Recent Blog

Building a Strong Digital Foundation as a New Business

Building a strong digital foundation sets a new business up for success through online interactions that can boost branding, marketing, and sales. But many new companies actually struggle with this, even though it is easier than ever, and with modern tools focused on...

Game-Changing Tools when Running a Small Business

If you are looking for a way to automate tasks, as well as ways to enhance your communication or even better your customer experience, then you have come to the right place. This guide will show you what you can do to try to optimize your business, so you can make...

10 Ways to Improve Your Business Offering

Improving your business offering doesn't always mean doing something huge and dramatic, but more often, it's about making changes that make your product or service more usable and easier to understand. You also want to ensure that it's more enjoyable to use. The best...

See more Business Tips

The post The Biggest Causes Of Online Shopping Cart Abandonment first appeared on DFW Website Designers - 817.247.6003.

Recent Blog

Building a Strong Digital Foundation as a New Business

Building a strong digital foundation sets a new business up for success through online interactions that can boost branding, marketing, and sales. But many new companies actually struggle with this, even though it is easier than ever, and with modern tools focused on...

Game-Changing Tools when Running a Small Business

If you are looking for a way to automate tasks, as well as ways to enhance your communication or even better your customer experience, then you have come to the right place. This guide will show you what you can do to try to optimize your business, so you can make...

10 Ways to Improve Your Business Offering

Improving your business offering doesn't always mean doing something huge and dramatic, but more often, it's about making changes that make your product or service more usable and easier to understand. You also want to ensure that it's more enjoyable to use. The best...

See more Business Tips

The post How to Structure Your Online Business first appeared on DFW Website Designers - 817.247.6003.

Recent Blog

Building a Strong Digital Foundation as a New Business

Building a strong digital foundation sets a new business up for success through online interactions that can boost branding, marketing, and sales. But many new companies actually struggle with this, even though it is easier than ever, and with modern tools focused on...

Game-Changing Tools when Running a Small Business

If you are looking for a way to automate tasks, as well as ways to enhance your communication or even better your customer experience, then you have come to the right place. This guide will show you what you can do to try to optimize your business, so you can make...

10 Ways to Improve Your Business Offering

Improving your business offering doesn't always mean doing something huge and dramatic, but more often, it's about making changes that make your product or service more usable and easier to understand. You also want to ensure that it's more enjoyable to use. The best...

See more Business Tips

The post What Are the Main Uses of Using a Domain and Social Media Name Checker? first appeared on DFW Website Designers - 817.247.6003.

Not Checking Email Can Be a Good Thing

About five years ago, I read a book by Julie Morgenstein called, “Never Check Your Email in the Morning.” In that book, it prioritizes that you should only check your email at certain times of the day and that email can be a distraction. Of course, that book was written long before we got more addicted to our smartphones.

Now between Twitter, Facebook, email and social media, our entire society has become a group of people who do nothing but look down and study their phones. I go to restaurants and see people eating together but not talking with one another but texting and pulling email on their phones. It took this unplanned experiment for me to realize that checking my email all the time is not good and rude to most around me. Furthermore, I realize I can get more done when I am not distracted by email on my phone.

It’s been two weeks and this experiment has changed my ability to communicate with those I was with. I now can read at the gym without being distracted. It has given me more productive in my work and allows me to focus more on the tasks at hand.

So I decided not to fix it.

I no longer check email on my phone.

Why I No Longer Check Email on my Phone

This little experiment has made me wonder what other elements can I cut out of my life? I suffer from ADD so anything that routinely distracts me needs to be examined. Can I schedule other parts? Perhaps social media, maybe telephone calls, other people that I work with?

I’m not telling you that you shouldn’t check your email, nor am I saying you probably shouldn’t check your email on your phone, but for me, I have found it completely liberating to no longer have access to email all the time. “I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

Are you addicted to email? What other business elements do you do in access?

The post Why I No Longer Check Email on my Phone first appeared on DFW Website Designers - 817.247.6003.

It’s time to consider an additional business landing page.

What is a Business Landing Page?

Nowadays most of my clients have a good website (or at least if I build them one). Now they need help with ads, promotions, email lists, or running social media campaigns. In that line of thinking, a single page landing page is easy to optimize and rank well on Google. The team at Leadpages, a company that specializes in conversions has this to say.

Because landing pages are designed to convert, one of the key advantages of landing pages is their ability to bring traffic to the next stage of the sales funnel. No other webpage has this kind of targeted approach, which means landing pages can truly be your digital marketing lifesaver.

Big SEO and Lead Gen Companies Use Landing Pages

Over the years, I have connected with SEO and lead generation companies. Let me give you a little secret. Call it a behind-the-scenes tip, which will help bring the discussion of landing pages to the forefront. After these high dollar companies sell you a lead generating packages, they immediately go to their office and have their staff create 20 or 30 landing pages that they quickly index and optimize. These landing pages generate leads which they then pass back to you the external client.

So my advice to you today is to consider an additional landing page or two, to help grow your leads for your small business.

So here comes my call-to-action. If you cannot build these landing pages for yourself, DFW Website Designers sells landing pages that are optimized for your particular business for a flat fee of $597. Or if that is too much money, we also rent landing pages turnkey for $49.97 a month.

Whether or not you take us up on this great deal, you should really consider a landing page for your small business.

How have landing pages helped your small business?

The post What’s a Landing Page & Do I Need One? first appeared on DFW Website Designers - 817.247.6003.

Electronic shopping was introduced back in 1979 when English inventor Michael Aldrich connected a modified TV to a transaction-processing computer via telephone line and opened the information systems for secure data transmission. This technology became the foundation on which the eCommerce as we know it was built.

Today, eCommerce is used on a daily basis and living without it seems just complicated and inconvenient. The new technologies and innovations are continuously changing and exponentially improving the user experience and safety which, on the other hand, results in staggering eCommerce growth.

eCommerce paves the way for the new methods of making money that weren’t available before. For instance, dropshipping – a mode of product fulfillment that was only available to big corporations, is now something that anyone can do from the comfort of their own home. The best dropshipping products are usually purchased from Chinese marketplaces, such as AliExpress and Alibaba and resold for a markup.

By the end of 2018, the global eCommerce sales will reach approximately $2.8 trillion and in 2021 they will hit $4.5 trillion. With eCommerce evolving at a rapid pace, it can be hard to keep up with the latest trends. We here at Subscriptionly, keep a close eye on all things related to online sales and thought we’d share some 60 odd e-commerce stats and trends to get you ready for 2018/19.

The Future of eCommerce

This infographic originally appeared here. Republished with permission. 

The post 60 Stats & Trends that Will Define the Future of eCommerce [Infographic] first appeared on DFW Website Designers - 817.247.6003.

Why Your Business Needs to Be on Facebook

#2 1.47 billion people use Facebook (as of 2nd quarter 2018) and it costs your business nothing but time to build a business fan page.

Now I could stop right here and end this conversation as that is enough evidence to convenience you that you need a Facebook business page business owners. But before I stop, go read Scott Ayres’ Top 10 Benefits of a Facebook Business Page.

#3 It’s Very Low Cost Marketing to Be on Facebook

In Scott’s article above he mentions the ability to actually market to a very, very, “Did I say very?” specific demographic for an extremely low cost. You, of course, cannot market to this demographic without having a business fan page, thus you have to be on Facebook. Here is a video from which I got a new client by spending no more than $10 by boosting a promotion on my business Facebook fan page. Watch it below…

So if you don’t have a Facebook business page go create one now. Here is Facebook’s explanation on creating one.

Now if you need a great website to go with that fan page, call me at 817-247-6003. Who know I just might throw in a new business Facebook page for free!

The post Three Reasons Why Your Business Needs to Be on Facebook first appeared on DFW Website Designers - 817.247.6003.

Designing for Every Device You Can Access a Website On

From e-readers to smartphones to tablets, the consequences of responsive design are significant. Responsive design, also known as omnichannel design, is where web pages can detect the size of users’ screens and adjust the content on them automatically. Without it, some websites end up being very difficult to navigate. With 45% of total e-commerce purchases likely to be made on mobile by 2020, it’s crucial to make sure your website is ready.

Keeping Customers Hooked

Even after a customer has made a purchase, many online stores now think about how to keep these people engaged enough to consider making another purchase in the future, creating a more regular relationship. Effective digital marketing means it’s no longer a large time commitment for even the smallest of businesses to set up a regular newsletter or keep social media platforms active. In this way, previous customers stay informed about new products or promotions. As one marketing professional put it in an interview: “For small brands it’s often all about the story – if they can differentiate themselves from the big faceless brands out there and connect with consumers on an emotional, more personal, level.” Regular communication provides a clear avenue to do this.

Bringing the Product to Life

Businesses’ product visualization brings the sense of the product in a more vivid way to potential clients. It’s likely you’ve come across this on larger retail websites already: many contain the option to say, view a video of how a dress moves on a live model as they’re walking. For businesses selling complex products, like vehicles or architecture, a 3D visualization can be the start of a conversation with a customer which can guide the final product towards exactly what the client wants.

Augmented and virtual reality is the natural next step of product visualization and there’s significant innovation going on in this area already. Users of the interior design app Hutch take a picture of the room they’re trying to style, swipe through ‘design filters’ and then finalize their products within the preselected theme. Meanwhile, through Avametric, shoppers can try on clothes virtually, using the company’s ‘clothing-fit’ technology.

Future-Proofing Your Online Business

All of this can seem overwhelming for a small business owner on a limited budget, but there are ways you can incorporate these three trends into your business. It’s easy to check whether your web pages look ok on a mobile, and keeping in touch with existing customers is a great way to find out what they like and dislike about your products. Even for product visualization, every shopper appreciates plenty of photos of the product, and free returns if it ends up not living up to the promise. In such a competitive online landscape, it’s important to do whatever you can to ensure your online business stands out!

Featured image by NeONBRAND on Unsplash.

The post Is Your Website Ready For The Upcoming Trends In Online Commerce? first appeared on DFW Website Designers - 817.247.6003.

Web Design for Color Blindness – What is CVD?

CVD is the inability to distinguish blue, red and green streams of light. The most common form is red/green color blindness, where any colors that have red or green as part of them are muddled. It is caused by a mutation in the X chromosome, which is why men are more likely to be affected by the condition than women. Women, however, can be carriers of the genetic condition, without actually having any of the symptoms. Other types of CVD include Protan color blindness, which affects the ability to distinguish red light and Protanopia which affects the ability to distinguish blue and purple light.

How Does this Affect Web Design?

Web design is all about accessibility – creating a website that is simple to use, intuitive in the use buttons and functions. Having a site that is overly busy in pictures and information can put users off, and they will look elsewhere for the things that they need. When you are trying to convey a message, then it is important to use both colors and symbols that are easily distinguishable. Web design has advanced enormously since the 1980s, but even the oldest domains on the internet were designed with the customer’s needs in mind, this is good practice. Things like error messages are often put in red, but unless there are symbols next to them clarifying what is wrong, they can be missed if the website user has CVD.

Keeping Design Clean and Sleek

Keeping web design minimal and clean is aesthetically pleasing to the eye, but also helps users with CVD. Obviously, the color palette that you use is extremely important, but it is also good to be conservative in the choices you make. Using a limited amount of colors will look classic and timeless, and it will also help cut down any confusion. Some color combinations are particularly difficult for people with CVD, not just red/green. Green/brown, blue/grey and green/black can commonly cause problems too.

Instead of concentrating on color, instead, use different textures and patterns on block images to show contrasts. This is particularly useful when featuring infographics and graphs. It is also a good idea to place text next to important images, to clarify their meaning. That way it is easy to understand the information that is needed.

When you are designing a website, considering users with CVD can help make your website look clean, and helps to really focus on making the website content clear. You can’t rely on color to bring across the message that you’re trying to convey. A well-placed text will really help make your website user-friendly.

Feature image courtesy of Igor Miske via Unsplash.com

The post Web Design for Color Blindness first appeared on DFW Website Designers - 817.247.6003.

In storing files online, people nowadays rely much on cloud storages because aside from the convenience, storage sites now offer a bigger space per user. But have you ever bothered to ask yourself how secure is it to upload your files to these sites?

The most popular cloud storage available today is the Google Drive and its email platform, Gmail. (Who on earth doesn’t know Google?) One of the things these sites boast about their storage system is the security and privacy.

Wait… Did I just mention privacy? Perhaps it’s time to take a pause and discuss some dark facts and the pitfall of sharing files on Google.

How Secure is Secure?

Of course, before you signed up for these free cloud storages and file sharing apps, they bragged about their “A+” security. Isn’t it one of the reasons you trusted them with your precious files? We always fall for “Your privacy is our concern.” Before you answer “yes”, let us quickly go through this list and see if Google really lives up to their promises.

1. Terms of Service.

While Google assured their users that they retain ownership of any intellectual property rights of any file uploaded to their system, this statement seems to control those rights.

“When you upload, submit, store, send or receive content to or through our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content.

The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing you have added to Google Maps).”

Yeah, this sounds like no matter what you feel about it, once you have uploaded what’s yours, Google has the right to use it for “improving” their services. And don’t worry. Even if you delete your file and your account, Google can still continue to use the content. (Looks like there is no escaping the system.)

2.  Google has to comply with world governments.

Uh-oh. Even just hearing it makes you wonder. What is it for? Edward Snowden, a former NSA employee exposed that the government is spying on its people collecting telephone records from millions of Verizon customers. He also revealed that Google and Facebook made it easier for the government to collect data from their users through a program called Prism. They say it’s to detect possible terrorist attacks beforehand, but who would ever believe that?

3. Ownership of files can be transferred.

Careful! Transferring ownership to another person can be done as easy as 1, 2, 3, and this sometimes happens accidentally! For enterprises, yes, it’s prone to data leaks.

4. Send without sharing option.

One of the most critical parts of sending files via email is the sharing option. When you send a drive file to someone who does not have the permission to view it, there’s a “Send without sharing” option in Gmail. Otherwise, your file will become public.

5. “Wherever you are, we are there.”

Also known as, “One Account. All of Google”. Indeed, it is easier to manage your Google apps with just one account and password, but the downside of it is that you are more vulnerable to hacking. One account hacked, all of Google.

These are just some of the risks in using Google and probably all other cloud storage and file sharing platforms online. For Gmail, phishing is still one of the main security problems, so make sure to clean your inbox regularly and never click on suspicious links especially if you found them in your spam folder.

Since Google does not use client-side encryption, you might want to consider doing a pre-encryption setup using a third-party software on your computer before uploading your files. It is extremely important that you know the pros and cons before using any services on the Internet. Always remember: Your privacy, your responsibility.

The post Privacy at Risk: The Hidden Dangers of Google File Sharing first appeared on DFW Website Designers - 817.247.6003.