I’ll just qualify post this as a bit of a rant right off the bat. Cheap hosting is killing small businesses by tricking them into thinking that their $5 or $10 is such a good deal, they don’t need to do anything else online. I have had meetings with numerous small businesses that basically brag on how cheap their hosting is. However, not one of them brags about how much business, leads or sales their website is bringing in. Do you see the correlation?

Hosting a website, at least the disk space and bandwidth is becoming almost free from many large providers. But only hosting your website will get you few results in today’s Internet marketplace. With millions of new pages hitting the web every day, you need additional Internet marketing services, tools and strategies to stand out online.

Here are just some of the additional website marketing services you should be looking into adding to your monthly fees of having a website:

• SEO - Organic search engine optimization can move you up the search ranks and produce traffic
• PPC - Pay-per-click advertising allows you to target terms, specific areas and even track it’s performance
• Email Marketing - Using permission based email marketing to stay in front of your customers is a must due to it’s cost effectiveness and ability to be tracked. It takes just pennies!
• Analytics - Your website can report to you just about everything going on with it. Data is king, leverage it!
• Business Blogging - Roll out new content, increase SEO, establish expertise, connect with customers and build a following.

Here at Five, we will never have a $10 monthly hosting fee or anywhere near that. We offer a monthly managed service that combines web hosting with a content management tool, web analytics (stats), support and basic SEO. From there we have further marketing services to customize what is best for our clients. It’s not our interest in hosting 10,000 websites that move little business, we’re into quality websites that make a difference to their owners.

Thanks for allowing me to rant.

Graphic designer David Airey, from across the pond, put out a great post today on elements your blog should contain/display to welcome first time readers and obviously turn them into long time readers. David points out that while you have been blogging for weeks, months or years; the visitor might be reading your blog for the first time ever.

Since my niche in blogging is more focused to business blogging I thought I would outline David’s points (originally from Problogger) and also add some small business blogging angles to it.

• Why did you start your blog? The story of how, when and why you started the blog can help readers connect with you.
• How is it designed to be used? An increasing number of people understand what a blog is and how it operates, but some readers may not, particularly non-tech savvy audiences. Explain concepts like comments and any features you’ve installed that might take a little describing.
• How can users connect / subscribe? Explain how to use RSS or how to subscribe via email. It’s amazing how many people don’t understand this.
• How can readers get more involved? If you have forums or a community area to get readers more involved, highlight them.
• Where should readers start? Point new readers to some starting points to read.

My additions based on business blogging:

• How can a reader work with you? While I’m not a fan of having a blatant post asking for business (ex: we are the greatest, we are the best, must use us!), I think having an easy to find “contact us” link or even using a soft sell is OK in the closing. Having a finishing sentence of “If you are looking for specific service here help, then contact us today” or “Need our expertise? Holler at us.”.
• Do you list your affiliations, qualifications or partners? If you’re using your blog to build trust and credibility then show some of the credible partners you have or associations you are a part of. Industry associations, civic groups and chambers are all examples of this.

With any business blog, new or old, there is always room for improvement. I need to implement some of these items myself for the five spot blog, especially as my amount of content grows.

I read a USA Today article this week about small businesses using sandwich board signs to attract more business and the issues some city governments/councils had with them “cluttering up” the streets. More businesses are looking to increase the ways that they attract customers past their existing signage in these economic times and the sandwich board is one of the cheap basics. I’ll stay out of the politics of the article, but it got me thinking about the online equivilant of a sandwich board.

So what is the Online Marketing Sandwich Board?
I don’t have the exact answer … but I do have the following to consider.

A Single Page Website
I do believe that small business can get away with just one very informative page for a website. There are obvious drawbacks, but simple done the right way can go a long way. You can have an easy to use layout covering who you are, what you do, specialties, hours/availability, map and how to contact you. This web firm has a great one page website. I know there are other services for one page websites out there for small businesses.

Small Business Blog
Many businesses today skip a website and go straight to business blogging. This St. Paul cookie company is one example and there are many others. With free sub domains through Wordpress and Blogger you can have a free site up and running in minutes.

Online Directories
In some industries like restaurants, some small business are utilizing the abilities of a profile page on Yelp, Dex or another web directory as a home page/website. With the ability to add text, photos, logo, hours and more and built-in maps, directions and reviews, these sites can have everything a business wants. Most of these offer a pretty clean URL to advertise offline, an example is: http://www.yelp.com/biz/la-belle-vie-minneapolis

Social or Networking Websites
Depending on your style or type of business maybe you can get buy with a LinkedIn profile, Facebook or one of the many other flavors of web 2.0. Many bands and music peeps have used MySpace for quite some time as their home on the web.

Do you have anymore to add? There are more and will certainly be more basic and entry level web tools coming online this year and it will be interesting to see what grabs hold. My opinion is to develop a great website and then utilize some of the basics outlined as landing pages to drive more traffic to your website.

In landing a website redesign project for a window washing company we knew it had to be a clean web design, streak free content and a clear focus on local search results. Ryan Doliber, the owner of Sparkling Clean Window Washing has been in business for a few years and realized it was time to move up in the web world and decisively differ his brand appearance from the competition.

Sparkling Clean Website Before

When launching his business in 2005, Ryan utilized a do-it-yourself website building tool (Yahoo Sitebuilder) and put together the site himself. It was a web presence, better than nothing, that covered the basics but it lacked the branding, usability and search engine optimization Ryan truly wanted.

Sparkling Clean’s Website Redesign

As you can see from above and in visiting the website, we pushed things to a new level. Our website redesign was able to accomplish:

• Moving the website to a new domain that contained the business name for better branding
• A new interface design with a more inviting color scheme and stronger visual impact
• Clear content sections for home window cleaning and business services
• Best web practices, proper site structure and page structure
• An easy to use free estimate form with date and time requests
• Focused local search optimization through the use of geographical terms like Minnesota, Twin Cities, Minneapolis and lists of other main cities served.

Overall, we’re very pleased with the website redesign outcome and so is our client. Visit the new website and think about requesting a free estimate if you’re in the Minneapolis area.

If your thinking it’s time to clean up your website, contact us about a website redesign for your site today.

For me there is nothing better than hitting up some of the great CSS gallery websites as well as the different CSS and web resources out there. I’m one of those in a constant push to find new techniques, angles, connections and develop new lines of thinking.

That said, I’m not a radical or into confusing a user for the sake of “cool”. I am however after the almighty goal of creating easy to use web interfaces and designs that make an impression so my client can win business by being remembered (branding ya say!).

So today I came across a new resource when viewing the updated screenshots on CSS Mania. Take a peak at Noupe if you like posts/articles with tutorials, links and examples galore.

Here are 3 articles that I thought rocked. Glad I found another source of creative knowledge, from another source of inspiration.

• As a fan of CSS, how about 50+ Creative Examples & Tutorials in CSS, there are some great links to some great info
• If you are a fan of backgrounds and want a good collection of latest, greatest, coolest and crazy … then these 63 website backgrounds and tutorials will satisfy you. bonus: Char at Keystrokes highlighted 13 texture resources that come in handy for fresh backgrounds too.
• Want more than 63 of something? How about 70 impresive website headers.

Have a great weekend.