I confess, I’m a member of the mobile generation. I’m not one of the annoying types who answer their phone at restaurants or during meetings, but I do carry my mobile everywhere and thanks to Telstra’s NextG service, I’m continually connected to the internet.

There are a growing number of constantly connected consumers, who, just like me, browse the web from their mobile phone, on an exceptionally small screen. We are a frustrated lot too, because most websites are not built with small screens in mind.

Many people don’t believe their website will need to be adapted for mobiles, but if your business does financial transactions over the phone, or have a retail store, chances are a percentage of your customers are already trying to find you. Here’s a couple of real life examples of how someone with a mobile might be interacting with your business.

Restaurants

While enjoying an afternoon out of the house, a couple decide to go to a restaurant for dinner, but aren’t near a phone book. They look up the restaurant’s website on their phone to find the phone number.

• Quickly seeking a phone number is currently the most common reason someone might use their phone-based internet provider.

Real Estate

While driving past an interesting property, someone might notice a For Sale sign out the front and look up a real estate’s website to find out the price of the property.

• Looking for specific information on a business website outside of operating hours is realistic, and will rise as customers become increasingly time poor.

Retail Stores & Attractions

While out and about we might want to check the closing time of a particular store, or opening times of an attraction.

• Easy to find trading hours is an essential asset on websites.

Accommodation

On the way for a weekend getaway, you forget how to get to an accomodation property. You whip out your trusty mobile phone and look up the website for directions, or just for an address to enter into your GPS unit.

• Driving directions and addresses are handy additions to your website for customers.

Your web designer should easily be able to adapt your website to create an easy to read version for a mobile phone in 30 minutes - 2 hours, but having all the information a mobile user might require is important in the first place.

The next time you see a friend with one of those fandangled-looking mobiles that can surf the internet, ask if they can look up your website and have a go at browsing it, or finding specific information. You’ll be suprised how it looks!

One of the major factors responsible for a cost blowout on website development is continually making changes and tweaks whilst the site is still under development.

Most web development companies will charge you hourly for changes made to your website, so it’s important from a cost perspective to get all the glitches, spelling mistakes and formatting ironed out before you hand it over to your web developer.

Lots of little changes add up, and can put a project significantly over budget. Even worse for businesses with marketing deadlines, it can also cause your website to be late.

When you’re approaching a web developer for a website, ensure you have the following ready:

• A high resolution/vector copy of your logo.
• Your branding materials like company tagline, colour scheme, mood/attitude of your business.
• A collection of images you’ve used in marketing collaterial or a good list of images from a stock photography website that matches your brand.
• List of the websites you love.
• List of the websites you hate.
• Copy for your website in word documents for each page.

This guest star article is written by cityofcairns.com’s lead graphic designer, Belinda Vere. Belinda is an outspoken supporter of businesses having a strong brand kit and lifting the professionalism of small business with a functional and attractive website design.

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One of the most under-valued aspects of a business is its brand and identity. A business’ brand is a tool to increase customer familiarity and recognition and prove your worth as a professional, reliable business. It should be just as important as the appearance of your staff and the quality of the product and service you produce. Some things to remember when you are starting a new business or re-evaluating your identity are:

1. Don’t give up your day job

Are you a whiz on the computer? Did everybody love your kid’s birthday invitations that you created in Word Art? Don’t be fooled! This does not qualify you as a Graphic Designer and the identity you produce will look amateurish and therefore can not be taken seriously. Hiring a Graphic Designer to do a professional identity package for your business saves you time and creates a trustworthy, professional image for your company.

2. Hit the target

A professionally designed logo should appeal to your target market and reflect your product or service. Your target market determines your identity and should be a major influence on your brand. If you are trying to sell children’s clothing your brand will be bright, colourful and fun however if you are an accountant your target market are looking for somebody who is professional, efficient and approachable. Try not to let your own personal style influence your branding if you are not the target market.

3. Squish the rainbow

A succint choice of colours will help increase the familiarity of your brand. When we think purple we think Cadbury (or Darryl Lea depending on whose side you are on), yellow reminds us of the Golden Arches and red makes us thirsty for Coca Cola. Keep your colour palette to one or two key colours and stick with them throughout your branding.

4. Use it!

Use your brand in everything you do but keep it consistent. Print business cards, get a website, send emails with a signature and splash your brand everywhere just don’t confuse people by having a green car, a red website and purple decor. Remember to maintain your image, colours, logo and style throughout every aspect of your marketing.

When you shoot a photograph the copyright of that creative piece is automatically assigned to you. Nobody is allowed to use your copyrighted material without your permission. You are the sole owner.

Many people don’t realise this, and might search the internet for a photo to use on their website. Google Images, Flickr and Picasa are popular places to search for photographs. If you want to use any photos you find you must contact their owner and ask permission.

Although the internet seems like a big anonymous place, you might find it’s smaller than you think when you steal pictures of someone. Taking photos without permission can be an expensive exercise. Photography companies will often charge you for using the picture, recently I heard of someone being charged $4,300 for a single photo they used on their website.

If your web designer uses a photo on your website which does not belong to you, check to ensure they have purchased it on your behalf from a stock photography library like iStockPhoto, or that they have permission to use the picture.

When you receive permission from someone to use their photo, you should credit them appropriately.

Cut Limes. Photo courtesy Kaj Haffenden. Knife courtesy Erick Zegeer. Limes from Rusty’s Markets. Chopping board from Yungaburra Markets.

Search engines don’t care what your website looks like. In fact, it even seems to prefer the ones most people would believe are old and in need of a re-design. Why is this so?

Google uses the text on your website to determine what you will rank for. It’s a major determining factor.

Google can’t read images. So it doesn’t matter how beautiful your sunrise picture is, or if you’re smiling on your corporate profile page.

Google isn’t fond of flash. Anything that moves, wiggles and blinks doesn’t contain a lot of information, so Google doesn’t look at it as seriously.

Google loves headings. Break up your text into logical pieces with headings on each. Don’t scrimp on this.

Google loves copy. The more text you write and the more pages your website contains will reward you with great rankings. Put important text up the top.

Google hates copiers. Don’t steal other people’s text. It doesn’t belong to you, and you wouldn’t like it if someone stole yours!

A trend of the 90’s which has persisted in the dark depths of the internet are background textures. These are images which when tiled next to each other produce a (hopefully) seamless pattern. Popular backgrounds in the early days were stars, logos, sand, crinkled paper and clouds.

Background textures should be used sparingly, if at all. They should definitely not have text written over the top of them.

If a texture is part of your brand, use it on the non-text areas of your website.

The text on your home page is the most important text on your website.

Your home page not only leads your visitors into the money-making parts of your website, but it also provides the most important terms search engines will use to rank you.

Without text on your home page you’ll fall behind competitors in the search engines, and annoy customers who’ve come to explore your site.

Consider the most important words you believe your customers will type into a search engine and ensure these are included on your home page. This might be your location and industry, like cairns web design, or it might be the product you’re selling, like tennis balls.

Summarise your website on your home page by including useful paragraphs and snippets about what information can be found throughout the website. Invite people to explore further through strong calls-to-action.

Most importantly, don’t let your web designer build you a home page with just images, and no text.

Small business owners on a tight budget are often tempted by the cheap prices of inexperienced web designers or the opportunities presented by tech-savvy family members. Unfortunately my firm has recently fixed a lot of problems caused by the creation of what we refer to as backyard websites.

If you’re serious about your business but don’t know much about the web here’s what you should consider when choosing someone to build your website:

• Has this person done a number of other business websites before?
  If so, have a look at them and ask other people what they think. Typical mistakes of an inexperienced developer include flashing or blinking text, dark coloured backgrounds with white text and blurry photos. If they have no previous experience with businesses, I strongly suggest you look for another developer.
• How much will the website cost?
  This might be a really simple consideration, but I strongly advise you to get a quote in writing which outlines what you will get. Websites are custom written, so be aware if you make lots of changes this will be more expensive. Your quote should detail how much extra changes will cost, and what warrants a chargeable extra.
• Will the website be search engine friendly?
  Many less-reputable website developers don’t know much about internet marketing, so this is a sure fire way to find out if they’re worth their money! Everyone wants their site included in Google, and your web developer needs to know what stops the search engines from good rankings.

Now that everybody owns a digital camera there are a far greater number of amateur photographers who take their own photos for their website. Whilst I strongly recommend you hire a professional photographer, I realise this is cost prohibitive for many small businesses.

Here’s some tips for making your website photos look more attractive.

- Don’t ever use blurry or out of focus photos. Always reshoot these until you’ve got a crisp subject.

- When taking a series of photos of a similar theme, keep the background and lighting the same in each photo. This is particularly important when you have a shopping cart website and are displaying many products on the same page.

- Because the photos displayed on websites are quite small, less complex photos look much better. Try for shots with a single subject and a simple, plain background.

- Putting people in your photos will help your visitors put themselves in the picture. Carefully consider the age and look of your models though, as you will put some demographics offside by choosing models who your market don’t identify with.

- Include photos of you (the business owners), your team looking smart in their uniforms and your building. The internet is anonymous so photos of the management give visitors some people contact they miss from a face-to-face transaction. It also raises your credibility through recognition.

This is one of my little pet peevs, a bugbear, gets my goat sort of thing. People fall in love with some fonts, and then want to use them for everything. Some fonts were just not made for web pages though.

Have you ever sent a word document to someone and then saw it on their computer and it doesn’t look quite the same? The reason is often because they don’t have the same fonts installed as you do. The same applies to web pages, if the visitor doesn’t have the font installed, they will see it differently.

For the main text of your website use Verdana, Arial or Georgia.