This means your site doesn’t need a complete overhaul (which I’ll write about in my newsletter); rather, it can be tweaked and finessed to get it up to speed. So you might only need a website refresh if…

1. Your site needs some responsive love. Responsive web design (RWD) is a hot topic in the web design world these days. With the proliferation of devices that your site is accessible on (phones, tablets, laptops, desktops, even refrigerators), it’s imperative that your content looks the best on screens of every size. That’s where responsive design comes in. Visitors don’t have the patience to pinch and squeeze your site to find what they’re looking for. So, instead of your site shrinking on a tiny device, the content will rearrange itself so the viewer can easily access your content while browsing your website no matter what device they use.

2. You need to add a free report or giveaway to entice viewers to get on your list. Having a newsletter sign-up form on your site is awesome, and it’s even better if you pair that with some sort of free download or offer in exchange for the person’s name and email. This can range from a simple 1-page report with tips + tricks your audience is interested in to a full-blown multi-page ebook or audio download. Look at the top of this page for my free report: 7 Stylish + Sure-fire Ways to Get Your Website Noticed and Engage Your Ideal Clients. And, once someone signs up for your free report and gets on your newsletter mailing list, they’ll be in your tribe of people you can stay in contact with to keep your business top-of-mind.

3. You want your web site to help you save time. Time is one of those precious commodities that there never seems to be enough of, and there are a few ways you get your site working more efficiently for you so you can spend less time on administrative tasks and more time on what you enjoy doing. Here’s how:

• Use a content management system (CMS) like WordPress so it’s super easy to add and edit content, projects, testimonials, blog posts, etc.

• Use online forms and questionnaires for people to connect with you, then have those forms integrate directly with your invoicing and estimating service. Then you never have to manually enter someone’s contact info again. That’s how I do it. I use a combination of Gravity Forms (the best form management plugin there is, in my opinion) with the FreshBooks add-on on my WordPress site. (FreshBooks is a wonderfully easy online invoicing, expense management and time tracking service.) When someone wants to have a complimentary chat with me, they fill out the form and their info is 1.) stored within my WordPress backend (which saves so much time sifting through emails), and 2.) sent to my FreshBooks account. When it’s time to send an estimate or invoice, I just go to FreshBooks, select their name from a drop down menu, and voila—it’s there.

• On that same note, you can connect WordPress + Gravity Forms + MailChimp. Then, on all your online forms (think project questionnaires, contact forms, registrations, etc.), add a checkbox for people to subscribe to your newsletter. Their info is automatically sent to MailChimp and you’re done.

There are tons of other services that will integrate with WordPress to save you precious minutes everyday which leads to saving several hours or more a month. So, give that a thought the next time you want to spice up your site or do a simple refresh.

And if you want help with any of this, just sign up for my complimentary chat…

Home Page

For many visitors, your Home page is the main point of entry into your website. It’s main purpose is to engage your viewer—to learn more about you, understand what you offer, and inspire action.

Think of the Home page as a general overview of your business. You might choose to start out with a simple statement about what you do. Or, you can pose some questions to the viewer that makes them feel like they are in the right place and that you understand their needs. If you are a creative or have specific samples to show, show a few projects on your Home page to encourage viewers to peruse your body of work. Add your photo so people can put a face to your name.

About Page

The About page is the place to give viewers insight into who you are both personally and professionally. Let readers resonate with who you are as a person. This is a great time to give some personal details about yourself while keeping the tone professional and related to the work that you do. Including your mug and signature on your About page is a great way to show your personality.

Services Page

The Services page is where you list out what you do. Breaking the content into short, digestible chunks of information with bulleted or numbered lists is a handy way to make sure the information is easily consumed. Let your keywords shine on this page by using headers to break up the content.

If you have a wealth of content spanning various subjects, add an introductory paragraph and link to another page with the nuts and bolts of that specific subject. Be sure to link back to your main services page.

Work Page

If you are a designer, copywriter, photographer, or other creative, add a Work page (or Portfolio) to house your various projects. The number of projects you include depends upon several factors including the amount of services you offer and years of experience. I think 12 projects is a good number as they can be arranged in columns or 3 or 4.

Your Work page should include an overview of all your projects with thumbnail images. Then, each project can link to a separate page about that specific project. Using WordPress as the content management system (CMS) for your website, is a great way to house your work examples, and it provides a very friendly interface to maintain and add projects.

Contact Page

This page is probably the easiest one to write. Simply include how you want people to contact you—phone, email, snail mail. An email form can be nice too so viewers don’t have to click away from your site.

And that’s it, folks. Start out with the above pages and you’ll be well on your way to having a complete website.

Your John Hancock

Adding your actual signature—not a font—is a a super, authentic way to add a bit of personality to your website. If your home page has some first person copy from you, like a letter, add your signature underneath. Your about page and your newsletter are also great places for your signature. For a more informal, personal feel, just use your first name. It has that friendly appeal as if you were signing a note or card. Use a color that complements your brand. I used brown for my signature on my about page.

So, how do you generate a web-ready signature? It’s simple.

1. Grab a marker (I prefer ones with a fine tip) and a clean, white sheet of paper.
2. Sign your name just like you would sign a note or a card. It’s totally fine if it’s illegible.
3. Scan or take a photo of your signature at a high resolution.
4. If your signature will go on a page that has color or an image in the background, remove the white background so the file is transparent.
5. Crop the signature and save at a small size (100 pixels high @ 72dpi works nicely) as a .png file.
6. Upload it to your about page, newsletter, and home page (if applicable).

Your Mug

A happy, smiling photo is a warm and inviting way to let visitors get to know you. But that’s not the only way to display your mug. If you’re more offbeat, do a funny face or different expression. You don’t always have to be looking at the camera either. A candid shot can speak wonders all by itself.

If you are not a shutterbug, consider hiring a photographer for your headshot so you can get a really great photo with the right lighting, unobtrusive background, and clarity. Before you visit with your photographer, find some examples of headshots and photos from other websites that you really like. That way you can work with your photographer to perfect the look of the photo. Remember to wear neutral colors or hues in line with your brand. That ensures your photo will look great on your website and not clash with the design.

If you’re a fan of a cropped photo without a background, make sure the photograph is taken with a white backdrop. Then the background can easily be removed. Likewise, have the photographer shoot the photo with you standing on the left or right with lots of additional space to the side of you. Photos like this are great for adding words on top to create a really dynamic statement.

(Do you want to know the truth about my photo on this site? I really resisted putting it on my home page and cringed so much at the idea. Yet for years, I’ve pushed my clients to include their photos on their sites since it’s such a good way to create a great first impression. So, I finally got over myself and put it front and center on my home page. And you know what? People seem to generally like it. They say it makes me more accessible and real.)

What about you?

Oh, no. They have an unpleasant, frustrating experience when completing your form. How do you think your prospect feels about you now? Most likely, it’s less favorable than before. If it happens after the form is submitted, you might get away with it. But if your prospect has a poor experience while filling out your form, you might loose that connection. They might get frustrated and leave your site.

If you have a contact form or questionnaire or application on your website—or possibly all 3—the forms need to be easy to use. Here are 6 simple ways to make sure your visitors have a pleasant user experience when filling out your online forms:

1. Useable on every device. A few nights ago, I remembered I hadn’t scheduled my son’s yearly checkup. So, I pulled out my phone and went to his pediatrician’s website to use their online form to book an appointment. The form was virtually unusable because everything was misaligned and the date picker was off the screen. I got really irritated that I had to go get my laptop to make the appointment. Had my son been a new patient, I just might have given up and found another practice.

2. On longer forms, mark which fields are required. Unless your form only has a name + email field, as in the case of an opt-in for a freebie or newsletter sign-up, marking the fields that are required with an asterisk will really make your visitors happy. If you’ve ever filled out a long form, clicked submit, then had a sea of red alert messages screaming that you missed some fields, you know how annoying this can be.

3. Readable field text. In other words, text that is large enough to read easily. It’s no fun when you fill out a form and the font size is so tiny, you can barely read what you write.

4. Fields that fit the amount of information. If you are asking someone for their name or email, a standard text field will do. If you want a couple of sentences of information, then give the user a large input box that will easily house their response. Likewise, if fields aren’t wide enough, people with longer email addresses might have trouble.

5. Easy to find submit buttons. Make sure your submit button is in close proximity to the form. Just underneath the last field is a great place. If it’s way off to the side and your form isn’t responsive and optimized for mobile or tablet devices, your prospective client might not find the button. As we’ve learned, confused viewers might give up. Don’t just rely on the browser standard for a submit button. Those tend to blend in and get lost. Make the mouse cursor change from an arrow to a pointer and make the button change color or transition in an eye-catching way. Also, you don’t have to use “submit” as the text on the button. That can be pretty boring. It should be something that is enticing and understandable like “Sign me up” or “Get it now!”

6. A clear success message when the form is submitted. Let your visitor know that they’ve completed the form successfully. It makes people feel good. The best thing to do is serve up an entirely separate page with a visible ‘Thank you!” or “Success” or both. The second best thing is to include a confirmation message on the same page and have it stand out. The trouble with the latter is that, if the form is really long and the page doesn’t jump up to where the success message is, the user might not see it.

Be sure to give clear instructions on what the person should expect next—a call back, a confirmation in their inbox, or some other form of follow up. Clear communication keeps people feeling good about you and your brand.

Bonus tip—go a step further and include your social media links on your form’s Thank You page. Your prospective client might be so impressed that you provided such a great user experience for them that you could gain a new fan or follower.

A website, like any other informational piece, needs to lead viewers in a direction—a direction you want them to take. If you sell products online, you want people to buy your items. If your site functions as a marketing piece, you probably want people to contact you or sign up for your newsletter or subscribe to your blog.

The best way to make sure visitors do these things is to clearly call out what you want them to do. This is a “call to action.” This can be many things:

• Get my free report.
• Sign up for a free chat.
• Apply for a discovery session.
• View my work.

Ask yourself what the number one goal of your website is, then make sure to call your visitors to action in a prominent and eye-catching way. Your call to action could be a statement at the bottom of each page prompting viewers to call you, an opt-in form for a free gift in the header with some compelling copy, or even a combination of the two. Or, maybe you want to send folks over to your blog and have them subscribe.

On her new website for The Soul Map (a project I worked on for Solamar Agency), Lissa Boles wants to take viewers to her blog or have them learn about her services. We developed a call to action at the bottom of her landing pages to give viewers a choice of where to go next.

Hazlehurst House, a historic event facility in Metro Atlanta, wants their visitors to call them or schedule an appointment using their online form. So, we prominently display a bright banner on the site with their phone number and link to their schedule an appointment form. This banner is on the home page and at the top of every other page.

This concept applies to smaller or secondary calls to action on your site as well. Instead of simply linking some text for people to download a recording or go deeper into your site, use a nice button or icon. Making these items stand out will help visitors get where they need to go, and they’ll have a great user experience on your site.

Initials, Inc., a party plan company that sells personalized gifts, wants visitors to connect with one of their consultants when they want to host a party. We made it super clear how to do this with fun buttons.

Whatever your goal is, make sure it stands out in a big way so people know exactly what step to take. Your viewers will thank you.

How are you calling your viewers to action? Please share your methods in the comments below.

Fundamentally, the WordPress Theme system is a way to “skin” your weblog. Yet, it is more than just a “skin.” Skinning your site implies that only the design is changed. WordPress Themes can provide much more control over the look and presentation of the material on your website.

In other words, a theme is the set of files that makes up the look and feel of a WordPress website. It’s all the graphics, styles, and images along with the core WordPress functionality. Every WordPress site needs one and they can range from very generic to super complex. Currently, any new installation of WordPress is packaged with the Twenty Eleven and Twenty Ten themes. Yeah, pretty basic in terms of design.

Alright, so now that we know what a theme is, let’s discuss the options for using a theme in a new website design.

1. Find or buy an existing theme from sites such as ThemeForest, Elegant Themes, etc.
2. Have a theme custom-designed for you by a web designer (like me).

Let’s look at some pros + cons of each.

Pros of using an existing theme

• Very economical. Themes range from free to $50.
• Fast. If you know what you are doing, installing and configuring a theme can be done in under an hour.

Cons of using an existing theme

• No differentiation. Your site can end up looking just like someone else’s which can completely dilute your brand.
• Installation + theme setup difficultly. Installing a theme yourself does require some technical knowledge and computer savvy. If attaching a file to email or downloading a photo from Facebook scare you, then installing a theme will too. Once the theme is installed, adding your logo and changing the colors does require technical savvy.

Pros of hiring a designer to design a custom theme

• Brand differentiation. A custom-design theme means that no one else’s site will look like yours. Your brand will stay true.
• Easy of theme installation + setup. Having a theme custom-designed for you means that the designer installs + sets up everything. At the end of the project, you’re handed a perfectly beautiful and functioning website that’s easy to maintain.

Cons of hiring a designer to design a custom theme

• Cost. Depending on the designer’s level of experience, custom themes can start at $2,500.
• Timeliness. Custom WordPress theme design + build can take anywhere from 4-8 weeks.

In the end, it’s really about cost, time, and the importance of brand differentiation to you.

These affirmations are hanging in my office right next to the window. When I find myself gazing outside, hopelessly daydreaming, these words of wisdom pull me back to the world of reality and a place where I call the shots. Hopefully, they’ll help you too. Enjoy!

Choose from:

• 2 x 3.5 inch with Rounded Corners
• 2 x 2 inch with Rounded Corners
• 1.75 x 3.5 inch with Rounded Corners
• 2 x 3.5 inch with Two Rounded Corners + Two Square Corners (Leaf)
• 2 x 3.5 inch with One Rounded Corner
• 2 x 3.5 inch with Half Circle Side
• 2 x 3.5 inch Oval
• 2.5 inch Circle

And the following paper stocks:

• 14pt Cardstock Gloss / Matte / High Gloss (UV)
• 13pt Cardstock Uncoated

Includes: 6 Business Days Turnaround + Free shipping!

How to Enter

To win, simply be the first person to reply to this post, comment on the post on Facebook, or tweet about it on Twitter by November 4, 2011. Then, I’ll hook you up with UPrinting for your free business card printing.

Good luck!

The fine print: Limited to US residents 18 years old and above only. This giveaway is sponsored by UPrinting, no monetary compensation was given and I will receive a set of business cards for hosting. This giveaway applies to free business card printing only, not business card design.

Cookies, in Internet speak, are small text files that websites temporarily store on your computer. They contain data such as form entries, shopping cart items, login details, and other information so the website will remember your computer the next time you visit.

A cache is where your browser (Firefox, Safari, Chrome—and that other one that people still insist on using—Internet Explorer), stores images, audio files, video files, and text to make pages load faster and run smoother. (By the way, it’s pronounced cash, not cash-ay like I used to say when I first started designing websites many moons ago . . .)

It’s good practice to clear your cookies and cache periodically so you can know you are viewing the most up-to-date content on the web. And, it helps your browser function better, especially if wonky things are happening.

Here’s how to clear your browser’s cookies and cache and refresh your page:

Internet Explorer

IE8+

• Go to the Safety menu (upper right corner) and click Delete Browsing History
• Uncheck Preserve Favorites website data and check Temporary Internet files, Cookies, and History
• Click Delete
• Click Refresh

IE7

• Go to the Tools menu (upper right corner) and click Internet Options
• Under Browsing history, click Delete
• Check Delete files, Delete cookies, and Delete history
• Click Close and then click OK to exit
• Click Refresh

Firefox

• Go to the Tools menu and click Clear Recent History
• From the Time range to clear drop-down menu, select Everything
• Click the down arrow next to Details
• Check Browsing & Download History, Cookies, and Cache
• Click Clear Now
• Click Reload

Google Chrome

• Go to the Wrench icon (upper right corner), click Tools, and click Clear Browsing Data
• Check Clear browsing history, Clear download history, Empty the cache, and Delete cookies and other site data
• Select the beginning of time from the Obliterate the following items from drop-down
• Click Clear Browsing Data
• Click Reload

Safari

• Go to the Safari menu and click Reset Safari
• Check Clear history, Remove all webpage preview images, Remove all website icons, and Remove all website data
• Click Reset
• Click Reload

Safari for iPhone, iPod Touch + iPad

• Go to the home screen, tap Settings, and then tap Safari
• At the bottom of Safari’s settings screen, tap the buttons for Clear Cookies and Clear Cache
• To confirm, tap Clear Cookies or Clear Cache again

The entire day was spent outside in 30-degree weather. It was quite chilly, but the end result was well worth it. Look for their new Spring/Summer 2011 catalog—designed by yours truly—soon (and see what this jumping business is all about).

Photography by David Christensen Photography

Akismet come pre-packaged with every WordPress installation, but you’ll need an API key to get it working. To get a free API key and setup Akismet, simply follow these steps:

1. Go to WordPress.com/signup/ and sign-up for a free WordPress.com account—be sure to use the Username option, not the Blog Address option.
2. Note: if you already have a WordPress.com account, you can find your API key on your profile page—just click on the “My Account” link located at the top left of the screen.
3. Your API key will be in your welcome email from WordPress.com. Or, you can find it on your WordPress.com profile page.
4. Once you have your API key in hand, either email it to me (if I’m designing your WordPress website) or configure the plugin yourself.
5. Login to your WordPress Admin and go to Plugins. Activate the Akismet plugin.
6. You’ll be prompted to enter your API key. Paste it in the box and click on “Update options” and you’ll be set. You can also go to Plugins > Akismet Configuration.
7. To view your spam stats, click on the Akismet Stats link in the Dashboard section.

Voila! That’s it! No more pesky spam comments.

Click here to view this photo book larger

1. Do your homework. Define your core values, mission, and goals. Analyze your audience and competition. Establish your USP (Unique Selling Proposition)—what makes your company stand out from the rest. Why would someone want to buy from you versus someone else who sells the same thing? Keep in mind the four “P’s” of marketing: Product, Place (location), Price, and Promotion in determining your USP.

2. Play the name game. What’s in a name? Everything. Now that you have your data, it’s time to come up with a name. Great brand names are memorable, personable, and emotional. They should roll off the tongue and be easy to spell. Take Nike, for example. Nike is the Greek goddess of victory, which is an excellent connotation for their products. Another great name is Roomba, the robot vacuum. Roomba, an invented word, kind of sounds like rumba, a Spanish rhythmic dance. So this vacuum basically “dances” around the room. What a pleasing thought from a vacuum cleaner!

Now, how do you find out if someone is already using the fabulous name you came up with? Check out the Trademark Electronic Search System and do some Google searches. To be absolutely sure the name is okay to use, hire a lawyer. Filing trademark applications can be tricky and it’s better to be safe than sorry.

3. Perfect your logo. Picture Coca-Cola and you see the bright red color and flowing script. Think IBM and it’s those bold, block letters with horizontal stripes. These logos were ranked no. 1 and 3, respectively, in the top brands of 2007 by BusinessWeek. And no wonder. Both follow the fundamental principles of well-designed logos: they are instantly recognizable, timeless, scalable, and perfectly simple. Make sure your logo has all these qualities and communicates your core values.

4. Set standards. All of your marketing materials including your website should have visual coherency that support your company’s mission and goals. Your materials should compliment your logo and share associated colors, typefaces and images. Many successful brands have developed standards manuals that clearly define logo usage guidelines, corporate colors, etc. Share these guidelines with your staff to make sure the visual components of your brand are consistent.

5. Package it up! Consider your identity pieces: business cards, letterhead, envelopes, notecards, promotional materials, etc. What do they communicate? Are they professional? If your company is selling natural, organic products, then slick, shiny postcards may not be the way to go. Perhaps using uncoated, recycled paper might make a better impression.

Always have your collateral pieces printed professionally. Yes, your customers can tell if you print your letterhead or business cards with your inkjet printer. With so many online printers with low overhead and expert printing technology, prices are cheaper than ever. It’s possible to order full-color letterhead, business cards, and #10 envelopes—500 of each—for less than $500 total. Check out this list of printers.

6. Create demand for your brand. Now that your materials are well designed and represent your company’s ideal image, it’s time to get out there and market. You’ve already defined your audience, and now you need to be where they are. Try to find a good combination of reaching the largest numbers of your target market with the minimum amount of resources.

Grassroots marketing—writing articles, attending networking events, generating referrals, and getting celebrities as customers—is the most affordable way to start. Step it up a notch with online marketing such as search engine optimization, blogging, email marketing, and banner advertising. Finally, consider traditional paid advertising as icing-on-the-top-of-your-marketing-cake. Continue to reinforce your brand message and you’ll be well on your way to success.

More resources:

Brand Naming by Fast Company
Making Your Mark by HOW Design

For clarity, we’re talking about natural listings that appear in the main section of a search engine. The links offset in colored boxes at the top or right-hand side of the page, are sponsored links which you paid for, and that’s for another discussion. For now, let’s focus on natural ways to make your website a hit with search engines.

Linking

One of the best things you can do to increase your ranking with search engines is have credible websites link to your website. More sites linking to yours = higher results because search engines factor this in when deciding which sites to list first.

You want natural, incoming links (not linking schemes or link-sharing programs that say they’ll increase your website’s ranking—those will do more harm than good). The quality of a link depends on how close its keywords match yours, plus its search engine ranking.

So how can you get quality links? Provide worthy content on your site that other sites will want to link to such as articles, blogs, and free services. And, find resource areas or link sections on related websites and ask them to link to your website.

Keywords

Keywords and keyword phrases are very important as they enable search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and others to find your site. Choose your keywords and phrases based on what your visitors will use to search for your company, such as your business name, industry, products, services, location, etc.

Wordtracker is a great tool for choosing keywords and is relatively inexpensive. Also try this free tool for checking keyword density and prominence.

Once you’ve chosen your keywords, make sure to include them in the following places on your site:

• Page title, which appears at the top of the browser window. Titles form the link to your site from the search engines and should be no more than 8-10 words or 75 characters, including spaces. Only capitalize proper nouns—leave keywords lowercase.
• Headers. “Is Your Website a Hit with Search Engines” is the header of this page and it’s located in H1 (header) tags.
• Description. The description is what appears under the page titles on search engines. It should be no more than 150 characters, including spaces. Just like page titles, only capitalize proper nouns and leave keywords lowercase.
• URLs. For example, for this article, my URL is jilllynndesign.com/search-engine-optimization. Use dashes (-) instead of underscores (_) to separate words.
• The main body of your website. If you are selling online, make sure the product descriptions are filled with quality keywords. These words can include the product benefits, how it works, specific advantages, and why it’s different.
• Keyword meta tags. Perhaps not as important as in the past, but it doesn’t hurt to include them anyway. Separate keywords by commas.

Remember, keywords should be page specific. If you sell widgets and whatchamacallits, don’t use the widget keywords on the whatchamacallit pages and vice versa. Make it easy for visitors to find exactly what they’re searching for which will convert to more website traffic.

Other useful resources for Search Engine Optimization:

Optimizing Your Web Site for the Search Engines by Interspire
Getting Exposure on Search Engines by Freelance Switch
Keyword Research Articles for Beginners and Experts by Wordtracker