Tag Archives: website design loudoun county

Why Your Small Business Needs to be on Facebook

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If you haven’t jumped into any social media as a small business owner, Facebook is a great place to start. As part of your business-to-consumer marketing, it’s a must. 

Your customers are there. According the Facebook statistics site,  there are more than 800 million active users of Facebook, and more than half (52%) of them log on every day. That is a staggering statistic! There are only about 311 million people in the United States right now, so the reach of Facebook is truly amazing. Of course, you don’t want to reach 800 or even 311 million people, you want to reach the local people who come to your business for a haircut, a meal, flowers or a dental exam. Those potential customers are on Facebook – probably right now! 

Word of mouth/viral marketing. Facebook is a medium that allows for instant sharing. It’s easy for your fans to click the ‘share’ button to show their friends what special offer or interesting news you have. In addition, by simply commenting on or liking a post of yours, your fans share with their friends via their newsfeed and ticker. 

Feedback. Facebook is a fantastic tool for gauging customer feedback. Do not be put off because someone might write something negative about your business/product/service. It is the perfect opportunity to show all of your customers (and potential customers) how you handle the glitches that crop up in every business. Facebook also allows you to post announcements, events, specials, etc and the ability to track what your fans like to see, attend and do. 

It’s free. It’s true! Facebook is absolutely free in terms of cash outlays. Caveat (you knew this was coming, didn’t you?): Setting up, and more importantly, maintaining a Facebook presence for your business takes time. To have a good, interactive Facebook presence, truly connecting with your fans, requires more than a rote listing of specials. You need to do research on your customers and craft posts that are engaging to your fans. With the changes to Facebook, many people’s newsfeeds are set to the default “Highlighted stories first,’ which means if you don’t post often enough, your posts just won’t be seen by your fans. 

So in the end, Facebook is a terrific tool for the small business owner looking to attract their local customers. If you’re looking for more information, feel free to call me here at Nova Creative media at anytime – I’d be happy to sit down with you and walk you through the Facebook experience!

6 Steps to Website Credibility

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As a small business owner, you may only have one shot to impress customers and clients with your website. The following are basic observations we see violated constantly. A more in-depth look at website credibility can be found at Stanford University’s Stanford Persuasive Tech Lab. 

Content: It should go without saying that your content should be factual, easy-to-read, and error-free. Content IS king and it is surprising how many small businesses skimp on this crucial part of their website planning and execution. Visitors want to see what you have to say, not what you have copied and pasted from another source. 

Links: You need to be obsessive about checking the links on your website. Any broken links need to be repaired or taken down. 

Design: People do judge books by their covers, so believe us when we say they absolutely judge websites at first glance. We will go into design elements in another post, but here are a few basics: 1) Do not clutter your site with useless ‘stuff;’ 2) Invest in a template, if there is no budget for a designer 3) For DIYers, please follow the KISS (Keep It Short & Simple) principle. 

About Us: Is there an ‘us?’ A generic line or paragraph telling site visitors that you’re a three -year-old company located along the lovely banks of the Mississippi, founded by up-and-coming Internet phenoms will not fly.  Your potential customers want to know your name and your credentials. 

Contact: Essential to credibility is the ability of the website visitor to contact you for further information. Simply offering a web form to be filled out is not nearly enough. You must also offer a legitimate mailing address, a phone number and email address (and not your Hotmail or Yahoo email either). 

Privacy: If you don’t have a privacy policy, you need one. If you collect information on visitors to your site, you need to say so. If you offer newsletters and updates via email, you need to state whether those email addresses you collect will be shared or not. 

When just starting out, it’s not necessary to have all the bells and whistles. Your company didn’t begin big and at the top, and neither will your website. It will grow and evolve, just as your business will.