimised, visible and effective website with a relatively limited budget if you follow these key principles.

10 Things Every Small-Business Website Needs

The Web is full of horrendous sites, and we're not just talking about bad design. There are many other elements besides how your website looks that go into making it customer-friendly -- not to mention something that inspires them to actually do business with you.

From thorough contact information to customer testimonials, here are the essentials that every small business website should have for it to effectively help you do business.

1. A clear description of who you are
Someone who stumbles upon your website shouldn't have to do investigative work to figure out what, exactly, it is that you do. That means clearly stating your name and summing up your products or services right on the homepage.

2. A simple, sensible Web address
Don't make things complicated.

Your domain name is like your brand. It should be easy for a user to type it into a Web browser or an e-mail address.

I always recommend the .com domain as users are conditioned to type that extension when they enter a Web address. For non-profits or organizations, I usually recommend using a .org domain for branding purposes, but also recommend having a .com version of the domain in case a user accidentally types the .com address.

Avoid dashes (which can cause SEO headaches) and numbers (which can cause confusion for customers).

3. An easily-navigated site map
Clear links to the most important pages, and a site map, are crucial for guiding visitors to the information they're looking for.

Be sure your navigation is clearly laid out. I always recommend using dropdowns in the navigation menu so the visitor can see the content under every heading from virtually any page. You want to make it very easy for your visitors to find what they are looking for, or what you want them to know.

4. Easy-to-find contact information
You wouldn't want to lose a customer to a competitor just because you made it difficult for them to get in touch with you.

Not every online visitor has the patience to click through every page on your website to find the contact information.

The best place for the contact information is the top left or top right corner of the home page. It is also a good practice to include contact information in every page of the website in the footer or side bar or even in top right corner, which helps the visitors to find it more easily.

You should also be sure to include several ways for them to contact you -- phone, e-mail, and a standard contact form, are all good options. Forbes also suggests including your address, and even a link to your location in Google maps.

One of the biggest mistakes business owners make is to force only one way to reach them. The point is to make it very easy for users to communicate with you on their terms.

5. Customer testimonials
Honest words from others help make your products or services more tangible to customers who are visiting you online.

They help your potential customers to build trust in you, especially if you are new. And they help shoppers to confirm whether the product or services meet their needs.

People love to hear stories from real people. They help people find out other things you haven't said on your website.

6. An obvious call to action
Tell the online visitors literally what you want them to do with clear tones of commend. For instance, you may want them to call you now for free quote, or sign up to your exclusively online coupons, or add products to the online shopping cart, etc.

Call attention to your suggestion by using special buttons or highlighting the text, for example.

7. Know the basics of SEO
Your website won't do you as much good if no one can stumble upon it. Become familiar with the SEO basics to make it more accessible by search engine.

You don't need to employ mysterious, ninja, black hat SEO types to rank well on the search engines. Simply make sure your website is coded correctly.

That means using the correct keywords throughout your text, putting in plenty of links, naming your page titles and URLs correctly, and employing the magic of images and videos.

8. Fresh, quality content
For many businesses, your website is your first impression on a customer. You want to give them what they're looking for, and perhaps even give them a reason to keep coming back.

The user is looking for something. Make sure you give it to them.... and be sure your content is original, well written and valuable.

Fresh content is a goldmine for SEO, as well. You can keep your content from getting stale (and give your company some personality, too) by incorporating a regularly-updated blog or connecting in your social media feeds.

9. A secure hosting platform
Having your online information hijacked is a nightmare, and, should it happen to your business, it could cost you customers.

It is imperative that you have a secure, trustworthy hosting company to keep the bad guys out and your content up and running. It is also very important to keep your content management system updated in order to stay one step ahead of the hackers.

10. A design and style that's friendly to online readers
As Forbes puts it, "Web surfers have the attention spans of drunken gnats."

Online visitors often scan through a Web page to sample the content first when they open a new Web page. If they feel like they are on the right page, they will slow down to read the full story. To enhance user's experience on your small business website, you need to organize the content for scanning

He recommends three style points for online writing to keep in mind:

• Break things down into short paragraphs, with headers if necessary
• Use bullet points
• Highlight important words or phrases.

In the end, simplicity and basic colors are the best bet. Again, the content is the focus, not dancing clowns at the top of the page.

The Finestral Website - By Blab Solutions

Finestral Malta has been successfully operating for 15 years of which the last 10 years the company specialised in the manufacturing of PVC apertures. Finestral Malta was the first and only company who ventured in such manufacturing business.

Finestral Malta enjoys a manufacturing and installation license from Deceuninck Group which is a Belgian company considered to be the number one producer of PVC profiles worldwide. Throughout this time, we have worked hard to develop streamlined procedures to help us offer the highest standards of advice, sales, installation, support and after-care, whilst striving to keep our prices as low as possible without compromising on quality. We have installed thousands of windows in Malta and all have stood the test of time and the harsh summer and mild winter we have in Malta. So we are proud to say that the warranty we provide is sealed with years of experience in the local manufacturing. Deceuninck are leaders in energy efficient PVC apertures offering superior thermal and sound insulation. Other positive benefits are the high security, maintenance and corrosion free, and maximum water tightness and wind resistance. A variety of designs, colours and systems are available carrying a 7 year warranty.