Contact pages play the role of facilitating communication with a website’s visitors. A well designed page encourages the visitor to give plenty of details about themselves and insight on the services/products they are looking for, without overwhelming or turning them away.

A Well Designed Contact Page Should Include:

• Contact form (including fields for: name, email, and message)
• Phone and fax numbers
• Directions to your office
• Google or other online map with physical address
• Photo of your real office or a nice call-to-action graphic
• Online chat, especially for ecommerce websites and service providers

Here Are a Couple of Creative Contact Page Ideas for Inspiration

The 411 on 404

The 404 (or Not Found) error message is a HTTP standard response code indicating that the client was able to communicate with the server, but the server could not find what was requested. So the site generates a 404 page when users attempt to follow a broken link.

The Impact of a 404

More often than not, when a visitor arrives on a 404 page, they immediately leave the website and go somewhere else. This not only gives a website a bad first impression to visitors, but it also increases a website’s bounce rate. High bounce rates are noticed by search engines like Google and can negatively impact the site’s search engine ranking.

404 pages can be annoying because the visitor doesn’t find what they were looking for. Fortunately, a well-designed default 404 page can help create a more positive user experience and encourage them to click around on the rest of the website instead of giving up and leaving. The following are a couple of our favorite designs that will make you smile!

The Hunger Games are much like the battle for top position in search results. You practice not only your combat, survival, and other skills, but also perform other tasks in an effort to gain a higher ranking (i.e. sponsorship and rewards) going into the games themselves.

No matter how unique you think your organization might be, chances are that you have at least one other competitor out there – vying for the same keywords and search result placement as you.

So in a fight to the death, does it make more sense to cooperate or betray? Our SEO experts say “both.”

Assess the Strengths of the Competition

In the Hunger Games, one of the challenges that the tributes faced was that they had no idea what the strengths of their opponents were. Some were better at being nimble and avoiding danger, while others were more brute force and willing to face danger full-on. It was only out in the arena that each contestant was able to pick up hints on the strengths of their competitors.

The same holds true in the business world. Think about all of the hefty security measures organizations of all sizes go through to protect their intellectual property and corporate strategies. True, information leaks happen on occasion but are not a dependable source. The only way to really see what you are up against, is to step into the arena and observe.

Take stock of who your online competition is by searching for services related to what you offer. Where on the search results page do they show up? Are they above or below your listing? You will be able to get a sense then of how they measure up to you. You can also use certain SEO tools that can help you identify how many backlinks their website is getting, what keywords they are optimizing for, and stats on their average page ranking.

Take Advantage of Their Weaknesses

What is your competition NOT doing? Where have they left a hole in either their marketing tactics or website design? Maybe they don’t have any active social media accounts, or haven’t setup their Google Place Pages. Find out where your competition is not advertising, commenting, or link building and capitalize on those resources to give your site an advantage.

Formulate a plan based on where your competition is lacking in order to take them down.

Form Alliances

Alliances were formed between contestants in the Hunger Games. They pooled resources like food and weapons as a means to survive. Strategic alliances can also be useful for similar or complementary businesses.

Because of the wide-spread connecting nature of the web, you can easily link with key online players to pool resources and capture a greater share of the market. By affiliating yourself with carefully selected partners and sharing your strengths, you can fast track your online presence straight to the top.

Use your strategic alliances to:

• Exchange online testimonials. Reciprocal testimonials can lend valuable credibility for each other’s businesses.
• Increase your geographic reach. Partnering with businesses located in different cities or states can help you find an online presence in that area as well.
• Build links. Links to your site from partner websites can increase search engine ranking for both parties.

Create a Compelling Story

All of the citizens of Panem watched the televised Hunger Games religiously. Like any reality show, the characters can either be beloved or loathed by the audience for seemingly arbitrary reasons. Katniss had an emotional and heartwarming story before even entering the arena that made her a national sweetheart. We see sites like Facebook and Pinterest rise to the top of our radar in much the same way.

Gaining audience support is crucial for survival in both the Hunger Games scenario and in search engine optimization. Search engines favor websites who have loyal followers and backlinks to websites with authority, thereby asserting that your website is a trustworthy source of information.

Ultimately, the Capitol Decides if You Live or Die

Like the Capitol is for Panem, Google is the be-all and end-all for search results. Disobeying their rules can lead to punishment (by degrading your ranking in search results) or death!

Following the guidelines of good, organic SEO and avoiding the trappings of bad link building and spam attempts will keep you in good standing with Google’s web spiders. One slip up however, like publishing duplicate/stolen content, being misleading with your page titles, or cramming too many ads onto your site and you’ll feel the bite of the spiders by noticing a big drop in your SERP ranking.

Search engine optimization is powerful in the right hands. Trumping your competition not only takes fine-tuned skills in your industry, but insight and strategy as well. The key is to use the arena around you and rework it to your advantage.

For years, I have loved this two night oasis in the television programming glut that is February. And in recent years, the world of Westminster has evolved towards incorporating Social Media to tout their fine event.

So why is this important? Well, when an organization as sophisticated and established (a.k.a. ‘old school’) as the Westminster Kennel Club creates a Facebook page, we have officially hit a social media tipping point.

And there’s no turning back, Rover.

TheeDesign Studio is a market leader in identifying and enacting methodologies in the constantly expanding world of Social Media. In fact, many of our dog service-related clients can be found there too including: Darwin K9, Bayleaf Veterinary Hospital, and Topline K9 Obedience. We can very well elevate your company (or kennel club, or 7th generation English Spotted Retriever) to that next level. You know the one – it’s where all the blue ribbons live.

Woof.

Pinterest has been attracting a large following, especially among women, with images of captivating dream homes, beautiful wedding designs, and mouth-watering recipes…

Pinterest pinboards allow members to “pin” images from the anywhere on the web, attached via links to the source website. And while links to recipes, weddings, and home decor currently dominate the site, funny quotes, comics, and tech gadgets are also popular topics gaining a lot of momentum.

Basic Piniquette

1. Find the original source.
2. Use the specific URL when pinning.
3. Avoid pinning anything from sites that make finding the original source difficult.

What this Means for Businesses

According to CNN and Mashable, unique visitors to Pinterest.com grew 400% from September 2011 to December 2011. A recent study has also shown that Pinterest drives more visitors to third-party websites than Google+, YouTube, and LinkedIn COMBINED.

Pinterest is inherently sharable, making it an ideal platform for natural link building and SEO. Businesses can start capturing the attention of their audience by luring them to click and share great photos of their products that link to an online store.

Pinterest is also an ideal internet marketing tactic for building referrals. If one happy customer likes your product and “pins” an image and link of that product on their pinboard, that pin is then shared with their social network not just on Pinterest but also to their Facebook and/or Twitter communities – providing an enormously influential social reach.

Companies like Whole Foods and Wedding Republic have already jumped on the Pinterest bandwagon and created branded pinboards showcasing their products in a fun and sharable way.

Though Facebook and Twitter remain the top influencers, the growing interest in Pinterest should be embraced as part of a business’s social media agenda in the near future. And yes, TheeDesign is on there too!

We may not have a crystal ball with all of the answers, but here at TheeDesign Studio we have a few 2012 predictions on how internet marketing will adapt to changes in web design.

Responsive design will become mainstream.

Responsive design is the concept of creating websites that automatically scale and rearrange their content according to the device and screen size it is being viewed. We saw a bit of responsive design in 2011 with smartphone applications and games, but in 2012 it will become necessary for websites to function and become just as visually adaptable.

Responsive web design will require internet marketing experts to decide what content is the most important and how it should be placed on the page. A call-to-action button, like “Call us Now” or “Place Order Here,” in a sidebar on a desktop computer might not fit on a mobile browser, and so they’ll have to think about the size and placement of that button on the page.

Mobile design will become industry standard.

Smartphones are everywhere and tablet usage is growing every day. In order to stay in front of their audience, websites are being forced to adapt to the various mobile platforms available on the market.

In 2011 we saw marketers start to capitalize on mobile technology by offering incentives to customers who used their smartphones to scan promotional codes or check-in their location at their business. We will still see this mobile approach to marketing in 2012, but we will also see more business executives using their tablets as high-tech marketing brochures. Mobile devices allow the traveling salesperson to bring and showcase their portfolio, quickly pull up reports, or process a credit card payment instantly and all on one device.

Flash will become extinct.

Flash was once very popular for web designers, but it has slowly lost momentum. In 2012, flash will likely lose all or most of its momentum. CSS3 and HTML5 have come into the picture and offer faster loading, interactivity for users, and is simply better than Flash for mobile devices.

HTML5 has taken over most of the actions that Flash could do. HTML5 will greatly influence internet marketing in 2012 because it can create really rich and interesting typography, graphics and video which combined can create a dynamic marketing website that compels the viewer to stay on the site longer or make a purchase.

Managing a business website is now easier than ever with the availability of open source Content Management Systems (CMS). A CMS allows a business owner to update and edit their website’s content without advanced webmaster or programming skills.

A good CMS helps you:

• keep your website well organized
• reduce site maintenance costs
• generate and manage sales leads

WordPress is a very popular blog posting platform. But what many people don’t know is that it is also an excellent open source CMS. Here at TheeDesign Studio, we use WordPress to design and build websites for our clients. Our designers and developers customize the CMS to fit each client’s needs and design preferences.

A few reasons why we believe WordPress is the best open source CMS of 2011:

• Supportive global community.

Since WordPress is so widely used, there is an abundance of tutorials and help forums available to find any and all information a developer could possibly need in customizing the CMS.

• Easy content editing.

Once the design and development are done, our clients love the user-friendly CMS platform that allows them to update their content, post blogs or company news, or update contact information.

• Search engine friendliness.

WordPress makes it easy to optimize websites for search engine results. That means your site is more likely to land on the first page of Google, Yahoo, and Bing results when someone is searching for your keywords.

• Sales lead management.

We design websites are not just pretty, but are powerful marketing tools. WordPress is great for keeping track of your internet leads coming from your website and submitting information on your website contact form.

Many of us at TheeDesign Studio are from elsewhere; California, New York, Kansas, Connecticut, Michigan and even Hungary. We all agree that this is the one of the strongest economies in the country and an excellent place to raise a family.

Personally, I have lived all over the country and can say that there’s no place quite like NC. I like being able to drive for a couple of hours East to some of the most beautiful beaches the Atlantic Coast has to offer or drive a couple of hours West of here and let my kids experience natural wonders of the Appalachian Mountains.

The folks at NC Headlines agree with us and they created this awesome infographic that displays some of the best features North Carolina offers it’s residents and tourists. From the Hatteras Lighthouse to the Biltmore Estate to The Birthplace of NASCAR in Hickory, North Carolina is just about the best place to live and work.

Our marketing and web design team here in Raleigh is working hard filling your website and internet presence with holiday cheer (and search engine friendly keywords). But sometimes even hard working elves need to take a break and share a laugh…

Internet marketing efforts can fall into two holiday categories: Naughty and Nice. Here are a couple examples of both to help you assess, is your marketing Naughty or Nice?

Naughty List

• Boring Content

If you aren’t keeping your website and social media content fresh and interesting, you are wasting your time. A common marketing mistake for businesses is that they believe they should talk only about themselves and their achievements. This might be interesting to you and your staff, but can be boring to your audience.

It is more valuable to your marketing efforts if you can tell your audience what you can offer them. How you can make their lives better or easier. Useful or entertaining information is much more interesting than self promotion.

• Christmas Spam

A holiday ham can be tasty, but spam is a different story. No one likes spam messages regardless of the time of year. However many businesses abuse the holidays as an excuse to send excessive amounts of email promotions. Being too pushy or spamming with your internet marketing can have the opposite effect of what you intended, as your would-be consumers start to opt-out of your messages or blacklist you as a spammer.

Nice List

• Holiday Keywords

The holidays are a great opportunity for marketing your products or services as gift items. Including keywords like “Christmas” or “Gift” can help your target consumers find your products easier as they are searching for the perfect gift items for loved ones. If you are a bakery for example, you could add the keywords “Christmas cupcakes for holiday parties” or “gifts for bakers.”

• Spreading Social Cheer

Wish your Facebook fans a Merry Christmas. Take some time out of your busy day and write personal thank you messages to clients on their Facebook wall. Make someone smile for the simple joy that it brings. People trust brands with good intentions and respond well to messages that don’t have an alternative or hidden agenda.

Unless you are already experienced with website design, SEO, HTML, and CSS coding it’s probably an easy decision to just hire a professional web development company to handle the designing and implementation for you. Before you hire someone though, there are a few things you need to consider.

Initial thoughts are usually about price: “How much is going to cost me?” But along with cost you want to interview and assess the skills of the people who will be working on your site. Most successful website development companies work as a team utilizing a combination of specialists:

• PHP and MySQL Programmers
• HTML and CSS Developers
• Web and Graphic Designers
• Copywriters and Content Developers
• Internet Marketers and SEO Experts

Other “companies” may have one person trying to do all of this. It’s important to make sure you interview these individuals and making sure they are competent in each field.

Before searching for a website design company you probably want to give some thought to:

• What do you want your website to look like?
• What meta messages and content do you want on the home page?
• How do you want to convert your visitors: phone number, shopping cart, contact form or subscribe button?
• How many pages will you need?
• What color scheme do you like?
• Do you need a new logo or will you use your existing corporate identity elements?
• Do you have a video or need one produced?
• What kind of images will you need?
• Do you have any client testimonials and how do you want them displayed?
• What social media do you use or want to connect to?

A good website designer or website design agency can help guide you through these decisions. Your online marketing should be customized to what you want and doesn’t leave you stuck in a cookie-cutter template.

What to Look for in a Website Design Firm?

• Portfolio
  An established website design company will have a portfolio for you to browse. Along with impressive design, you want to look for originality and diversification. You should ask to see some “live” examples of their work online. Excessive flash designs are bad, as search engines have a hard time indexing them and can therefore hinder your search ranking. Look for social media connectivity, sign up forms, contact forms and other marketing features. Remember that a website’s purpose is to effectively market your products and services, not just look pretty.
• Originality
  Look for originality in the layout, design, graphics, videos etc. Anyone can copy photos and videos from the net, but it takes an expert to design quality custom images. You want your site to be as unique as your company.
• Experience
  Although someone new without a large portfolio might save you some money initially, if you are envisioning a large site with interactivity, videos, sales funnels, shopping carts, etc. you’re going to need someone with experience.
  An experienced website designer will be able to get the tasks done much faster – saving you time and money in the long run.
• Price
  Website design pricing can be all over the place. You can find a couple of hundred dollar quotes but these are normally only small-scale static page sites; not professional interactive marketing website with a content management system that you are probably looking for. Never choose the cheapest developer but you probably don’t want to pay the large agencies’ overhead either. If you want rotating presentations, green screen videos, newsletter systems, SEO, online marketing, social media and other features that will grow your business, you can’t afford to skimp! Get it done right the first time!
• Timeline to Complete
  You should expect that a good development team take about a week to research your company industry and competitors. Then they will plan your site structure and setup your site map. Based on the approved wireframe it takes about a week to design your home page. After approval, it takes about a month to develop a fully functioning CMS website, adding the content and optimizing it for search engines. If you have a particularly large site with a lot of products, shopping carts, and custom graphics then it may take longer.
• On-Going Support, Marketing and SEO Services
  One of the most important (and often overlooked) aspect of a website is SEO. When hiring a web designer you have to make sure they develop clean, search engine friendly codes based on CSS/XHTML templates. Then they need to tweak your text and optimize it for the major search engines. You also want to make sure they will be available when you need assistance or changes that your content management system doesn’t allow you to update.

These were just a few thoughts about choosing your web design partner. Do your own research and decide wisely.