Web Design & Advice Made Simple.

Over the Christmas and New Year break we decided to give Doggo bit of a makeover and add some new features to help all our doggy mates.

If you are unfamiliar with Doggo, it is a directory of dog parks, beaches and dog friendly accommodation throughout Australia. What makes Doggo different from the other pet directories out there is that it uses Google Map technology to let users search for locations within a particular search radius of a given address or location. Site users can also rate the parks, beaches or accommodation and leave comments to help others select the best place to go with their doggy mates.

We currently have over 700 locations in the directory and are in the process of adding lots more - so if you have any suggestions or would like to add a location head over to the submit page.

If you’d like to support Doggo the best thing you can do is spread the word! Tell all your friends about it, link to it, blog about it. . . why you can even sing about it if you want!

Some other tid-bits about the site:

• Doggo is now built completely on WordPress , demonstrating that WordPress can be used for much more that just blogging!
• You can subscribe to the Blog Feed, Accommodation Feed and Dog Park Feed to keep up-to-date with all the latest additions to the site .
• The site is now gravatar (globally recognised avatar) enabled - so if you’d like a pretty picture to come up when you comment on the site, head on over to gravatar.com to register .

Today, most customers and clients expect the businesses they deal with to have a website, and in fact most small businesses need an online presence as much as they need a phone, mail box, or email address. Used effectively, a website can boost your business credibility, improve customer service, increase the effectiveness of your advertising and generate leads. But simply having a website isn’t enough. To attract and retain visitors it must be well designed, easy to navigate, up-to-date, and clearly provide the information or services that users are likely to want. A poorly designed and managed website may actually be driving potential customers away. To help you determine if your business website is in need of a new year makeover, below is  our list of the top 10 website turn-offs (in no particular order)….

10. Lack of clear contact information

You’d be surprised how many site visitors just want a phone number to call or an email address to contact. They may have additional questions about your product/service or want to make a booking/purchase. Contact information needs to be easy to find. Users are quickly frustrated if they cant find it, and will quickly leave your website. Make sure you also provide a few different contact options (ie. phone, email, web contact form, physical store/office).

9. Slow load times

Graphics that aren’t optimised for the web and complex web animations can cause websites to load slowly which is frustrating for users. Slow load times are particularly problematic for users who access the internet using a dial-up connection. While broadband use is becoming more common, in 2007-08, 17% of Australian internet users were still accessing the internet using a dial-up connection.

8. Having a horizontal scrollbars

Horizontal scrollbars are annoying for users as they make scanning your website difficult and require extra mouse clicks/movement to view your entire webpage content. Websites that are designed using appropriate screen resolutions will avoid the need for horizontal scrollbars.

7. Using “splash” pages (or false home pages) that require an additional click to enter the site

Users want information about your product/service and they want it NOW. Splash pages are usually totally unnecessary - all they do is frustrate the user by adding an additional page and mouse click before they can get to the information they really want.

6. Requiring the use of plug-ins

A plug-In is a piece of software that works in conjunction with a browser to display specific material (eg. animation, sound etc). If your visitor doesn’t have the required plug-in they will need to download and install it before they can continue using your site. Often people are unwilling to or do not know how to do this.

5. Broken links

This is just plain frustrating for users. They are expecting certain information to appear when they click on a link on your site and will be disappointed when instead they get a HTTP 404 Not Found error message.

4. Poor graphic design

The design of your site should be easy on the eyes. This means that text is easy to read (choose appropriate fonts and text sizes), images should be appropriate sizes, colour choice appealing, and layout consistent between pages.

3. Music/sounds that play automatically

Users like to be in control of their web browsing experience. Sites that automatically play sounds or music remove that control and can annoy web visitors. The music on your site is unlikely to be to the taste of all visitors. In addition, if the user is viewing your site in a public place (library, internet cafe) or at work, they may be embarrassed by the sudden sounds and elect to exit from your site immediately.

2. Out-of-date content

There’s not much point in having information on your website if its obviously out-of-date. Users see little value in information that they suspect is out-of-date or no longer relevant. Make sure price lists and contact information are always up-to-date. Consider integrating a blog onto your website as this is a great way to keep users updated with latest news and offers, and it keeps your content fresh (which search engines love).

1. Grammatical and spelling errors

Grammatical and spelling errors demonstrate a level of carelessness, which may leave users wondering if you are careless in other aspects of your business. Have a friend/colleague/family proof-read your website content, and consider signing up for a spellr.us account.

A big thank you to all our clients and every one who has supported _FindingSimple throughout 2008.

We wish each and every one of you a safe and Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! See you in 2009.

It’s that time of year again when the Christmas trees come out, the Christmas lights go up and the shops are filled to capacity as people search for the perfect gift.

Businesses put a lot of effort and preparation into spreading Christmas cheer within their stores and around the workplace but generally not so much online. Why is that? Everyone loves Google’s holiday logos so why don’t more business do something similar?

Adding some Christmas spirit to your own site is a great way to connect with your visitors and show that your site is kept up-to-date.

We think that there needs to be more of it. So, to help you, here are a few examples of ways that you can add some joy to your own website this Christmas:

• Add some chrismas wallpaper. It doesn’t have to be over the top or tacky (in fact we advise against this). A few transparent snow flakes over an existing background or a simple pattern using the customary red, green and white will usually do.
• Add some decorations. Just like your office or home, why not add some stockings, tinsel or a Christmas tree to your website (but again, don’t go overboard). Simply modify some of your existing graphics (remembering to make a backup of the originals) and you are good to go. A great example is the Canberra Furnished Accommodation website where they have added a stylish looking Santa hat to the corner of their logo.
• Add a Christmas counter. Working so hard you are not sure how many days are left until Christmas? Or perhaps you want to give you customers a subtle reminder that there aren’t too many shopping days left? Why not add a counter to your site counting down the number of days left until Christmas? There are lots of generic timers available online if you do a quick search of Google but if your having trouble finding one, I found this one especially for Christmas which even comes as a WordPress plugin.
• Add some falling snow. If you are feeling a little bit more adventurous you can also add some falling snow to your site like that used on Ma.tt’s website. You can download the code for it here.

Following on from my previous post, the finding simple team had a great weekend attending WordCamp Australia 2008 in Sydney over the weekend.

The location was perfect, there were lots of like minded people doing similar work in the web design space, the food was delicious, the free wifi was flawless and everyone received a funky free t-shirt upon arrival!

Matt’s presentation was easily the highlight of the conference, closely followed by presentations by

• Dan Milward who spoke about experiences with the WP-eCommerce plugin;
• Jane Wells who spoke about the upcoming version 2.7 release of WordPress (we’ll be doing free upgrades for all existing clients when it comes out!);
• Sam Bauers who spoke about his pet project “Prolouge Projects” - a great looking theme which lets teams of people collaborate and track tasks easily;
• Jeff Waugh who spoke about his love of WordPress and his work on Crikey!; and
• Alister Cameron who stirred up bit of a debate on licensing and the GPL.

In a nutshell - it was great to see so much love for and enthusiasm for the ongoing development of WordPress - it can only mean great things for WordPress and WordPress Community.

The finding simple team is attending WordCamp Australia 2008 this weekend in Sydney - a conference for users and developers of WordPress.

It looks like there are going to be some really interesting presentations about new media, blogging and better business using WordPress. Matt Mullenweg - the founder of WordPress - is even going to be giving the key note presentation!

We’ll be posting more about the conference over the next few days. In the meantime - you can check out the live video stream or follow the twitter.

SE-what?
Product and service research is now the second biggest online activity behind email. But, what’s the point in having a great website, with great information about the products and services you offer, if none of your target audience can find it? Internet search engines (incl. Google, Yahoo and MSN) are special sites on the web that are designed to help people find information stored on other sites. Sites’ positions in search engine results (also known as ‘rankings’) are determined based on a number of factors designed to provide end-users with helpful, accurate search results. The process of designing or modifying your site to enhance the likelihood of high search-engine rankings is known as search-engine optimisation (SEO).

Why do I need SEO?
The aim of a good SEO campaign is to achieve the highest possible ranking in search engine results (Google, Yahoo and MSN etc.) by ‘optimising’ your web page content, structure, meta-data and incoming links. The higher your search-engine ranking, the easier it is for your potential customers and clients to find your site, and therefore the higher your website traffic. Your job is then to ensure your site engages, retains and converts the traffic into sales or sales queries.

Simple Five point SEO Health Check
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is not easy – however there are some simple checks that you can perform yourself which will give you an indication of some of the areas that can be improved on your site to help increase its ranking in search engine results.

1. Check your Metadata
2. Check your Keywords
3. Check your URLs
4. Check your HTML
5. Check your Spelling

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Soloists, entrepeneurs, freelancers and small business owners need to know other soloists, entrepeneurs, freelancers and small business owners. We need to make new connections, increase our network, hear about what others are doing, and be in the right place when somebody else needs to out-source a gig…

To help this process along I’ve decided to start a little non-event called the Very Small Business Lunch to bring soloists, entrepeneurs, freelancers and small business owners in the Canberra region together for an hour-long lunch once or twice a month.

I’ll be sending an email around for the first event in late October to early November, so if you are interested in tagging along, meeting a few new people and making some connections all you need to do is flick me your address on the Very Small Business Lunch site and I’ll let you know when and where (I like to keep things simple).