Helpful Hints, Websites
As part of finding budget friendly solutions for small business customers. I am always in search of themes that easy to manipulate without a lot of coding. This flexibility allows me to build websites that look custom without the price of a full custom coded site. One of my favorite themes, Divi, comes from Elegant Themes.
I was honored this summer to be accepted as a guest blogger on the Elegant Marketplace Forum. The folks over at Elegant Marketplace offer some great child themes and plugins that are compatible with with Divi Theme.
My first post talked about how to determine the colors, where images come from, as well as plugins that websites designers use.
Here’s a little excerpt:
How do you determine the theme and special plugins a website is using?
The easiest way to determine the theme or plugins is using a website like WPThemeDetector or WhatWPThemeIsThat
How can you determine the color or make a color palette from a website?
I use the Chrome extension Colorzilla (which is also available for Firefox), to grab the colors from the site. This handy tool gives you both the RGB and Hex of the colors you select.
How to determine where images on the website came from?
An easy way to determine where website images originate from is using a image search tool like Google Reverse Image Search or TinEye, if it’s stock imagery you’ll be able to find which stock website it was purchased from, so you can purchase it.
You can read the full post on Elegant Marketplace.
Websites
We had the pleasure of working with Peterson Guide Service of Maine on their new website. Jon and Jeff are two of the funniest guys we’ve had the pleasure of spending time with. Their needs were simple; a site to showcase where they fish, a little about themselves, and a place to post fishing reports when they return home along with a place for clients to schedule their next trip.
Overall the site came out amazing and was simple to put together since Jon and Jeff came prepared with ideas, we were able to bring those ideas to life and give them a very functional website. If you would like to discuss changes to your site feel free to contact us.
A Little About Themselves
We kept the layout for the about page very simple with a bio about Jon, as he is their Registered Maine Guide, fun facts about his favorite fishing spots, and how his love of fishing developed. At the bottom of the page we included visual links to other pages which helps greatly on the mobile layout
A Little About Their Trips
The trip page is split into three major sections, the areas in which they travel. Each section has an overview of the area and fishing, along with a photo gallery of images that Jon and Jeff took while there.
Showcase
The layout of the gallery / showcase was also kept to a minimalist feel. Allowing the pictures of their trips to speak for themselves. The way the site is designed the gallery will change every time the page is refreshed. This helps it look fresh to repeat visitors without having the constant maintenance of adding new photo’s.
Scheduling
Lastly, a custom scheduling form which allows clients to choose the date and location of their trip as well as their skill level was added to gather reservations!
Helpful Hints, Services, Websites
I have to admit I started this post in January and it’s now almost April, and I still haven’t posted it! We always set the best intentions, but we get busy helping clients and doing things like… WORK! that get in the way of maintaining our own websites. This goes for ALL companies, including those of us that work online for a living. We get busy, we have customers coming in, so who cares if your site isn’t completely up to date, right? hmmmm. I cringe every time I don’t practice what I preach. I’m really great at updating others websites, my own… forget it. But, my question to you is… how many customers have you lost because of outdated information?
I’ve compiled a quick to do list for you to look at below.
Review your content:
Have content that is outdated? Get rid of it.
Time Sensitive? Get rid of it.
Holiday Message? Get rid of it.
Blog posts that mention specific events? Add a disclaimer or call to action like: “Want to hear about when we offer this again in 2015? Sign up for our newsletter” (and don’t forget to add a link to your newsletter sign-up!)
Team Page? Remove old team members, review bios for XX years of experience and update to reflect current experience.
Are your .pdfs current? Do you still have your summer shopping guide linked?
Update the nuts and bolts:
Update your copyright notice. (don’t know what this is??? Look down at the bottom of your site do you see @2014 or earlier? If so, you will want to update it to 2015. Although some visitors will never notice this date, by having an outdated copyright date it will look like your site hasn’t been updated in a while. In order to be trustworthy to your visitors you want to make sure it looks like you pay attention to the small details.)
Post a blog!
Check for links that no longer work. Other people may have taken down their pages you had linked to and now your links go nowhere.
Check your physical address, email address and phone/fax numbers. Are the all the same? (do you actually still have a fax??)
Test your forms and make sure they’re still working. What’s the point of having a contact form that doesn’t actually work?
I think that’ll be a good start for now. If you need help or want a second set of eyes to look over your site. Contact Us we would love to help you out.
Services, Uncategorized, Websites
Are you a small business owner looking for a website on a budget? We’ve recently launched a sister company Budget Site Design to offer fixed cost websites for small business owners.
Websites start at $497 and can be customized with add-ons like maintenance, directory listings, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), as well as 1×1 training so you know how to make changes to your site!!
These sites are “templated sites” meaning they aren’t fully customizable like the sites offered by Core Virtual Support. If you prefer to have Core Virtual Support make your changes we are happy to do so with one of our hourly rates or packages.
For more information feel free to contact us here.
