BEFORE - see how their original site looked

This Washington DC contractor hired us to re-design their website. Basically it needed an overhaul. From the top down…

AFTER - check out their new website!

• The logo needed to be shrunk significantly. The first five or six inches of the pages are highly valuable real estate where you should be communicating what services your business offers and serve up an introduction. It should NOT be taken up entirely by a logo.
• Prominent CALL-TO-ACTION buttons (“Request A FREE Estimate”) were added in multiple places to encourage visitors to proceed to the desired next step.
• A rotating image gallery was added that shows off their finest Design and Remodeling projects.
• The best testimonials were made prominent. When a potential client is researching contractors, they’re going to hire the one that has a great track record with their clients. Hence the importance of making testimonials prominent.

There’s plenty more but that’s the gist of it.

If you’re sick of having a low conversion and ready to do the things necessary to get a higher percentage of your visitors to actually pick up the phone and hire you, then contact our website design experts TODAY.

BEFORE - see original website design

Website visitors have an incredibly short attention span. They don’t want to have to wade through all the information that you bombard them with. Visitors just want to immediately find what they’re interested in learning about and go from there.

AFTER - see their new and improved website

This Washington DC canopy manufacturer and supplier hired us to design them a website that would clearly delineate between the Residential and Commercial options so visitors could immediately head to their respective option and read up on the details without being overwhelmed with pictures and info about the other irrelevant option.

CLIENT TESTIMONIAL
“This looks great!”

Contact us today and let’s discuss how we can better organize your service options and give your visitors a more practical surfing experience.

If you look more closely you’ll notice that these scheisters give zero specifics about your site in particular. That’s because these are just cookie cutter template e-mails that they send to anybody that owns a website. They haven’t actually had a human being look at your site and do an analysis of where your site currently ranks.

They just propose that they can make your site rank on at the top of the search engines. But how would they know if they don’t know what search terms you want to compete for? For instance, our company wants to be listed near or at the top for the search term “Hoboken Website Designers”. Actually, we already are up there! So why in the world would we be getting tons of solicitations to improve our rank? Again, it’s because they’ve never looked at our site. They’re just spamming all small business owners in the hopes that they’ll wrassle up some naive business owners.

On a final note, be skeptical of anyone who GUARANTEES they can get you on page one of Google. Nobody can guarantee that. The search engines are always changing the criteria that they use to rank sites. Plus, you can’t control what changes your competitors are making to their sites that could push them ahead of you.

Consider yourself warned! Have questions about this stuff? Give us a ring.

BEFORE - see their original design

This Long Island, New York logistical consulting business started with a pretty bland website design. That’s typically the case when you higher a family member or friend to build your site and that friend DOES know how to code, but does NOT have any design background. It didn’t “pop” and it didn’t compel visitors to take that next step and actually pick up the phone to inquire further about the business. So, they called us to fix it up…

AFTER - see their new website

First, we outfitted the site with a sharp, eye-catching new logo that blew the old one out of the water. We also moved the color scheme away from the drab green and grey and brightened it up with light blues and whites.

And as always, we made the company’s competitive advantage loud and clear: “Hire us, the experts, if you want to lower your logistical costs”.

CLIENT TESTIMONIAL
"Looks good. Great work."

If you’re ready for YOUR consulting firm’s website to benefit from the same treatment, give us a call now for a free estimate.

BEFORE - see the original website design

Much like a refinished floor, a refinished website design can make an established small business shine like new. These Baltimore, Maryland flooring contractors contacted us to polish up their site and that’s just what we did.

AFTER - see their new website

We improved the overall website design, giving it a much more polished feel. And we brought their talents front and center so visitors would immediately be aware of their competitive advantage, “DUST FREE” floor refinishing. Additionally, we installed a free estimate request form to encourage website visitors to reach out to the company.

To round out the package, we made it simple for the business owners to manage the content of their site by installing WordPress as their content management system.

Give us a call today and let’s talk about the different ways we can polish up YOUR website!

click to view website

So that’s just what we did, build them a website that clearly showcases their live call-answering, scheduling and administrative services. Lartech’s contact information is prominently displayed for all to see and the design and content clearly conveys what they do, how they do it, and how to contact the company.

Additionally, we emphasized their competitive advantage (American based and well trained operators) to give visitors the sense they have finally arrived at the ideal company in this unique niche market.

Finally, we made it easy for Lartech to update their website by building the framework of the site on the WordPress blogging platform.

CLIENT TESTIMONIAL
"Thank you very much. It looks very good."

Now consider the stress you’d avoid if you could manage your own sleek-looking webpage in just a few clicks! Give us a call to discuss and ask for a free quote!

BEFORE - see their original design

Even though the contracting business (garage door repair in particular) is not the most glamorous, doesn’t mean contractors should settle for a mediocre looking website design. A professional looking site helps your company stand out from the crowd and land more of those high-end high-paying contracts.

AFTER - see their new website

This Virginia contractor hired us to re-design their site to give visitors a better sense of their professionalism. And that started with a brand new logo. Then we added in some better looking pictures from their portfolio. Some calls-to-action. Some testimonials… The works. You can see for yourself that the new website design is much more convincing than what they previously had up there.

CLIENT TESTIMONIAL
"Looks excellent. Nice job."

Contact us today to discuss how we can build a more professional looking site that will land YOUR business more big clients!

What's wrong with this picture?

I received a promotional e-mail today from who knows what company about who cares what product. But what got my attention was the fact that they put a QR code in their e-mail. Do you know why that doesn’t make sense? Obviously they didn’t. Go ahead and scan the QR code in this post and you might start to understand before getting into the meat of this tutorial.

A Quick Response (QR) code is that square box with the funky zebra/camouflage dot print that you’re seeing all over the place now. They’re often found (for now but soon to be everywhere!!!) in magazine advertisements, on posters, on product packaging and on store-front windows. When you scan a QR code with your smart phone, it takes you to a website address. Businesses use it to give the customer a way to access additional information, maybe even deals, about whatever product or service the customer has just been exposed to.

So why is it weird to have a QR code in an e-mail blast or on a webpage? Well… have you scanned this QR code yet? If so, you’ll notice that it just took you to this same post. That’s because a QR code is nothing more than a link to a webpage. But the thing is, when someone is already on a webpage, or looking at an e-mail, you can provide regular hyperlinks to whatever webpage destination you want to take them to. Why in the world would you make them take out their smart phone, then scan, then go to the webpage you want them at, and force them to look at in in their tiny phone screen instead of on the computer?! Just give ‘em a regular old hyperlink.

Arghh!!!

In both cases, you’re only charged on a “pay-per-click” rather than a “pay-per-impression” basis or in layman’s terms “pay-per-appearance”. You actually could select a “pay-per-impression” campaign but we don’t recommend it.

Both ad platforms can be geographically targeted which is vitally important if your product or service is only provided in a certain geographic region. For instance, if we (SBM) wanted to place an ad for our “website design services”, and if we only serviced Hoboken, Jersey City and New York City businesses (though we really service clients all over the US) we could set our Facebook or AdWords campaigns to only target people who live in these cities. Pretty cool, right?!

This is where Google AdWords appears.

GOOGLE ADWORDS REVIEW
Overview – AdWords ads appear above and to the right of a Google search listing. You’re allowed 25 characters for the title. 70 characters for the ad text. 35 characters for the display of the URL. The key is to make your text compelling and relevant enough to entice the person who just searched for the term that your paid to advertisement next to. The placement of your ad is largely determined by how much you bid on that search term. So you gots ta pay-to-play. That’s how the world of internet advertising works. Learn it. Love it. Live it. Here’s the link to Google AdWords setup page.

What’s good – Anyone who types in a Google search term is actively seeking information on that very subject that your ad (hopefully) corresponds to. So if your ad is relevant to that topic and appealing, there’s a good chance they could click on it.

Something we like to put great emphasis on… customer service. Unlike Facebook ads, there is actually a phone number to contact the Google AdWords department!!!

The performance tracking and analytics are phenomenal. If you’re a numbers person, you could study the data and charts until the cows come home and tweak your campaign to the n-th degree to maximize your return-on-investment.

What sucks – It can be friggin’ expensive. You’re in a bidding war with tons of other companies all trying to get in the face of the Google searcher. So it’s highly competitive.

The advertising dashboard, user interface and setup process can be overwhelming to a novice. There’s just so much information and tools and data to take in.

There’s a steep learning curve. It’s going to take a while to get the hang of it. You might blow through a little money before you first see a return-on-investment.

This is where your ad appears on Facebook

FACEBOOK ADVERTISING REVIEW
Overview – Facebook ads appear to the right of Facebook profiles. They feature a title of 25 characters, ad text of 135 characters and an image. The ads appear on the profiles of those individuals that you decide to target, based on their profile characteristics (i.e. demographic information that Facebook stores, and you probably wish they didn’t!).

What’s good – Unlike Google AdWords, you can include an image in your advertisement which can help make it that much more enticing.

The setup process is very streamlined. You can see the exact number of people your ad will target based on the targeting demographic info you set.

What sucks – You must have a Facebook account to run ads. If you don’t have an account… I guess just setup a dummy account.

Another thing is, they don’t have a customer service hotline like Google… yet.

Facebook ads are kind of a shot-in-the-dark because people logged into Facebook aren’t necesssarily “searching” for information like they are when they type a search term into Google.

Keep in mind though, there is a downside to doing it yourself… it could wind up being a major time suck and waste of money if it’s not done right. If you’re having trouble getting the most out of your campaign, or just don’t have the time or patience to do it yourself, then give us a ring.

BEFORE - see the original website design

This New Jersey commercial lender’s original website was constructed with the help of the most basic looking template. Well it’s 2011 now and basic doesn’t cut it.

AFTER - see their new website

A polished website should make you look like a subject matter expert. It’s important that you establish knowledge, legitimacy, and expertise in your particular business online, making you stand out above the rest of your competition.

We redesigned this site with the help of WordPress so that the client had a content-management-system at his fingertips so he could continue to write and post articles that showcase his in-depth knowledge on the subject matter.

CLIENT TESTIMONIAL
"Thank you very much and I hope I can refer more business to you in the future."

If you’re wondering how to modernize your website, contact our website designers today to discuss and ask us for a free quote!