Monthly Archives: July 2011

It’s all about the title and description, baby.

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Like a 24-hour diner with a glowing neon sign welcoming weary travelers, the title and description of your website are just as important in encouraging burnt-out web surfers to come in, stay awhile and try the poutine (it’s delicious).

These days, there are so many ways your website can be shared. (And let’s face it, your website should get around. It’s a strapping, attractive, perfectly healthy website that needs to stretch its legs, see the world, make new friends.) Fans can promote your page on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, anyone can see your search engine results, and bloggers can chatter all about your staggering genius to their loyal readers. Even as new technologies arrive (ahem, Google+), the same information is pulled from your site to display to the whole world: A website title and description.

These two little details  are the difference between a website that glows like bionic kryptonite or sputters and fails. Writing an engaging title and description begins with knowing your audience, continues with communicating a benefit, and ends with a little magnetic flair.

Know your audience: Whether you’re an interior decorator or a Tae Kwon Do master, you have to know your audience and how to engage them.  Ask yourself: what are my customers looking for?  What interests them? How do they want to be pursued?

Communicate a benefit: Identify the need your customer is searching to fill. What can you do for them? Why should you be the one to do it?

It’s all about you: Add some life to your description with appealing words or funny quips. Sprinkle your sparkling personality. Go ahead and use searchable keywords as you find appropriate, but remember: no one wants to cuddle with a robot. In the same way, your customers will be more likely to click on your site if they get an inkling of your good-nature and accesability.

Let’s get technical: Keep it short and sweet. Follow the 140-character rule, as most descriptions will be cut off if they’re any longer. And, be sure to have a unique title and description for each and every page on your website.

This, plus the startling, artistic beauty of your finely-designed website, is all it takes to bring ‘em in, time and time again.

 

 

Quick Notes on Google+

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Since the recent (and partial) launch of Google+, many of our clients have approached us for advice on setting up brand pages for their business, much as is the common practice with Facebook.

Our advice is to wait. Google has stated that they are coming soon, so we would suggest that you hold out for the real deal. We don’t advise setting up another user account on Google to try to make a business page now, as you will likely run into problems when you want to use actual Business pages.

Trust us on this one. Better to wait. And frankly, few people understand or get much use out of the service yet, so you’re not missing out.

What we do think is a good idea is to go ahead and add the Google +1 button to your pages, alongside the Twitter and Facebook buttons you may already have. It’s a relatively simple change that could start driving traffic and, potentially, helping your ranking in Google.

When we have a more complete picture on Google+ Brand Pages, we’ll be sure to post an update here.

Designing Responsive Layouts with SimpleGrid

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As part of the redesign of our website, I promised to share some of my more geeky notes. The first topic I’d like to cover is our use of the SimpleGrid framework to lay out our website.

SimpleGrid is just one of three frameworks that we actually borrowed from. The first was HTML5 Boilerplate, which is jam packed full of good ideas and best practices, but needs to be thoroughly considered before use. The other was 320 and Up.

For today, I just want to focus on how I made a simple, responsive layout for one page of our site.

What’s New with Newsletters

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First our website, now our newsletter system—we’re all about modernization this month. Starting today, you’ll note a handful of new features to the Needmore newsletter mailing system.

The first update of note is a handy new vertical split window. Now you can see most or all of your email as you add content to it. Trust us, it’s a huge improvement on the old horizontal split!

Wait, there’s more! If you want to check out some of the other new enhancements, take a couple minutes (1:56 to be exact) to watch the video.

Twitter for Restaurants

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Many of our clients are restaurants, and many of our friends own restaurants as well, so we’re often asked for our opinions and suggestions on the matter.

A common refrain that we here is that a restauranteur doesn’t have time for Twitter. One bistro owner even implied that he wasn’t willing to make the choice between preparing dinner service and writing on Twitter. But that misses the point. Tweets are short, and you don’t need to put much thought into them. Just make it a habit.

For example, The Country Cat makes a fairly consistent habit of posting updates just before meal service, often highlighting daily food or drink specials. It takes little more than jotting a quick note on your cell phone. The timing is perfect because as they’re preparing dinner, we’re starting to get hungry. If we happen to peek at Twitter when we’re thinking about dinner, we’re likely to notice their message, and far more likely to go there to eat.

We’ve Redesigned… Responsively

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Welcome to our updated and refreshed website. It’s not a dramatic redesign—we did that in January. Rather, it’s an overhaul to make sure that we’re using all the best technology. Exactly the stuff that we recommend to our clients, in fact.