Front Page Slide Details

The front page slide is a nifty way to display up to 10 mini "bits" of text and pictures in a rather compressed space.  Because a website visitor can interract with it, its a nice drawcard to have, especially on a front page.  Use it to show case your favourite products, some of your package deals, or perhaps a quick series of facts/figures related to your business.  Visitors will likely read this content - they can't help themselves while playing with it for a minute or two!

Extension type	Content Display
Extension name	Front Page Slide
BWD Configuration cost	$15.00 per "slide" in the extension (maximum of 10)

Details Required

We need to know how many slides you want and what you want in each slide.

SEO Efforts Make Clients

If you have a website, invest some money up front to ensure that you have several ways to publish articles, contents, tips & tricks quickly and easily.  This will do two things.

• Provide more info to visitors - they will see that you have broad experience in your industry.  It reassures them that you are a solid, serious business as people like websites that offer free tidbits of advice.  It won't lose you business, but they do like to see helpful stuff.
• It will increase your search engine rankings.  Search engines consume text and only text - in text or it didn't happen as far as a search engine is concerned.  The easier it is for you to publish text, the better search engine rankings you will get.

A blog setup (whether Joomla! or something else like WordPress) will do the job.  A wiki is an excellent choice if you are planning on writing many articles that you want to use (or have used) as a resource - think of a mini WikiPedia.

Text vs. Images

Images, image galleries and sliding/animated gadgets really catch a visitor's eye and keep them engaged for an extra minute or two, which is always a good thing. But never discount the importance of a "textually rich" website.  The aim of the game is balance - pictures to please and break up "walls of text", but enough relevant, on point text that will still get you good search engine rankings.

Don't make the mistakes of:

• using images in place of text for headings
• using images everywhere for your business name - make sure your business name appears in text, even if it is only on the front page
• having pages with nothing but images on them, unless its a very large image gallery

Does Your Website Have a Job Description?

Ok, so this will sound a little odd - do you know what your website's function in your business is?  An "e-brochure" to show what you do?  Is its destiny is to become an online store, selling directly from the internet?  A resource that contains support content, FAQs and other instructive information?  Most websites are e-brochure websites - a soft sales point to collect leads from the internet (e.g. people searching for "Moorooka Painter"), some text and images to show that you know what you're doing and reassure the visitor, then a contact form so they can get in contact if they want to.  In this case, you only need about 4-5 pages.  Your website will probably cost less than $1,500.

If you want a "functional" website that serves up information, offers downloads or has other "tools" that do specific "jobs", then its going to be more expensive.  Before going down this road, make certain that you will use the tools.  Don't bother keeping up with the Joneses - if you can make use of tools on your website - do it.  If they are there to 'look good', don't bother - there are better and cheaper ways to make your site look amazing.

Repetitive Q & A's

Do you repeatedly ask the same questions when taking on a new job?  What's the address? What type of room is it?  How big are those foundations?  What sort of colours did you have in mind?

If you do ask these sorts of questions, consider getting a custom contact form that asks these questions.  If you have a general contact form (name, phone number, message), that's fine - but if you have a contact form that says "get a quote" or something similar, people will use it.  They will answer these questions for you, so that when you call them back, you are spending less time to provide a better service - you have the information already.

Contact forms are a very useful tool to cut down the amount of phone time you have to spend on a new job.

Repetitive Answers

Do you answer the same questions over and over on the phone?  Yes, we are certified.  No, we can't start immediately - our lead time is usually 2 weeks.  Yes, we do residential call out work. No, we can't code VBA systems.  Yes, we do website design.

If you find yourself in this situation, considering using an FAQs extension.  FAQ stands for "Frequently Asked Questions" and is a very common thing on the internet.  Many web-savvy people (most people under 35 are reasonably web savvy these days) actively look for FAQs, because they know most of the questions they have will probably be answered there.

So if you find yourself answering the same 5, 10 or 50 questions over and over again, get an FAQ extension.  They aren't expensive and may just save you a bucket of time from week to week.