Charlotte Website Development

How Should I Accept Payments Through Craigslist?

Charlotte Web Development — Wed, 16 May 2012 10:54:22 +0000

Note: This image is from the Collective Commons collection at Flickr.

Last week I posted an article about helping you on Craigslist. One of the questions I was asked was ‘How should I accept payment through Craigslist?’ Here are my thoughts:

I think Paypal might be the best way to accept payments online. It’s good enough for Ebay & a billion other shops. You can accept credit cards without having to set up complex banking arrangements. Also, you can embed Paypal Buy Now links in your website.

Also, why not redirect people from your Craigslist ad to your website where you might have other services / items you can sell them? Since you have pre-qualified your leads, you could capture their information and then market to them again as a warm lead.

As always, if you have any other website questions at all, please let me know and I’ll do my best to help out. If you’d like to get free tips like this delivered to you via email, please put your address in the form at the top of the page. That will stay absolutely private, I promise. Thanks for reading!

Other Craigslist Tips & Guides I’ve Written

How to Sell Your Crap Online

Incidentally, there’s another guy out here on the interwebs who thinks helping people out a great business model. Adam Baker from Man vs Debt has an incredible story about taking his wife and small child out of the States and traveling around the world after selling nearly all of his stuff.

While you might not be looking to do something that extreme, he’s an interesting person to learn from – especially when it comes to selling your stuff and services on Craigslist, EBay, Amazon, or anywhere, really. If you’re so inclined, check out his (paid) guide on selling stuff online. He’s got a $100 guarantee on his site. Buy his book and if you don’t make $100 by implementing his techniques, he’ll refund your purchase.

Not a bad guarantee – you make back multiple times the price of his guide or you pay nothing. And that’s even without the tons of great extras he’s included from a legion of other interesting people.

I don’t often direct visitors to this website to somewhere else on the web, but if you’re reading my article on Craigslist, Adam has something that I think can help you out.

How to put your Picasa Images on Craigslist

Charlotte Web Development — Mon, 14 May 2012 10:19:44 +0000

Last week I posted an article about helping you on Craigslist. One of the questions I was asked was how to put Picasa images on Craigslist. This is a tricky one, but I’ll get you through it.

Step 1: Go to Picasa

Picasa is tricky because you have to right click on the image to see what the real file is. Let’s take my logo image on Picasa for a moment.

Here’s the link: https://picasaweb.google.com/106273101224393545862/May122012

While this may show you the image, it’s not the image file – it’s a page. You can tell because there is no file type associated with it. Ex. It doesn’t end in .jpg, .gif, ..png, etc.

Step 2: Right Click the Image

In order to find the file type we have to right-click the image and look under properties.

In my example the file location is:

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-zaG53KetqRM/T67jFLshMRI/AAAAAAAACAo/1BahY7bwcB8/s128/CWD%20logo%20circle%20250×250%20pixel.png

See how this ends in a .png suffix? That’s how we know it’s an image file.

Step 3: Write the Image Code

Now we can follow the usual steps. Click here to go to Step 2 in putting an image on Craigslist.

Hope that helps.

Other Craigslist Tips & Guides I’ve Written

How to Sell Your Crap Online

Incidentally, there’s another guy out here on the interwebs who thinks helping people out a great business model. Adam Baker from Man vs Debt has an incredible story about taking his wife and small child out of the States and travelling around the world after selling nearly all of his stuff.

I don’t often direct visitors to this website to somewhere else on the web, but if you’re reading my article on Craigslist, Adam has something that I think can help you out.

Need Craigslist Help?

Charlotte Web Development — Wed, 09 May 2012 18:00:00 +0000

Years ago I wrote a small tutorial on How to Put Pictures on Craigslist. Since then, that little article has been the single-biggest driver of traffic to my website and to my business.

After helping THOUSANDS of people with their Craigslist Ads, I put together a series of related “How-to” guides based off of other questions I got – you can see a my free Craigslist guides here.

I’m Looking for More People to Help

Helping people feels good. And it turns out it’s an excellent business model, too. That said, I’m at a loss on who needs what kind of help where.

That’s where you come in!

Got Craigslist Questions?

Write them in the comments below and I’ll do my best to make a tutorial to guide you through the process.

Here’s a few that I’ve answered already:

How to Sell Your Crap Online

Incidentally, there’s another guy out here on the interwebs who thinks helping people out a great business model. Adam Baker from Man vs Debt has an incredible story about taking his wife and small child out of the States and travelling around the world after selling nearly all of his stuff.

I don’t often direct visitors to this website to somewhere else on the web, but if you’re reading my article on Craigslist, Adam has something that I think can help you out.

How do I Get Links to my Website for Free

Charlotte Web Development — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 11:26:05 +0000

Lately we have been talking about strategies on how to drive traffic to your website through search engines. By examining the construction of our websites, the content we have on them, and the context that search engines judge our websites in, we can formulate a plan on how to better. We have also discussed a wide range of basic SEO tactics you can use. One of the best tactics you can follow to improve your rankings is to get as many links back to your website as possible. And there is no better way than free, right?

Unethical Link Building

Search engines love links to your site. In the algorithms they use, a link can be considered a vote in favor of your site. If you are in competition with other websites to rank well for your search term, you want to get more of these ‘votes’ than the other guy.

I bet you can start to see the incentive for gathering as many links to your site as possible. And I bet you can see the potential for abuse. Shortly after Google and the other search engines became such an amazing revenue engine for businesses placing well in their rankings links developed into a sort of currency on the web.

Before we talk about how to go about gathering free links to your website, I want to touch on less than savory practices that have come out of the search engine optimization community. I’m talking about building links associated with “link farms” or blogs designed by SEO companies for the sole purpose of posting links, etc.

So, how do you build up your incoming links without crossing the ethical line? Read on.

How to Get Free, Quality Links

Quality vs Quantity

Some people just link everywhere in a shotgun strategy approach. This is something you do when you don’t have a plan. What you are looking for are reputable websites. The higher quality the site, the more valuable the backlinks. Think of this as the Scarcity approach. The harder it is to get a link from that site, the better those links will be. Also, the fewer links there are on a high quality page, the more impact a link to your site will have.

Get Other Sites to Organically Link to You by Providing Excellent Content

Ultimately you are creating webpages – and links for real, live people. Even when you are thinking about submitting links far and abroad, put people first. For example, editorial links are created by bloggers and other content managers when they want to reference something you have published in their own writing. This is one of the many reasons why creating high-quality content and extending that content through social networking sites is so important, because you greatly multiply the chances that someone will discover and cite one of your articles.

Get people talking about you. Get your employees out to community events. Host community events. Sponsor events. Get your employees blogging about your industry and their thoughts. Get involved in social media. Invest in some PR. Be creative. Be awesome. People spread “awesome.”

When people start talking about you in real life, they’ll start writing about you online. When people start writing about you online, half the time they’ll link to your site. The other half of the time, you have opportunity to go back after they’ve written and ask that they link to your site. People link to people they like.

Ask People Who Know You

Webmasters who have developed high-quality and popular websites are constantly bombarded with requests for links. You can also approach the owner or webmaster of another popular, good quality website and ask that they add a link to your site. The best place to start with these requests is your own network of business partners, vendors and clients. Try writing testimonials of their services for use on their website. Once done, ask for a link back. You should only write testimonials for products, services, and people you believe in. Trading your good name for a link is a very poor exchange.

Another great source of links are public Facebook pages. In addition to Facebook being it’s own giant ecosystem, these are posts and updates are indexed by search engines. You can add links to your best content on your Facebook page. Once your articles are shared by your fans – even better. Here is another powerful incentive to write great, useful content for your audience. Don’t forget to link to your website in your Facebook personal profile as well as create a separate page for your business.

You can tweet also your links. Valuable and clever links will be re-tweeted. Interact with the Twitterverse, engage others in conversation and share your links when appropriate. Twitter pages also carry Google page rank so don’t forget to update your profile here. It’s a good practice to have a Twitter profile for yourself and another for your company or website.

Obviously Google + will be an important social sharing service to look for. Another that is coming on the scene quickly is Pintrest. Both should be investigated.

What if You Don’t Know Anyone

YouTube offers another great way of building an audience. If you’re comfortable in front of a camera, you can create a bunch of tutorials on any subject. Post them there. Configure your YouTube profile to include links to your website. For example, you can link from your YouTube Channels and video descriptions back to your site – great video content will make people want to click over to your website.

Bookmarking services seem to be the standard go-to for people looking to get started building links. I think this advice was great 10 years ago and I am not so certain of its relevancy any more. Some experts still contend that these services get your pages/posts indexed faster – plus good content generates great traffic and exposure. While not my cup of tea, I am not willing to entirely write them off yet. I recommend starting with StumbleUpon and Delicious, gauging your level of success, and then moving on to other directories.

If you are just starting out, you need to build a sturdy network – and for more reasons than just generating links. Try to meet people through networking, LinkedIn, and industry forums. Add insightful comments and share knowledge where ever you can. Engage people where they are seeking engagement. Partner with people on other worthwhile projects. Networking gets you traffic and credibility and links backs. Don’t forget that you can go to LinkedIn and other business profiling websites and add links to your company in employee profiles. Don’t forget that you can create a personal page in LinkedIn with a link to your website as well as a separate business profile again with a website.

Don’t forget you can synch your website’s blog RSS feed to multiple social websites. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and many other sites will automatically post links to articles in your RSS feed once properly configured.

Advertising in both local and specialist online directories in another old-school way to score points for inbound links. I have the same reservations on this approach as I do for bookmarking services. I include it here for the sake of completeness. Just make sure the directory site is one that is respected and has a legitimate editorial process, such as the Yahoo! Directory. Also try DMoz and Yahoo. Additionally, in both places you can find many local business directories that rank well in search engines for your business category – and many of those directories provide free listings.

You also can get started building links with a press release. Write an article about something you and your business has done recently and post it on your site. Create a press release with links back to your website and submit it to a service like prweb.com to help get maximum distribution.

If Social Media is your thing, check out this article I wrote on 9 Free Places to Share Your Website.

Create Your Own Back Links

Comments that Link Back

Believe it or not, you can even create your own inbound links on other sites. Seek out websites and blogs that cover subjects of relevance to your keywords and that have a readership aligned with your target audience. For example, if you are a landscaper, seek out gardening blogs. Subscribe to the RSS feeds for these sites and then establish a daily or weekly routine of scanning newly posted material for opportunities to post topical, insightful comments that link back to related content on your own site. The extra benefit here is that if you are regularly posting helpful comments that demonstrate your expertise and authority, you will not only boost your ranking, but you will also increase your visibility to prospective customers and provide opportunities for direct click-throughs to your site.

Track Back Links

Some websites are configured so that they will automatically link back to your website if you link to theirs. This is most commonly found between 2 webpages on sites that are set up with RSS Feeds.

Links are More for People than Search Engines

Remember that links have two audiences: the people who click them and search engines that judge them. We want as many clicks as possible on our links, because that means people are reading our content. When our audiences click our content, we want them to think two things: 1) this content is relevant and 2) this content is credible. If you have those two things, you can safely assume that you have high quality links.

The most important tip I’ve saved for last. When in doubt, find a way to put a link to your site where people will find it and share it. You can do that by being ubiquitous. You can do that by simply being your awesome self and letting that shine through on your website. If you are busy being awesome, creating great content for humans the search engines will find you. And that will lead to even more humans finding you, too.

Picture Perfect Website Development Photographers Speech

Charlotte Web Development — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 11:10:50 +0000

In 2010 I gave a speech on website design and development at the Picture Perfect event organized by the beautiful Daniel Stowe Botanical gardens. After having to miss out on attending last year’s event due to personal obligations I was invited back again for 2012. I thought this would be a good time to revisit my original notes and post them on-line with additional clarifications and links to more information. I’d be happy to speak to your group, too! Just contact me here.

The audience was diverse bringing together both professionals and enthusiasts, photographers and those in related industries. My speech ran over my allotted 30 minutes and I offered to take my rough notes and turn them into a resource people could use.

While this speech was geared towards photographers, it can be easily adapted to other companies and professionals looking to go on-line. I hope it’s useful and it’s provided free with that intent. Please feel free to forward it to anyone you think might use it. The price of use is to give me your feedback. It’s only through your additional questions can the free resources and tutorials I post on-line can grow. Feel free to quote me with attribution. Please do not just copy and paste or plagiarize.

A final note is that There is no one-size fits all speech that I can give. Your situation likely as different as the Picture Perfect attendees. If you have a question, it’s likely other people do, too. Just let me know in the comments below and I’ll do my best to help out.

About Charlotte Website Development

Somebody asked me why a website developer was at a photography convention. The short answer is because I was asked. The longer answer is because the organizers thought there might be some interest in the group. (They were right!)

The Real Reason They Chose Me

While I didn’t ask, there are a few reasons why the Picture Perfect organizers may have chosen me.

1) My company website shows up #1 in Google, Yahoo! & other places for a variety of search terms.

Despite me working part-time as a 1 man shop against larger companies, I tend to do very well in local search engine results. A high ranking for frequently-searched phrases assures you a lot of exposure for your business. If you’d like to learn more about how I do this, please check these SEO tutorials I have created.

2) They may be part of my on-line social network.

I have a lot of industry contacts on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc and I get a lot of business from there.

3) I am active in the community and may have been referred.

Despite the fact that we are living in the Digital Age, people are still people and business is still based on relationships and face-to-face contact still matters. Any number of places like the Charlotte Better Business Bureau (where I hold an A+ Rating), the Lake Wylie Chamber of Commerce, or Lake Wylie Friends in Business could have referred them.

You can learn more about me on my company about page. You can see how I got my start in website design on this post. If you’re interested in me personally, I write about travels, adventures, and my own brand of philosophy at Cubicle Warrior. Yes, I sometimes share my bad travel photos there, too! (Don’t judge too harshly!)

Similarities Between Website Designers & Photographers.

Both website designers and photographers have ‘ephemeral’ products. With the advent of digital photography and cameras in every phone people are taking pictures all of the time. Similarly, there are many products on the market that build websites automatically for people. Both of our client bases see something that is so easy to hand them and tend to treat them as commodities. Clients do not see the years of training, practice and diligence in our crafts. Our clients can recognize that your work is clearly superior to their own but believe it’s just a matter of a few small ‘tricks’ before their products are as good as yours.

Another similarity between website developers and photographers is that it is very easy for people to directly steal or “be influenced by” your work. Take engagement photos for example. It’s common practice for the bride-to-be to Google a bunch of similar photos and hand them to the photographer and say ‘I want these and nothing else!’ All the while ignoring your special eye, creativity and expertise. I promise you the same thing happens in website design. It’s a constant battle to decide whether to give your client what they want vs what they really need. Or, in some cases, predict what it is that they really want when they don’t know themselves.

Difference Between Website Design & Website Development.

While many people use these terms interchangeably, I prefer to distinguish between website design and website development. One refers to making a website pretty (Design = Aesthetic + Structure + Performance). The other refers to making a website profitable. Development = Design +Marketing + Continuous Improvement. In other words, website design is a sub-set of website development.

While look, feel, branding, and overall appeal and aesthetics are certainly very important to the user experience, it is only one portion of what makes a business website successful. As I am speaking to an audience of artists with talent for images and layout, I will focus on is the larger set web development where the goals are business related. This brings me to my first point.

Why have a website?

There is a phase I’ve heard that ‘you can have many masters but only truly serve one. A website is no different. You need to clearly identify your goals.

Normally when I speak to small business owners their goals are to get more clients. Here, in a mixed audience, there is a large personal and hobby side as well. While there is always room for personal expression on the web, be certain to clearly identify your over-arching goal for the website before starting.

You really have 2 choices:

Return on Investment – your site is for profit.
Personal Fulfillment – your site is for fun.

It may see strange coming from a website developer but websites are not for everyone. Refer to this of 8 items to see if your business should have a website.

How to Build Your Website

In a business sense there is only one reason to spend precious resources, whether it be time, effort, or money on having a website. And that is a return on your investment. Each element and each function you add to your website should be viewed through the lens of ‘will adding this functionality improve my website profitability?’

Building a website is a lot like writing an essay. If you take a little bit of time to sketch out your ideas and then order them in a logical progression, you’ll save a lot of heart ache later on.

First Identify the Need, Then Plan the Website

If you don’t have a need, you don’t have a website. Before starting to build a website take a minute to state your exact needs by establishing your audience and their desires. Next, plan how your website will fulfill those needs.

Here is a list of 5 things that professional website designers do before they ever develop a website to ensure it’s success. Before you build a website, be sure to read that article! It will save you hours of development and thousands of dollars in wasted effort!

Identify Constraints, Technology and Tools Needed

There are no technology solutions, only business solutions.

Discussing technical issues would be multiple other speeches in an of themselves. In this case, I will focus on the technology questions that stem from the various businesses associated with technology. If I were to make a targeted list for photographers, here are a few items I would think you would have to make decisions on:

Do you even need a website? For example, Should you only use Facebook or MySpace?
Should you build your website yourself or use a free service like Blogger, WordPress.com, or Google Sites?
How will you display your images? Will you have a water mark? Is there any way to prevent people from stealing your images once you’ve put them online?
What are the ideal sizes and file types for web images? How will the size of the images affect speed for users and bandwidth charges for you?
What kind of functionality do I need in a website? How often will I have to update and maintain my website? How will I accomplish this?
Marketing: should the website work to market my work? Will I need to market my website?
How will sales occur?
How do I walk that fine line between showing my ability and preventing theft?

Quick Notes on How to Protect Your Art

Any image put on the web can be stolen or copied in some fashion.
Most people won’t steal your work.
Fine line of marketing yourself security.
Don’t ever put your images on someone else’s server.
Don’t put your data where you can’t get it out.

Website Maintenance

Remember, Websites do not exist in a vacuum. They need attention and some TLC to flourish. Create a regular maintenance strategy like you would for your house or car.

Follow this up with a marketing / advertising strategy complete with your expected results. Monitor all of your expenses to be sure you are getting a return on that investment!

Conclusion

Of course, the speech ran 30 minutes and I met hundreds of people afterward at my booth. Meeting people led to even more questions and I compiled a list of frequently asked questions that I promised to type up and share with everyone as well.

There are more topics asked than I can write about in a single page. Some are highly-specific to certain situations. I have my notes and I will eventually write them all up. Of course, the more people who ask about a certain topic, the greater the chance that I’ll cover it. If you’d like to join my mailing list and automatically receive the articles I write straight to your email in-box, please sign up here.

(Note: I will never spam you and you can unsubscribe any day.)

If anything else should be elaborated on, please let me know via the contact form or leave a comment below.

I’d love to friend you on Facebook, link up via LinkedIn, or meet you on Twitter.

3 Thing that Professionals do Before Developing a Website

Charlotte Web Development — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 11:24:31 +0000

With the tools available on the market almost anyone can design a website these days. So why then are so many website designs abysmal failures? This is an important question to ask if you are going to spend your resources of time, capital, and effort. In the end, building a website is a lot like writing a novel or building a house. If you take a little bit of time to sketch out your ideas and then order them in a logical progression, you’ll save a lot of heart ache later on.

Identify the Website Goals

It’s amazing how many people build websites without defining the goal. In Stephen Covey parlance, this would be ‘beginning with the end in mind.’

If you don’t have a clearly defined need, you will not have a good website. Before starting to build a website take care to state your exact needs by establishing your audience and what they are looking to accomplish. Then, chart how your website will fulfill the needs of those people

1. Define Your Audience

Your Audience are the groups of people that you would expect to be using your site. Be specific here! Avoid generalities such as “someone” or “anyone.” So many business owners commission a website design without thinking of the exact people who will be using it. Worse, they want to build a website that is good ‘for everyone.’

Designing a Website for Everyone will make you go broke.

Building a website for everyone is useless. It’s what amateurs do. There are just too many different people in the world to serve all of their needs well. As a business owner, you have a finite amount of attention to spend on your website. Make sure you focus on the most profitable pursuits. The specific audience types you define should correlate tightly to your business’s sweet spot – those archetypes of prospects that turn into your most profitable customers. Once you have the best business case audiences decided we can move on to implementing strategies to best serve them. You can always return to other offerings later one after the best ones are complete.

2. Define Your Audience’s Goals

Goals are what your website’s audience wishes to do. Remember that marketing phrase “No one ever really buys a hammer; they buy the thought of the picture hanging in the wall.” Too many businesses merely list the services they offer on their website hoping that the user will choose exactly what they want from a menu like they would a hamburger off of the menu board at McDonald’s. That’s another poor idea. Your audience doesn’t think like you! They have a different set of experiences and expertise. They use a different vocabulary set to express their issues. Your website design must take this into consideration to be successful.

To start, take your most profitable and / or your most popular service offerings and list them. Now pair each one with a the reason ‘why’ your audience needs that particular offering. Returning to that marketing quote you might have a list like:

Need: Hammer. Why: Hang a picture.

3. Create Actors for each Goal.

Now that you have your audience identified and their goals listed, it’s now time to humanize the interaction of your website. Remember, you’re not creating your website for search engines. You’re not developing the site for the unknown masses who might contract your services. You are doing business with real, flesh and blood people.

Ex. Actor: Mary
Mary is a 25 year old bride-to-be looking for someone locally to take engagement photos of her and her fiance on Lake Norman.

Her decision process when looking for a wedding photographer might look something like the following:

Can this photographer do the job I am asking?
Have they done this before?
Are they reliable?
What do their pictures look like?
What are their rates?
Are they available?

You get the point.

4. Solve the Needs with a Flow Diagram

A user flow diagram is a fancy way of saying ‘a list of steps in box form.’ See the picture below. Just describe the steps a user would take on your website. Begin with how an actor might discover your website. Continue with how the actor would learn that your services can help them fulfill their goals.

This does not have to be a fancy affair. You can do this in may kinds of software or even on a dry-erase board or on the back of a napkin. The important part is a logical flow of events.

Let’s return to Mary from the example above. The flow diagram for Mary might look something like the following:

Mary searches Google for Lake Norman Wedding Photographers and clicks the first website link.
She sees that the photographer on the website does indeed do wedding photography.
Mary sees examples of previous work as well as testimonials of a job well done. The pictures look like something she wants.
Mary finds the rate structure and it is within her budget.
Mary contacts the photographer to ask about availability.

5. Translate the Flow Diagram to Web Pages

Now that you now your audience, their goals, and a reasonable process they would follow it. Let’s return to Mary in the example above.

1. Mary searched Google so we need to have one page specifically geared to rank highly for that phrase. (Let’s call this the landing page.)

2. The landing page has language on it that speaks to Mary. Remember, she’s not buying the pictures; she’s buying the wedding experience, memories for a lifetime, etc.

3. The landing page has few example pictures of smiling brides, handsome grooms, happy family members, dancing flower girls.

4. There are a few quotes pulled from testimonials in the web page text but also links to to a portfolio of pictures and a page full of testimonials.

5. Since how the photographer acts during her special day is as important as the pictures themselves, there are video clips of the photographers themselves being both ubiquitous at the wedding and discreet.

6. There is even a free download-able checklist for the bride helping her plan the special day, photography options detailed out.

7. On the side of every page is a picture of the photographer with his email and phone number clearly defined. At the bottom of the page there is a button that when clicked brings Mary to a contact form asking a few questions about the wedding and inquiring how the photographer can help.

We could go on for a long time in just this one example, but already you can see that website taking shape. You can also see why this kind of a wedding photography website would do better than a competitor’s as it addresses Mary’s needs.

Once you repeat this exercise for a few actors a full website will emerge. You’ll be able to group similar terms and build elements that serve multiple types of clients.

Conclusion

This set of exercises aid in understanding the psychology of your market. With that understanding you can create a phenomenal website that will be successful. What do you think? Have you tried this with your website? Are you go revisit your site with these questions in mind? Did I miss any steps that helped your website be successful? Let us know in the comments at the bottom of the page.

The Most Important Thing You Must Do for Your Website

6 Steps to Branding Your Business Facebook Page

Charlotte Web Development — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 11:03:05 +0000

Here’s a quick tutorial on how to create and brand a Facebook Page for your business.

I’ve written previously that your business social media accounts should be separate from your personal ones. Don’t use your personal Facebook page to advertise your business. It’s tacky and it will alienate your friends and family. It’s cute when the family girl scout goes around selling cookies and the little league slugger is shopping candy bars – everyone loves to help them earn a few dollars and learn about basic capitalism. But that’s because they are little kids. You’re not. You’re a business person. You really don’t want to be “that guy/gal” who is always hawking things to your inner circle.

Who should create it? The Creation Dilemma

You need to be personally logged in to create a fan page. This is great if you are a sole-proprietor and the one who will be managing the fan page. If you aren’t, for example if you are asking an employee to create the fan page, remember that when that person is no longer with your company, neither will the fan page be.

You should be aware that if you use your personal Facebook account when creating your business page, it won’t cause any trouble. That is because the people who will become Fans (or “LIKE”) your page will not know who is managing that page. But, if you are still uncomfortable with that notion, you can create a new Facebook account just for administering your business page. However, I’d say most people just use the log in they already use to interact with their friends and post things on their own wall.

You can also add additional members to be administrators of the page, allowing them to also post updates to your page. Please be aware however, that administrators can remove themselves and other administrators from the page, so it is possible to have a page floating without anyone having admin access to the page.

Step 0: Get a personal Facebook account / Sign In.

Before we start this tutorial you will need a personal Facebook account. If you don’t already have your own, go to their website and sign up. It will only take a moment. Well, if you spend a lot of time ‘friending’ people and looking around on their timelines and photos, it will take a lot longer than a minute! Not to worry, I’ll be here when you get back!

Step 1: Request your business page.

Create a Facebook Page

Now that your are logged into Facebook, go to the Create a Page part of the site. For most cases you should probably choose the “Company, Organization or Institution” option.

Step 2: Customize your Facebook page

Charlotte Web Development’s Facebook Page

After performing the business set up try customizing your page with branded items. Here are some suggestions:

Upload photos of your business, products, achievements.
List your website.
Add a branded business background with your logo.
Configure your Facebook page to automatically display your new articles from your RSS feed.
Consider syncing your Twitter feed to the page.

Step 3: Invite people to ‘like’ your page

If you have previously been asking your customers to find your personal page now is the time to let them know you have a specific page just for your business. You may want to or need to de-friend them from your personal account. After all, do you really want them to see the jokes you’re putting on your brother’s wall? Send a note to your Facebook fans that you’re moving all business -related items to the page and ask them to ‘Like’ it.

Step 4: Interact with your business.

Now that your business has it’s own Facebook page, it’s time to start interacting. Ask questions to your fan base. Post pictures of your recent projects. Ask your audience questions in your field. Remember that social media is a conversation, not a lecture. Get them to participate!

Step 5: Like other businesses

I know it sounds slightly counter-intuitive but you will want to ‘like’ other businesses you have worked with. Think about your suppliers or businesses you supply. Your accountant, your plumber, anyone you would give a personal reference to. Speaking of which, if you’re reading this article consider liking Charlotte Web Development on Facebook!

The idea here is to spread the wealth and get access to their audiences. There are several algorithms at play in the ad display on the right hand side of Facebook where they suggest companies for you to ‘like’. One of the chief drivers is if people in your friend base also like that company. Another would be if you liked a page that has ties to another Facebook business page. Think of these likes as connections. The more likes you have, the more connections you have. The more connections you have, the more audience your company will have exposure to.

Step 6: Claim your unique business name

When you first create your business page you will have a long, weird URL. Make it easy for your fans to share your website by getting a custom name that looks something like this: https://www.facebook.com/webdesigncharlotte

To do this you will need to have at least 25 likes on Facebook. Once you do, go to this address: http://www.facebook.com/username/

See if it will let you customize your name. We want this for search purposes. Make it very specific to your company.

Following the steps in this tutorial will not take very long but the benefits will be felt for a long time. Please let us know about your business Facebook page in the comments below.

How I Got Started in Website Development

Charlotte Web Development — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 11:02:57 +0000

A local school district invited me to come speak to their 9th grade class on careers in technology. The coordinators are looking for business members in the Lake Wylie community to come and share the path they took to their current profession. Since my website design clients often ask how I got started in this business I thought I would take this opportunity to share my story. At the end of this article is a comments section. I’d love to hear how you got started in your business, too.

Website Design in College

As a kid I loved business and finance but through a need to learn how real products were actually made, 1996 found me enrolled in Dual Ocean & Aerospace engineering major at Virginia Tech. I have a passion for the ocean and learning how to build ships appealed to my. Another hobby I’ve had my entire life is writing fiction. The mid 90′s was arguably the beginning of the Internet age and I saw websites as a great way to deliver content in new and interesting ways. If nothing else, a website was a great way to ‘staple’ pictures and all sorts of writing notes together in one place. The ability to link to other documents was great for pinning thoughts together. Eventually I taught myself basic HTML websites for my side writing.I would build websites around my fiction to establish the back stories of characters, track timelines, etc. These were very simple sites written by hand in Notepad and FTP’ed to my student account on the main server. It was lots of fun. I still find websites to be wonderful tools for creating and sharing content.

How I Got Started in Website Development

Changing Majors

One of the extracurricular clubs I joined at Virginia Tech was an magazine called the Engineers’ Forum. There I acted as a writer and a managing editors. I enjoyed the combined challenge of running the business, writing about technical fields for not-necessarily technical folks and the exposure to new technology I received while on assignment.

I switched majors to Computer Science in 1999 after several summer internships in civil & structural engineering. I realized that the primary employers of aerospace and ocean engineers were either various governments or companies that primarily contracted to them. The Dot Com boom was in full swing and employers trying to recruit bright young engineers were driving my magazine ad rates through the roof. I also helped run the engineering employment fairs and was introduced to many companies that way. Software and business intrigued me so I went in that direction.

Through my efforts on the engineering magazine I got another internship working for Computer Associates and learned about large scale enterprise software, mainframes, and applied artificial intelligence. Google had just been starting to gain serious traction at this time and some of my fellow interns were working on search software, others in artificial intelligence. I really just loved the business of building great, useful software and focused my studies on operating systems, client-server technology. I ultimately built a host of great projects that explored the underpinnings of the Internet.

First Job & Master of Science

My senior year I interviewed with many companies and decided to accept an offer from a large financial company in Charlotte as a web technologies developer, which I took after graduating in May of 2001. That company sent me to graduate school at night and over the next 4 years I received a post graduate certificate in IT Management, IT Security, and ultimately earned a Master of Science in Information Technology from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. I saw this degree as another opportunity to bridge the divide between my engineering foundation and business aspirations. My final classes offered me the chance to explore how Google’s algorithm really worked, how Amazon was able to provide all of these incredible technologies to other IT firms – if you only know of Amazon as a book & DVD seller, you are really missing out!

Working building complex transactional web sites for financial companies through the day from 40 to 80 hours a week fills up your time pretty quickly. Once you start taking graduate classes at night you can add another 20 hours of work per week on top of it. By 2005 my patience was wearing thin so when one of my capstone class professors challenged me to choose a topic project for a project I replied that my project was to learn “how people make money out of this !@#$ing degree!” Fortunately for me my professor had more patience that I had so he directed me to the underpinnings of e-commerce. I graduated in May 2005 with a sound theoretical basis and years of work experience.

The Accidental Company

The Housing Bubble followed the Internet Bubble and like many other people out of college I bought a house. My home is in Lake Wylie, a resort-like bedroom community of Charlotte, North Carolina just over the boarder in South Carolina. My house had not been lived in for years and required a lot of work. One of the first contractors I hired needed a website and talked me into building one for him. I quoted him an insanely low price that came out to less than a dollar an hour for the work that needed to be done but I got it complete on time and on budget! My entrepreneurial nerve was struck and incorporated shortly there after in 2005.

I experimented with PayPal, with Amazon’s auto-delivery services and built several E-commerce stores. I designed and built websites for friends and family. I discovered Blogging and used Google’s Blogger to build several more websites. Eventually I heard about WordPress and saw how easy it was to build great websites that performed using that technology – such a difference from writing every last piece of code by hand in NotePad!

Today

From then on I would build websites for all sorts of companies and professionals. Most come from Charlotte and the surrounding area. Other companies find me from other parts of the country like Green Bay, DC and elsewhere. I still work full time for that large financial company that brought me to Charlotte and run my website development business after hours and during the weekends.

I sincerely love learning about other businesses and then determining what I can do to help make them more profitable using the web. I still do a great deal of writing – most of it as articles written to help my clients and the small business community at large.

So that’s how I got my start. How did you start your business?

9 Free Places to Share Your Website

Charlotte Web Development — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 11:18:53 +0000

Sharing is caring. In this Valentine’s day edition of Charlotte Web Development I’ll take you through some ways to get some love for your website and your company through social sharing. Just remember that whatever you do, the Internet is forever. Whatever you post on-line, you can have no reasonable expectation of privacy despite the security levels you set.

In case you missed it, we covered why such sharing and linking is so important to your website in these 2 articles: How Do I Drive Traffic to my Website? and SEO: Basic Tactics You Can Use Today.

1. Facebook

Charlotte Web Development's Facebook Page

Facebook is of course the 800lb gorilla in the room. With something like 1 out of every 9 people on the planet using Facebook in 2012, you should have your business on it.

Do This on Facebook:

Create a separate Facebook business page for your company / website. Customize the page with your logos, pictures of your company being vibrant and active.
Add Facebook ‘like’ buttons to your website.
Post updates from more than just your website RSS feed. Think conversation with your fans rather than lecturing.
Like your friend’s, family, clients, and supplier’s pages from your corporate Facebook Page. Chances are they’ll return the favor and it’s the right thing to do.

Not This:

Use your personal account for business. Do that too often and people will just de-friend you or hide your updates.
Spam your friends and family with links to your business. If they like your corporate page, they’ll automatically get the updates.
Neglect your website for your Facebook page. Yes you can get a ton of business from Facebook. But remember, you don’t own your account, Facebook does. What happens to your client list if Facebook terminates your account? Use it as a driver, not a vehicle.

Debatable:

Consider automating your website updates to appear on your corporate Facebook Page. Handmade posts are still the best option to encourage conversations.
Allow fans to post their own content on your page.
Put a Facebook bar on your business website that displays your Facebook activity or fan’s profiles.

2. Twitter

Friend of CWD: Lincoln's Twitter Page

Was Twitter responsible for the Arab Spring? I don’t know. But I do know that it is a tremendous resource for engaging the world in a public format and a worthwhile place to investigate creating a presence for your business.

Do This on Twitter:

Nearly all of the items I just mentioned above for Facebook apply to your Twitter accounts. Be a good social media citizen and separate your personal and private selves with different accounts.
Add ‘Tweet this’ buttons to your website.
Follow your customers, clients, & suppliers back.
Re-tweet news sources that reinforce your core message.
Follow hash tags related to your field.

Not This:

Troll your competitors.
Follow people just so they will automatically follow you back.

Debatable:

Consider linking your corporate Twitter account to your corporate Facebook account so updates in one place flow to the next.
Automate your tweets with scheduling software.
Display your Twitter feed on your website.

3. LinkedIn

My LinkedIn Connections Statistics

LinkedIn has matured beyond just being a place to keep your resume. It is a wonderful networking platform for businesses and professionals. There are so many new aspects to this website, it is worth your time to check it out.

Do This on LinkedIn:

Again, nearly all of the items I just mentioned above for Facebook and Twitter accounts. Be a good social media citizen and separate your personal and business profiles.
Add your RSS feed to both your personal and corporate LinkedIn profiles.
Link to your customers, clients, & suppliers.
Provide recommendations to the people you truly support and whom have truly helped you.
Share interesting stories that relate to your field.
Join industry-related groups.
Fill out your profile completely.
Use the LinkedIn Answers section to share your expertise or to recommend other professionals that could help.

Not This:

Log in with the mindset of getting. It’s best to seek out ways to help others first, then let the magic of Internet karma return the favor later on.
Link to people on your personal account that you know absolutely nothing about.

Debatable:

Consider linking your corporate Twitter account to your LinkedIn account so updates in one place flow to the next.

4-9. Google’s Properties

If Facebook is an 800lb gorilla, then Google is it’s massively bigger brother. Google is now a collection of applications that exists at scale that’s hard to fathom. Luckily they are currently linking the profiles of all of their disparate properties so it may soon come to pass that you’ll only ever have to enter your information once.

Google Plus. They only allow personal pages last I checked but it’s important to remember that Google searches will now take how many ‘+1′s your website content gets. People still search for goods and services in droves so you’ll want to stay on top of this one by putting a +1 badge on your website.
YouTube (Owned by Google). Make some videos. Start a channel. Brand it with your logo and share your message with the world.
Google Webmaster. We spoke about this one earlier when discussing sitemaps. Essential technology for so many reasons.
Feed Burner (Owned by Google). Google’s free RSS subscription service. No reason not to burn your feed. It’s like direct injection to their listings.
Google Places / Maps. An absolute must for the Mobile Internet age. Get your company listed and share your website information there.
Google Reader. An RSS aggregation engine. Add your feed as well as others in your industry to keep up with the news.

Bonus Round

Example of a Gravatar comment on this website.

Gravatar

Ever wonder why some comments show a custom photo in website comments while others don’t? It’s because of Gravatar. Sign up, enter your information, add a profile pic and let all of the websites you comment on (like this one) build your brand. Also consider adding Gravatar support to your own comments if you don’t already have it. Enter a comment below this article to see it in action.

Others of Interest

Pintrest – Like an on-line bulletin board. Coming on strong in 2012 as it fills the need of organizing all of your million bookmarks with a beautiful interface while also allowing ease fo sharing and enabling social discovery. This will be a major source of traffic for businesses in no time flat.

I could go on forever but we have to end this article some time It wasn’t too long ago that sharing services like Digg & StumbleUpon produced ‘Oprah effect‘ – like levels of traffic and commerce.

Another giant from years gone past is Flickr & Other Yahoo! properties. Like AOL they somehow manage to retain a respectable user base. If you customers are there, you should be too.

Conclusion

These were some ideas to get you started. Remember, you don’t have to do everything. In fact, I’d argue if you were spending all of your time on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc, I would ask how much time was really being spent on your business. Despite the social pressure, you can’t be everywhere at once.

The best advice I can extend is to focus on building your business and your brand. Keep your core data to yourself on an independent website and then find ways to share it on other platforms. Experiment with each of the places listed above. Find out what works for you & your audience. Also take note of what doesn’t and scale down from there.

As a final warning don’t put your data any place you can’t easily get it back from! Putting all of your company’s eggs in the basket of on any service that you yourself do not directly own is a recipe for disaster.

7 Things that Multi-Million Dollar Websites Do on their Homepage that You Don’t

Charlotte Web Development — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:51:02 +0000

This past week I’ve had the flu. That mean a lot of time spent on the couch watching TV & movies. It also got me thinking: What can the owner of a small business website learn from 3 large, successful companies? What? You don’t think about web development when you’re sick???

Well, I do. If we look at companies where the website homepage is an important – if not the most important way – they get customers, what would we learn? In this article I’ll describe what 7 lessons we can take from the big guys to improve our homepages and websites.

The Websites

For this exercise, I choose NetFlix, TiVo, and LifeLock. Certainly each of these companies fit the bill. Here are what their sites look like:

Website Criteria

First, let me talk a little about the criteria I used to choose these websites to analyze. Yes, these websites were identified a fever-induced haze but I did want to focus on service companies. Selling physical goods is worthy of its own study so no Amazon or eBay here. Here I wanted to focus on websites where companies who are looking to earn their keep by providing services because that’s what most small business websites should be designed to do. If you’re a landscaper, a personal trainer, a contractor, a web designer, a CPA, you provide a service. If you have a website for your small business, your home page is your best chance for a wonderful first impression. In some cases it may also be your only chance for a first impression! So let’s make the most of it!

Additionally, I wanted to choose companies that had multiple services. No one-trick ponies here. Again, this is what businesses across America do. You don’t only sell one service, you likely sell multiple related services. You may sell maintenance agreements on the original contract or offer related items. You probably want return business as well. And like all companies, you may have to educate your prospect on what exactly it is you do, why it’s better than the other guy, and why these other services are important, too!

Since it seems that every business has to serve multiple masters in terms of offerings, I steered away from specific website landing pages. Landing page web development is also worthy of its own examination and would cloud this issue.

For the purposes of this article let’s define landing pages as those long-hand copy pages filled with testimonials and emotional triggers where marketers use a laser-like focus to get website visitors to convert to a sale. This isn’t to say that you couldn’t make your website home page into such a landing page, just that many businesses choose to follow a hub and spoke model where the home page distributes visitors to other services.

Lesson 1: Put your Best Content at the Top

The screen captures shown represent what I see above the fold – the portion of their home pages that display on my monitor without scrolling down. Each of these websites are backed by sufficiently-talented marketing analytics teams and their best shot at converting me to a paying customer is top, front, and center. They know that the visitor doesn’t want to think and examine the entire page for what they are looking for. They know they only have a limited time to grab my attention and get the sale. You should know this, too. Put your best, most compelling foot forward on the top portion of your home page.

Lesson 2: Get Your Viewers to Imagine Themselves Using Your Service

Visualization is an important marketing technique. No matter what you are selling, you are ultimately selling to people. See how in this image there is a picture of a happy family watching NetFlix? They are gathered together and smiling. This subtly invokes the imagination of the viewer. Part of their target audience will be thinking about gathering together as a loving family in front of the TV.

Craft an image of your viewers using your service.

BTW, This is also why testimonials are so effective!

Lesson 3: Show Them What They Are Getting

Similar to the previous lesson, you must show users what they are getting for going with your service. A picture is worth a thousand words, especially when describing your service. If you are a landscaper, you are selling a beautiful lawn – so show it! If you are a home theater installer, show the finished product. If you are selling beautifully restored antique furniture, show it in a home setting. When you are constrained with space, as you are on your home page, try a picture of what you are offering to get the point across concisely.

Show a viewer a picture of what they are getting on your home page.

Lesson 4: Let Your Users Choose Their Own Adventure

Remember those children’s books where you were the main character and at certain decision points you could choose where you wanted the narrative to go? They went a little like this: “You hear a knocking, a rap-tap-tapping on the supposedly-abandoned cellar door. To open the door, turn to page 29. To run like hell, turn to page 62..”

Your home page should make effective use of in-page navigation to let the user select what service they are especially interested in.

Design your website home page to allow users to find out about more services.

Lesson 5: Use Top Level Navigation to Educate & Offer Contact Information

No matter what your company does, people will have questions. They’ll want to know how your company works, or learn more about the services you provide, the products you use, the philosophy that drives your business. They’ll want to know how to contact you. It’s impossible to comprehensively list all of your information on the small piece of real estate that is your home page. That’s why we use navigation links. Make them conspicuous and let the viewer decide where to go next.

Navigation is important to your website design.

Lesson 6: Capture Their Contact Information

People don’t just randomly type words into a browser just to see what comes up. When viewers arrive at your home page it is because your other marketing efforts got them there. Don’t waste it! Get to know who has come by your website and ask for their contact information if they are interested in learning more. This way, instead of waiting for the phone to ring, you can proactively cultivate a list of people interested in your service.

Get your website visitor's contact information.

Lesson 7: Ask for the Sale!

It’s amazing how many businesses make an investment in a website, put the time, effort, and resources into getting one developed, but never ask their visitors for the sale! It’s OK to ask for a sale. Everyone knows you are a business. If you’ve done a good job developing your website experience, your visitors will be ready to hear about what you are offering. So offer it!

Ask for the Sale

These were seven lessons that I noticed immediately from this analysis. What did you notice? What have you tried on your home page and how did it work out? What have you done in the limited real estate available? Tell us in the notes below.