Let me show you just a few of the reasons you may want to think about coming to us for a complete website redesign.

Making Your Website Look More Attractive – Does your small business have a website just for the sake of having a website? Is it just a small one that covers just the basics with no bells or whistles since you had no experience in website design? If either of these questions sounds familiar, then chances are you should redesign your website. As a business owner, you want the best results. A major key to seeing success comes from how appealing your website looks.

Organization Can Make All The Difference – Another main reason to get a site redesign is because right now your website is terribly unorganized. Older small business websites contain information scattered throughout the entire site, without any rhyme or reason. Chances are visitors may not find the information they are looking for or get confused by the flow of it and leave. Say goodbye to that potential sale then.

Develop the Right Style For Your Website – Every site designer I know all agree that style is one of the most important aspects of a small business website. We all have those certain things which we would love to see on our websites, but there is also other “stuff” you need to take into consideration when designing a website, for example, what is most suitable for your business, and what would a visitor be most interested in seeing. With a website redesign should could one developed for the style which you are looking for and deserving.

Promote Your Website – One of the main keys to a company’s ecommerce success is the extent of their website promotion. There are a number of different ways to increase your site’s visibility. Some of these are search engine optimization, email campaigns, social media campaigns, PPC campaigns and other forms of internet marketing.

Stay tuned later this week for part two of why a small business should consider redesigning their website.

Before the Myspace and the other social community revolution started to ravage the Internet landscape, small business owners had to either hire a web designer or use a template website such as Bravenet to create a web presence. Back then those template websites were very economical, but lacked all the customizable features that a web designer could provide.

Even though Bravenet has gone by the wayside and Myspace has taken its place as a way for small businesses to get a piece of that online market, it is not the best long term solution for a small business that is looking to enter the online business market.

There are several steps that need to be taken if you are a small business owner that is looking to revamp or even create a web presence from scratch.

1) A domain name that represents your business name is worth its weight in gold.

a. Just like a logo, your domain name is very important. You want to choose a domain name a close to the name of your business. That way consumers and internet surfers will remember your online presence with ease.

2) Looks are everything!!!

a. Even though templates are easy to put together, it comes down to being unique and separate yourself from the pack. Spend the time to pick the colors and overall structure of your website before you go to a web design company.

3) Being social is good, but you need a home.

a. Having a Myspace or a Facebook account to represent your business is a good thing, but should not be the overall solution. Those social sites should be used as a compliment to your main small business website. Those social sites are a great way to dive traffic to your main site and will be a great way to interact with customers.

So if you are a small business owner looking to get a piece of the booming online business market, remember to use the social community sites a compliment to your main site and if you’re looking for help with this, we offer a social media optimization package. Remember there is no place like home when it comes to having your own website and domain.

Mystic Liquid tries to focus on three principles of small business website design that apply to all websites.

The first is Simplicity

This is such an important principle, that it can easily be made into the top three web design principles all by itself. The important thing to always remember is that a web site must be designed to be as user friendly as possible and that is because of two main reasons. These are:

You want to make it easy for any future updates.

You want to make it simple for a user to navigate quickly and seamlessly.

This applies to all aspects of the website, from the design, to structure and the code.

Our next principle is its Modularity

All websites should be built and designed in a modular manner. What this means is that you want to create the site as a series of modules/components instead of a run-on sentence.

Doing so entails actions such as creating logical divisions in the site structure. Simple things like extracting out common elements like footers and using ‘include’ procedures to reinsert those elements back into your pages. Another option is to use external CSS style sheets rather than embedding it into your pages.

Modularity helps comply with the simplicity of the design as mentioned above. The thing I like most is that it cuts back on time and effort.

The final principle is the website’s Balance

The balance in a web page is one of those design aspects I see so many other designers take too lightly or forget completely. You need to balance out how much information is delivered on a page. You are basically deciding how much “stuff” to put on a page.

Do you want the page to be simple to look at or would you prefer it to be busy and exciting? These are two important questions when creating the balance. Just be careful that if you create a page that is too busy and overwhelming, more than likely a user will find it to be a distraction and will leave the site.

I wanted to let everyone know we are extremely excited to see 2008 coming and bring with it so many new and exciting opportunities in the world of small business website design. We have a lot of ideas and goals set for the new year and are looking forward to working along side you to make it all happen.

One of those goals is a little project we are putting together for the city of Scranton but we can’t give out anymore information about so you’ll just have to keep checking back in to see. We promise you’ll be impressed. Another one of our pet projects involves food, bars, parks, and web design. Curious what it can be? Again, you’ll have to wait and see.

Most importantly, our main goal is to help you build a presence online for your business. We want to see you succeed. If your business is drawing in paying customers, then we must be doing something right, as well. I hope you can see now why it is so important to us for you to show some great results.

Feel free to check in with us or just shoot us an email to see what we can do for you or if any of these projects sound like something you would be interested in getting involved with. We’re always ready to answer any and all your questions.

• Turn customers into repeat buyers – You want a customer’s experience with you to become a relationship with them. This can be done through analytics as well as collecting and using that information to follow-up with them and hopefully turn it into repeat business. Targeted email marketing campaigns and promotional discounts based on the customer information you have collected tend to work best.
• Become sociable – There are tons of social networks and websites out there just waiting to be marketed. Don’t underestimate how much they can boost your business. Visit and advertise on the websites your customers are at. Running an ad in the newspaper is a waste of time and money. Running an ad on Facebook, however, is a whole new niche of customers to drive business to your site from.
• Use content to draw traffic – Customers may love the products on your website but the search engines love your content. Websites with relevant content rank well in the results pages of the search engines like Google for relevant to your business keywords. If your website sells medical supplies, it better contain plenty of content on the subject. MysticLiquid offers services that can use that content to successfully market your products and drive customers to your ecommerce site.

I told you we had plenty of great ideas. That was just three ways we can help you with your small business e-commerce aspirations. We actually have plenty more ideas just waiting for a website to use them on. Send us an email to see about getting your website on the fast track to online success with some of these ideas.

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