93% of consumers prefer to find local businesses online as opposed to printed resources such as the Yellow Pages or newspapers*.  You need to be where your customers are searching.  Local Boost helps your business’s online visibility.  Not only will you be found on the websites your potential customers are using to find your services or products, but the listings themselves get indexed by the search engines, giving you an extra boost in your search engine rankings.

With Local Boost, you’ll be able to:

•     Save time and ensure accuracy by sending your business information to all these directories at once
•     Easily manage your business information in one place and update it all over the web with a single click
•     Track the reach and status of your listings

Even if you do not update your information, we will resubmit it monthly to the local search engines and directories to indicate that your business information is still relevant and fresh.

Ready to get started with Local Boost?  Click here.

Please note that currently we are only able to offer Local Boost to customers in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada.

*The Kelsey Group, 2007

We could only feature a few sites created by these hard-working dedicated moms, but to all the Mompreneurs out there, we salute you, Happy Mother’s Day!

Frosting Tutus

Melinda specializes in turning cute little girls into adorable pouffy princesses with her colorful custom tutus. Her kids keep her plenty busy but she still manages to find time to create beautiful custom tutus and hand stamped jewelry, all while promoting her business online and at craft fairs. This Mompreneur has shown her marketing savvy by introducing new products on her website via prize giveaways on her Facebook page, helping her to gather buzz for her ever expanding product line.

PunyPixel

Jo is a Mompreneur with a cause. She created adorable graphics for her kids clothing line, but she didn’t stop there. She insured her Puny Pixel characters would only be printed on certified organic cotton with eco friendly, low impact dyes and that they’d be assembled by a socially responsible manufacturer. On top of that she donates $1 from every purchase to various non-profit organizations dedicated to empowering children. She says “big change starts puny” but we think there’s nothing small about the impact this super mom has on her kids and the world around her.

Wolf Media Plus

Diane started Wolf Media Plus to help small businesses, non-profits and individuals get a custom designed website at an affordable price. This Mompreneur uses Yola to create websites for her clients and has found it to be helpful in achieving a harmonious work-life balance. Her business allows her to have a creative outlet while enabling her to be present to kiss every boo-boo and watch her three gorgeous sons grow a little more each day.

The fonts provided are Google web fonts which means they’re open source and supported in all modern browsers. If your site visitor is not running a current browser version, the font will degrade gracefully and not cause display issues with your website. This is a great way to revamp the overall look of your website in one easy click.

All styles start off with the “Default” option selected. Selecting a new font family will apply those changes to your site—but don’t worry, your widget fonts and any custom HTML you may have added will not be affected. When you change styles, the font will automatically be set to the default style of the new style. Should you return to a previous style in which you customized the fonts, that customization will be reapplied.

Steps to customize your website font:

• In the Sitebuilder click on Styles > Customize Fonts.
• You will see larger text and smaller text. The larger text is how your headings will look, the smaller text is body text.
• Select the font you’d like to use.
• The changes will be visible immediately.

To revert to the default font, simply click Styles > Customize Fonts and select “Default for style”.

1. Purpose: What’s the image for? At the heart of every image is the message it conveys to the viewer. Make sure that your image supports your written content and achieves the purpose you are using it for. They say a picture speaks a thousand words, therefore telling a story is the exact purpose you should be aiming for.

2. Tone: It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.  When providing information to people, it’s not just the content that matters, but also the tone in which the content comes across. Choose a humorous image to support a website that is supposed to convey a humorous tone, or a professional image for a business website. Using an image that compliments the tone of your message will be more powerful.

3. Audience Relevance: Does your audience relate to the image? Any person visiting a website or reading a publication wants to see the immediate relevance to their own lives, and one of the first places your website visitors attention will go to is the images on your website.  People like to identify.  Connect your audience to your subject by using a photo that relates to the subject matter appropriately.

4. Timeliness: How new is new? Up on the latest news? A trend setter perhaps? Reinforce your credibility with an image that screams, “I keep up with the Jones’!” Stay current with your topic, and reinforce it with an image that depicts the right moment, era or time.

5. Uniqueness: Is your image one of a kind? Show people that the content you provide is meaningful and unique. As tempting as it may be, steer clear of highly accessible freebie sites. What’s free and easy for you is also free and easy for everyone else. By picking a unique image from a micro-stock site, you show your followers that you’re taking the time to get great images. You can take it one step further by customizing it with Photoshop or other design tools to make it truly unique.

6. Image Rights: Is it legal? Another benefit of buying from a micro-stock company is that you will have the legal rights to use the photo as you please. Downloading an image illegally can sometimes involve serious repercussions. Take the safe road by purchasing royalty-free images and save yourself the headache.

7. Aesthetic Appeal: Lookin’ good, kid! Last but certainly not least, your image should have visual appeal. This is probably the most important feature to take into consideration. Draw your audience in by attracting them with stunning visuals. A beautifully placed image can make all the difference in making your material vivid and engaging. 


There’s a world of stock images out there—have fun exploring the thousands of images available to you and don’t over think it. Keep these handy tips in mind and you’re already well on your way to dazzling your audience.

- Matt Dujay, Fotolia

“The main thing I enjoyed about Yola is the way in which the template system allows you to make a great looking and unique website in a small amount of time. People who comment on the site say it is very professional and are surprised at its quality as we have no professional web developers in our team. This impression of quality has resulted in far more sales and online interest in our business than we had expected, thanks to Yola.”—Seyon Sivarajah, Director of IT, Panacea Records

They found the Form widget to be quick and easy to set up while providing a professional looking way for customers and website visitors to reach them. They also utilized the Share Me widget to add social features to every page of their site with just a few clicks. Thanks to that widget they received over 80 tweets about their venture!

“The really fantastic thing about Yola is that you can keep your website updated and fresh without any hassle. We are always thinking of ways to make the site better and the Yola editor with its instant publishing system lets us change and improve very quickly. A good example of this is the forthcoming addition of a Tumblr blog to the site which will let us put a lot more content and news on the site, at a rapid rate.“—Seyon Sivarajah

Want to see your site featured here? Take a few minutes to tell us what you think makes your site stand out and submit it through our Support Form.

“We started the process by filling out a questionnaire that was very complete on expressing what the client is looking for and what was to be added to the page.  We included all logos and pictures and color schemes that we were interested in. The new design captures our company image so much better than my original site that I created by myself. The new site has a professional look that gives us the detail and design that matches our MUD RUN Adventure Run feel.  We have gotten rave reviews on the site and the new look from all our racers, friends and family.  Being that our website is our first impression and storefront to get people interested we knew it was a no-brainer that we needed to have professional help to get the look we desired.  And the price is so affordable we knew it would be worth the chance and we are super happy with the results.” —Dan Matuszczak

Dan was also pleased that his designer took the time to teach him some of the techniques used in order to make maintaining his site in the future more seamless. They detailed how to use the different font types such as “paragraph” and “headings” including the specialty fonts that his designer added to his Sitebuilder giving his website a truly custom look. Run on FL.ROC!

Want to see your site featured here? Take a few minutes to tell us what you think makes your site stand out and submit it using our Support Form.

Aviary is powerful and easy to use. With it you’ll find all the features you love, in a slick, new interface. Add text, crop, rotate and adjust your photos, all within the Sitebuilder. This makes the editing process simple and easy!

Check out our tutorial for detailed steps on editing with Aviary via the Picture Widget or the Text Widget.

As great as we think our Sitebuilder already is, we know we can continue to make it even better.  This year we are focusing on three main areas of improvement.  First, we want to give you more control over your workspace.  When our customers are editing their site, we know the most important thing is the page they’re editing at that moment.  We want to help the page stand out and reduce the clutter of controls you don’t currently need.  We will be adding a control bar to the bottom of the tool that will let you show and hide the widget sidebar.  We will also add in a new style selector that will let you quickly preview your site in a new style without needing to open and close new dialog boxes.  Style changes will happen seamlessly from within your page. You will be able to hide tools you don’t need and free up more of the workspace to devote to the most important thing: your site.

The second area we are focusing on will be adding richer web tools into the Sitebuilder. We make it easy to add photos and text to your page, but now we want to provide more tools to support you after you have published your site. This year we added mobile optimized sites and Facebook publishing into the flow.  The next step will be to add even more tools that will help your site get found on Google and boost your page ranking.  The built-in tools will live within the bottom bar and will provide you real-time feedback about your website.  The goal is to make the site building tool a resource for the entire lifetime of your website.

The third user interface area we wish to address is online help. We currently offer email, forum, social, and phone support as well as our help bubbles and guided tour, but we think we can take the concept even further.   We are considering adding an easily accessible toggle that will trigger a context sensitive help layer.  Click on the layer, and the Sitebuilder will use arrows and text to explain everything on the screen. The idea would be to provide you an easy place to go whenever you have questions about the Sitebuilder.  The system would know what you were currently looking at and provide you the help most relevant to the moment.

And this is just the beginning.  We have a ton of other features in the works, including styles, widgets and new font choices.  It is going to be an exciting year.

- John-Mark, Director of UI & Design, Yola

Site owner Julie wanted to convey a fun and relaxed approach to the often daunting task of resume creation. Her goldfish graphic effectively conveys her understanding of clients need to stand apart in a fun way while her stylish banner and clean background keep the overall look of her website professional.

Using a Yola Style, I was easily able to customize it in order to display a light-hearted feel, while remaining fresh and professional. It is a good example of how to simply make changes to a Yola template, and create a unique site. The entire process was surprisingly easy and I would highly recommend Yola to others.—Julie

Want to see your site featured here? Take a few minutes to tell us what you think makes your site stand out and submit it through our Support Form.

To enable this feature, can click on the Facebook publishing button in the Site Settings panel or in the site preview window. Please note, you will need to publish your site at least once to use this feature. Check out our quick video tutorial below to get you started.

With this new feature, you can create a professional look and get your Facebook fans to engage with your business directly from your business’s Facebook page. Your fans can learn more about your business, make appointments, shop from your store, or leave comments on your pages, all without leaving Facebook.

And better yet, every time you make a change or update your website, your changes will automatically be propagated to your Facebook page.

We hope you enjoy this new feature, and we look forward to seeing your pages and hearing your success stories!