Blog
2:58 pm - March 14, 2008
What do we mean by "Complete Website Solution"? We mean exactly what we say! We offer a complete solution to your website needs, from your URL and your brand identity to your design to SEO to hosting, email, statistics - the whole enchilada!
Lots of website providers can help you with one or two of the necessary steps, but leave you searching for answers to other important elements for your Online Web Presense. At AlternaSite, we start with a one-on-one conversation and end up with a Complete Website Solution that includes all the bells and whistles.
No templates are used and no corners are cut. We'll work within your budget to get your site up and running and found by your potential customers. Contact us today to find out more!
12:50 pm - February 22, 2008
Site statistics can provide you with information beyond how many visitors you had (aka, the Web Counter). When you get a website set up, you want to know more than which pages are most popular on your site.
How about your visitor path through your site? On what page did a visitor enter your site, which pages did they visit, and on what page did they exit? How long did they stay on your site? How are they arriving at your site - from what outside sites are they finding you? Using what keywords in Google are visitors finding you?
Let's go beyond that - WHERE are your visitors from? No, not from what site - but from what country, state, and city are they being routed? What browser and operating system are they using? What is their screen resolution? And, most importantly, is your website optimized for those settings? Site statistics can provide you with answers to crucial site design questions.
Site statistics can provide you with answers to important site design questions - including how best to optimize your site, knowing who your visitors are, and know how your visitors are using your website.
AlternaSite offers an easy-to-use site statistics service - along with Website Design and Search Engine Optimization - as part of our Complete Website Solution for you. Contact us to find out more.
11:29am - February 14, 2008
How important is Search Engine Optimization? It depends on whether or not you want people to find you! If you are a couple getting married and you want an informative, custom-made website to provide information to your guests - you can include your url (say, steveandjessica07.com for example) in your save the dates and give guests hotel and travel information, registry links, a wedding party list, and info on how you met! However, SEO might not be as important to you, as you are really not looking for people outside your circle to find your site.
On the other hand, if you are a small business or similar who is trying to get your message out to the public, SEO is very important! You want users who are searching on Google.com to find your website when they search for keywords that match you!
If you provide Shoe Repair in Boston... then we want users to find you when they search for shoe repair in Boston! If you give hang gliding lessons in Upstate New York, we want users searching for "Utica Hang Gliding" to find your site!
SEO is very tricky, there is no question. There are literally billions - nearly 9 billion, to be exact - of websites on the WWW. Everyone is jockeying for position. You have to use tips and tricks to get your site listed. Some categories are more competitive than others. Some businesses BUY certain keywords so their sites show up in the paid section when searched.
We can help you optimize your existing site for SEO - or build your site from scratch and incorporate SEO best practices throughout the process. Contact us to find out more.
3:01pm - January 23, 2008
Website Design isn't easy - you want an attractive site that is also functional and easy to use. Often, the "attractive" and the "easy" get in the way of each other. They butt heads. The graphic designer comes up with beautiful layouts that are unnavigable! The hardcore computer guy knows his code, but has no eye for design!
What you need is someone who can do both - who can speak both languages. Someone who can act as a bridge between the aesthetic and the technical. Coding and navigation combined with usability and attractiveness. Simple, functional, pleasant, and easy to use.
Let's look at some good designs:
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Google.com - can you imagine a site more simple and easy to use? No wonder they are so popular!
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Let's say you are a restaurant - you want people to get a feel for the vibe of your establishment, you want them to know where you are and how to contact you, you want them to know what's on the menu, and you want a simple site to convey all of that info. Perfect: FrankRestaurant.com
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Another example of a site that is attractive, makes information readily available to the user, and makes navigation easy: Hotel Gymnas
How about some bad designs?
Time.com has an article on the Five Worst Websites! Included are the dating site eHarmony.com, the omnipresent online invitation site Evite.com, digital signature annoyance Meez.com, once-cool, now full of spam-and-bots social networking site Myspace.com, and weird virtual world site SecondLife.com.
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What do you NOT want to do? You don't want to make users WORK for their information. On Marines.com, the website of the US Marines, you have to mouse over or even click blindly just to navigate around the site! They don't tell you what is behind the navigation elements (perhaps as a ploy to inflate pageviews? naahhhh). You want people to know what they are clicking.
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Here is another example of blind navigation: Custom Staffing Inc. Tell people what you have available, don't make them work for it!
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Companies can go wayyyy too far with their designs, too. If you are a tool company, you want to present your image as strong, you want to list the tools you make and reasons why they are superior, and you want to enable the user to figure out how to buy those tools. Or, you can use a way over-the-top flash site that is difficult to navigate - and NOT get your simple message out... like these guys! MeyerTool.com
Let's get started on your clean, informative, useful site today! Contact us to find out more.
10:45am - January 30, 2008
How much do you need? How big is your site? How much traffic do you anticipate?
Large sites with hundreds of pages and big files and images need dedicated hosting. But smaller, informative websites - probably 90% of the websites on the web - can easily get by with a shared hosting plan that starts at under $4 per month!
And, there is no need to buy big right away - because you can always expand your hosting contract if necessary. If we build your website and it starts off small, but then some of our SEO best practices kick in and word gets around and traffic soars - we can always expand your hosting capabilites. It's a nice problem to have!
We can help you with hosting plans - and lots more. Contact us with your questions and to find out more today!
See some example sites:
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AlternaSite
Complete Website Solutions
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