Meet Justin Seedman, owner and head trainer of JustinFit — our Sites We Love winner of the week!  In the video below Justin shares the personal journey of how his business came to be and the lessons he’s learned along the way.

JustinFit is active on just about every social media platform there is. From Twitter to Facebook to Pinterest, Seedman has his social bases covered, and you can really feel his passion in the video below.

Thanks, Justin, for sharing your story with us!

Although email communication was originally intended to save time by cutting down the number of face-to-face interactions needed to accomplish tasks, most professionals find that it’s spiraled out of control – eating up far more time and energy than in-person meetings ever did!  If you’re facing a serious case of email overload that’s preventing you from growing your business effectively, consider the following steps to help you tame the inbox monster:

Step #1 – Establish a Filing System

The key to developing an email management system that’s effective and efficient lies in determining how you’ll handle storing the messages you receive.  Although leaving every message you receive in your inbox is – technically – a filing strategy, failing to find a proper home for each email can add to your stress level and cause you to misplace important information.

So before we can even begin discussing how to handle email messages on a day-to-day basis, we need to lay the groundwork for our new organizational system by putting a filing system in place first.  Of course, the specific folders that you’ll want to make use of will depend on your unique business needs, but you can start by considering some of the following options:

• Create email folders by client – Directing messages from your customers to client-specific folders can be a good way to group relevant emails together and make it easier to access information quickly when working on client projects.  If your email system allows for multiple levels of folders and sub-folders, you can even create folders for active and archived projects within each client folder.
• Create email folders by task – Alternatively, you may find it easier to group email messages according to the specific tasks they relate to.  For example, if you prefer to batch process your tasks and handle all writing projects at once, a “Writing” folder (with client-specific sub-folders, when possible) will make it easy for you to quickly see which items can be done at the same time.
• Create email folders by priority – Another possibility for managing emails is to create folders based on priority level (for example, “High priority”, “Due within a week” or “Never gonna get around to it”).  You can even set up separate priority folders next to a client- or task-based folder system so that messages can be archived in the correct location after action has been taken on them.

Depending on how you work, one of these options may intuitively make more sense than another, but don’t be afraid to experiment with your specific folder system as you go.  It can take time to understand how to manage email effectively, but if you’re diligent about sticking with your system and making improvements as needed, you’ll ultimately find that your organization will pay off in the long run.

Step #2 – Practice Making Email Decisions

Now that your email filing system is in place, it’s time to put email management rules into place!  According to most productivity and organization experts, the best way to avoid email overload is by making an immediate decision on how you’ll handle every email you receive.  That is, instead of glancing through your inbox every hour or so and opening up only the messages that look interesting, you set aside a chunk of time to determine what “next steps” should be taken on each message.

In the “Getting Things Done” world, this is called “processing time” and it plays a vital role in keeping you organized and productive:

“Processing is not doing, it’s deciding. The only “doing” time recommended during processing are those items that will take less than 2 minutes to complete.”

To set your own email processing rules, first think of all the different ways you could handle an email message:

• Deleting it, if the information isn’t relevant to you and your business
• Forwarding it, if the actions that must be taken from the message are best handled by another person
• Acting on immediately, if the resulting follow up will only take a few minutes
• Filing it, if the needed follow up will take a larger chunk of your time

With each of these possible outcomes in mind, set up a system that will allow you move through these email decisions quickly and efficiently.  For example, you could decide to only check your email once an hour, at which time, you’ll set aside ten full minutes for processing messages (you may need more or less time, depending on your usual email load).  If you choose to check your messages less frequently, you may want to make use of an autoresponder that tells senders what your email availability is and how to contact you if a response is needed sooner.

When the time roles around to check your messages, commit to going through every message you’ve received and taking the above actions immediately.  You may find it useful to set even more specific parameters to manage your inbox – for example, you may decide that actions that take fewer than one, two, five or even ten minutes will be completed immediately, while tasks requiring longer follow up will be filed away into one of the folders you created earlier in Step #1.

Step #3 – Make Use of External Email Tools

Once you have your incoming email messages under control, you can begin to add other external tools to your inbox processing method to take your email skills to the next level.  Check out any of the following options to make your email work for you (not the other way around!):

Advanced Email Spam Filters – Although most email programs come with default spam blocking installed, these tools often let messages slip through the cracks.  Advanced spam filtering programs, like GFI MailEssentials and Spam Bully, give you even more control over the messages you deem irrelevant and protect you from dangerous phishing or malicious content messages that threaten the security of your business.

In-Email CRM or Task Management Programs – If you work with a standard email platform like Microsoft Outlook or Google’s Gmail, there are a number of tools you can integrate into your inbox to make customer tracking and task creation even more efficient.  Many of these tools – YesWare and Rapportive, for example – integrate with existing CRM software programs and “to do” list managers to track information and centralize action items from within your inbox.

Email Template Creation – If you find yourself writing the same email messages over and over again, email template creator programs like TextExpander can help you to set up email templates and insert them, as needed, into messages with a simple script.  Even something as simple as using this program to set up automatic email signature insertion can save you time that’s better spent on the projects that will advance your business!

Of course, don’t go so crazy integrating these new tools that you no longer have time to maintain the email management rules you established in Step #2!  Add these tools only when you’re confident you can do so without compromising your business productivity and email inbox integrity.

Image: Keegan Jones

As we discussed last week, pay-per-click (PPC) ads can be a great way to send a steady stream of visitors back to your website.  However, it can also be an easy way to lose your shirt if you aren’t carefully tracking your budget and the ultimate ROI of your advertisements.

So today, let’s focus on how to get the most out of your PPC ads by choosing the best wording and the most persuasive calls to action.  You might be surprised – even the smallest tweaks in your ad’s content can make a dramatic difference in your overall conversion rates!

The first challenge you’ll run into when drafting your paid ads is that the character limits on popular PPC engines are notoriously short.  For example, if you decide to advertise with Google’s Adwords program (by far the largest provider of these services), you’ll be held to 25 characters for your title, 70 characters for your ad text and 35 characters for your display URL (though this may vary slightly if you’re using more advanced keyword insertion methods, advertising outside of the US or writing ads in a language other than English).

These limitations mean that each and every work you include must be carefully chosen in order to be as effective as possible.  Let’s look at each element in your PPC ad to

Element #1 – Headline

Basically, there are two schools of thought when it comes to crafting effective PPC ad headlines.  Either you build your headline around an attention-grabbing call to action or use keyword insertion tools (when present, depending on your chosen PPC engine) to highlight the keywords you’re advertising for.

Building a “call to action” into your PPC ad headline can be effective, as it helps your advertisement stand out from all the other advertisers who are bidding on your same keywords.  For example, if you run an auto repair shop in your area, the headline, “Save 55%+ On Oil Changes” could help your ad get more attention as a result of both the promised savings and the inclusion of specific, measurable savings.

Unfortunately, the limit of 25 characters doesn’t give you much room to expound on the benefits of working with your company.  If you simply can’t make things fit, consider experimenting with keyword insertion.  This feature utilizes a small snippet of code to replace your standard headline with the keyword you’re advertising for.

For example, if you’re running your ad for the keyword, “Oil Change Atlanta GA”, adding the code “{keyword:default text}” to your headline box will cause your ad to run with the headline “Oil Change Atlanta GA.”

This comes with two major advantages – first, that visitors see exactly the search phrase they entered into Google in your ad, which can make your message seem more relevant than the other advertisements displayed.  In addition, using keyword insertion causes your keyword to be displayed in bold, further differentiating your advertisement from your competitors.

Of course, you’ll want to use care with this option, as it’s a more advanced feature offered by Google Adwords and other PPC engines.  In large part, the success of your keyword insertion headlines will depend on how narrowly you’ve structured your campaign.  If the keywords you’ve chosen for each ad group aren’t that closely related, using keyword insertion in your headline could result in ads that don’t make much sense.

Element #2 – Your Ad Text

Once your headline is out of the way, you can breathe a sigh of relief – now you’ve got a full 70 characters to work with when it comes to writing the bulk of your ad message.  Unfortunately, when you actually sit down to write your ads, you’ll likely find that these characters don’t go nearly as far as you’d like them to!

Because of these limitations, PPC ad text must be as concise and engaging as possible.  Encouraging someone to click through to your website in this small number of characters can be challenging, but you can increase your chances of success by following standard accepted PPC strategies:

• Include a sale or promotion in your ad text – No matter what industry you’re in, people love to save, which makes including specific sales figures in your ad text a powerful way to get their attention.
• Add a call to action to your ad – Don’t expect that readers will put all the pieces of the puzzle together on their own!  Instead, eliminate confusion by telling readers what you want them to do by including phrases like, “Act Now,” “Get A Free Estimate Today” or “Sign Up Now.”
• Focus on benefits, not features – This standard piece of copywriting advice applies to PPC ads as much as any other type of copywriting.  Instead of telling readers what specifically they’re going to get, tell them how they’ll benefit and what they stand to gain from working with you.  It can be tricky to do this in such a limited amount of space, but if you get it right, focusing on benefits can be extremely compelling!

Element # – Your Display URL

Of all three elements you’ll need to address when writing your PPC ad, your display URL will be the easiest by far to write, as you likely won’t have a lot of different options to consider.  If you own multiple websites or plan to make use of separate landing pages, you’ll need to make a few decisions here, but for the most part, if you only own one website, you’ll simply enter your web address into this section and launch your ad.

Of course, you’re not finished yet!  Given how much of a difference subtle tweaks to your PPC ad copy can make, you’re leaving money on the table if you don’t go ahead and create a second ad version to split test against your original.  The following are a few different elements you can experiment with in your split test campaigns:

• Different headline variations
• The placement of calls to action or promotions in your ad’s body copy
• The specific type of promotion you run
• The features and benefits you focus on in your body copy
• Geographic targeting within your headline and body content
• Different capitalization schemes throughout your ad
• Unique landing pages for each ad group you develop

In order to split test effectively, you’ll also need to change a few elements that control how your ad is displayed.  In Google Adwords, specifically, campaigns are set to display the most successful ads more frequently by default.  Obviously, this won’t work from a split testing perspective, so be sure to set your campaigns to display ad variations more evenly to determine which ad converts better overall.

Once you’ve run a single split test long enough to gather statistically significant data about which ad variation results in better overall conversion rates, eliminate the losing ad and replace it with yet another variation.  By continually testing and improving your campaigns, you’ll ensure that your ads are as effective as possible in terms of generating increasing traffic and revenue for your website.

Image: Schill

This week’s success story comes from Wanda Bruno, co-owner of Esaie Couture Design Schools, which offers sewing classes and instructions in New York City. From simple craft projects to dressmaking, Esaie Couture caters to a wide range of skill sets — and can even help you learn what it takes to become a fashion designer.

Initially, Bruno knew she needed a presence on the internet for her bricks-and-mortar business. While looking online for some help with building her web presence, she found Intuit Websites, and the vast selection of template designs caught her attention. She ultimately decided to use Intuit Design Services based on its customization options and ability to get her website up rapidly.

“It was awesome. They listened to my ideas and jumped right on it. Communication was the key,” Bruno says. “[The site] looked so professional. It had all the pages I needed, and they advised me beautifully on how to put a video up. The best part is that I can add and edit my site if I need to, with support.”

Since Bruno used Intuit Websites to help design and optimize her website, she has seen a healthy growth in online traffic. In December 2010, she had just 100 visitors to her site. By December 2011, that number had jumped up to 510 visitors, and January 2012 is looking even better.

Would Bruno recommend Intuit Websites to a friend? “Totally, and always have,” she says. “My suggestion is to do what I did. Go to Intuit and sign up. They are very responsive, quick, and the support makes it easy if you ever need any help.”

People often ask me, “What can I do to make my website more effective?” Ninety-nine percent of the time, my answer is the same — because, no matter how many small-business sites I review, I find similar issues. This infographic shares my top five online business practices. Click the image for an enlarged view.

Although the word “blogging” is associated with personal websites in the digital world, building a business blog actually has a number of different advantages.  Not only can business blogs be an incredibly useful tool in branding your business as an authority within your industry, they can also help you to engage visitors and turn them into repeat customers.

Today, we’ll look at how business blogs work in more depth, as well as cover the steps you need to take to add one to your own website.  Let’s get started!

The first step in launching a business blog is installing blog platform software on your website.  Although you could simply designate a static HTML page as your business blog and update it regularly with new content, this isn’t a recommended solution.  Blog platform software is uniquely coded to manage frequent updates and provides a number of search engine optimization benefits that occur apart from standard HTML pages.

But knowing to use blogging-specific software is only half the battle – the next step is to choose the one that’s right for your website.  By far, the most popular blogging platform is WordPress, which can be easily installed and customized to match the look and feel of your website.  As an added bonus, uploading content and managing posts through the WordPress dashboard is easy enough for even beginning webmasters to handle.

However, WordPress isn’t the only blogging software out there that can be used to create a business blog on your website.  Movable Type, Joomla, Drupal, Expression Engine and BlogEngine.net are all viable alternatives, so you’ll want to do some research into each of these platforms before deciding which blogging software is right for your business.

Once you have a blogging platform picked out, the next step is to install it on your website in order to start building your business blog.  Depending on the way your hosting is set up, this could be as simple as running a script and designating the specific directory on which you’d like your site to be built (for example, http://www.yoursite.com/blog/, with “blog” as your chosen directory).  If you aren’t technologically savvy – or if the process is more complicated based on the type of hosting your site runs on – you can always outsource this process to a qualified web developer.

Congratulations – at this point in the process, you should have your very own business blog up and running!  Now it’s time to design your blog and update it with fun and informative content…

After your blogging software is installed, you’ll want to customize the look and feel of your business blog.  If you’ve chosen to go with the WordPress platform, this is done through the use of “themes” – aka, template files that can be added to quickly and easily change the look of the default installation.  The WordPress directory offers tons of free themes to choose from, although you can also create your own custom theme using tools like Artisteer or hire a graphic designer to create a theme if you have something unique in mind.

As far as choosing a theme direction goes, most website strategy experts recommend coming up with a blogging design that mimics elements of your homepage, whether through the use of similar colors, fonts or graphics.  This will help to ensure a cohesive theme to your site and will eliminate the cognitive dissonance that can disrupt readers’ attention when they land on a blog that looks significantly different from its home page.

Keep in mind that one of the major advantages to installing a blogging platform on your site to run your business blog is that you can change its entire look and feel by simply uploading a new theme.  Don’t get too hung up on making sure that everything is perfect from the get go – remember that you can always make changes and improvements as you go along.

Now that you’ve chosen a design theme to move forward with, it’s time to start adding content.  There are a few different types of blog posts that you’ll want to consider adding to your publishing schedule:

Newsworthy Content – In late 2011, Google released a major “Freshness” update with the goal of providing up-to-date results for specific topics.  Basically, for certain search queries – like those related to conferences, major events or other time-sensitive occurrences – the search results follow a new algorithm which prioritizes timely content over articles that would otherwise rank well according to traditional SEO.

Because of this – and because of the potential for your business blog to brand you as an authority in your industry – it’s a good idea to feature many articles on your blog that are related to high priority industry news.  For example, if a new product or service is released in your niche, weighing in on it could help your site to get noticed in the Google SERPs faster than it would through traditional SEO.

Evergreen Content – “Evergreen” content is referred to this way because it contains information that will always be useful to your website visitors.  For example, if you run a website in the fashion industry, certain trends will come and go, but articles on topics like “dressing your figure” or “budget shopping techniques” will always appeal to your readers.

For best results, try to structure evergreen content around good long tail keywords in your niche – that is, keywords that have consistent search volume and a low number of competing pages.  As your evergreen articles get shared around the web, these back links will help your articles to maintain high positions in the search results pages, ensuring that even more traffic finds its way back to your site.

Personal Content – One of the other advantages of running a business blog is that it lets your readers see “the man (or woman) behind the mask.”  When you run an internet business, you aren’t able to connect with customers the way you can in a traditional offline store.  This often prevents the loyalty and associations that people have with their favorite offline retailers from developing with online merchants.

A business blog lets you remedy this situation by sharing elements of your personal life or personal opinions with your readers.  Obviously, your business blog isn’t the best place to post on the great meal you had for dinner, but by carefully referencing pieces of your family life or personal philosophy can help readers form a more personal connection with you and your business.

When it comes to balancing these types of blog posts, there’s no exact formula to follow to determine what percentage of different types of posts will be appropriate.  If you work in a fast-paced industry where things change quickly, you may want to dedicate more of your posts to newsworthy content.  On the other hand, if you work in personal development or personal finance, sharing more information about your life through personal content could be valuable.

To identify the ratio that’s right for you, track how visitors respond to specific posts on your site.  If you get more comments or social shares on one type of post over another, that could be an indication that your audience prefers this type of content.  By paying attention to the reaction each post gets, you’ll be able to better tailor the content on your business blog to meet the unique needs of your audience.

Image: mugfaker

So far on the Intuit Websites Blog, we’ve talked a lot about how to build traffic by achieving high rankings in the search engine results pages using a process known as search engine optimization (SEO).  And while these techniques are incredibly valuable in terms of your site’s long term success, there’s no arguing with the fact that SEO traffic can take a long time to materialize.

But what if you don’t want to wait for your site’s rankings to increase naturally to start earning money or generating leads from your website?  What if you want to start seeing results right away?

In fact, there is another way to get visitors to your site – pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements.  Although there is some cost involved with this method, when used carefully, it can be a great way to start testing your website’s conversion process before you begin seeing an influx of SEO traffic.  Here’s how to get started:

Step #1 – Choose a PPC System

First, let’s cover a little background information on PPC ads.  PPC ads are small snippets of text (or images and video files, depending on the service that you use) advertising your website that display in various places, including in the natural search engine results and as ad blocks on websites that publish these ads.  They are free to run in most cases, and you only pay when a reader clicks on your ad and winds up on your site.

As you might expect, this type of system offers a number of advantages for businesses.  Compared to the upfront cost of magazine or television advertisements, you don’t pay for your PPC ads until you’ve found an interested prospect.  In addition, the nature of PPC ads allows you to target visitors more effectively (again, compared to the broad reach of magazine and TV ads), ensuring that your ad spend reaches only the people who will be most interested in your products or services.

So where can you find PPC advertising programs?  The most widely known program is Google Adwords, which allows you to display ads within the Google search results pages, as well as on a huge variety of websites that participate in the Google Adsense publisher program.  Other top-tier programs include Microsoft’s adCenter on Bing and Yahoo’s Search Marketing platform.

Working with one of these top-level PPC providers gives you the most extensive reach and a greater number of opportunities for your ads to appear.  However, because these programs are so widely used, average cost-per-click (CPC) rates may be substantially higher than on second-tier PPC engines, like Ask.com, 7Search and AdBrite.  Be aware, though, that although these services may be cheaper, the traffic they provide isn’t often as high quality as what you’ll get through the Big 3 PPC engines.

For most beginners, the best approach is to start with Google Adwords.  Although it’s slightly more expensive, the interface is easy to understand and the help section Google provides is extensive.  Once you’ve honed your PPC advertising skills here, you can move on and apply these lessons to other sites as needed.

Step #2 – Identify Your Target Keywords

Once you set up your account with Google Adwords, the first thing you’ll do is to create a campaign for each web page you want to send traffic to, which will contain the specific keywords that your ads will display for in the search engine results pages.  Choosing the right keywords for your ad is as much an art as it is a science, but the following guidelines should help you to choose the best phrases when you’re first getting started:

• Start small – Create a single campaign at a time and add no more than 5-10 highly-related keywords to each campaign.  This will allow you to create ads that are well tailored to your chosen phrases.
• Think narrow – Advertising for popular keywords like “lose weight” or “make money online” will be prohibitively expensive.  Instead, target less expensive long tail keywords that still have the potential to drive significant traffic back to your site.
• Focus on “phrase” and “exact” match to start – Read up on keyword match types in the Adwords help section, and stick to “phrase” and “exact” match keywords for your first campaign.  When you’re more experienced, you can add in “broad” match keywords to expand your reach.
• Track your competitor’s keywords – See which advertisers are running PPC ads in Google for the keywords you’re considering.  If you see your competitors there, chances are good the phrases will work for you as well.

Step #3 – Write Your Ads

Once you’ve chosen your target keywords, the next step is to write the ad that will display in the search engines when your phrase is searched for.  Because you’ve only got a limited number of characters for each ad, it’s important to make them count!  Here’s how to structure your ads effectively:

• Write a compelling headline – As with other types of internet advertising, you only have a short time to cut through the noise and engage a prospect, so make your headline as compelling as possible.
• Use your target keyword in your ad text – When you do this, your keyword will appear bolded in the search results, setting your ad apart from others.
• Consider your landing page – Don’t simply send visitors to your homepage!  The specific landing page to which you direct visitors should be as closely related to your keywords as possible.
• Split test your ads – Whenever you set up a new PPC campaign, create two ads that can be split test against each other to improve your performance.

Step #4 – Set a Budget

Because the default setting in Google Adwords is to run your ads as often as possible in order to generate data faster, it’s incredibly easy to blow through your entire advertising budget – and much, much more – in a short amount of time.

To protect yourself from overspending, take advantage of features within Google Adwords and other PPC programs that let you set a daily spending budget.  Set your budget as low as $5-10/day until you get a feel for how these ads work and how you can maximize their impact on your business.

Step #5 – Evaluate Your Conversions

Of course, even if you’re only spending a few dollars a day, it’s still important to ensure that you’re seeing a positive ROI for your efforts.  That is, if you’re paying for traffic, you’d better be sure it’s resulting in sales!

Although there are several third-party software programs that offer this functionality, the easiest way to evaluate the conversions of your PPC ads within Google Adwords is to tie your account to your Google Analytics data.  This will help you to see which of your PPC keywords are resulting in conversions for your website, and which keywords should be eliminated from your campaign for non-performance.

Finally, as you begin adding PPC advertisements to your promotional strategy, be aware that there is a learning curve associated with this technique.  It may take some time until you achieve a positive ROI with your campaigns and are able to implement them on a wide enough scale to make a difference in your bottom line.  But by carefully launching campaigns and tracking the performance of every ad you run, you’ll ultimately find that PPC ads can be used to bring fast, steady traffic to your business website.

Image: bredgur

My experience at Intuit has taught me that talking about doing something and actually doing it are two completely different matters.

One of the jobs I’ve held here involved helping small-business owners to design and create websites. This included writing content for their sites, specifically information about their businesses. I gave them basic guidance about what they might want to consider including (or not including) in their text. I was confused when quite a few people told me, “I don’t know what to write.” I’m not a small-business owner, but I thought that if you built and ran a company, it would be pretty easy for you to write about its history, operations, and staff.

And then recently I was tasked with writing a post for the Intuit Websites blog. I write for a large portion of the day — every day — at work. I thought I was quite knowledgeable about Intuit Websites and our products and services. But I spent what seemed like days trying to figure out what to say.

Suddenly, I understood the dilemma that many small-business owners face. Even when you know a subject inside and out, writing about it is a whole different ball game: What do I say? What if my post is boring or makes no sense? Fortunately, I have the support of a wonderful manager who encouraged me, guided me, and helped me to realize that I just really needed to get started — and the rest would work itself out.

Now I’d like to share what I learned with you. Here are a few tips for novice writers and bloggers:

• Write what you know! No one knows your business like you.
• Use your website’s home page to provide a broad overview. Tell your business’s history on an About Us page, including your personal background and stories about what keeps you going. Put descriptions of products and services on the appropriate pages.
• Do some keyword research and insert those terms into your content. Try to integrate those keywords into your posts without it looking heavy-handed. Link those keywords to other pages on your site.
• Once you really get going, you may want to write a ton. Practice restraint. You can easily overwhelm visitors with too much information.

Making your website more interactive has myriad advantages, not the least of which is the boost in search-engine rankings your site gets when it’s shared more frequently on social-networking sites. Making your site more social also creates a positive atmosphere for your users by making them feel that their feedback is welcome and valued. This, in turn, improves the public’s perception of your brand and encourages repeat business, because people naturally want to associate with those who make them feel appreciated.

You can promote a social environment on your website in a number of ways, each of which comes with its own level of difficulty and required commitment post-installation. Let’s look at a few types of social tools you can integrate into your website, as well as determine which ones might make the most sense for your business.

Comments Sections

Although Comments sections are most often used in conjunction with a blog and blog posts, you can add one to any page on your website to give readers the opportunity to leave feedback about your business and your content. Comments sections can be particularly valuable in increasing visitor engagement, because they are a standard feature across websites. But be aware that they do require an ongoing investment, in terms of moderating readers’ notes and adding your own responses.

If you do decide to integrate Comments sections into your website, there are a few places where you’ll find them to be most effective:

• At the end of each blog post
• At the end of any news articles on your site
• At the end of any other major content pages on your site

Conversely, you wouldn’t want to put Comments sections on sales pages or promotion-specific pages, where the goal isn’t to facilitate customer interaction, but instead to drive visitors through the sales process as quickly as possible.

Depending upon the type of website you run, adding Comments sections might be as simple as turning on a standard option and specifying where on your site you’d like the sections to appear. If your web platform doesn’t include commenting as a standard feature — or if you simply want more functionality added to your Comments sections — look into solutions like DISQUS or IntenseDebate.

Social Sharing Tools

Social sharing tools are another vital component in the process of making your site more interactive. These tools typically consist of button sets that allow readers to post content on your website to their favorite social networks. These “shares” are the type that are most rewarded by the search engine ranking algorithms, which makes integrating tools that facilitate this process into your website a smart move for any webmaster.

But the best part about adding social sharing tools to your website to increase shares on social networks is that, for the most part, it is a “set it and forget it” process. Once you install the buttons on your site, the entire process of social sharing can be carried out automatically. All you have to do is to check back every so often to make sure the buttons are still working correctly.

Social sharing tools are another feature that’s often included as a standard option within most website platforms. If it isn’t an option for you, check out AddThis or ShareThis, both of which can be integrated into any type of website.

Once you’ve activated this feature or installed any necessary plug-ins, the only choice you’ll need to make is where on your site to display the buttons. As with the Comments sections described above, social sharing buttons will be most effectively used on news content or other “shareable” text that users will want to distribute to friends and family members. To facilitate maximum sharing, add buttons that appear integrated into the top of the article content, at the bottom of the text, and as part of a sliding toolbar that moves down the article as the user scrolls.

Customer Review Trackers

People love to share their opinions about products and services, so giving them the opportunity to rate your products or services will keep them on your website longer — and make them more engaged with your brand. Customer reviews can also generate market research data that will allow you to improve your offerings or decide what product lines to feature next.

Integrating customer review tools into your site can be a little more difficult if your chosen website platform doesn’t come with this feature pre-installed. However, it is possible with the use of third-party software scripts (search “review script” on Google to find different options), although you may need to hire out the installation of these scripts to a professional web developer if you aren’t technically inclined yourself.

Of course, when discussing the possible addition of customer review trackers to your website, it’s important to mention one potential caveat — the possibility that you’ll receive negative reviews. If you decide to enable reviews on your site, be sure to have a plan in place for how you’ll deal with this feedback, as yanking the tool down after a few bad reviews comes off as extremely unprofessional.

User Forums or Message Boards

Another option for creating more social interactions on your website is to create a user forum or message board. Although this option won’t make sense for many small-business owners, these tools can be incredibly powerful for “authority” sites in any industry or for those selling highly technical products (for example, software developers or financial advisers).

Essentially, user forums and message boards allow your customers to “talk amongst themselves” by posting questions and comments to the website’s community-at-large. At their best, these tools can help take the customer service burden off of you by allowing expert members of your community to answer the questions of neophytes.

At their worst, user forums and message boards can become dangerous repositories for spam, malware ads, and other nasty items. If you decide to host your own forum or message board, it’s important to choose a provider that requires all participants to register (which will discourage fraudulent postings) and to develop a good strategy for policing the forum (whether through your own efforts or those of designated moderator).

If a forum or message board sounds like it would be a useful tool for your customers — and you’re willing to commit the time that’s necessary to foster vibrant, useful discussions — there are several different tools available. SimpleMachines and phpBB offer free, open-source forum programs, although you’ll need to know how to manage PHP databases within your site’s dashboard to install them on your own.

Finally, keep in mind that the tools listed here represent only a small number of ways in which you can encourage social participation on your website. If you have other ideas or strategies for increasing customer engagement that you’ve used successfully on your site, please share your thoughts in the Comments section below!

Image: bengrey

So you think you’re ready to start building a website for your business. Maybe you’ve seen a few websites that you like, or you’ve found a template with the design elements you seek. Well, hold your horses! Proper site planning involves a lot more than picking pretty colors or choosing a random template.

Before you inadvertently set yourself up to fail, check out the following tips for building an effective site plan. This plan will start the design process off right — and help guide your site’s development.

Step 1: Plan out your pages.

Depending on the size and scope of your business, this stage of your site plan can be easy to complete or require several hours to flesh out. For example, if you’re a sole proprietor offering a single service (such as tax preparation or massage therapy), you may only need a few pages to convey all of the necessary information about your business. On the other hand, if you’re planning a major e-commerce site, the number of pages you’ll need to create will be much more extensive.

To get you started, consider the following list of typical pages that you may want to include on your website:

• Home page. This page represents your visitor’s first impression of your brand, so you’ll want to be sure it’s designed well and contains all of the necessary information to get visitors to take the next step and engage with your business.
• About page. “About me” pages are frequently the most accessed pages on websites, because potential customers want to know more about the people they’re doing business with. No matter what type of website you’re building, include an About page.
• Contact page. The Contact page is also vital, because it offers visitors options for getting in touch with you for more information. Include this page and plan to offer several different contact methods, including physical address (when appropriate), telephone number, email address, contact form, and social networking profiles.
• Product or service offering page. Your product page(s) provide the fundamental details about everything you’re selling. If your selection is limited, one page may suffice for this entire section. If you’re planning a larger site, plan for a single page for each product.
• FAQ or information page. One way to cut back on unnecessary customer queries is to post answers to the most frequently asked questions. FAQ or information pages are a great place to educate visitors about your business or products, and they often help to remove barriers that would otherwise prevent people from buying.

While these standard page types represent a good starting place for most businesses, you may also need to plan for account login pages, blog posts, order history sections, and more, depending on the specific needs of your company. One way to determine what other pages you may need is to look at your competitors’ websites. If all of them include a specific page type that you’re on the fence about, consider including it; there’s a good chance they’re using it because it serves a valuable purpose.

Step 2: Decide on an effective navigation structure.

Once you have an idea of all the different pages you’ll want to include in your new website, it’s time to start piecing them together into an effective navigation structure. It’s best to do this before you choose a website template for your new site, because it will allow you to pick a template that works for your needs, instead of hammering your content into a site design that doesn’t fit your desired navigation structure.

The first step in this process is to determine which items will appear as category headers on your main navigation bar. Nearly all website structures contain one main navigation section (whether it runs horizontally across the top of the site or vertically down the left or right sidebars) with drop-down sub-pages or sub-categories. And although your site may have secondary navigation bars or linked call-outs from the main page, the elements that form your main navigation bar should receive the most attention, as most visitors will use these links to navigate your site.

When planning your main navigation bar, follow these standard guidelines to make it as effective as possible:

• Number of items. Your main navigation bar should contain no more than 7 or 8 items. After this point, visitors’ attention begins to lag, causing them to miss important information on your site.
• SEO. Whenever possible, incorporate target keywords into your navigation structure for better search engine optimization.
• Navigation depth. Google prefers sites that have a “wide” navigation structure, not a “deep” alternative, so make sure that every page on your site can be reached within three clicks.

One of the easiest ways to build out your navigation bar is to write each of the pages you came up with in Step 1 onto a sticky note and organize them on a wall or other large surface. This allows you to visually create categories and manipulate layouts until you come up with a structure that makes sense for your business. Clearly, this might not be an option if you’re anticipating hundreds or thousands of pages — in these cases, consider scoping out your competitors to see what categories and sub-categories they use.

Step 3: Follow established design principles.

Although most people jump to design considerations first when planning a new website, it’s listed here as Step 3 for a reason: Until you know what information you want to present and how you want to present it, you won’t be able to choose a website design template that will work best for your business!

Now that you know how many pages, categories, and navigation bar items you want on your website, you can start looking for design templates that will allow you to present the information you’ve come up with in the most attractive way possible. As you go through different template options, consider the following established design principles to ensure your new site conveys the right message about you and your business:

• Avoid “over-designing.” Although you can add plenty of bells and whistles to any site, the most important thing you should consider is whether or not your chosen design interferes with the way your site’s message is conveyed. Whenever possible, stick with easy-to-read fonts, high-contrast text and background colors, and limited images that enhance (rather than overpower) your content.
• Use high-quality imagery. The days of dancing GIFs and pixelated images are over! These days, stock photographs can be purchased for incredibly affordable prices through sites like iStockphoto or Getty Images, and even the cheapest digital cameras on the market can be used to take powerful product photos. Think of the images on your site as an extension of your brand and make them as high in quality as possible.
• Pay attention to your color schemes. According to the tenets of color theory, different hues convey different emotions and psychological impacts. Choose colors carefully to ensure that your site gives off the right “feeling” to future visitors.

By taking the time to follow each of these steps in order, you’ll wind up with a website that not only looks good, but also works well from the perspective of both website visitors and search engine spiders!

Image: Ronn ashore