The two things I love the most about owning and operating New Dimension Website Design are:

1. Being both creative and business-minded, and developing websites that make a good rate of return for my clients
2. Developing long term relationships with my clients and having a part in promoting their businesses to grow and change

I am already a huge fan of Studio 853, and look forward to seeing more inspiring work from this company!

Although Fleuriste Brunet was not quite ready to offer full online purchases, we were able to design their site so that all of the arrangements can be seen online and then easily ordered over the phone. Also, if they decide to implement full e-commerce in the future, it will be a smooth transition.

The website development process was an enjoyable  experience and I look forward to seeing where this company goes in the future!

How can I get to the top?

Website SEO (Search Engine Positioning), is even more important than website design.

Did I say that out loud? Yes, I did. You may have just spent a good deal of time and money on your new website – yet if it is not being seen by the right people, it is not worth much to your business.

Every day, millions of people use search engines to find information, products and services. Being at the top of search results can bring potential customers to your website that may be looking for what you have to offer. And this means a good return on your investment.

How can I optimize my website for search engines?

• SEO starts with building a high quality, well organized website made for humans (not robots).
• Define why your website exists. What is its purpose?
• Use search engine friendly URLs – Use your best keywords in your domain name, titles,  folder name, and page names
• Focus on 5-20 main related keywords or phrases for your entire site. Choose carefully. You can optimize all you like but if people aren’t searching for what you’re selling, no amount of SEO will help you rank or sell more.
• Style your headings, (in your HTML, use real headings elements throughout your content)
• Refresh your website with new content and pages regularly
• Formulate unique titles and page meta data.  Make sure the title of each page is different, and that each page follows a ‘theme’ of keywords unique to that page
• Use image (alt) tags in your HTML that offer useful descriptive keywords
• Link in and Link out  – Search engines give more importance to websites that link to other related sites. Campaign to have other sites link to you as well, especially those with existing high ranking. When linking from one page to another within your own site, use your specific keywords or phrases. If possible, don’t just use words like Home, Products, Contact, etc.

What is the ultimate goal here?

The most common misunderstandings of SEO is that it isn’t just important to attempt to increase the level of visitors, but also to increase the level of visitors’ engagement.

We often hear about website hits or visits.  However, it’s not about how many potential customers come to your site, but what they do once they are there.  If all the traffic you are driving to your site does not find what it is looking for, it will just leave.

This is all Greek to me, can you do this for me?

Yes, we can!

We will analyze your visitors with an “engagement index” — an equation that goes beyond “page views” and into the factors that differentiate a loyal, dedicated prospect from a fly-by.

Back to our first rule of SEO, we help you define why your website exists.  We help define up to 7 engagement indicators that define a ‘conversion’, whether it’s time on the site, how many pages they read, filling in a form, accessing your contact page, downloading something, or even making a purchase.  These indicators define the level of customer engagement.

The next step was to track the percentage of overall visits that satisfy each of these categories over time.  More broadly, tracking engagement allows you to put traffic data in perspective. Even if overall traffic for the site is down, but the number of engaged users are up, that still means the site is doing well.

By having a well-rounded SEO strategy and by being aware of factors that engage your visitors, we will help drive up the quantity as well as the  quality of visitors, keeping them coming back and referring them to friends and colleagues.

Contact us now to find out more!

Heather & Sean enjoying some speed!

Back in the mid-90′s

When I first started designing websites back in around 1997, the internet arena looked very different from what it is today. The primary objective was to design a website so that it had fast loading speed. We were just starting to hear about Search Engines, and there was a long list of them to submit a site to: Excite, Lycos, Looksmart, Altavista, and Webcrawler to name a few. One of the techniques at the time was to create a landing or gateway page for each search engine. I loved trying to figure out the best way to trick a search engine into ranking my page above others. Needless to say, this activity no longer occupies my time.

Starting a company

In 2005, I co-founded a website design company with a good friend of mine, Jan Matthews. This was when I lived out west near the town of Turner Valley, Alberta. The company, Skyline Design, is an excellent website design company today and even though we now run our own companies, it is great to be able to bounce ideas back and forth with each other. Jan and I were both involved in every area of website development, from start to finish. I would meet with the client, come up with mockups, develop the design into a website, program the site using HTML, javascript, and CSS, and after the launch of the website, maintain the site for the client.

Running a business and doing the work

Launching New Dimension Design in 2007, I loved every aspect of my job – from getting out and meeting with the clients, to figuring out how to make the code work behind the scenes. As time quickly passed, things started moving so fast. I got more clients, more websites, learned new technologies, kept up with the changing methods of online marketing. Every now and then I even opened a graphic design book and got back to the principles of good design.

Building a team

Now that I was running a successful business, I started wondering why I wasn’t having as much fun as I used to. I was starting to feel like a hamster running in a wheel… moving faster and faster, but really not going anywhere and always feeling like I was behind. While sharing these thoughts with friend and fellow business-owner Murray Groen, he suggested that I hire a business coach. Hiring Laura Watson of  Venture Coaching has been one of the best business decisions I’ve made. As a result of my weekly phone sessions with Laura, I have been working on building a team made up of highly skilled and talented individuals who specialize in specific areas, such as website programming, testing, online marketing, and logo/branding design. These people have similar business values to me, and are better at their specific skills than I am.

New technology, old fashioned service

In the last year, New Dimension Design has been growing and changing. But my resolve is strong to never lose sight of the goal, to serve my customers and to see them achieve their goals and dreams. Now that I have a team to help with certain tasks, I am more available to build long-term relationships with you, my clients – and to ensure that your website and graphic design needs are met. I welcome your thoughts and comments – let’s enjoy the ride together!

Not only is it free, but it is very easy to use even for the novice computer user. It is the best solution we have found for most small to medium size business owners and their staff to be able to change their own content, add photos, add pages, and write blog posts.

You are investing both time and money into your website, so we believe that effort should be put into how your website is ranked on Google so that the right people see your website. Although we include basic SEO in our website designs, we also encourage additional SEO packages and will custom design an SEO package for you. If you want training on how to improve your search engine rankings yourself using free tools such as Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools, and Google Places – we will provide one-on-one training in these areas. Contact us for more information!

Here’s what Matthew Grasmeyer (owner of Ottawa Orthotic Lab) has to say about our services:

“I had my web site done twice before and never really felt I was pleased, therefore I was not looking forward to changing it. Again I interviewed several companies and felt like a number, then I met Heather at NDDesign, I had seen some of her previous designs and liked what I saw but I had gone down that road before so I was cautious. I chose NDDesign and am so happy I did, it was easy working with Heather, it went so smooth and I love the web site.”

One of New Dimension’s values is excellent customer service. We know that our clients are busy and we make it possible for them to hand over website maintenance tasks without having to worry once it is handed over.

Here’s what Jack (Budd) Lewis of Penner & Lewis Rock Technologies has to say about our services:

“I spent three full 1/2 days studying the various web sites of Ottawa-based graphic designers, and interviewed ND Design’s Heather Morin as one of three I had selected. I liked the work she had done for other clients. We met and discussed ‘the look’ I wanted and general content which I had prepared. She listened and came back to me with a professional proposal in a timely manner. It was a very efficient process from thereon, and it turned out that I was always pleased with what she prepared/proposed. She always gave me 2 or 3 options to choose from. I am most pleased with what she created for us. Feel free to contact me me any time at budd.l@pennerlewis.ca for further comments.”

At the top of their list was the ability to showcase photos and locations of their work. They wanted to be able to do this themselves, without having to wait for a website designer to do it for them. We created 7 photo galleries – and without any prior knowledge of HTML or website development, the client is able to easily upload photos, keep them organized, and maintain the galleries. Even with this number of galleries, we were able to keep the website budget economical for them.

New Dimension Design provides an introductory WordPress training session to its clients, which enables them to update their own content, add their own photos, write blog posts, and add pages. As of June 23rd, we also have a new WordPress Video Tutorial plugin available for our clients. While updating their site, if the client has a question about any WordPress function, they can simply click on a quick video tutorial to learn simple step-by-step instructions.

Ken MacLaren, the director of OIM, started utilizing the blog portion of their site by writing weekly posts. Many of these posts are true stories about the street friends that this organization helps. These posts give supporters and potential supporters a glimpse of what is going on inside the organization, and makes them feel more involved. With Google, content is still king, and blogging is a great way to keep your website alive with fresh, applicable content. It is great to see a client like OIM taking advantage of their blog. If you would like to find out more about the amazing work this organization does, follow their blog.

Another feature OIM wanted on their site was the ability to upload videos. Videos are a very effective way of communicating with your audience and again, you don’t need a website developer to be able to make a video, upload it to your YouTube or Vimeo account, and embed the video code into your website.

When the user lands on the home page of Marketing What’s New, they see the company’s key message instantly. From there they can easily click on Glenn’s latest blog post, follow Glenn with the clearly displayed social media links, or click on a more specialized action button.