Author: Leigh Wright

With COVID-19 on the forefront of all newscasts nowadays, it’s more important than ever for your business to have a website. Building a website to fit your brand can be hard sometimes. The first time you build a website for your business, there will probably be many flaws, but over time as you continue to update and improve the site, it will begin to look much better. Here are the top 5 mistakes we see small businesses make on their websites:

Too Much

A crowded website is never a good thing. Websites with too much text, colors or images tend to lose customers very quickly. In fact, if your website can not tell customers what they need to know about your business in a few seconds, they will leave. The information on your site needs to look nice and be easy to navigate through to give customers a good impression of your business.

Too Little

At the other end of the spectrum are websites with way too little information on them. Minimalism is a popular style right now, but you don’t want to do it the wrong way. You want customers to know what your business does and what you can do for them without leaving too much to the imagination. Never leave your customers guessing. That is not a good marketing strategy for your business, and might make your business seem untrustworthy. (Not to mention, Google standards recommend around 500 words on your service pages.)

Not Hiring a Professional

You should always hire a professional when building and updating your website. We all see the ads that advertise a quick and easy-to build-website that only costs $29.99 a month, but they are not reliable and have many flaws. (Also, when you read the fine print with these places, many of them own your website. That means that when you decide to stop paying them, your website goes away forever.) These websites are some of the least appealing visually and can’t be found in search engines. And if you’re not showing up on Google, what’s the point of having a website?

Also, it’s never a good idea to hire a “kid good with computers” to build your site. Web development requires a certain set of skills, and if your developer isn’t properly trained, your website will have many errors. A professional may cost more money up front, but it is well worth the investment. It will save time, credibility and customers in the long run.

Missing Your Target Audience

As a business owner, it is important to know who your target audience is and how to reach them. The way your website looks and feels will attract certain customers. For example, if you’re a retail boutique, you may want your website to appear bubbly and playful while a personal injury attorney may want a website to appear more serious.

You want your website to reach as many customers (or potential customers) as possible, but trying to combine too many styles is never a good idea.

Putting off SEO

At this moment you might be asking yourself, “What is SEO?”. SEO is search engine optimization and it is the process of increasing the quality and quantity of traffic to your website. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize why SEO is important – if someone searches for your product or service online and you don’t show up in those search results, then you are losing out on that business!

SEO is an ongoing process that includes employing several different techniques to help your website rank better. Some of these techniques include looking at and editing the backend code of your site, writing and labeling tags correctly, writing blogs, gaining backlinks, etc. A good SEO strategy that keeps you in the top of search results is well worth the investment. Company plug – Southern View Media is available to help you with anything your website may need. We are one of very few companies who offer SEO, and we can also help you to create a solid strategy for your business. Visit our website for more details.

March is International Women’s Month and celebrates the achievements of women from all over the world. There have been many outstanding women in history who have made a name for themselves and are extremely well known today, but there are also many women who have changed things by being in the background. Women’s history has long been overshadowed and it wasn’t until the early 20th century women were finally gaining the rights they deserved. However, we still have a long way to go.

(Un)Equal Pay

Female workers have never been paid the same as their male counterparts who do the same job. On average, women make 80.7 cents for every dollar that a man makes, and while the gap has gotten smaller over time, it is projected that women will not be paid the same in the United States until 2059. That’s almost 40 years from now! By that time, many people from my daughters’ generation will be only 10 years away from retirement age. California has the smallest wage gap at 10.9%; if you’re an average 16-year-old female in California, you’re already starting out $5704 behind your male counterparts. In states like Alabama and Louisiana, the gap is even larger. Louisiana actually has the largest wage gap in the country at 31.2%! In 28 states, the gender wage gap is larger than the national average. The wage gap is especially large for people of color, as the lowest average belongs to hispanic women, who make only 58% of a dollar that a man makes. Women with children are even more penalized, but the opposite is true for many fathers. The wage gap also tends to get bigger as women age. When you start an entry level job as a teenager, the gap is small, but over time as you move up the ladder, the wage gap widens.

(Un)Equal Opportunities

On top of unequal pay, many women are not given the same opportunities as men. One of the best examples is the lack of female CEOs. Fewer than than 30% of women are able to work their way up to the Vice President position in a company compared to the 70% of men who achieve this. Females are also the minorities in a variety of industries. Less than 25% of women work in the tech industry and a whopping 41% of these women end up leaving the industry! Entrepreneurship is the industry with the least females! Many females are scared to start their own businesses or corporations due to the fact that it is a male dominated field, and when they attempt to start the business they receive less money than a male would in investments and funding. Hollywood is another notable industry where women aren’t given an equal shot. The ratio of men to women working on sets is 5 to 1, and there are seven times more men writing scripts than women. Movements have certainly helped women gain more access and equality to many things. Over a century ago the women’s rights movement opened the doors to voting, more jobs and better education, and in the last couple years there have been continuous movements that have helped the wage gap grow smaller and the opportunities grow larger. In the future we hope to see complete equality, but until then we will continue to work towards it.

March is Women’s History Month, and part of this month is celebrating the achievements of the women who came before us. Women remained in the background of history until the early 20th century. But with the 19th Amendment and after, Women finally had access to education, voting rights, and more job opportunities, and were more determined than ever to prove themselves. Here are five things you might not have known women invented:

Kevlar

Kevlar is a material stronger than steel that is used to make bulletproof vests, hats, gloves, etc. It was invented by a woman named Stephanie Kwolek in 1966, while she was trying to make a light fiber for car tires at DuPoint. She earned the patent for it and worked with DuPoint to commercialize the product as a replacement for the steel in race car tires because of the fiber’s heat resistance.

Windshield Wipers

Living in one of the rainiest cities in America, I use my windshield wipers all the time. Windshield wipers make it easy to drop my daughter off at school and allow me to get to work without worrying about my view getting obstructed, so thank you Mary Anderson. Andersn invented windshield wipers in 1903! Many were skeptical and thought it was safer to drive when snow and rain obstructing the view and clearing with it the pull of a lever. The patent expired in 1920, but by then many drivers were using wipers. The first car company to use them was Cadillac, and many others followed soon after.

Monopoly

Monopoly is one of the world’s most loved board games, but the inventor is widely unknown. Elizabeth Magie created the game, originally called The Landlord’s Game, to spread the economic ideology of Georgism. She meant to teach the players about the unfairness of land grabbing, disadvantages of renting and the need for a single land value tax. Magie received a patent in 1904 and self-published the game in 1906. Thirty years later, Charles Darrow redesigned the board and the game’s message, and sold Monopoly to Parker Brothers, who bought the original patent from Magie for $500 and no royalties.

Liquid Paper

Liquid paper is one of the many items we use on a daily basis, and not many people know where it came from. Liquid paper was invented by Bette Nesmith Graham. She was a secretary before the delete key was invented and wanted a way to carefully cover her mistakes. She spent years trying to perfect the formula in her kitchen, and patented the product in 1958. Gillette bought her company twenty-one years later for $47.5 million.

Computer Algorithms

Ada Lovelace has been called the world’s first computer programmer. She is credited with writing the world’s first machine algorithm for an early computer that existed only on paper.

Women have proved to be a strong and powerful force throughout history, but many are just now getting the recognition they deserve. There are hundreds of more unknown inventors and thousands more stories to be told. It is true what they say, women run the world.

As the world becomes more technically advanced, your business needs to be as well. You should no longer just rely on your Facebook to be the main source page for your business, as you can lose hundreds of opportunities if you do so. Here is what you are able to gain by using a website:

Increase Visibility

The web has the widest range of users currently than ever before. So many people use the internet now that it is impossible to avoid it. And while it takes time to build up your website’s online traffic, there are many things that you can do to help with that. Updating your website frequently and connecting with a marketing business (like Southern View Media) who can help build advertisements on main stream sites will help your website become more and more recognized.

Credibility

Many people google a business or product before using it to see if it actually works or is credible. When building a website, you are telling customers that they can really trust you and your product. Your website allows you to add facts and provide potential clients with information of previous customer’s experience. (Can you say, ‘testimonial!’?)

Better Impression

When a business has a website, it gives the business a better impression to its customers. Many people often associate websites with large and successful companies. Appearing successful gives your company a leg up on those with just a simple facebook page that is used to operate their business. This also levels the playing field with larger companies because if two companies are compared, one has a facebook page and the other has a website, nine times out of ten people are going to put more faith and trust in the company with the website.

Accessible

Websites are nice because they are available twenty-four hours a day, all year long. This allows customers to learn about your business at any time and from anywhere. This is also more convenient for many potential clients as many work or go to school for long periods of time during the week. Creating a website will be creating a way to get information out to clients and potential clients that might otherwise only be available if someone was to call during business hours. 

Boost Sales

Online shopping has become a part of our daily lives. It is no longer necessary to wander around a mall for hours looking for the perfect handbag or baseball cap. With a click of a button, an item or service can be at your door in no time at all, so why run the risk of losing profit just because you do not have a website to do this through? This also allows customers to more clearly see what is available to them and if they are getting a good price. Websites are very important for any business in today’s world. Don’t be left behind or left out of a person’s decision just because you don’t have a website. If you are interested in building a website and growing it for an affordable cost, contact Southern View Media and we will gladly help you!