Website Extras You Might Need
Do you want to offer your visitors more than just a standard website? When choosing website extras, you need balance. You don’t want your visitors to find your website lacking. On the other hand, you don’t want to pay for features which will just sit around unused, costing you money without generating any traffic or revenues.
In this article, we’ll take a quick look at some of the most popular extra features you can add to your web space—and see which ones will benefit your site the most.
Blogs
Blogs are one of the most popular extras available for your web space, and with good reason. There are many different types of sites which can benefit from a blog, including some which might surprise you.
A great example would be a restaurant website. Sure, you can create an absolutely gorgeous site, showing off your menus and featuring a dramatic slideshow of your dining room and outdoor patio area. However, visitors will be very intrigued by a blog written by the owner of the restaurant, detailing day-to-day operations in way that’s fun to read. The idea is to draw customers into your world, which will make them feel connected and entice them to come and taste this wonderful food they’ve been reading about.
If you feel that a blog might help your website, we encourage you to give it a try. This add-on is inexpensive and can really help boost sales and loyalty. A web host that offers Fantastico is a great choice for beginners. This helpful tool makes adding blogs a snap—often it can be done with a single click.
Flashing Graphics
Overall, flashing graphics look amateurish and make people think of a high school student’s social network page. Most small businesses should stick with tasteful, suitable graphics that don’t move or flash. Not only will a flashing or moving graphic cost you money that it will not recoup, but it might actually drive customers away from your web space.
Forums
Forums or message boards let your website visitors interact with each other. This can be a big boost in terms of keeping people on your site longer, and in making them feel connected to the site. However, not every site will draw customers who enjoy forum discussions.
Only you can decide this, since you know your business best. Sites which deal with social issues are ideal for forums. Ecommerce sites, in general, are not. A few customers may want to leave feedback, but there are many less-expensive ways for them to do that.
Unless you want to immediately spark ongoing conversations among your visitors, hold off on a forum until you’re certain that it will benefit your web space.
The Bottom Line
Research each extra feature carefully before you commit money to it. You can always grow your web space later, but in the beginning, it’s best to keep overhead costs low. Click here to see affordable and recommended web hosts that allow you to install blogs and forums for free.
Read MoreCustom Web Design vs. Website Templates
You want your website to reflect your brand, entice visitors, and make customers feel welcome. Appearances matter a great deal. Your web space’s visual appeal can make or break your success.
The two main options for web design are custom design and website templates. We’ll discuss both in this article.
Custom Web Design
Your first option is to hire a web design agency or professional to design and code a custom website for you. Make sure you’re working with a professional individual or firm, so that you’ll still be very involved in the process. You can expect to provide your own content, make strategic decisions, and generally collaborate with them on the website.
Website Templates
A website template is a pre-made website design you can buy and use. You can use a template directly, or customize it to meet special design needs. Since the same template is available to a lot of people, this option is more affordable.
There are thousands of website templates online. You can buy them directly from template shops. Also, some web space hosts, such as the ones on our recommended list, bundle website templates for free with their hosting plans.
Website Builders
We need to mention another option which combines website templates and custom design. Many web hosts include website builders free with hosting plans. This allows you to start from a template and customize your website design, all within your browser and without having to know how to code. Site builders allow you to build your web space one component at a time, making the entire process simpler.
Which One Is Right for You?
When choosing between custom web design or website templates, take these into consideration:
Branding
If you want a unique brand, then you have to invest in custom design. After all, anybody can use a template—and you may just go online one day and discover that a competitor is using the exact template you’ve chosen. With all the websites online, you really want yours to stand out from the crowd.
Nature of Business
It just so happens that most website templates available have a sleek and modern look and feel. Now, if you’re selling discounted computer parts, this is perfect. But if you’re a boutique selling vintage pieces, a modern look will detract from your brand image. Vintage necklaces just don’t look at home in the standard Web 2.0 web design style.
Website Size
In general, large sites are better suited to custom design, simply because you want to ensure that all sections and components work together according to your needs. Small sites can do just fine with a template.
Conclusion
Do your research and think of the considerations above when choosing between custom design and templates. Whatever you decide, make sure you choose a good web host that can meet all your web space needs.
Read MoreAdding a Blog to Your Website
Blogs are everywhere these days, and for good reason. A blog can be beneficial to your web space. Here, we’ll give you a primer on blogs and what they can do for you.
What Is a Blog?
Blogs allow you to post about whatever you like, whenever you like, and share it with your visitors. While you may be thinking that nobody would want to read your blog, you’re wrong. Connecting with your visitors is a powerful way to get them to return. A blog can be great whether your website is personal or for business.
- If you run a restaurant, talk about the freshest dishes on the menu for a particular day.
- Selling T-shirts? Write a funny story about how you wore your own creation out to lunch and somebody recognized it.
- If you run a site about social issues, blog about how you started a recycling campaign at your day job and got the entire office going green.
You get the idea—anything goes. Even posts that are only slightly related can be successful, as long as they’re fun to read. People love to be entertained, so entertain them in your web space to keep them there longer.
Would Your Website Benefit?
In reality, there are many sites which could benefit from a blog. Your audience is a big indicator of whether or not a blog will be good for your web space. The more tech-savvy your target market, the more likely they are to enjoy reading a blog. Target markets which aren’t all that up-to-date on things may not even know what a blog is, and your efforts will be for naught. Are you enticing customers to your hip new Tex-Asian fusion cafe? Blog away! If you’re selling home safety products to seniors, a blog might be a waste of time.
Also remember that your website will only benefit from a blog if you can devote the time and energy to setting it up and maintaining it properly. This includes posting regularly—we recommend at least once a week—and following SEO guidelines. If this is too much for you right now, don’t force it—-wait a while, research by reading successful blogs, and add one when the time is right.
Blogging Platforms and Web Space Hosts
Self-hosted blogging platforms are the best choice, since they give you the most control. WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal are among the most popular, and with good reason. They’re easy to integrate into your web space, offer great features for optimization and, most importantly, are extremely easy for a beginner to set up and use.
When selecting your web host, look for a featured called Fantastico, which allows you to install blogs—as well as other software, such as ecommerce systems and message boards—in a few clicks.
One of the best web hosts for blogs is Just Host. They include Fantastico and support a variety of blogging platforms.
Conclusion
If you can dedicate the time to creating and maintaining an up-to-date and quality blog, go for it. Take the time to research your options, set it up carefully and above all, make those posts interesting! This will draw visitors to your web space and keep them there, generating traffic and revenue.
Image by Harold Groven.
Read MoreEcommerce Web Space
If you want to sell products or services online, you need an ecommerce website. Ecommerce web space offers many features. Here are a few of them:
Product Categories
You don’t want your customers getting lost while shopping. If you have enough products for sale, organize them by category in a way that’s easy for shoppers to navigate.
Search Features
Adding a search bar to your ecommerce web space can make shopping a much simpler experience for your guests. Instead of reading through every product you have for sale, they can simply type in a request such as “kids’ tees” and be directed to all the children’s shirts you have for sale.
Secure Checkout
In this day and age, nobody is going to purchase anything from you if the checkout process isn’t safe and secure. People trust companies they know, so choose a popular payment service, one which customers will recognize. Encrypted checkouts are the only way to go in terms of keeping your customers’ sensitive information safe.
Shopping Cart
Just as in a real-life store, a shopping cart is a way for your customers to collect their items before making their final purchase. This makes shopping simpler and more convenient, which translates into more and bigger sales for you.
Visual Appeal
Regardless of whether you use a gallery, a slideshow, or individual pictures for each product page, pictures are essential to boosting sales. Would you buy a product you couldn’t see? Of course not. You’ll need quality, high resolution shots of every single item for sale, from all angles. Let your customers see exactly what they’ll be getting. This inspires confidence. The more pictures featured on your web space, the higher your sales are likely to climb.
Do You Need Ecommerce?
The only question you need to ask yourself in determining whether ecommerce systems are right for you is whether or not you want to sell online. It’s that simple. Your web space may be advertising a retail establishment such as a restaurant, but not taking online orders. If this is your situation, you have no need for ecommerce features, so spend your money improving your web space in other ways.
Ecommerce Web Space Hosts
Choosing a hosting provider for your web space is an important step. You want affordability combined with reliability. While many sites offer ecommerce, some stand out from the pack. Just Host is a hosting service we highly recommend for this purpose. It has received outstanding ratings from independent reviewers and consistently delivers on the features which matter most to small business owners.
Conclusion
While ecommerce can seem intimidating, it’s really not a complicated matter. Make smart decisions for your web space by choosing a good ecommerce hosting provider, and you’ll see those sales start rolling in!
Image by zorraquino.
Read MoreFrontPage Web Space
Creating a website with Microsoft FrontPage can be tricky if you don’t go for the right web host. You need to find a provider whose technical platform supports websites made by this software.
Intuitive and easy to use
Microsoft FrontPage works well for people who want to build their own websites without much technical knowledge. It’s an application that allows you to create your website and publish it easily to a host.
It’s a very simple yet robust design software that you can use to build good-looking pages in minutes. Not only that, it’s also a great file manager. When you use it to build your website, it organizes all of the files and folders within it.
Choosing your web host
Here are some things you need to look out for when choosing your web host:
- The web host’s servers should support the version of FrontPage you’re using to build your website.
- Make sure you’ll be able to create the number of email addresses you’ll need. This is particularly important if you own a business and need multiple email accounts.
- Check the bandwidth and storage limits.
Our recommended FrontPage web space provider is Just Host, which offers a generous hosting package and a wide variety of features for an affordable price. Of course, it supports websites created with Microsoft FrontPage.
Read MoreAmazon Web Space
Choosing where to buy web space can be a challenge. With hundreds of companies offering these services, you may find yourself feeling overwhelmed. However, if you have specific needs that can’t be met by regular web hosting, you may want to look into Amazon Web Services.
When you have a business website or web application that needs higher-level resources or particular services, Amazon is a good option for you. Amazon offers a variety of different packages for specific needs.
Amazon CloudFront helps you avoid the messy files and folders, unused paid space, and slow content serving that’s common among dedicated servers.
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud.
Amazon Simple Storage Service or Amazon S3 provides a simple and affordable web service which allows you to save and load any amount of data from anywhere and at any time.
Amazon SimpleDB provides the core database functions of data indexing and querying.
Amazon Simple Queue Service provides a high-performance secure queuing system, allowing you to reliably distribute work between your application processes with no inconvenience.
Are these web services right for you? You first have to determine the complexity of your website and your requirements. Shared web hosting is enough for most needs, but if you’re running a web application or a high-traffic website, you could definitely benefit from these Amazon Web Services. All in all, Amazon web space is a great option for businesses and companies who need more than the basic resources.
Read More