How to Choose a Web Design Agency to Build Your eCommerce Site

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These days, anyone with a computer and an Internet connection can build a website. The question is, what kind of website will you get? Will your new website function well and be able to expand as your company grows? Your website is often the first impression that clients have of your business, so you need a professional web design agency—not some guy who pirated a copy of Dreamweaver with a stack of business cards using a VistaPrint template.


There are a few things which you need to check before signing a contract and handing over a deposit—especially if you are building an eCommerce site. Below are some of the key points to check before deciding which design agency to use.

Check the agency’s design portfolio.

Whenever you’re choosing a web design company, make sure you check that they have actually worked on similar projects in the past. You don’t want to be an inexperienced designers “guinea pig.” It’s a situation that too often leads to disappointing results, unfinished sites or incomplete projects.
Choosing a web design agency with the right experience is especially important when you’re looking for an eCommerce provider. Don’t fall into the trap of using a “design” agency when what you really need is a development company. eCommerce sites are very technology-heavy with complex coding and specialized systems, so you need an agency that understands the potential problems that come with this type of site.
To avoid hiring a designer to do a developer’s job, check an agencies portfolio to ensure it has many examples of functional/tech-heavy websites and not just logos, flyers and print design.

Ask whether the web design agency will be building a website or customizing a template.

When choosing a web company, be sure to check whether they build from scratch or customize templates. There is a big price difference! Cheaper solutions usually use free, out of the box software packages and design templates in order to allow them to quickly create a site. More expensive design bids are usually from companies offering custom software designed exclusively for your needs. Neither solution is “right” or “wrong.” It will depend entirely on your needs, but you definitely want to know what you are buying. You don’t want to end up paying for custom when what you’re really getting is customization.

Check that the design agency is big enough to cope with the work.

Find out if the company has a technical team or is a one-man shop. Many web ‘companies’ actually only consist of one designer and one developer. Over the years there have been many scenarios where the only technical contact at the company has left leaving all clients stranded. The other reason to know the true size of the staff is to ensure that your website will be built by the designer and not sent out to someone else.

Check that the design work is carried out in-house rather than outsourced.

Be wary of a false sales pitch with nothing to back it up. There are lots of ‘middle men’ in this industry and agencies who can outsource the entire project. Don’t fall for a slick PowerPoint presentation! Make sure you meet members of the team and if possible go visit your developer’s office to see exactly who you are commissioning to do your project. Quite often those who outsource a project overseas will be reluctant for you to visit their office and meet the team.
Although there are many pitfalls when choosing a company to build you an eCommerce website, if you get it right then the benefits are great. Making the right choice can lead to success, low overheads and a website to be proud of. So when choosing which company to use, remember the checklist above and ensure that you ‘do it once – do it right’.
Visualsoft UK are the North East’s leading eCommerce website specialists. Check out their portfolio of over 300 websites they have built already on their website at www.visualsoft.co.uk 

9 Email Designs for Content-Heavy Newsletters

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I’ve recently been working on a project to design a daily email newsletter that will be powered by MailChimp’s RSS to Email option. In some ways using RSS limits the design, however by automating the email campaign the site owner can focus on creating content rather than delivering content.


The challenge for this email campaign is to create a template that can accommodate between 4 and 8 articles with photos and summaries, a spot for advertising, branding options and of course space for all the “required” information to be can-spam compliant. Oh yeah, the content all needs to fit together elegantly and encourage users to take action by visiting the site, bookmarking an article, etc. What’s the best way to fit that much information in an email and keep it organized?


I went looking for inspiration on Emailium, and found a collection of content-heavy email designs proving that it is indeed possible to fit a mountain of information into a document no more than 600 pixels wide. Want to be inspired, too? Check out this list of email designs for content-heavy newsletters and publishing sites.

Email Design Ideas for Publishing Websites

I think what I found most amazing about these email designs is that, for the most part, they look like mini-sites—complete with top-level navigation. It’s great for branding and also gives the user more opportunities to click-through to the website.

Email Looks Like Its Website

The Bang repeats the same trendy look from the website in the email newsletters they send to subscribers. This is a good example of carrying branding through all aspects of a site design. It’s also a way to re-use resources which is good for site owners on a budget as it usually takes less time (ie: billable hours) to resize a design that to create something new from scratch.

Email Design With Layers of Content

Sky News establishes a hierarchy of information by arranging stories in layers with featured content on top. Again, this email layout is one often favored by content-heavy websites and online magazines.

News Layout With a Dark Background

ShowBiz (another sky.com property) features something rarely seen in email campaigns with lots of content—a dark background. Although not recommended for text-heavy webpages or email layouts, it works for this template because the email relies on photos with very little text.

Email Design With Room for Ads

MotocycleUSA created an email template using two columns with space for featured content and advertisements.

A Two-Column Email Layout for Featured Content

MOMA’s email layout features a large feature photo to let users know which content is most important. The secondary column in this design is narrow enough not to be distracting, but wide enough to keep the text legible.

Email Design Lets Photos Tell the Story

With a focus on entertainment and shopping, it’s no wonder that InStyle lets photos do most of the work. What really works well in this design is the extra white space which gives the layout a magazine feel so that the content doesn’t appear cramped.

Email Design Puts the Focus on Text

Trading Market knows their audience. By putting the focus on the text, they’ved designed an email that will be easy to read across most browsers, email programs and on smart phones—great for business people on the go.

Simple Email Design That’s Easy on the Eyes

Wolfgang’s Vault is easy on the eyes, as my dad used to say. One-column designs run the danger of feeling static, but this layout ads interest with square photos, reminiscent of album covers and perfect for a concert-themed website.

Traditional Email Newsletter That Still Looks Fresh

The Edenews eNewsletter uses the same layout as many email templates that come “free” from your email service provider. It’s a predictable two-column layout with articles on one side and short blurbs on the other. Yet, it doesn’t look stale or outdated. With a strong header and eye-catching navigation, Edenews has managed to keep the look fresh while including lots of content to tantalize their readers.
All the email designs for this article were discovered on Emailium. Read more about the new email design showcase in our earlier article.

Free WordPress Plugins and Add-ons to Promote Your Blog On Autopilot

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There are WordPress addons available for just about any function — including automatic promotion of your blog posts! This article is specifically aimed at folks who are new to blog promotion or want to start their first website marketing campaign but aren’t sure where to begin. The great thing is, these plugins are so simple to set up, there’s absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t be using these tactics to increase your blog’s following.
Here’s a guide to some of the best WordPress plugins for automating your blog promotion tasks without spending a lot of money.

Plugins and Badges to Promote Your Blog on Twitter

In case you haven’t heard, Twitter is huge! As a blog owner, you really want to take advantage of that fact. Thankfully there are a huge number of free WordPress addons that’ll help you to do that.
For most of these plugins remember that you’re going to first need your own Twitter account at — build some followers by connecting with others in your niche, tweeting any of their posts that you find interesting, and replying to your followers to build relationships.

Tweet This

Instead of manually tweeting a link to your new blog posts — which is time consuming — plugins like Tweet This will automatically send the link to your Twitter followers. You’ll need to follow the instructions to set yourself up with your own Twitter application code but, once you have, this really is set and forget!

TweetMeme Button

The TweetMeme plugin lets your followers do your blog promotion for you. It adds an eye-catching tweet button in a prominent location at the top of every blog post, letting your readers share the link with friends if they find it interesting.

Tweet Old Post

Don’t leave your old posts out of your Twitter promotion plan — especially if you write about evergreen topics! Tweet Old Post is a plugin that makes it super easy to set up random tweets with links to your old posts at the interval you choose. You can also add tags to your tweets and exclude certain categories if you don’t want to tweet them out to your followers.

Promote Your RSS Feed for Extra Blog Traffic

Every blog comes with an RSS feed — this is simply a way to deliver your blog to people who want to keep up with what’s new. The more people you can get to subscribe to your RSS feed, the more traffic your blog should get.

FeedBurner

Feedburner is the popular Google-run service used by bloggers who want more stats on who is reading their RSS feed and how many subscribers they have. This isn’t a plugin, simply sign up and paste your blog URL in to instantly “burn” your feed. It’s simple and it’s well worth it! FeedBurner also provide all the buttons you need to promote your feed on your blog.

Plugins to Promote Your Blog on Facebook

Facebook has now become one of the most popular and most visited websites in the world, so it’s important to make sure you make use of this method of promotion! Here are some recommended WordPress addons for helping you to do that.

Simple Facebook Connect

When you create a Facebook page, Facebook will provide you with a number of ways to get people to “like” your page, including a simple button or a box that shows the faces of a selection of other people who like the page. Simple Facebook Connect provides a better way to integrate your blog with your Facebook page by automatically sending posts to your fan page, adding Like buttons, and letting people register or login using their Facebook credentials. This article goes into more detail about why I chose Simple Facebook Connect for my blogs.

Socialize

The Socialize plugin isn’t just great for Facebook, it can add links to a whole range of other services such as Digg, Twitter, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn and more! It’s well worth having as it’ll help you place convenient “like” buttons on the top of the post, and an extra box at the end of each post encouraging your readers to share it. When it comes to WordPress plugins for social media promotion, this one really does do a lot for your blog!
The good news is that you don’t even have to create a fan page for your site in order to have visitors “like” or “share” the page with their friends. There really is no excuse for not using a plugin that allows them to do so!
All of the WordPress addons mentioned in this article are completely free and, once set up, do all the hard work for you! So get going and install them on your blog — open it up to some new methods of promotion today. Do you use any free WordPress plugins for automated blog promotion? What about other social media badges? Share your tips below and we’ll go over paid plugins in a future article.

How Can a Marketer Take Advantage of Facebook’s New Send Dialog?

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Back in April, Facebook rolled out the Send button, a function that provided a simple and direct way for users to privately share content through the platform. Though it has not garnered as much attention as the Like button, this feature can be viewed a huge success considering that the social network says it has already been installed on more than 100,000 sites. Nearly two months later, Facebook has followed up the Send button with a new feature called Send Dialog. In this article, we will discuss the feature in more detail and explain how a marketer can take advantage of the Send Dialog to engage their audience.

Another Way to Plug Into the Facebook Experience

The Send Dialog function has much more in common with the Send button than the obvious. Both features are similar in that they allow users to share private information with others. However, Send Dialog goes one step further by giving users the ability to share content as private Facebook, group, or email messages. According to the social network itself, this feature is even better than the actual button from an integration standpoint because it enables developers to make conversation the core functionality of the website or app it is added to. We agree, but also want to add that the Send Dialog is just better all around, mainly because of its marketing potential.
Having the freedom to include a personal message with your link adds a new dimension to Facebook’s sharing feature. Some of the content you publish on your website is probably self explanatory. For example, if the content is an article with a descriptive title, a simple link could be all a visitor needs when sharing it with their friends or colleagues. On the other hand, a video that is only accompanied by a still preview image may require a little extra in the form of an explanation to convey its value to others. When looking at it from this perspective, the Send Dialog feature benefits the marketer by arming users with a more effective way to be advocates for their content, which it does by coupling a messaging element with the already powerful sharing component.

Use the Send Dialog Wisely

The Send Dialog function is it sort of like an email, and it would be best for a marketer to treat it as such. In fact, Facebook says that it is most appropriate in a situation where a user might share the information via email otherwise. The company warns that it should not be used to deliver impersonal communications like in-game status or invitations, citing that the “Requests” feature is still the best channel for such actions. For this reason, marketers may need to school their audience on how to use Send Dialog while stressing the importance of respecting the privacy of others.
Facebook’s new Send Dialog definitely appears to have a lot of potential. We can especially see it being useful for marketers with active audiences looking to add a new element to social sharing. The feature has already been implemented by a few popular websites, so its true potential should be revealed in the very near future.