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New clients for your web design services are not always easy to come by. So when you have a client, being able to offer them more services can have a drastic impact on your income. Fortunately for web designers there are plenty of additional related services that your clients are likely to need. If you’re able to provide some of these services it will also be a positive experience for the client, as they won’t need to go out and find another provider.
In this article we’ll take a look at some of the different services that you can offer on top of web design to your clients. You certainly don’t need to offer them all, but focusing on one or a few that work well for you could make a big difference for your and your clients. All of these things can be offered at the time you are securing the clients business for the web design, but you can also offer them to past clients as you follow up.
Many of your clients will have a need going forward for maintenance or minor changes to their site. Even if you provide a client with a website that includes a Content Management System, some clients will prefer to pay someone to do a lot of the work for them. Of course, this depends on the client, but there are plenty of opportunities out there for ongoing work.
Having a few regular clients that you know you’ll get work from each month can make a huge difference in your bottom line and in how much time and effort you have to dedicate to finding new clients. The more income you have from ongoing clients the less you will be reliant on securing projects with new clients. You’ll be likely to spend more time working and designing and less time trying to find and secure work.
The concept of being green has for decades, in my opinion been unnecessarily politicized. People are labeled as either tree-huggers or a ‘drill baby drill’ types. We all want to save money on energy and increase the value of home at the same time so why not harness energy in more creative and natural ways.
Harnessing the Sun's Energy
As part of the search engine business, I am particularly interested in what people are searching on for information on green home building and as I research this, I start to get a better idea of how popular it is becoming. There is plenty of nomenclature for green homes; carbon neutral, sustainable etc etc.
The cost of building your own or adding environmentally friendly features have been historically high. With more and more green companies providing a critical mass with green tax deductions, breaking even and beginning to saving money the green way is closer than ever.
I have conversations with clients all the time that begin with “my friend/son/son’s friend designed my website and I like the look of the homepage but I don’t like the way it works with the MLS data and the navigation.” This is a common problem for Realtors® because the specific requirements of real estate data mean that being a good web designer does not mean that someone can build a good real estate website.
If you go to a general web developer and ask them to build you a Real Estate website, what they will do is build you a nice looking website and then “frame in” an IDX feed. (For more information on how this works please have a look at our past blog post about Integrating Real Estate Technology Into Your Website) In short, “framing in” MLS information means taking another website and making it look like it is part of yours. The most fundamental problem with framing in MLS information is that all of the “framed” information is invisible to search engines, and if building your real estate business is important, then one of your main priorities HAS to be building up your visibility in search engines. If you are building a Real Estate web site and there is no real estate information actually built directly into your site, chances are your site will not get much traction with Google, and you will just end up with a good looking customer service brochure for clients you’re already working with. And, that’s not why you’re building a website, is it?
But, it’s not just the search engines that matter; your website also needs to work for people and on the human side, framed MLS information is also damaging. Not only is it harder to maintain branding using a framed IDX solution, since you will have to maintain your website and your IDX, but it also limits your ability to add value to the property information (ex. not allowing you to call out specific properties in a school district or near a body of water). In short, it does not allow you to feature your knowledge of the market area and intersect it with property listings. Featuring framed MLS information on your website is like buying a car without a stereo and putting a boom box in the passenger seat. You have all of the pieces and it sort of does what you want but it is not going to impress anyone.
Get my site out of here!
In my previous post I talked about the Google Sandbox and wanted to go into a bit more detail with this one about how to go about quickly getting back on track.
Many things can change on a site when it undergoes a re-launch. The design, navigation, page urls, internal link structure, domain name and entire Content Management System (CMS) might change. This means that search engines have to re-index the site and understand what has changed and how that should affect the site’s rankings.
Don't Forget to Re-Direct
Last week Yahoo announced an update to their search functionality. This new update is being called Yahoo! Search Direct and has been in testing for the last year. Yahoo’s CTO Blake Irving described Search Direct as “Yahoo’s version of Google’s Instant Search but with richer content.” Irving also reminded everyone at the press event that Yahoo had developed a version of Google’s Instant Search years before – though they dropped the project rather abruptly.
Check Out Yahoo’s Promotional video below!
Click here to view the embedded video.
We will follow up on this release with a Yahoo vs Google blog post next week.
Blogging provides anyone with the opportunity to publish content and the potential to make money. Because of this, there are hundreds or thousands of new blogs launched every day. Unfortunately, there are some significant challenges that most new bloggers face, and in many cases the challenges are significant enough to lead the blogger to give up.
In this post we’ll look at five problems that many bloggers face, especially in the early days of their blog, and we’ll also look at some ways that these problems can be overcome.
It can be very frustrating to dedicate time creating a blog post, only to sit and wait for comments that never come. The interactive aspect of blogging is what draws many people to get started with their own blog, but in reality many new blogs have trouble attracting comments. If you find that your blog posts don’t usually get the attention or feedback that you had hoped for, you’re not alone.
Here are a few tips to get the comments flowing.
A while ago we shared 25 great web-design and development books and since this earlier post got a great response (and we’ve read a lot more books since), we’ve now gathered another 25.
In this list you’ll find books about design, theory, development, css, html and a lot more. I hope you enjoy the post!
Author: Shari Thurow
Topics: Web-Design, SEO, UX
Price: $19.59
Don’t get me wrong – I love Search Engine Rankings (SERPS). I love seeing a client get to page 1 for their goal term in Google and they love me for helping them.
What’s not to love about this? Well, for one, making bad decisions about your site. You also need to understand why sometimes your site will experience fluctuations in ranking, just like the stock market.
Here’s a few factors to consider before becoming SERP obsessed and and reacting to fluctuations.
Different State, Different SERPs
The success of a website is far more dependent upon performance than it is on looks and appearance, although design certainly has an impact on performance. Being able to use analytics programs proficiently will make a designer more effective and more valuable to clients. In this post we’ll feature tutorials and articles from across the web that will show you how to improve in this area.
The resources in this post focus on Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer, two of the most popular tools of the trade. However, there are many other tools and programs that can be used for these purposes, and while the specific steps of some of these tutorials may not apply outside of Google’s products, the principles will.
Pro Blog Design has a post that serves as a good intro to analytics. It covers the basics of what you should be paying attention to and how you can act on the information that you obtain.
“This blog series is intended to be a walk-through for setting up a lead generating website. My goal is to get you thinking about ways to improve your site and enhance its performance. Each blog post will be centered on a specific part of website development that will help you grow your online business. Some posts will be more specific and advanced, while others will be more general and introductory. Taken together, the posts in this series will offer valuable tips, regardless of where you are with the maturity of your website.”
Design is an important element in website development. In the past the thought was to create animated, Flash-heavy websites that dazzled Internet searchers. Today, Internet Marketers say that Flash websites daze and confuse consumers, who have become more sophisticated at searching for websites thanks to companies like Google.
Website optimization is the key to doing online business in the 
21st century, but that doesn’t mean that design has to suffer to rank number one. Website design is very much about structure. According to our Creative Director, Todd Cummings “There is a step in the web design process known as Information Architecture. IA is the development of the web site’s structure and navigation. This framework or “wire frame” provides a map of the content and functionality that will drive the design and development process and result in the finished web site.” Think about the design structure and layout of your site like an architect would about a new home being developed. The questions raised before actually building a new home are very similar to those developers ask before building a new website.
Understanding the intended audience will help determine the look and feel of your website. Builders need to understand their market before starting a project. Do their potential buyers prefer hardwood or carpeted floors in their homes? The same goes for your potential clients: put yourself in their shoes and shop for a home on a competitor’s website. When you first visit that site, what attracts to you to it, and what annoys you? Sometimes we forget to see our sites through the consumer’s eyes.
Search Engine Optimization
